The American Frank

 

T3^rd World –> 1^st World / Web1 –> Web3

MY COUNTRY, THE PHILIPPINES, IS AT THE LOWER RUNGS OF THE TALL LADDER OF FIRST WORLD SUCCESS. ACTUALLY, OTHER COUNTRIES ARE JUST A BIT BETTER, NOTWITHSTANDING THEIR MUCH HIGHER WORLD RANKING. AFTER ALL, FIRST WORLD IS NOT ONLY ABILITY BUT ALSO SUSTAINABILITY, MORE SO EQUITABILITY. Image from Ruthie101 which she titles Sustaining_Hotmomma (flickr.com/ - that’s ability, that’s sustainability, that’s equitability.

True, the Third World can’t compete with the First World; when it comes to Goods, we’re only That Good. But we can compete in Services, and that we are already doing (and we’re Topnotch) – except that we’re doing it half-consciously, haphazardly. That’s the problem! I am writing this to wake all of us up to the reality that the Philippines has the genius to become First World. As has Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, East Timor, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam.

But how do we compete with the other Asian countries? We don’t. We use our head. Let us simply excel in what we’re good at. Let us simply be the best in what we do. Only the best is good enough.

And to do that, here’s one lesson we need to learn, and it has to do with knowing. It is this: Knowledge is the new capital of the world, as according to Peter Drucker, the thinking management guru:

Knowledge, during the last few decades, has become the central capital, the cost center, and the crucial resource of the economy. This changes labor forces and work, teaching and learning, and the meaning of knowledge and its politics. But it also raises the problem of the responsibilities of the new men of power, the men of knowledge.

Hidden knowledge? Drucker wrote that 38 years ago yet in his book of intellectual discovery, The Age Of Discontinuity: Guidelines To Our Changing Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1968: xi). We never had an epiphany out of that one declarative sentence or two from one great mind. Where was our genius? (Well, we Filipinos have never been known as readers.)

Now we are in the Age of the Internet; by Drucker’s way of thinking, to explore the Net’s full potential requires that we use information innovatively, ingeniously, inspiringly – because if we don’t, the other Third World countries will catch up with the idea and the Philippines will remain as the Sick Man of Asia, The Laughingstock. We don’t have the oil and the forests of Indonesia; we don’t have the discipline of Singapore; we don’t have the managerial autocracy of Malaysia; we don’t have the spirit of South Korea; we don’t have the enlightened monarchy of Thailand; and we have not exhibited anything like the brain & brawn energies of Vietnam.

So how do we get out of the mud of the mediocrity of our achievements?

We must make a paradigm shift, and here is the tool I offer with which we can change perspective from knowing everything to knowing (almost) nothing:

Eng.

Now, that’s a thinking aid, a 3-letter word I have invented as my contribution to creative thinking Third World Development as of 2006. Consider the sight & sound of Eng: you can write it cap or lowercase, set it bold or italics, change the font or the size, whatever. Eng is a creation that is either an invocation, or act, or advocacy, or wish, or will – or all of the above. You can make it what you want to.

My Eng is the equivalent of Edward De Bono’s Po, which he offers as a device for creative thinking. In my view, De Bono is the world’s authority on thinking, having invented ‘lateral thinking’ as a technique for creative thinking. Following De Bono, the moment you think No, you are thinking critically, logically; the same as when you think Yes. No and Yes stop you from being creative; they are the enemies of creative thinking. So, when brainstorming, don’t anybody say ‘No’ and don’t anybody say ‘Yes’ – instead, say ‘Po’ all the time and go on and generate more ideas, the crazier the better. Once you get the hang of it – it’s not that easy – in a little while, a brilliant idea will come flashing through, from out of the blue, from out of the weird. (See Edward De Bono’s Web, edwdebono.com/. I first learned about lateral thinking when my good friend Orli Ochosa gifted me with a copy of De Bono’s Mechanism Of Mind almost 30 years ago.)

In my case, this 3^rd week of July 2006, I had been thinking along the lines of Po when suddenly I came up with my own Po, and that is my Eng.

To apply the idea of the Eng as a tool for creative thinking, we are going to play what I call The Eng Game.

Eng is a prefix, that which is in front of something else. Eng is an abbreviation, a shortened version of a name, place, thing, act or event. As a prefix, when you add Eng to a word or idea, you enrich it. As an abbreviation, when you spell out the Eng word or term, you signify a need-to-do. Both the enriching and the signifying a need-to-do are important in national development – as I am about to illustrate.

We will now use Eng in a mathematical formula to enumerate the factors that must work together for the complex growth of a country, Dev1 being 1^st World Development, – (minus quantity), + (plus quantity), ± (plus or minus quantity):

Dev1 = + (Eng1) – (Eng2) – (Eng3) ± (Eng4) + (Eng5) + (Eng6) + (Eng7).

