Mix pressure from Internet-hungry consumers and lots of well-trained computer scientists and electronic technicians, and you have a potent brew. That is just the situation in the Philippines today, where a number of factors seem on the verge of coalescing into a new economy. PNS associate editor Rene Ciria-Cruz, together with photographer Rick Rocamora, is on special assignment in the Philippines for New California Media and the San Francisco Examiner. Ciria-Cruz is a long-time editor of Filipinas Magazine. Photographs are available to PNS subscribers on request (e-mail slouie@pacificnews.org). This is the second of two stories.

MANILA -- Filipinos are crazy for the Internet, but they can't get to it. There are 200 Internet service providers, some with leased international telecom lines. There are cybercafes in far-flung provincial cities. But Internet access isn't easy -- there are only about a million personal computers in a country of 76 million people.

That could change soon. Filipinos have taken to cellular phones as the next best affordable gadget for communicating. There are three million cellular phone subscribers, according to the National Telecommunications Commission, and the number is expected to grow to 10 million.

That may prove key to broadening access to the Internet. Certainly it has established a market for wireless application protocol (WAP), the computer language that allows digital phones to get to the Internet. Two leading cell phone companies are rushing to make their phones WAP-capable.

For now, Filipinos have turned to "text messaging" -- sending short text messages over the cell phone, a technology not widely available in the United States. They send 28 million messages a day, outstripping Europe which has 10 times the population but sends only 20 million a day.

Filipinos love text messaging, which is cheaper than regular cellular calls, and send anything -- serious news, gossip, jokes, dangerous hoaxes.

President Joseph Estrada lost his usual cool when jokes at his expense became a fad among millions of texters, and a bank nearly went belly up when texters spread rumors of a bank holiday. Texting has so irked the Estrada administration that it once asked cell phone companies to delay transmissions so the government could filter messages, a near-impossible proposition.

With Filipino consumers hungry to grab any affordable high-tech product, Filipino computer scientists and electronics engineers are in a giddy, inventive mood. These are potent ingredients for a new economy.

"I can't reveal details, but we have a master plan," says a beaming Rowena Guevara, chair of the University of the Philippines department of electrical and electronics engineering.

The plan integrates the activities of research laboratories, but, perhaps more significantly, her crew is "evangelizing" and "partnering" with researchers in other schools and private industry. Guevara does not use the term, but this is in fact a plan for nationwide technological development.

Guevara's vision reflects a major shift in the culture. The desire to contribute through technological innovation is replacing the older generation's political nationalism. She and her colleagues are fired up by the fact that the "digital age" is wide open -- even little guys have a chance to kick butt.

"I'm very confident that at the rate our students are going with research and development we can be a regional player," says Guevara, who has a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and is the first woman to head her department at the state university.

The 1200 students in that department take turns 24 hours a day at their 14 laboratories, most of which were set up in partnership with such giants as Intel, Texas Instruments and Sun Microsystems.

"Those students practically live in the labs," says university president Francisco Nemenzo. "We need to give them every break we can give." Nemenzo is constantly seeking intellectual resources -- like the help he will get from the University of California, Berkeley in training faculty, revising curriculum, planning laboratories and making industry-academe tie-ups.

Guevara reels off a list of student projects in dizzying computerese -- Wavelet-based, ethernet video codec; a 32-bit Superscalar RISC microprocessor; PC-based 3-D animation library through optical motion capture, computer-telephony interface card, etc.

She finds it "inspiring" that graduating students, who once eagerly moved into high-paying management jobs, are now looking for riskier R & D positions where they can grow.

Filipinos have untapped advantages in the race for regional leadership in high-tech. Other Asian countries have traditionally drawn from the Philippines' English-speaking pool of business managers, media and artistic professionals, architects and fashion designers. Now they are also heavily recruiting animators and computer programmers.

"We have an open society, so we have lots of content and creativity," says a university professor who doesn't wish to be identified.

"Look at Singapore," he says, "it is leading in Internet infrastructure, but it has to hire creative people from here. It's now looking for the creativity that it once destroyed."

Perhaps when they are finally able to get to the Internet they will stop sending unkind jokes about their president. Then again, maybe they won't.