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Which will be the ‘next Internet’: Google or Facebook?

Note: This piece was first published in the Northern Dispatch (Nordis) Weekly (www.nordis.net) on July 17, 2011. I made some minor editing for this post.

 

Facebook and Google have been battling it out for the title of 'The Next Internet'. Who is expected to win?

Of course there is only one Internet. It is composed of many parts, to be sure, and there are many ways of “surfing it.” But it is just one big whole, just as there is only one global ocean even if it’s composed of many parts and there are many ways of travelling through it.

So, why must the question be asked at all? Why should we be concerned whether the Internet takes this or that shape?

Continue reading “Which will be the ‘next Internet’: Google or Facebook?”

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A road map to the past

It’s June 12, 2011. Yet another Philippine Independence Day.

Boxer Codex
Visayan Pintados ("the painted ones"), the Boxer Codex, 1590

Again, Filipinos here and all over the world will celebrate, commemorate, cerebrate, maybe exonerate a couple of historical villains here and there, and perhaps commiserate with each other for what our country and people have achieved, or not achieved, since that fateful day 113 years ago.

Media (including Internet media) will be awash with historical or at least wannabe-historical pieces about our country’s past.

I, of course, being a Filipino — and a history buff at that — will join the June 12 hordes. But I have a special agenda. Continue reading “A road map to the past”