Technological Change... Environment Change?

The environment has a very strong influence on how people make their daily living. In fact, human being must adopt to the environment they are living for them to survive. It has been proven throughout the history of human being that the way human being revolved, their lifestyle, their needs among others depends on the environment or society they belong.

Technology on the other hand has been created and used to serve fast changing human needs. Technology has started to its basic form during the ancient times where human knowledge and resources were still limited. But this simple technologies of the past serve as the stepping stone on what the present and the future appearance and features and capabilities of technologies has been and will be. A very good example of this very simple technology is the abacus which was invented by the Chinese thousand of years ago. From this simple counting machine originated the idea of what we knew today as the calculators and supercomputers which can perform billion of instructions per second, a billion times faster and accurate than the abacus. The abacus was invented by the Chinese because of their need of an accurate, fast and efficient way of computing which was very important in trading of goods. With this example, it is very evident that technology existed because of the needs of people and for them to cope up with the fast pace changes in the society.

Innovation in the field of technology can be defined as applying changes to an existing machine or technology to serve a purpose. With this simple definition, we can say that technological innovations made not only because of the dynamic and increasing needs and demands of human being, but simply because society itself demands for such innovations. We cannot deny the fact that there are certain events in society not only simple but very significant events that triggers major turnaround on the way people living in the past which also influenced what we see now in the present and will see in the future. If we try to look back few centuries back, I don't know if it is just an unexpected circumstances happened or it is a trend. Every historical and significant events happened, new technologies were introduced or innovations in existing technologies were made in order for the event to be more significant and historical. At some point in time it is safe to say that significant events in our society leads to invention and innovation in technology. Taking the abacus again as the example, at the beginning of its utilization its basic function as a machine that performs arithmetic operations had fully suits its purpose. But as the needs of people grow due to huge changes in the society and the environment. It is a very long story on how the basic idea of a simple machine performing only arithmetic functions and intended only for business has evolved to a very complex and sophisticated machine that has the capability to process billions of instructions in a second and used not in business operations but in almost any fields; biology, astronomy, medicine, mathematics and even in the military. Because of the fast advancements of the above mentioned fields, most of the historical events happened were greatly influenced by these technological fields. In fact, there will be two scenarios that occasionally happen. It is either new innovations from the existing technologies will be developed or technologies were used to drive significant events. For me to prove that these scenarios were not just merely coincidence but a fact, I have identified several significant and historical events in society. Significant here doesn't mean only events that are constructive but all event, whether it is constructive or destructive in nature.

In the field of astronomy, the discovery of Galileo Galilee of the planetary bodies using simple telescope has inspired a lot of astronomers to explore the space and the universe. Because of this discovery, more and more and more powerful and high technology telescopic and astronomical gadgets were developed and innovated to unveil the mysteries of the universe. Humans are not contented on viewing the heavens from the earth. Many astronomers specially the Americans and the Russians raced to be the first to send human on the outer space using their most powerful and expensive space shuttles. In the present, robots were sent to planet Mars to investigate the possibilities of human survival in the planet. Clearly, innovations in technologies in the field of astronomy had conquered the universe more than human being can imagine. Technological changes and historical events must be related and interconnected with each other in other words.

The world had also experienced chaos that sent the whole world into total destruction and human being from extinction. Although this turmoil in society has had a lot of damages and caused trauma for those who had witnessed and experienced it, somehow it also brought benefits in which people from the present have been very thankful and that the is the technological change. First was the World War 1. this war was considered to be the old fashioned war where countries and its soldiers used low powered and slow weapons. Battleships were the most powerful weapon during that time. World War I had brought a lot of lessons and ideas to military to create or develop more technological weapons to minimize damages and civilian casualties. 30 years after and another World War started. But the 30 years before the war was the transition of constant technological innovations and development. The idea and the prototype of the first aircraft technology developed by the Wright Brothers were developed during that pre war era. This aircraft technology were the cream of the top as far as technological advancements are concerned. Airplanes which were developed to provide convenience to mankind as a means of transportation were put into experimentation by the military and later turned into a super weapon and also turned war into a new dimension, the battle on the sky were inaugurated.

