THE suggestion by Rep. Joseph Santiago of Catanduanes for the state-owned Philippine Postal Corp. to use technology to avoid its steady retreat into oblivion deserves serious attention.

It’s undeniable that all over the world, especially in the United States, public post offices are falling by the wayside, unable to cope with the too-rapid march of technology, which made a big bulk of previous mail irrelevant with the massive use of electronic mail. The US postal office has struggled the past several years with billions of dollars in losses, and has had to take drastic steps to reinvent itself, as massive layoffs failed to substantially reduce such losses.

Here, our own Philpost can learn a lot from America’s problems.  In much the same way, Filipinos have greatly reduced the sending of mail through the post office (the so-called snail mail as opposed to e-mail), resorting instead to the Internet not just for the usual social correspondence, but even for sending vital documents. Yes, even greeting cards have seen sales slipping in the face of the increasing popularity of electronic greeting cards, which save time and money, transmitted either through the computer or one’s mobile phone.

According to Santiago, all’s not lost for Philpost, however. By taking the trouble to reinvent itself, especially by banking on the technology that seems to have rendered irrelevant a lot of its old mandate, Philpost may yet find some use for its services, and subsequently discover new revenue streams.

Specifically, Santiago, himself a “techie” (a former chief of the National Telecommunications Commission), is proposing that Philpost go into the remittance trade and install Internet cafes as a way to stay in the game. Santiago had noted that besides the growing resort to e-mail, Philpost had gotten stiff competition from private courier firms, which offer competitive rates at faster delivery rates. But, he adds, there’s one way Philpost can have a presence—in remittance, considering that many people in rural areas without bank accounts still resort to money orders. With its network of 2,000 postal offices, distribution hubs and small outlets nationwide, Philpost, if it plays its cards right, may yet avoid the fate of other state-owned dinosaurs here and abroad that simply folded under the advance of technology, instead of embracing it to stay ahead.

Technology is a fact of life, not to be feared but be adopted; its benefits applied to further human progress, not cause economic dislocation. But it takes a certain willingness to tackle the challenges it poses, a mindset and determination to conquer, rather than be conquered. With vision, creativity, good planning and hard research, it may yet prove that the architectural icon called the Post Office across the Bonifacio Monument in Manila is not just a piece of history, but a symbol of the future.