Imee Marcos Online

Cable Gal
Folio, Issue No. 3/2000
By Beatriz Estela M. Tianco
Photograph by Denise Weldon Miñana
Styled by J. De Borja
Hair by Thomas Elsworth Makeup by Cristine Duque

Marcos is recovering from an addiction. "It's so shameful, "she says. "Other women keep buying jewelry and damit and bags and shoes…" Here she pauses, a true testament to her roots. "Ay, shoes pa rin, pero not like this. There's no lust, you know?"

Lust, indeed. The woman is talking about cables. Computer cables. "From the 9-pin to the USB to the ewan, " she explains. " And then I make them baklas. That's my happiness. "And happiness is not just in cables. Imee has found it in the hand phones, printers, digital cameras galore. This is someone so enamored with her gadgets that she takes offense at the term. "You mean this is not essential to my being?" she asks in mock astonishment. Her numerous hardware acquisitions stick out from her computer, crawl about on her bedroom floor, take over her life. She leans over confidentially. "I don't even fix my home anymore, "she adds in a tone that toes the line between giddy and guilty.

All this has come about, perhaps, because Imee is someone who simply will not take "no" for an answer. In the ever-confusing area of compatibility and mixed protocols, where mere mortals throw their hands up in defeat, she doggedly insists on making her myriad machines communicate. "They have to work. They're not incompatible," she insists stubbornly. " I'm gonna make them work."

And do they? Some machines she can scare (well, wire actually) into submission. But inevitably, Imee must face the dichotomy of modern technology. "They don't want (to communicate), " she says plaintively. " Why do you think I have mountains of junk?"

All this manic talk is about so much hardware has piqued our interest. What does she have, exactly? Can we possibly get a list of specifications, cross-referenced and annotated, showing us in black and white, just how for this addiction goes? It doesn't prove to be an easy task. Like most recovering addicts in withdrawal, Imee seems to find it too painful to talk about her babies. And then there's that little matter with PCGG… "We shouldn't talk about that because the PCGG will attach all my gizmos, "she says of her hardware fetish and tracking of hardware stocks as in the stockmarket, (being a gadget nut, she feels has to put her money where her mouth is). So, all right, we think. Maybe a list would be extreme. We content ourselves with bits and pieces here and there. Like how this whole obsession began in the first place.

Imee's technolust had its humble beginnings in e-mail. Way back in "97 (in cybertime, three years is an epoch) she was living in Singapore and writing some scripts for contacts in Manila. Being way too long and expensive to fax time, she was doing interiors in collaboration with some interior design films in Singapore. "I was doing painting. (experimenting with) a lot of combinations. It was fun and very easy to do with all the software, " she relates. The technology appealed to her need for instant gratification, and soon she was "messing around" on the net, looking for free stuff, doing research (not necessarily official, she is quick to clarify). One time, she went "wallpaper and screensaver crazy." "It's very therapeutic. It's so mindless. It's the most relaxing thing, "she gushes.

The highly wired city helped move her along the road to her addiction. She would visit Sim Lim Square and Sim Lim Tower, Singapore's highly advanced equivalent of Greenhill's Viramall, where she became machine-savvy and picked up her penchant for taking them apart. "You just hang out with all those pimply fat boys walking around in their pajamas, unwashed, and after a while, you know, right? Pulling out the guts of each and every motherboard… "She leers comically. "After a while, these kids, they start looking hot, right? They're so competent. It's cool when somebody is so competent. They can really fix the thing and they can do so much stuff with it. If you can do only one hundredth of what they're actually doing, happy ka na, di ba?

Imee's gung-ho attitude in taking apart machines has helped her make use of technology to bring people and information together. Her work as the congressperson of the Ilocos Norte's 2nd District has her living in Manila but constantly shutting back and forth to the province. Instead of calling long distance, or worse, constantly enduring the 10 to 11 hour drive over typhoon-damaged roads, she enlists the aid of modern technology to "call the district office, to harass mayors, to call barangay captains. So they can't hide from me, no matter what sulok of the Cordillera they are in." In fact, she says, people in congress are always asking her why the Ilocanos are so wired. For Imee, familiar with the difficulties of constant travel " I really think It's (a) necessity."