In considering this formula, remember, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

So now we play The Eng Game of Third World Development. I am about to demonstrate a play of words even I have never seen before – I invented The Eng Game just this evening of 22 July, Manila time – and it’s all to show you that we Filipinos can run out of gas, we can run out of breath, but we will never run out of ideas – 24 July finds me still revising text and title, and now I have come up with the idea of another kind of Internet, which you can read about later in this article – and we Filipinos will never run out of hope.

THE ENG GAME BEGINS NOW:

(1) England as our model First World country? Yes. If it came to a plebiscite, I would vote for England. We Filipinos like the British, if only for Princess Diana and London, and I like the British version of the Parliament. We are playing the Parliament game already anyway with the People’s Initiative, a signature campaign. In the United Kingdom, there are two houses. One is the House of Lords, which comprises 724 Peers (595 of them appointed for life, the rest hereditary) and 26 Bishops and Archbishops of the Church of England; the other is the House of Commons, which has 646 Members of Parliaments (the MPs), all MPs being popularly elected. The House of Commons is the center of political life in Britain, as even ministers have to explain and justify their actions to the MPs (UK, news.bbc.co.uk/).

Now, did you notice that the House of Lords includes a good number of Bishops and Archbishops? The Men in Faith. In the House of Lords, the Men in Black can vote. Yankees, listen! In Britain, where you come from, there is no separation of Church and State; there is no separate peace. If you separate Church and State, you separate yin and yang, thesis and anti-thesis, your heart from your brain.

Clueless, we Filipinos adopted the Yankee system and installed a President and a Congress made up of the House of Representatives and the Senate. In the United States, the ladies and gentlemen of Congress are forbidden by law to share their faith. That’s why the Yankees have all kinds of laws beyond logic, like same sex marriages, and they have made it a transgression against society to say even a word about your faith in class or office. So, never mind those moonstruck Yankees! The bloody British are right. We Filipinos must adopt their system. The UK, represented by England, is a model country of how and why not to separate the Church from the State. You can’t separate the mind from the body, the spirit from the flesh. Beyond kindness and understanding, liberal democracy will be the death of the Yankees yet.

(2) Friedrich Engels as model political philosopher and, if Engels comes, can Karl Marx be far behind? No! The two together developed the theory of communism, one of the major counterpoints of democratism, the other being Muslimism. The two made a perfect pair, as Marx was at his best explaining communist theory to scholars while Engels was at his best explaining communist would-be-practice to the masses (spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/). One of the most famous lines in history is that one from The Communist Manifesto co-authored by Marx and Engels: ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’ In Marx’s revolutionary activities, Engels supported him financially and intellectually. After Marx died, Engels spent the rest of his life and money explaining what communism was all about, believing that ‘Marx had found a scientific basis for history’ (WJ Rayment 2003, indepthinfo.com/). And that is precisely why Filipinos reject the Communist Manifesto: Too much science and not enough humanity. Marx and Engels had abandoned the humanistic materialism of Ludwig Feuerbach and adopted Marx’s dialectical materialism (wikipedia.org/). When I was much younger, I tried but failed to understand dialectical materialism.

(3) The English Revolution as the model for the people’s ascent to power? No! The English Revolution in the 17^th century was the struggle between the ‘Divine Right’ of kings (as claimed by King Charles II) and the ‘reasonable right’ of Parliament. It seemed to have been religion versus reason, but only because the king wanted it to appear so (Hendrik van Loon 2003, authorama.com/). Religion is not the enemy of reason – the believers of reason insist that it is, and that is unreasonable.

In last year’s and this year’s attempts to dethrone the Queen, to unseat the Philippine President, there are parallels to the 17^th century English Revolution. There are two camps claiming rightful headship of the Philippines. On one hand, there are some honored military minds who believe that they have divined the best design on how to run this country. On the other hand, there are honorable men who have divined that in the meantime the Philippines is better off with Gloria-Macapagal Arroyo as President of her country, duly elected. Like what the Englishmen did with the Scots who then betrayed their king who was of their own kind, the opponents of GMA have tried to buy the Filipino people with propaganda, or entice them to wage a third People Power Revolution, but the people would not betray their Queen. The voice of the people is the voice of God. Those who claim to have divined their right to rule their country must be worthy of their countrymen.

(4) Engineering as a field to master to lead us to national development? Yes. I would recommend chemical engineering (since our farmers insist on chemicals for farming: inorganic fertilizers and inorganic pesticides). I would also recommend quality assurance engineering, since we Filipinos are not too keen on total quality management. And systems design engineering, since we Filipinos do not talk in terms of systems but in terms of components only. We do not seem to realize it is the relationships that make the whole, not the sum of the parts.

