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Txt-ing Selves: Cellphones and Modernity
An attempt at assessing implications of new interactive communications technology
By Dr. Raul Pertierra

The book was the result of a six months study funded by Nokia and the Finnish Embassy to examine some of the cultural consequences of the rapid penetration of cellphones into Philippine life. While its most dramatic example may have been EDSA 2, Filipinos have taken to cellphones with extraordinary enthusiasm. Cellphones provide ordinary people with a relatively cheap and reliable means of communication. We were interested in exploring how Filipinos use this new technology. Has its usage resulted in extending people’s relationships into non-traditional areas or does the cellphone simply allow people to remain in contact with friends and relatives. As expected it does both. Traditional ties are maintained despite spatial distances separating overseas workers from their families. But the ability to communicate over wide areas also allows for new forms of intimacy. Wives in Hong Kong whisper intimate requests to their village spouses. It seems this talk over distance encourages people to reveal their desires in ways that would normally be embarrassing. The facility to engage in covert conversations is relatively new for most Filipinos. Not only is domestic space generally limited but cultural constraints also prevent most people from engaging in intimate talk with strangers. The cellphone is ideal for unsurveilled and surreptitious conversations.

The main focus of our study was in the use of txt-ing. This new way of communicating seemed to have particular salience in the Philippines. Undoubtedly, its initially free use explained its popularity but there also seemed other reasons for its success. Short episodic messages rather than profound exchanges characterize txt-ing. It is a form of idle talk as much concerned with its reassuring presence as its capacity to deliver simple information. This technology allows Filipinos to remain in contact with friends in their absence. The fear of many Filipinos to be left out of their respective networks is solved by txt-ing. Parents use it to remain in touch with their children and retired people can maintain contact with their former colleagues. As expected, the new technology can also be used more creatively. Young people use it to meet new friends and explore radical identities. Housewives can engage in text-affairs without their husbands’ knowledge. Most people limit these communicative exchanges to a virtual level but some extend it to real relationships. Lagablab, a gay and lesbian organization, uses txt-ing to galvanize its members, many of whom are too hesitant to participate directly. Cobradors use it to transmit bets in juetext. Catholics have set up catextism classes and asked their members to txt their support for the Pope’s visit. All of these varied uses indicate the cellphones’ capacity to mobilize wide interactive networks. Additionally, txt-ing preserves an intimacy associated with direct speech while removing the latter’s constraints. People txt what they cannot say.

We also explored the political implications of txt-ing. While confirming the importance of txt-ing in EDSA 2, the majority of our informants denied its central role. Txt-ing was simply one of many media dealing with political events. The coverage of these events by television, radio and the press was almost certainly more significant than txt-ing. But txt-ing provided an outlet for ribald and scatological humour. Moreover, its interactive nature may have given people a sense of active participation in the nation’s telepolitical drama. Surprisingly, according to our informants, txt-ing was more important for EDSA 3.What emerged, however, was txt-ing’s central importance in organizing both events. It facilitated the task of coordinating decisions about meetings and strategies for EDSA 2. Interestingly, the number of txts sent during EDSA 2 was slightly lower than at other times, confirming that its role was mostly complimentary rather than crucial.

To make sense of our data we used the concepts of complex connectivity and global modernity. The former refers to the varied and plural ways in which people are increasingly interlinked. These linkages consist of representations, images, commodities, desires and material structures generating a world where real and virtual are simply aspects of a shared ontology, experientially inseparable. Global modernity indicates that the modern condition is universal. September 11, 2001 and the destruction of Kabul indicate how complex connectivity links the local with the global, blurring their differences into a shared glocality. People in Ilocos not only communicate regularly with their kin overseas but share a common imaginary of identity and desire. Global modernity destroys the local and replaces it with its simulacrum. Shopping malls and tourist spaces are material expressions of this universal condition (perhaps international airports embody it more fully). Their architectural designs, landscapes and even peoples are disconnected from the local (or recreate it as exotic) and the everyday. The latter are reduced to the banal and the inferior. Only the young and rootless feel at home in these spaces even if temporarily. Hence, they txt. The destruction of the local also means the end of the sacred as a distinct category. In such a case, it is no wonder that Coke advertises itself as uplifting the Filipino spirit and McDonalds identifies with traditional Filipino religiosity.

Complex connectivity and global modernity represent the end of culture, identity and society as we have hitherto known them. Previously rooted in a past and identified with a territory, culture becomes a free-floating set of images and practices only contingently associated with place. Identity is dislocated from the collective and becomes lodged in the individual as an index of difference. The social is deconstructed and the collective is replaced by networks linking individuals. In such circumstances, a national consciousness is challenged by its glocal counterpart. The nation-state becomes too small to solve global issues and too big to deal with local problems.

Finally, a culture of virtuality generates post-corporeal subjects. Young Filipinos lead multiple lives as members of real families but also as participants in virtual ones. Cyber identities become as important as ordinary ones. In a world of shifting materiality it becomes difficult to distinguish the real from its simulacrum. A local housing estate advertises its houses as making one feel as though one is living abroad. Manila malls regularly offer theirs customers the opportunity to experience a New York winter locally. Filipinos increasingly meet new friends in cyberspace and engage in virtual sex.

It is too early to assess the full implications of the new interactive communications technologies such as cellphones and the Internet for Philippine society. But their results will clearly be significant and unpredictable. This study at least provides the empirical and theoretical bases for beginning such an exploration and assessment. We look forward to engaging with other Filipino researchers on this important project.

Editor’s note: The following article is the response of Dr. Raul Pertierra of the UP Asian Center to the review of Sarah Raymundo of the book Txt-ing Selves: Cellphones and Modernity published in the November-December 2002 issue of the FORUM. The book was authored by Pertierra, Eduaro F. Ugarte, Alicia Pingol, Joel Hernandez and Nikos Lexis Dacanay and published by De La Salle University Press, Inc. in 2002.