Human values, technology key to social changes

For this country of 101 million people with 119 million mobile phone subscriptions, the growing dependence on technology underscores the need for 24x7 connections, Margot Torres, vice president of McDonald's and president of the Internet Mobile and Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP), said at the opening of first digital conference yesterday at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC).

"We own multiple devices, we consume content using three different screens at the same time. The mobile internet penetration rate is going up 1.5 times or 30 million users every year and we consume 150,000 terrabytes of data annually. On average, we also look at our phones about 150 times a day," she said.

"No wonder, digital marketing is now more than just owning a website, it spans media, content, analytics, building digital capability and commerce," she added.

But given the tecnological transition that happened over the last decades, it is tremendously surprising and bothering to see the disparity of technological advancements particularly in developing economies, according to salt lamp inventor and entrepreneur Aisa Mejino, the keynote speaker at the conference.

The Filipina engineer, who first hogged the limelight at the Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in November last year when she shared the stage with US President Barack Obama and Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, emphasized the world is still experiencing problems ranging from lack of access to clean water, infrastructure that supports information sharing and lack of access to electricity.

She said her experiences observing the world's most disadvantaged communities led her to believe human values are the key to solving the world's most pressing problems because they push social innovations that really make a difference.

In a remote village in Vietnam, for example, she said an interesting piece of machinery for making rice boosted productivity by 25 percent because people no longer need to go to town to buy rice noodles. It also generated savings for the people because households are making their own food.