night cycling and lessons learnt: something about chinese, dialects, and speaking English

Here, I'm not going to add the photoes that materialised from the night cycling. I hope the photographer would upload the photoes on facebook!

Rather, what I'm going to do here is to mention the issues I've discovered from night cycling.

I've realised there is a much more serious chasm between generations, one that is worse than I expected. The kids born after the 1985s can barely understand our parent's generation born in the midst of the post-war boom. How did I know this? You know something is wrong when kids can't communicate with the chinese/dialect-speaking auntie who is taking your order at the restaurant or kopitiam. Something is seriously dead wrong.

I discovered this revelation while I was night-cycling, and we entered a dim sum restaurant that I presumed was quite traditional. When your friend has to look at the English translation of the dishes...

I think this goes beyond any talk about class warfare. It is simply this: one generation cannot understand the other, and because of this, Singapore is on the verge of losing something very precious: our past. Perhaps the govt is trying to stamp out all visages of the past in order to preserve its image of modernity - which is another figment of imagination dreamt up by a certain founding father.

There is a lack of a missing savviness, some kind of street sense, that ability to mix around with other people of different socio-economic status. From the nightcycling, I observed that Singapore is really divided not between the haves and have-nots, but rather, between the English speakers and non-English speakers. The talk about income inequality I think, is really about those who can speak English well enough to compete in the global market, and the rest of Singaporeans who have done not-so-well in English. It really just boils down to the language divide.

There is however, a silver lining in all of these. The fact that everyone has a chance to learn English and to potentially participate in the global market despite the background - that in itself is a miracle. I look at my sec 4 class again, and easily more than half have made it either to a local university or elsewhere. Yet, Geylang Methodist Secondary when we came in was just like a neighbourhood school, not unlike other secondary school, with its fair share of troubled kids in a rough neighbourhood (it was geylang, after all). Yet in that secondary school, there is a class where more than half - in fact, almost all of the kids are studying in a university, despite the middle-class background, and having parents who might not have even spoken a proper word of English ever in their whole lives (my own parents were primary school dropout). My class is a testament of how neighbourhood kids can eventually grow up to take on the world, and it is a demonstration of nothing less than the success of meritocracy in ensuring social mobility - that our birth does not decide our destiny, that it is our own choice that decide where we end up, whether we choose to persevere in our own learning...

So between the understanding of our past - of our parent's generation, and the ability to hold our futures in our own hands - how do we choose? I would like to say that these choices are not at all mutually exclusive, that a person who eats potato can also learn to appreciate the diversity of cultures out there. I write English essays, but I also can converse with childhood friends in Chinese, and army friends in Hokkien if I choose to. My culture is part of my DNA - but it doesn't determine fully who I am. I can flow between these different places, and to think of it now, these kinds of cultural legacies that are only transmitted through families - these are gifts. That my neighbourhood friends have gone so far off on the other side and chosen to live predominantly in their English-speaking universe - well I'll just be agnostic about that.

But it just seems very weird that my neighbourhood friends can't exactly hang out speaking hokkien or chinese, despite their backgrounds in middle-class families, and most of them would also be chinese speaking at home... On a lighter side, it is something quite awkward when you go to a chinese restaurant and the auntie speaks chinese and hokkien....

something to mull about...

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Singapore the Nonexistent Nation

Dec 28 was the last youth service.

Anyway, the more I think about it, it didn't make any real sense to have a third youth service. It would only make sense if there was a different message, or repackaged for the youth. And the definition of youth is well, kinda irrelevant too. And its about the demographics too. There are simply less young people than before.

Anyway, I attended the service on december 28th, and I was glad I did, because Pastor Khong talked about something that struck me. He said something like, 'its a miracle that Singapore exists!' And he went on saying that Singapore has no reason to exist politically, economically, demographically, because of the limited size and population of Singapore. And he went on saying that it is God's miracle that Singapore exists and prospers.

That thought really struck me. And since I'm on this theme of the Singapore and the future, and thinking of writing something long about it, I thought that that words, Singapore, non-existent, miracle should somehow be together. So I thought something along the lines of, Singapore: Continuing the Miracle of the Non-Existent Nation.

I wonder if it might work. Still haven't even jot down a single word about all the futures that I want to write about it. But yeah. I guess all these conceptualisations are just a start. Its difficult to predict anything, especially for the future - goes that wise saying.

Hmm..

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Steven Chu is Obama's secretary of energy!

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i'm a... NOKIA... fan

This might be surprising, given that I have an iPod Touch and I have a MacBook...

The reason why I'm a slight fan of Nokia is because of its vision of mobile computing that it has, in reimagining how mobile devices might be like in the future. That said, I am also interested in how Apple might be having implementing its future designs. I am also, looking forward to the MacTouch or MacBook Touch sometime in the future.

I'm not really a brand fan - I'm just interested in how these companies are pushing the frontiers of consumer technology and the evolution of user interface, and of course, how technology will integrate with everyday life and reimagining the possibilities of computing.