The World War II was the said to be the most expensive and most destructive war in the world history in terms of cost of weapons and damages. The huge lift in technological innovations in this field clearly had caused such chaos and damage in our society. It is said that innovations in technology in war reveals the dark side of technology.

The military specially in the United States and that also includes the Defense Department of the United States of America had funded a lot of research projects to improve the current technologies and to strengthen their defense against terrorism and other evil forces. In the present, a lot of new technologies used in the military all around the world were developed not only to become more powerful but also to minimize civilian casualties. We have now the stealth fighter technology aircraft that can penetrate enemy's territory without even detected by a radar and also integrated with a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracker to make war more accurate and precise while minimizing casualties. This technology was used in Afghanistan in search for Osama Bin Laden .

With this technologies existed as a legacy of war, we can say that damages and turmoil caused by the war doesn't brought only disadvantages but also benefits. This event should be a classic example of significant event in society that resulted technological innovations.

The birth of the Internet in the late 80's also gave birth to the generation that we commonly called today as the “information age”. This event is one of the most significant event in society if we try to look at the way people living in the present world. Nowadays almost all transactions of every individual could be done through the world wide web and the cyberspace from banking, purchasing, research and even chatting and social networking. No doubt the Internet was a big hit. In the beginning, only computers had the capability to access the Internet, but now, almost all electronic gadgets could access the Internet at a very low cost. Cellphones, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and Iphones all created and innovated to have access on the Internet using the new technology called wi-fi or wireless fidelity. As of this moment, majority of the technologies created and will be made in the future must support the Internet for these technologies to be competitive in the market. Clearly, the Internet is another milestone in the success of mankind because of many advantages it provides to end users. The endpoint is that the birth of the Internet is an example of technological innovations that became a significant event in society.
Actually, technologies of the present are the results of the hard work and efforts of genius entities of the past together with the mighty force of our society. We could never reached all the things that are happening today if all such events in our history never happened. But always remember that things are always created in a balance way.

As a summary, from the above mentioned scenarios and those that we feel and experience from our daily lives, we can say that significant events in our society and innovations in technology are related and interconnected. Events that happened had become successful and also destructive because of such technological innovations and also technological innovations has been successful because of such significant events in society.

USEP - Obrero Online Community

The University of Southeastern Philippines has a new online community where the students of the University and outsiders can hang-out with. The online community was created by John Francis Dela Vega, an evening student from the University of Southeastern Philippines. The online community has a lot of features such as chatting, blogging and many more. With this online community, it is very easy for not only for USEPians but also for outsiders to meet and make friends in cyberspace. Faculty are also welcome to join.

The image above is the actual appearance of the site. Click the image to visit the site.

Update: Sorry but the website's already down.

My PhilNITS exam Result

Last night, I receive the result of my PhilNITS FE examination. The exam was conducted here in Davao last October 19,2008 at the University of Immaculate Conception - Bonifacio Campus. I have waited for my examination results to arrive so that I would know if I performed well in the examination. Sad to say, I have failed the examination due to lack of concentration because of my academics and the examination was quite difficult.

Upon opening the envelop that contained my scores both from the a.m and the p.m examination (the FE examination composed of 2 parts. The a.m examination was all about fundamentals of Information Technology. The p.m was about programming and analysis skills) ,I was very nervous. But when I finally saw my score, I was shocked and very frustrated. My score was very close to passing the examination.

I got 555 points out of 800 items for the a.m examination and 550 for the p.m examination out of 800 items. The passing score for both examinations were 600. I almost got it! I only need maybe 4 or 5 correct answers to pass the exam. I was really frustrated because I may have passed it during that time. There are a lot of items in the examination that I wasn't able to answer due to lack of time.

I will try to take the examination again next year, where I will have all the time in the world to review. I will become a PhilNITS passer someday.

To view the List of Passers, visit their website.

I would like to congratulate my classmate Rendell Andrin for passing the PhilNITS exam.

My Plans as an I.T Professional to be....

