Teacher Sol, playing the “interview game” initiated by Dean Alfar gave me five questions to answer.  Recall that I got involved first by responding to questions thrown at me by Bing of Warmstone.

Here I discuss my ideal world, on why I’d want a Mac, and how blogging

can be very empowering, especially in this knowledge-based economy of

ours.

1. Pretend that you are making your own world. What are the three most important things you would put in it? Why?

This one’s quite difficult.  I wouldn’t want to be too

philosophical, but then again, I’d like to take this opportunity ot

impress.

Hmm …

If I were to create my own world, it must have:

1. Balance, so everything
   
   would be perfect.  Just like two sides of an equation, things
   
   would follow this very simple rule.  There would be light and dark
   
   sides (of the force?).  There would be black and white (and
   
   everything in between).  There would even be good and bad. 
   
   The scale may be tipped to either side, but will always return to a
   
   state of equilibrium.
   


2. Freedom of choice for the inhabitants of that world, so they would get to learn from their own actions, and I get to learn from them myself.


3. The ability to start from scratch
   
   or from any point.  Very Matrix-like, but if everything went
   
   FUBAR, then I’d definitely want to pause, rewind, and set things up
   
   again with perhaps some minor adjustments, to see if things could be
   
   any better.

#1 is an essential for perfection, but only that would be boring. 

#2 brings about excitement.  #3 brings about assurance that

there’s always a chance for a new beginning.  Ain’t that a

wonderful world?

2. Have you ever been jealous of someone? What did you do about it?

Yes.  If I told you, then I’d have to kill you (and everyone else who reads this post) .

3. You’re a techie person, which do you prefer, a Mac or a PC? Why?

I’ve always been a PC guy, not by choice, but rather by

circumstance.  Macs had historically been a tad more expensive

than your regular clone PC with more-or-less equivalent specs (or

computing power), and I’m not one to afford such a luxury.  But if

I had the money to spend, then I’d definitely get a Mac.  I’d want

my equipment to have the power, but without the headaches and hassles

commonly associated with PCs and PC-based software.

If I had the spare PhP 64k, I’d get an iBook 12″.  Definitely

cheaper than most branded PC-based notebooks (even non 12-inchers)

these days.  Not as powerful as the Powerbook, but it will do.

4. If you are given the power to change one important thing in the Pinoy Blogging Community, what would it be?




As I see it, the Pinoy Blogging community is just still in its

infancy.  Blogging is not as mainstream as it is in the west,

especially in the US.  And I can observe that access to blogs and

blogging is still quite restricted to a privileged few, particularly

those who are tech-literate, and who have access to the needed

facilities.

But blogging can be very empowering, especially to those who are not

politically and economically well-endowed.  Blogging gives a voice

to the masses–you don’t need to own a newspaper or run a television or

radio show to be heard (and that’s where podcasting comes in). 

It’s basically grassroots publishing at its finest, but the people who

can benefit the most from this wonderful concept are those who cannot

afford to even try it out.  And that’s not because internet access

is expensive, and the PC and internet penetration rates in the country

are low.  But it’s because a lot of people are so impoverished

that getting ideas published online would be the last thing on their

mind.

So that’s it: if there’s one important thing, it would be for blogs and

blogging to be known as the mouthpiece of the masses–truly empowering

technology.  That’s something we don’t have now, because as I see

it, most who get involved in blogging are those who are either

tech-savvy in the first place, and/or who are quite well-off.

5. How do you see the blogosphere (in general) 10 years from now?

I honestly still don’t have a definitive opinion on this one.  We

have seen media evolve in the past decade, with the popularity of the

Internet.  So anything can happen in the next ten years.  I’m

seeing that the blogosphere is becoming more and more mainstream, and

is gaining ground in terms of influence and reach.  There are

opinions that the blogging trend is only a bandwagon, or a bubble

waiting to burst very much like the tech bubble of the 1990’s. 

And yet there are also opinions that there is no such bubble, at least

not financially, because blogging is all about mindshare, all about

knowledge exchange.

And I subscribe to the latter: that blogs and blogging are very much in

tune with the increasingly knowledge-based world economy that we’re

living in, and hence is assured of its place in the future. 

Knowledge is the becoming to be the most essential capital, and blogs

are an excellent venue for knowledge management and enhancement.

So in the next 10 years, anything can happen with the

blogosphere.  But whatever that is, whatever the blogosphere

evolves into, it would definitely involve a lot of improvement in

knowledge capital.

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