I can still remember that I am very fascinated with having so many friends on Friendster and MySpace where the two community sites became my instant diary of my rants and raves aside from my photo albums. I became a huge fan of Pinoy Central and Pinoy Exchange during the time of UAAP exchanging my views with fellow students. Those were my first few memories on how I did enjoyed having the access of internet during my younger years aside from academic researches of course.
Who can ever forget the famous My Own Email website that offers cool email extensions when you are so bored with your email address ends at yahoo and hotmail that doesn’t have to much memory only around 250MB that time. And also MIRc was a big thing for community chat when mobile apps like Line, Wechat and Kakaotalk are not yet existing.
We enjoyed technology the same I do that bridge us to one person to another and across the ocean. It became our instant connection among persons, culture, belief and later opinion when other applications and community sites flourish. And we take advantage of those options to express ourselves
From Php 50 down to Php 10 per hour on internet rentals in some computer cafes near academes. And with the birth of laptops, smartphones and tablets along with plug-it, WiFi and 3G/LTE we can reach out anyone even we are on the road.
As years go by with out access to the world wide web it gives us the power to see the world just a click away and express ourselves at the same time. As we celebrate 20 years of Philippine Internet may we not only remember the triumph but also the learning that we encountered. Each one of us became netizens and citizen journalist sharing our reports and views that became part of nation building. From traffic in EDSA to virtual bayanihan during calamities we Filipinos unite as one nation. We became reporters via our social networks and messenger of hope for those who needs strength. We saw how social media were used during the typhoons Ondoy, Sendong, Pablo, Maring and Yolanda.
We became evangelists of information on how to take part of different relief efforts and during election the eye and ears of every Filipinos hoping for clean result. Until now we are the cyber watch dogs monitoring what is happening in the government.
As we move forward we must not forget all the things that we did with the help of internet. It is a very powerful tool we just need to use it wisely and responsible enough. Like a campaign that the other station did Think Before You Click. Even though it is different in the world wide web it is important to maintain respect and responsibility to yourself and to others.
