I’m at the Philippine Cyberpress forum: Vision 20/20: Looking Back & Looking Forward- celebrating 20 years of internet in the Philippines

Its hard to believe that there’s an age for everything, if humans get old and we start to go slow as we age, our Philippine internet gets old too, but rather than go slow, it becomes more faster as it upgrades itself every year. I just hope that we humans can be like that, we upgrade our self as time pass by, learning from the mistakes, do better process and be a better hardware like the internet. March 29, 1994 was the year of the 1st ever internet connection of the Philippines to the world, and for this 2014, we are already celebrating for its 20th year! wow! I just can’t believe that internet is already 20 years old. I’m 36 years old today, that’s 16 years older than the internet.

Thanks to the Philippine Cyberpress for inviting me for this special day and event to celebrate our 20th year of Philippine internet.The forum titled "Vision 20/20: Looking Back and Looking Forward", its a forum event attended by the IT journalist of the Philippines, media, bloggers and important people in the tech industry. It was the best forum event ever, almost everyone were there celebrating the launch of the 1st internet. The celebration is very important because we see how internet makes our life easier and fun.
For a short throwback of my history with the internet.

I remember that March 1994 was the year that I graduated in high school in Espiritu Santo Parochial School, its the same year were I started to upgrade myself to college and the same month and year that internet was connected in the Philippines.

But I’m aware already about the internet when I was in Grade 5 in University of Santo Thomas, I think I should thank the B-movies and sci fi movies for showing to us what’s the life of having an internet in the USA, and also I thank the computer magazines that I read for featuring some articles about the internet, it is also the time during my grade school years that I noticed IBM, Microsoft and Apple.But my only focus that time is gaming and Nintendo stuff. So the discovery of the internet through magazine is a bit accidental.

During my grade 5 years, there’s a rumor that there’s an internet connection at the top floor of the main building of UST, it was a rumor that year, and because of that rumor, me and my 3 classmates did some Goonies stunt, we sneaked in the building, and we are chased by the security guards as we attempted to reach the roof top of the main building. We failed… because the door to the rooftop is locked and we got stuck in a floor with glass displays of different kinds of worms, it was disgusting and I just wished that we never take that floor.

In grade 6 years, I finally sneaked in to the rooftop of the main building of UST, I just saw the structure on top and there’s no computer station or internet, so the rumors are just rumor and internet station at the rooftop are not true.

I waited for that internet connection in my life, so when I entered college in 1994, then fast forward to 1997 or 1998, I finally saw the 1st internet café and shop in Recto, I was studying in FEU that year taking BS Math major in Computer Science. I tried renting one desktop PC and surf the internet one by one, trying to learn on how those thing works, and then I learned on how to make an email and also surf some articles about Nintendo and Sega.

I wrote a snail mail letter to my Aunt Zenin in the USA, I included there in my snail mail letter that I already own my email address, I guess I’m the first ever person in the family here in the Philippines to get my own email. So I waited for months for her reply, then my auntie wrote back via email after she receives my snail mail letter. I printed her letter and showed it to my parents…and I think that’s the wow moments of our first reaction that we got a very cheap way to communicate with our relatives in the US.

During a year of internet surfing, I learned how to chat in miRC, then we were amazed for the coming of Yahoo! messenger, reading forums and bulletin boards, we got wow moments again when we learned how to download photos, we store those media files on a diskette and keep it as our own data files. We got wow again when we learned about MIDI files, WAV files, and RMV videos.

Then after that year, I started to learn on how to make my own website, by using that Netscape composer, I created my own website for our rock band. Then on 1999, I started creating our own ONLINE store, we sell anime and comics online. Then I met a girl who is also taking programming courses in CEU and was a customer of the internet shop, I got a crush on her, so I started my courtship moves, but it didn’t work out hahaha, after being depressed for some time, I started to learn from my mistakes and then I focus my time in learning the internet, until…. year 2003, I started my own blog and the rest is history!

It’s a fun throwback moments about my life with our Philippine internet, I haven’t chronicle it here in my blog, but consider this as my tribute for its 20th anniversary and also sharing my life with it.

Above is my photo with Engr. Benjie Tan, one of the responsible person who helped the country connect our internet to the world, thanks also to Dr. William Torres, who is considered to be our Father of Philippine Internet, because he is also responsible in doing the connection of internet for the Philippines in 1990, we’re not yet connected yet to the world that time, but we waited for 4 years for Engr Benjie to appear in the scene and make the first contact abroad using the internet.

There are lots of cyber rockstars in this forum event, but everyone do cheer to the max when Engr. Benjie Tan arrives.

here’s a photo op with our PBNET girls – Barbie, Edel and Irene

Panoramic view of the Cyberpress forum

Globe rep. during the panel talks, they shared to us some comments of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg about our usage of internet in the Philippines, that’s why they decided to do business with Globe, by offering Facebook for free in their Globe network only.

LG Mobile gave a nice talk about their products, and here I learned that are usually the first in every mobile tech. They released the first ever LTE phones and other tech shizgamigig in LG mobile.

A rep. from a business company who do Bitcoin trading went up on stage to share a talk on why it is good to move to Bitcoin. I got an interest to know about it, but I later started to move away because Bitcoin is not for me.