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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Arpanet and Google
By Antonio C. Abaya Written August 21, 2006 For the Standard Today, August 22 issue. The development of the Internet is probably the most important landmark in the history of communication, more literally earth-shaking in its impact on human civilization than the development of writing, the invention of printing and the moveable type, and the discovery of radio waves and their propagation through radio and television. In 1969, what became the Internet was originally known as the Arpanet, after ARPA or the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense. Its stated mission was �to assure that the US maintains a lead in applying state-of-the-art technology on military capabilities and to prevent technological surprises from her adversaries.� Its intellectual roots go back to the 1950s, to the pioneering work of Norbert Wiener in the field of cybernetics, a discipline in which that the US enjoyed a commanding lead, by default, after Josef Stalin pronounced cybernetics a �bourgeois pseudo-science� and forbade any dabbling in it by Soviet scientists. Fatuous claims that Marxism-Leninism is �scientific� have to be appreciated in this light. My own personal awareness of Arpanet began in 1989. Since April 1987 I had been writing a column in Business Day, which was shortly dissolved by publisher Raul Locsin and subsequently resurrected as BusinessWorld, after some Communist staff-members � led by someone who is now a senior executive in the capitalist Smart telecom giant - tried to grab editorial control of Business Day. (Other newspapers at the time � The Manila Times, The Manila Chronicle, Malaya � experienced similar attempts by Communists and communist sympathizers in their staffs to grab editorial control of the capitalist-owned publications. It was an organized effort to control media, taking advantage of the �democratic space� that the communist movement was then enjoying, post EDSA, under the Aquino administration. More about that in a future article.) Unbeknownst to me - I certainly was not paid a single cent for it � my articles were being monitored and uploaded into Arpanet, which was then an information service � there were no personal computers then - to which American university libraries and US government agencies subscribed. I personally became aware of this in 1988 when I was invited to read a paper in an International Workshop on Philippine Communism, held in Singapore and organized by Singapore �s Institute of Strategic Studies and the US Naval War College in Newport , Rhode Island . There were presenters not only from the US and the Philippines , but also from Japan , Vietnam , Australia , New Zealand , Israel , Belgium , the UK etc, as well as from the Rand Corporation and the US Army War College in Harrisburg , Pennsylvania . One of the attendees at the conference was a Philippine Navy captain who was enrolled at the US Naval War College. He told me that he read my articles through Arpanet, to which his college library subscribed. As did a US congressman from Louisiana whom I met in a later gathering, who said he read my articles through Arpanet, to which the Library of Congress also subscribed. From Arpanet, accessible only to select institutions in the US , to the Internet with hundreds of millions of daily users worldwide, in only 37 years, is a quantum leap and exponential growth unmatched by any other human invention that I can think of. Well, OK, perhaps international cable TV, which began in 1991, during the First Gulf War against Iraq and which is now another global phenomenon that bestrides the world like a Colossus. But in information contents, cable TV is superficial and limited, compared to the bottomless pit that is the Internet, though it must be granted that the video images of cable TV make it compelling and attractive even to those who are computer-illiterate.. I am no techno geek, so one aspect of the Internet that never fails to amaze me is the sheer interconnectivity of the whole network. For example, my article World War III? (Aug. 03), through the phenomenon of Google, drew comments and reactions from outside the Philippines, including from a retired history professor in Israel and the Financial Times correspondent in Tehran, hours before it appeared in print or online in the Manila Standard Today or in our tapatt distribution network. Apparently, the mere act of sending the article through cyberspace to Manila Standard Today triggered the Google digital monitors to snag it with their electronic nets and transmit it to those who had signed up for alerts on the subject of World War III. In my limited experience, this was just the second time that Google connected my article with someone (abroad) who had signed up for an alert on the subject of that article. In my article Bless You, Kalamzaoo (July 03), I had mentioned that in an earlier article My Aubervillers (Nov. 20, 2005), a reader in Racine, Wisconsin had reacted right away as a result of a Google alert on the subject of Vespa motor scooters. He reported that he was able to borrow a copy of my book Europe by Scooter (published in 1965 and long out of print) from the library of the Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo , Michigan , through an inter-library lending service accessed by the Racine Public Library. By coincidence, a Fil-Am reader, Gus Lucero, in Fullerton , California emailed his desire to get hold of the book, but despaired because he couldn�t find it in the Fullerton Public Library or in Borders or Barnes and Noble or amazon.com. So I told him to try the inter-library lending service through the Fullerton Public Library On Aug 03, he replied: �I took your advise and used the inter-library lending service and I was able to get your book As I told you before I read your column regularly and when you referred to your Europe by Scooter, I said I have to read this book. I finally did�. �Anyway, you might be interested to know that there are only seven copies of Europe by Scooter in the US . The libraries of the following universities have it: Yale University , the University of Illinois , Indiana University , Western Michigan University (that�s where I borrowed the copy I read), Cornell University , the University of Texas in Austin , and the University of Wisconsin in Madison �.� I�m surprised that my US alma mater, Northwestern University , no longer has a copy. When a niece of mine enrolled there about 15 years ago, it was still in its card catalogue. Maybe they threw away the book with the card catalogue. There�s a sequel to this. Sometime in July or August, a reader in Metro Manila (sorry, but I seem to have inadvertently deleted the post) emailed the information that Europe by Scooter was available in the main library of De La Salle University on Taft Ave., and �can be photocopied on the fourth floor.� But, apparently there is no copy of it in my own alma mater, Ateneo de Manila. Perhaps the Jesuits have disowned .me. ***** Reactions to [email protected]. Other articles since 2001 in www.tapatt.org. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |