Re: <nettime> Roberto Verzola, RIP

[Joseph Rabie via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

The typical story is that the loggers come, village or not, road or not. The only thing that stops the loggers is the absence of trees.

Joe



> Le 22 oct. 2024 à 19:19, mp via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> a écrit :
> 
> 
> 
> The vignette / cover story for his "Towards a Political Economy of Information":
> 
> “...We are all familiar with the typical story of an isolated village at the edge of the forest. Some villagers have to go to town to buy a few necessities, and maybe to stock the village store. Others need to go to sell some products for cash. Villagers start to feel that the foot path to town is insufficient for their needs.
> 
> Village activists may even pursue the issue and organize the people to demand a better road. Eventually, public opinion is swayed, and a petition is submitted. The government, the villagers are pleasantly surprised, is amenable to the idea. Road-building eventually starts.
> 
> As completion date nears, the village organizes a welcome party for the first vehicle that is coming in. A few days later, the village wakes up to the rumble of engines and smell of diesel exhaust. The vehicles have come. And they are logging trucks, carrying men with chain saws.”
> 
> He was a nice, kind guy.
> 
> Sad.
> 
> ...
> ..
> .
> 
> 
> On 10/22/24 16:41, GM - tedbyfield via nettime-l wrote:
>> 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.
> -- 
> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
> # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> # more info: https://www.nettime.org
> # contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org

-- 
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: https://www.nettime.org
# contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org