What about genetic engineering? This is seen as the new savior of farm crops from their age-old enemies, the insect pests. But the insect pests have come out with their own anti-insecticide adaptations against the genetically engineered super crops, so that now we have super pests, or those resistant to pesticides; already, some 1,000 major pest species have been reported as pesticide-resistant (Anne Platt McGinn 2000, usgbc.org/). Here is a big solution that happens to create another big problem.

I would prefer that we engage in value engineering. So then we can find out if indeed we are adding value via genetic engineering and all the other engineering projects we have. That of course depends on how you define value. Me, I define value in the moral, not the economic sense. Life is much more complicated than statistics. Let the economists and statisticians go figure.

(5) English as the medium of instruction in preschool, grade school, high school, college in the Philippines? By all means! English is the most powerful language in the world, so why not harness that latent energy?

The Philippine Star on 18 July carried the Page One news, ‘English to be fully restored as medium of instruction’ reported by Ding Cervantes:

Incoming Education Secretary (and Tarlac Representative) Jesli Lapus said here yesterday he will fully restore English as the medium of instruction in the country to upgrade the quality of education and make it ‘market driven.’

For the record, in the Philippines only the Philippine Star reported that piece of news. How do I know? On that same day, I bought copies of several newspapers: Manila Bulletin, Daily Inquirer, Business Mirror, Daily Tribune, Manila Standard Today, and not one mentioned Lapus’ plan to restore English in its exalted position in each classroom in all the 7,000 islands of the country – we had English in Grade 1 in 1947 when I was that high. A major story like that and they ignore it. Why the silence of the lamps, the failure of the light of reason in those proud papers? Why because it’s not negative enough to GMA; in fact it’s definitely positive for her. She believes in the 1^st World mind of the Filipino even if many Filipinos don’t!

Lapus would be historically the second remarkable man from the province of Tarlac in Central Luzon to dignify Philippine education. The first and very famous was Carlos P Romulo (1899-1985), the foremost Filipino diplomat, the only Filipino winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the first Asian to become President of the UN General Assembly. He was a distinguished President of the University of the Philippines and Secretary of Education (1963-196 (BookRags.com). He was a man. He was short but he was tall.

As was Romulo, so is Lapus convinced that in English lies the fundamental global competitiveness of the Filipino. I am glad to have read that news story because I myself have long been of the conviction that English would be the life of us. Because of our genius in mastering the English language, we have the facility to be ‘the best knowledge workers in the world,’ as GMA puts it (20 May, gov.ph/news/).

For all that, English is the way to go even if our skins are of the earth. The brain knows no color except gray.

(6) Database Engine to launch the national language project mandated by the 1987 Cory Constitution of the Philippines? Yes. That language-to-be I call not Filipino but Filipinas. I am using the database engine, which is that portion of a database management system (software) that actually stores and retrieves data, to represent the whole software itself for inputting, processing, storing and retrieving information. The 1987 Philippine Constitution mandates that the national language, to be called Filipino, be enriched with borrowings not only from Tagalog but also from the other languages in the Philippine islands and from foreign languages. To help build that new national language, we may need the regional colleges to build separate language databases to speed up the process. Let the 100 or so languages in the Philippines each contribute to the database a diversity of meaning and manner, substance and style, content and intent. Filipinas will be the richest language in history yet. Watch out! World.

(For more details on this, read my earlier article ‘A Damaged Academe: How can University of the Philippines save the Ship of State?’ also in the American Chronicle.)

Meanwhile, to the 100 tribes/languages in my country, I shout: ‘Amalgamate!’

(7) A different Search Engine to make creative minds of us all? Yes! We must redesign the Internet to yield not only information but information-in-context results, whatever the search may be. MSN, Yahoo and Google as search engines are fast, faster, fastest in that order, but all sophomoric when it comes to any search in context. They all are designed to search only for information and if they give you context, that’s accidental.

Context is crucial; context is like this:

I search for “NPK fertilizers” and that’s all I know about the subject.
The search results tell me that NPK fertilizers are inorganic fertilizers used as nutrient supplements for soils lacking such elements. My search results also tell me that on one hand there are also organic fertilizers that are used instead of inorganic fertilizers. I didn’t know that before; now I do. Context. That gets me to thinking: What about organic fertilizers? Now I can begin to relate inorganic fertilizers to organic fertilizers. I become more intelligent because I search for something and I learn something else I don’t know anything about but as it turns out I need to know.

Think!

Context helps me think better, much better. Assuming I have an open mind, if you give me more contexts, I will think even better.

NOW, TO SUMMARIZE:

For the Philippines, 1^st World Development = + (English Parliament) – (Engels) – (English Revolution) ± (Genetic Engineering) + (English) + (Database Engine) + (Search Engine).

