"Still your country can't popularise robots"

"Still your country can't popularise robots"

(or "All after seeing robot displays in a collector's shop
 yet still stepping in a country failing to industrialise itself)

At first, it's been so long for this writer to recall one of his writeups particularly those on how science fiction in the Philippines failed to cultivate due the country's culture prior to making this hell-of-a-kind post.

That, despite initial creations featured in every film, comic, or even television series, science has not quite well known in a society whose mysticism is emphasised, or rather say dwellth in a fantasy with emphasis on idealised love if not bouts of laughter and drama. Yes, to the extent of telling how Science Fiction is incompatible with Filipino sensibility.

However, despite almost unpopularity in the present (as in making anything science fiction unthinkable, thanks to emphasis on disencouraging science, industry and favoring pseudo-literature that is full of "passion") there are still those who continue to be imaginative in regards to Science Fiction Filipino-style. It tries at least to bridge some Filipino sensibilities though, but, that task is difficult and at the same time likely to have enough followers looking for something new. 

That there are still those who can afford to create robots such as those besides collecting old ones and be displayed in the glass shelves with features reminiscent of the old Ysmael Steel figure. UVLA, the shop located at Cubao Expo used that robot as one of its "trademark", a main showcase being featured besides old toys and other collectibles. 

But despite efforts and the system still chose backwardness hidden behind 'modern' façades, still your country can't popularise robots the way they popularise assholes and its sickening jokes being played thoroughly in the radio. For sure most people can't recognize the unfamiliar works left by artists, writers, and of course, scientists whom were trying to steer modernity least in par with its neighbours; if there was, then likely as a compliment to a fantasy or comedy people familiarised with rather than emphasised amidst the use of space travel or then-modern machineries. Apologies to those who ought to oppose this person, but it is indeniable that science in the Philippines is limited to the creation of medicines from herbs, handicrafts while technology is as limited to an experimental phase, mostly shown for curiosity's sake or mere showcase of pride. 

Textbooks did recognize the works of Gergorio Zafra with his videophone, Fe del Mundo and her jaudice healing device, or even the Hispanic-era cannon maker Panday Pira, but did the system really encourage besides giving them citations those who have the capability to churn the machineries of national progress? The system did speak of progress through commerce and trade, but not from the foundry that creates anything including those of robots in which UVLA hath end collected and displayed as a remnant of a promised past.

And speaking of Ysmael Steel and its figure it also means a future trying to forge with such as producing steel, making refrigerators, self-proclaiming that they were building a country amidst laws favoring exporting its resources than processing just to feed, clothe, shelter, empower its people no matter they were being called oligarch because of its big, compradore nature frustrating to be an industrialist. Sadly, despite its "idealism" the steel foundries had been closed and its figure remained a memory of the old; and although there are other companies trying to be like Ysmael, like PBM (Philippine Blooming Mills), Iligan, or Guevara's own Radiowealth, Philacor (Philippine Appliance Corporation), and National Steel, they end bankrupt if not unjustly absorbed by a foreign one using development or investment as its pretext. Concepcion Industries, the last amongst these frustrating industralists did survive and still frustrating to be like those of the past (and even going beyond), but are they willing to carry the painstaking task of strengthening existing foundations and building new ones? Maybe yes because they are industrialists as they proclaim, or maybe no because they are compradores and to sell according to the market's wishes is the "call of their heart".

It may sound frustrating for those who have the tools, the billions to just to have a hard trying, replicating, reviving the aspirations of the past all after getting bombarded by anything that is cheap in everybody's eyes. Cheap in a sense that  there's no need to produce anything, letting resources of its own be exported, and instead buy what is readily made for them such as steel bars to cellular phones assembled in China or in India (and domestic-based companies did bought these cheap despite self-proclaiming as a Filipino-owned company!). They rather laugh, calling them half-crazed at those whom willing to provide ideas for the fact that the system can't seriously give something to encourage industrialisation and stimulate further production in a country, that ironically, has much resources that still extracted for export.

Unless science and technology geared for industrialisation is encouraged, the country that boasted its rich resources rather remain backward amidst its facade and how it produces microchips and assembles cars, for there's no heavy industry that a nation serve as one of its own foundations for its own revival, a real renaissance to appraise with.

Or as what this title says: "Still your country can't popularise robots."