Of course, being wired is necessity to many people, not just Ilocanos. Many of Imee's contemporaries in congress have, to some degree, their own gizmo and gadget fixations. "This is really the Montessori congress," Imee relates. "It's a congress that's much younger than It's ever been, so when we all came in, tinanong kaming lahat. 'Bakit ang daming nakakabit sa katawan ninyo?'Ang daming kumikiriring."

It was this group of techno-savvy legislators that had the session floor wired right down to the telephone lines and outlets for each seat. "I guess a lot of kids demanded it. I think before (the others) just quietly used (their machines) in their homes, but now, everybody tries to have their laptop wearable. You're always making bitbit." And when congress convenes, do they actually end up working with their machines, or does the session turn into a hearts tournament? "We use it for looking up stuff. A lot of what we do is based on legal stuff and nobody can know every single word of every single law," Imee explains. So they go online to search for obscure rules and precedents? "You can, "she says, "but it's too much trouble. There's plenty of CDs naman available.

The House of Representative seems to be putting in its two cents' worth in the cyber-madness slowly (and belatedly) sweeping the country. A host of official and unofficial congress websites like www.congress.gov.ph, www.phcongress.com, and www.philcongress.com, most with directory information (be prepared for a long wait while the directory on site loads contact info for all 206 members) and links to the various legislators and home pages, Imee's included. Not that there's very much to see on the site, which is still under construction. Still, this site has at least gotten off the ground, quite unlike the home page some friends in Ilocos are developing for her. "I never approve it because I keep telling them to fix it. It looks so officious, naiinis ako.
"Which is not entirely surprising: given her background flamboyant nature, any site okayed by Imee would probably have a schizoid feel, some cross between pop divca, technogeek, socialite, and political celebrity - anything but official.

This multiple personality manifest itself in Imee's purchases (or lack thereof). Last year, she wanted to buy a new laptop: a Sony Vaio. "I was in Japan a year and a half ago. It was out na and it was in fuschia and purple, "she remembers. "But then, at that point, they had no matching printer. "The lust for the machine lost out to the need to have it complete with a "pretty" coordinating printer (to say nothing of a matching digital camera).

And the woman takes her printers seriously. "I went through a printer phase," says Imee, spewing terms like "photorealism" and "mega-pixel. "She has "the baby Canon, the limited edition in gold." This in addition to two other printers, all bought in lieu of an alligator Hermes Birkin bag. Why the need for multiple (and golden) printers? "Aside from the fact that none of my friends have it? See, because I'm always traveling, so I have this idea that I have to be able to print stuff everywhere so I can give all these mementos to everybody. So I can take pictures of myself with people and when they want it, then you can autograph it and give it to them right then and there." She muses over this a bit. "The reason being, with polaroids, very mahal the film. So instead, I spend, like six times more buying a printer. "She laughs at the absurdity of this. When you're addicted, you're addicted.

In fact, when she was still in Singapore, Imee decided to take a more active role in the, er, aesthetics of her PC and peripherals. "I got matte black paint and I matte blacked them all before the iMac came. Those big plastic things make me so unhappy. Happy na ako kasi may bubble gum (colors) na."

And speaking of the iMac, "I'm convinced it's named after me, I don't know about you.
"Hmmm… I am iMac? Does this cement her role as the poster girl for technology and gadget use? "I'm not really the poster girl, you know. There's (sic) really people who really know what they're doing. I'm just silly."

The self-proclaimed iMac is insisting that anybody can get a handle on technology: "Ako na nga yung best example, e. Kung naiintindihan ko na nga yung iba, if I can make some of these things work…..I'm so technically retarded! If I can hook up anything, anybody can too."

And if anybody can, Filipinos, the masters of improvisation and adaptation, should be at the forefront. "I think that the huge advantage of the Filipinos over all other Asians is that we like thinking out of the box, we like having all this new stuff thrown at our faces. I mean, we see it as a challenge. It's the Filipino way of life. Actually ang Pilipino, can cope with anything, 'di ba?"

