Political Machines: IBM in the Philippines and the Computerization of Informal Empire

Abstract

Scholarship on information and communications technologies (ICT) in the Philippines has attributed their proliferation to a series of socioeconomic reforms that the state implemented at the end of the twentieth century. Earlier ICT advances, however, call attention to the gradual introduction of these technologies through administrative reforms carried out since the US colonial period. This article draws on business history; studies in science, technology, and society; and the literature on elite class formation to contextualize the affinity between Philippine reformism and high-tech industry. The successive product lines that the International Business Machines Corporation shipped to the Philippines between 1934 and 1972 reveal how the threat of insurgency became essential for mobilizing capital across a vast network of management consultants, government officials, and technical experts that brought Filipino elites into contact with the early US computer industry.

KEYWORDS: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY • DEVELOPMENT • REFORMISM •ELITE CONSOLIDATION • BUREAUCRACY