Honestly, I am not yet ready to be called a professional specially in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) because of the underlying pressures on this field. Everybody seems to expect a lot from you knowing the fact that the world today, regardless of what culture, races, interests and field you are, seems to be attached and connected by a single word “technology”. But what really pressures an Information technology professional is that he or she needs to cope up with the fast pace development of technology. I think every information technology professional is aware that we are all living in an era where obsolescence comes in an instant. Technology becomes obsolete way before it has reached the market. It is safe to say that technology has become a commodity. People will not live without technology and no one will disagree with me if I say so. People are really obsess with technology. As of this moment, a single day will not be enough to name all the technologies developed for the past 8 years. I always believe in the saying “ necessity is the mother of all inventions”, technologies were created to serve human needs. This reason somehow makes me excited to become an Information technology professional, I want to be part of this roller coaster ride of this technology development and also to serve for the good of mankind.

But the reality speaks to itself and I cannot escape the fact that I will soon belong to the world of Information and Communication Technology. But the toughest challenge for the Information Technology professionals in the future (and that's include me of course) is that what makes us unique from the present professionals with such brilliant ideas? And what will be the innovations and new technologies should we introduce in order for us to fully compete or even outperform the current technologies? These questions could provide very interesting and very imaginative answers.

The world that we are living in nowadays is facing huge and serious problems in spite of the technology advancements. These problems needs to be solved to save human from total destruction. Yes technologies were created to improve the quality of life, but it was later discovered that technology itself is the number 1 contributor to the number 1 problem the world is facing right now, the climate change or the global warming. Technology side-effects were later discovered through frequent usage of technology that inventors and developers have not anticipated and didn't expected to happen. This side-effects has forced every professionals to an option, a trade offs between aiming to improve the quality of live of every single human being and also to prevent the total destruction of the world because of these technologies. With this dismal findings, I agree with one of my classmate's idea in our Future Technology class. He said that “ technology that human created will also kill humans”. This fact is very alarming. But come to think of it, with this huge problems we are facing, Information Technology professionals will have the opportunity to think of the immediate solutions to minimize and even eradicate this problems. This will provide a bright future for the Information Technology professionals who will be the next in line to combat this problems that is the legacy of the technologies that once used by everyone to improve quality of life but now already part of our long history.

Now, if I assumed that I am an Information Technology professional already, what will be the innovations and inventions I will introduce and contribute to improve the quality of life without even compromising the life of our mother nature? This is my chance to broadcast to the world what are my ideas regarding the features of this new technologies. There's no need for me to wait for the future to speak up my ideas. Among of the technologies which I would like to introduce and innovate are the following.

All in one body check-up machine – the first technology will be in the field of medicine. This is one of the fields where technology development was in total focus. As of this moment, a lot of new technologies were proposed to be able to detect and recognize variety of human diseases without being manually checked-up by a doctor. This technology was introduced by our classmates in our technology class. The concept of this present technology proposal is that the technology is in a form of a microchip. No doubt that the main advantage of this technology is the portability and its size. But it has the disadvantage of putting human life at risk. Since it is embedded inside the human body, proper placing is very crucial. Microchip also contains silicon and other elements which are also poisonous to the human body.
Now, the technology I have in my mind is somehow an innovation of the said microchip technology. This time, the technology will be using laser effects to capture an image of the human body through scanning process. But this is not just simply capturing an image of the human body. The laser will penetrate inside the human body to capture and analyze the image and generate a printed report which will serve as the diagnosis results. The doctor will simply interpret the results to the client. The entire consultation or check-up process will last only for 20 mins than the traditional where you wait for a day or more. The advantage of this laser technology is that it is very safe to use and the generation of reports will be very easy also. The disadvantage of this technology is that it is bulky and more expensive since it needs a lot of hardware.


