At the education summit, held at the Asian Institute of Management, I acknowledged the breakthrough importance of the Commission on Higher Education’s Memo Order No. 39, which standardizes the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration program nationwide. But I suggested that the world it assumed was skewed.

Excerpts:

“The late Roger Silverstone, the pioneering media theorist, once described the media as ‘the texture of our experience.’ Indeed, in all but the remotest locations, we can almost say that human existence seems to be predicated on access to media: think of the ubiquitous cell phone, or the universal television set, or the various forms in which music makes its omnipresence felt.

“But even these — cell phone, TV, radio or MP3 — can be said to be old media.

“The World Wide Web dazzles us with possibility, with its social networks and virtual worlds, its million books and unexpected discoveries. Any parent who has ever spent time in the Neopets universe or seen a teenager absorbed in Facebook knows what I mean.

“But even the Web fails to catch, with its gossamer net, the true meaning of media as ‘texture.’

“Once, in Bangkok, at a meeting of the World Association of Newspapers, I heard a presenter say the most extraordinary thing: Supermarkets, he said, are the new media. That would make Wal-Mart the world’s biggest media company — and bring us closer to Silverstone’s central insight.

“Of course, the presenter was straining at hyperbole to make a point. But he was also being quite literal. Enter a good-sized supermarket now, in any of the country’s bigger cities, and you find yourself in an immediate, even tactile, media environment. Brand names are talking to you; interactive advertising-on-an-endless-loop is waiting for you in the next aisle; moving displays startle you. It isn’t the futuristic world of Steven Spielberg’s ‘Minority Report’ yet, but does anyone doubt that, for the great majority, this is indeed the shape the future will take?

“Perhaps, if that presenter in Bangkok had spent any time in the Philippines, he would have said: Malls are the new media. Indeed, in the Philippines, we can almost say that the country’s malls form a parallel republic. We shouldn’t underestimate the possibilities that arise when a poor boy from Lubao, Pampanga, (and I mean a real poor boy, not the President’s late father) enters SM San Fernando and finds the exact same environment as would a yuppie shopping in SM Makati. In other words, teenagers in any of the areas with an SM mall can say, ‘Let’s watch a movie in SM,’ and, even though they are hundreds of kilometers apart, visualize the exact same cinema: the same stars on the ceiling, the same popcorn stand, the same seating.

“Welcome to SM Nation.

“Because ‘media is texture,’ what prevents the SM Group from venturing into news media, too? What prevents PLDT [Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co.], with its MyTV breakthrough, from assuming the functions of a news network? What prevents San Miguel from producing the news, not merely subsidizing it?

“Too many questions; not enough answers, at least not yet. But this is the world we live in; this is what the world is coming to. As broadly defined, media has become more and more the texture, even the very condition, of our experience. Does the new BSBA program prepare its students for this reality?