She goes through a distinctly Filipino monologue: "E paano, nagbago na 'to, walang ganito, walang ganyan, kulang ng ganyan, sige gagawan ng paraan, That's really a natural for IT, where they keep throwing new things at you."

She stops to consider who else is on the net. For the most part, she feels that the younger generation remains the more dominant presence. "I really find it very bizarre that there are so many cyber-phobic women my age. They shouldn't be addicts like me, "she hastens to add, "(but) I don't understand why everyone is not as gung-ho as I am. I think all women are natural multi-taskers: it's the feminine way of life. May anak na humihiyaw, mag-iihaw ka pa, may tatawag sa opisina, na-overdue na yung ganun, tapos maniningil yung basurero, di ba ganun yun?

"Internet users are now reflective of the population in the US, that 52% are women at any given time, online. So I believe really it affects the way of communication. And you never need to leave the house. So, in a way, home office and multi-tasking is actually pambabae. "Ginagawa na natin 'yon. Before, Faith Popcorn forecasted cocooning and home office, "she intones.

Yet the outspoken proponent of multi-tasking claims that it is the bane of her existence. After all, with the number of machines she has, multi-tasking must be no mean feat "Just because you own 12 machines does not mean that at any given time you have to turn on six. There's no requirement. It is not in the Ten Commandments, "she states, more to herself than to anyone else. "But I'm so possessed. I'm so stressed. My quarterly resolution is only two at a time."

She must be sticking to it. Throughout the meal, her phone only rang once, and she spent less than a minute on it. And, surprise, surprise, her other phone had been turned off.

iMac speaks

The problem with IT as a cure-all

How Filipinos overstate their goals and run out of steam

"We tend to overload, right? We tend to overstate our goals. It's real a problem. We should just focus on areas where we can really do it. You have to give yourself very specific, very small, very short term muna goals, rather than having these next big thing mentality . This is always it. It is going to save the world. The answer to all things. Now it's IT. Sometime it was housing and food security. Next it's biotech.

"The government's role really should be to provide the infrastructure and the environment. It has to provide a friendly, legal, and political environment. It has to establish and build the infrastructure. It has to motivate the population. But it shouldn't embark on business activities and compete with the few entrepreneurs there are in the Philippines. That's silly. And it should also throw into the pot, I mean, sweeten it na with everything from tax breaks to everything."

"But we are not so business friendly yet."

"We should just focus on hotspots." - You should be aware of the limitations.

"Now IT has become the buzzword. It's going to now solve everything? And we are now going to computerize everything? I don't think so. Service is a start, right?"

Obvious problems: Money, Phones, Infrastructure, Power

Deal with one thing at a time

"You should be able to get you driver's license, and your taxes, and so on, all in a one shop. Why is it so hard? Even the guy who really wants to pay his tax can't because it's so difficult.

"I'm very wary."

"Don't attempt all at once, and then it's so half-assed and so unthought of."

"What happens when you have all these brownouts in the provinces like we do?"

"So what if you have internet? Wala ka namang telefono."

- Infrastructure is expensive. E-mail is erratic in Ilocos.

- Cable is still quite expensive - "It's not student friendly."

Small steps to a big solution:

Giving away computers with her congressional fund

"It should be helped along I'm giving away computers for the kids in Ilocos as part of my congressional fund. I still haven't gotten around to it, but the next thing would be to teach them more or less for free. I'm putting it in the national high schools and we have a state university - Mariano Marcos. Also the bureaucracy - from the DECS, to the Department of Finance, to the hospitals, to the PNP and all that staff. They also need, everybody needs actually, but where do you start, right?

Final Words

Competence is cool

- Waiting for the new Nokia communicator, waiting for new technology after wap.
- We sent through a Nextel phase, but the security destroyed everything;
- Communicator, so I can email while traveling but now I'm philosophically opposed to this multitasking thing.

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