Before Banking
Was on the Phone

Before We Begin

Six small digital photographs preserve a room operating at the edge of what business technology could do in 2000.

The downtown Howe Street office was shared by Next Level and Wiremix. Among the desks, old monitors, server racks, suitcases, and one small dog sat the remains of a system Benny remembers costing more than a million dollars. The Sun servers had supported Starnet's gaming operation at its peak. They represented roughly two terabytes of capacity—an extraordinary figure at the time.

The servers later became part of a much larger journey. Benny had made a deal with First E-Bank in the Philippines to help introduce internet banking before banking lived on a phone. Equipment, technicians, software, regulators, and Benny himself all had to cross the Pacific to make it work.

The photographs do not show Manila or the bank tower in Makati. They show the moment before departure: the hardware, the suitcases, the office, and Sparky on the carpet. Benny's narration supplies everything outside the frame—including the unexpected request for hundreds of autographs before the work could begin.