Abstract

This paper entitled “History of Digitalization in the Philippines” discusses digitalization in the Philippines with a particular emphasis on the roots and current status of its information and communications technology (ICT). This research suggests that although the Philippines is one of the early colonial countries in Asia-Pacific to obtain and use early-digitized technologies, the foreign-dependent economic model under its colonial masters and neoliberalism-oriented leaders had hampered the industrialization of the country most notably in the 1960s-70s. The lost momentum to industrialize, along with economic policies that are foreign-oriented, caused the Philippines to become dependent on the service industry. The lack of national industry and grand political plan to do so lead the Philippine ICT to be highly reliant on foreign technologies and software which has a negative impact on the pace of current digitalization in the Philippines.