Cell sites as wifi hot spots – the next technology will be an innovation of the current state of wireless technology. Wireless technologies has been the most famous invention of the millennium. Many networks has migrated from wired to wireless technologies. This wireless technologies has been commonly known to the term wifi or wireless fidelity. But the current wifi technology or hot spots as we called it has a lot of limitations. First, is the distance. The signal from a wifi hot spot or access point could reach to only few meters. And this hot spots are not for free of course. Most wifi hot spots are commercial establishments, coffee shops and fast food chains where you need to buy something from them before you gain access.
Now this technology will use cell sites from different network companies to become a wireless access point (WAP). This will provide a wide range of wifi signals to allow users to stay connected over the INTERNET wherever they are. With this innovation, an entire city or geographical location could become a wifi hot spot. Although it is a little slower than the current wifi technology, this will provide greater accessibility to users. With this you can bring your laptop or other wifi ready gadgets anywhere without any worry of signal problems. But the best thing with this technology is it is FREE.



Artificial Intelligence for Solid Waste Management Problems – artificial intelligence is one of the well loved field in computer science. Everybody seemed to be interested in this subject matter. To date, this field has reached a lot of milestones when it comes to the capabilities and abilities that artificial intelligence can do. Lots of A.I projects were developed with a certain level of intelligence. The best example will be the deep blue machine by IBM. This A.I defeated the world's no. 1 chess player Gary Kasparov of Russia in a chess game. That are more to imagine when it comes to level of intelligence a machine can contain.
Proper garbage and waste disposal on the other hand is one of the worst problem here in the world specially in the Philippines. People are becoming lazy in segregating their garbages. And the result a lot of garbage dumped and becoming useless in the dump sites. People throw tons of garbages and waste a day both the biodegradable and non biodegradable, but our dump sites are not unlimited and time will come it cannot accommodate wastes anymore. This will be a problem that must be given a high priority and machine intelligence could help a lot on this matter.
This proposed technology will be an artificial intelligence (a robot or a machine) that has the capabilities to identify and segregate garbages and wastes. This task I believe is impossible for humans to perform but the intelligent machines as we called it could do so. If wastes are properly segregated, then good things will come out next. Biodegradable wastes could be used as a natural fertilizer and even used as an alternative to fuel through a form of methane gas. Upon thinking of this technology, I recalled the debate or the arguments that took place in our Future Technology class. The debate has something to do with could A.I eliminate humans?. This technology will be one of the answers. Why we think creating intelligent machines to destroy us if we can make them work for the betterment of mankind?
Actually, the capabilities of this technology is way way low from the level of intelligence the present machines could do. But what more important here is it serves a lot of purpose to improve the quality of life.


Automated electricity consumption controller for homes – this technology will be in a form of circuit installed in every home to control the electricity consumption of every home. This will function like a bandwidth manager in a computer networks. This technology has features to limit the maximum consumption of every home. A person can do this by setting up the average kilowatt per/hour consumption. Then this technology will control the consumption ensuring that the consumption will not exceed the ideal power consumption. This technology also is intelligent enough to do such things. For example, if it is morning, this technology limits the usage of lights and gives a high priority to other important appliances. This technology is flexible enough to cater the unexpected needs of users. This circuitry also acts as a circuit breaker in case of short circuit occurs in any appliances or wirings at home.

I am doubtful if this technology will materialize since the needs of everyone is dynamic. But the main reason for creating such circuitry is to fully maximize the power consumptions in every home also to prevent energy wastes. This is one of the ways to help lessen the cause of climate change.



The above mentioned technologies has a common denominator and that is to improve the quality of life without even compromising the life of our mother nature. We cannot deny the fact that everything in this world are balanced. Yes technology could change human beings completely; its lifestyle, its culture and its way of living. But exploiting technologies to the extent that it will destroy human race is injustice. I always recall one of my classmate's idea with regards to technology, technology was created in preparation for war. At some point he was right, but it people will just open their eyes wide and look around their environment, they will see the bigger needs of technologies to the improvement of human life. Now its not easy to become an Information Technology professional in the future. Not just invent and innovate in your mind. You also needs to think the consequences your brilliant ideas could create. Its a matter of life and death. Life because you create technology because there is a need. But death because you will never know that what you have created to improve your life could also be the reason for everybody to suffer. Necessity is the mother of all inventions. It is need that drives every human to create technology. But everything in this world needs to be balanced. This will be the toughest challenge for us in the future. How are we going to balanced or job with our responsibilities. Always remember that “technology is useless if human don't know how to use it in the right way” - RSG