The Eng Game we have just played tells us there are 7 steps to take for my country to go from 3^rd World to 1^st World:
(1) Accept England as model government; adapt its parliamentary system.
(2) Reject the political philosophy of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx.
(3) Reject the English Revolution as a model to effect radical change.
(4) Think 7 times about Genetic Engineering.
(5) Engender a Database Engine to develop the new national language Filipinas.
(6) Advocate English as medium of instruction nationwide, as medium of official communication and record in public and private offices.
(7) Generate a new Search Engine on the Internet as a creative thinking medium, an enricher of mind, via the device of context, bringing you information, leading you to insights, perhaps giving you options you didn’t know exist but are related to your search and which you can use for decision-making in any aspects of life public or private.

Context is what is missing in artificial intelligence (AI). With context programming, I expect to see quickly reality AI, higher-order artificial intelligence. Why because context reduces your problems with ‘what ifs’ that are theoretically infinite – because context defines boundaries. AI should be context-driven, not answer-driven; it should be more than what-if-driven. It has been 65 years since the genesis of AI in the mind of Alan Turing (Andrew Hodges, turing.org.uk/), and AI has not succeeded in mimicking the workings of the human brain, which it has set out to do. In fact, it never will, because our thinking is too complicated, too unpredictable – it can change context in a split second, and that’s why it’s perfect for creative thinking. It’s difficult enough for man to teach man to think creatively; man can never teach a machine to think creatively, and I’m glad: else, man would be God. I’m afraid that even today, man thinks too highly of himself already!

With context in mind, we must redesign the Internet so that it becomes not just an endless virtual vertical file but an active mind. An Internet that thinks! That would be the World Wide Mind, in short WWM, a vertical flip from WWW, a paradigm shift if ever I saw one, my dream Web 3.0, beyond today’s reality Web 1.0, way beyond your dream Web 2.0.

With context, beyond the audio-visual delights and data derivable from the Internet today lies its nuclear power, creative, god-like, God-given. We are men of power, having jumped to the moon up there, and we are men of knowledge, having mapped the human genome down here. All that will be nothing when The Other Internet we learn to create. When we do, we can all be 1^st World after all.

Copyright July 2006 by Frank A Hilario.
Published 24 July by American Chronicle

 

On English & Taglish

Email from Nonie David in Lagos, Nigeria, having read my ‘A Damaged Academe’ (published by American Chronicle, 29 June, published in this blogsite with the exact same content but with a different title: ‘Diliman in a Dilemma’ (see below). Image of Nigerian students of Nonie, captioned ‘Break time.’

Dear Frank,

Thanks a lot for the immediate reply. I devoted some time yesterday devouring your article. In the process I also ended up reading more things from other blogsites on Taglish.

As my sister has told you, I have been living in Nigeria for some time now, actually 24 years. I have always been in the education field. I lectured on geophysics at the University of Benin for ten years. Right now, I am administering a secondary school; I was the founding director - we started some 7 years ago.

Over the years I found myself really getting concerned, sometimes even irritated, every time I get to meet some of our compatriots in Nigeria and hear them speak Taglish. Nothing morally wrong with Taglish as such but many times I get the impression that it prevents them from being articulate with their thoughts. Actually, other expatriates have commented that sometimes they do not understand the way Pinoys express themselves. In the end, I think Taglish puts us to a disadvantage.

Living in Nigeria has exposed me to hundreds of tribes and therefore hundreds of local languages. They use English as a national language. I have not seen any disadvantage of their using English; as a matter of fact, it is an advantage. Interestingly enough, I believe that there are many more educated Nigerians (I mean those that passed through the university) speak much better English than the average Pinoy college graduate. This is because when they speak English, they think in English. There is a local lingua franca called Pidgin English but people who speak it are aware they are not speaking the correct English.

You were the first person I heard referring to tribes (Tagalogs, Ilocanos, etc.) in the Philippines. I am not very happy about it. If my experience in Nigeria is a guide, I would say that the fact of the tribal differences having disappeared among Pinoys over the centuries of colonial rule is a blessing. We have no problem of intermarriage nor is our politics based on tribal lines. I really think we are better off than those African countries who highlight tribal differences.

————————————
Well, Mr. Hilario, I am sorry for sending this rather delayed. Several times I tried to work on this piece I always end up the day not being able to send you because of power failure. That was the case of the whole week last week. We always have power failure here at times you least expect it. You just do not know what you enjoy there in Pinas.

Cheers,

Dr. Lorenzo M. David (a.k.a. Nonie)
Whitesands School
Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria

By the way, thanks a lot for the article. I just hope there are more of you Pinoys who could get most of us thinking.