<nettime> Roberto Verzola, RIP

[GM - tedbyfield via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

I just saw that Roberto Verzola, the “father of Philippine email” 
and a nettimer from the “heroic” period, died a few years ago — 
“during Covid” but, as one obit says, not due to it. I never met 
Roberto IRL, and I’m not sure how many nettimers ever did, so — 
unless I missed something, which is entirely possile — that his death 
would go unmentioned on the list maybe isn’t so surprising If 
anything, it’s a testament to the remarkable reach of this list in a 
time when, amazingly, the poetics of the net were very different, 
somehow smaller or even strangely intimate. The involvement of a 
Filipino activist was important for the list’s imaginary.

I did a Google search to check out his postings:

	https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Roberto+Verzola%22+site%3Anettime.org
	
I remember him as being a bit more prolific, but it’s hard to tell. In 
Google’s earlier years, it *loved* nettime, but sometime, I’d guess 
somewhere in the 2010–2015 range, it changed how it processed mailing 
lists, and now it’s all but useless for finding results.

Abstractions aside, hats off to Roberto for what sounds like a life 
well-lived in a time and place where it would have been much easier — 
and much safer — to drift along. 🎩

A few links below.

Ted
——-



P2P Foundation bio
	https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Roberto_Verzola


Libcom.org has him “narrat[ing] his youthful experience in the 
National Democratic (Maoist) movement during the years of the Marcos 
dictatorship in the Philippines”
	https://libcom.org/article/lest-we-forget-roberto-s-verzola


And a few obits:

Newbytes.ph:
	https://newsbytes.ph/2020/05/07/roberto-verzola-ph-internet-pioneer-and-activist-dies-at-67/

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1271704/verzola-father-of-philippine-email-67

He was a man of many hats: an electrical engineer, a pioneering 
environmentalist, a mathematics professor, a social activist and a 
martial law detainee.

But Roberto Verzola, Obet to friends and family, gained renown among 
civil society circles as the father of Philippine email, having designed 
and setup email systems for nongovernmental organizations (NGO) in 1992, 
way before the internet had reached Philippine shores.

Verzola passed away on May 6 at the Capitol Medical Center in Quezon 
City, after hospital confinement for pneumonia. He was 67.

Environmental lawyer Ipat Luna recalled how Obet had “a 
decrepit-looking computer underneath his stairs that was providing a 
gateway to the NGO sector to communicate.”

Despite the economic possibilities offered by his innovation, Verzola 
shut down his operations in 2000 rather than charge higher fees for his 
services.

His sister May Rodriguez described him as somewhat the country’s own 
Don Quixote: eccentric yet idealistic and wise.

As a University of the Philippines student, he worked for the 
underground newspaper Taliba ng Bayan and paid dearly for it.

In October 1974, the then 21-year-old was taken by state forces and 
tortured. Between heavy blows of fists and bottles, he was repeatedly 
electrocuted, an ordeal that was almost ironic to the young Verzola who 
then was studying to be an electronics and communications engineer.

Verzola spent three years in detention, from 1974 to 1977.

After the dictatorship, he moved on to become a driving force behind 
environmental groups, among them the Philippine Greens, Center for 
Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology, Systems for Rice Technology 
and Tanggol Kalikasan.

When the Department of Agriculture introduced genetically engineered Bt 
corn, Verzola led a one-month hunger strike outside the agency’s gates 
in 2003.

“He never asked for accolades,” said Red Constantino of the 
Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities. “It was enough for him 
to have the space, however small, to test his ideas and see them to 
fruition,” he added.

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