I'm really wondering, if we already have the capabilities of supercomputers of a few decades back... oh yeah. i live in the information age... what that means...? we are still figuring out the consequences of all of these, i suppose. it took a almost a century to realise that the industrial revolution had consequences for the environment. How long will it take for us to realise the consequences of living in an information age? hmm...

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future of Education

I wrote about the future of education before, about the future of knowledge and what it could mean for universities.

http://ed-leading-edge.blogspot.com/2008/07/future-of-knowledge.html

Here, I upon receiving some tweets from my dear friend Shaun, I'm going to map out how things might look like some few decades (maybe 2 or 3) about how the future of education might look like.

Given that there is already this major thing called independent learning going on, where students just go on their own path and learn new things themselves, the current system as it is, based strictly on syllabi and curricula feels rather anachronistic - students find their mental faculties constrained by such ideological boundaries. Yes, syllabus and curriculum still have their place in helping students organise knowledge, and a good syallabus should be a starting platform for students to explore on their own, but in a world where information and knowledge is *free*, what we need is the skills to enable students to manage the information on their own.

In other words, I propose that students be able to manage their own syllabus about what they want to learn, and how they want to learn. And bringing this to university, it means that students take lessons from whatever profs teach, but do not stick to modules, but rather combine ideas from different modules and come up with something synthetic - something that is relevant to themselves in their own context.

Yes, logistics will be a nightmare, and frankly, it will be impossible to introduce these kinds of systems. The module system still has its place, no doubt, but the influx of information and knowedge out there... that is going to pose quite a challenge to the current system anway.

The main problem, is of being constrained, that people feel trapped in what they are allowed to learn...

But I think that individual modules, independent learning, creation of individual syllabi - that seems to be how the future might look to be...

Then again, we could all have memory implants into our brain...

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The Intelligent Society powered by search

While wandering around trying to look for a Cheers, 7-11 to get my 100Plus or H2O, a scary future came to me. It was about imagining the future of cashiers, and I was wondering how even the lower paying jobs can be made into highly intelligent jobs...

I thought about this as I was asking the cashier a rather strange question. I was asking her what I could buy with less than a dollar. The cashier didn't know the answer, so I began thinking about this problem. 

I then realised that damned Google are going to rule the way with their search power. because a lot of problems in the world in the everyday world are essentially search problems... 

Anyway, I realised that if we can begin to see everyone as a repository of information, and are essentially information arbitrage agents, then... every activity can be value-added by adding that information component. 

Currently cashiers are only at the tail-end of the retail experience. You select the item yourself, and proceed to payment. Nothing really much else to it. But if the cashier was instead seen as an information agent, then...

'hey man, what would you like...'

'looking for a drink. just came back from a run'

(cashier checks stock of 100plus, isotonic drink)

'here you go. would you also like to buy an energy bar to help you recover from your run?'

Hmm.. just thinking. How expensive would it be if the cashiers took something like basic food science and brain chemistry? This kind of information are probably used by industries in their foodmaking, but if convenience stores act like... neurochemistry manipulators... 

I shudder at the thought of that. 

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America vs Singapore

While blogging last night, I had a realization about a fundamental difference between the outlook of America and Americans, and Singapore and Singaporeans. Here, America and Singapore refer to the government in power, and Americans, Singaporeans refer to the people respectively. 

I wrote something like this:

i think about why america is the hub of innovation, and i think i can come up with an answer, albeit tentatively. i think about the way americans always look to the future, daring to dream, and sweating it out to make that dream work. in singapore, we can't seem to be able to look at that future on the far horizon, and all that we seem to be able to do is to dwell on the present, to see and react to things as they are, not as what they could be. I think the attitude pervades a huge section of whatever we do - social policies, education policies. We prepare our kids for the future, but that future immediately becomes the present, and so what we have only been able to do is to give them the skills for a possible future, whether it might happen or not. What we should be doing, is to give kids the skills to pursue their future however they want it to be, because the future is NOT what the government think it might be.

So I'm thinking and thinking, and now I see that our perception of the future shapes our present, about what we do now, without ever thinking about the fact that our perceptions could be dead wrong. The future is an expectancy that we create, and it shouldn't be an expectation borne out. If everything were planned out, which things don't, then... it ain't called the future, ain't it?

I don't think this is my most coherent post, but I think I raised some valid questions, about the way we see our future, and how it shapes our policies, and the way we think. I think Americans have the highest number of future-fantasizers (serious ones) per capita. Or people who have the vision and the conviction to imagine a different future than what they've always had, and to work towards that... I think the day will come when people will go to university not thinking about what the future might be when they graduate, but rather, what the skills that the university will give them to CREATE THEIR OWN FUTURE.

Until we do that, that will be the day we stop making economic machines in the machinery of Singapore Inc, and that will be the day when the brain drain might actually reverse. 

After sleeing for about 6hrs and looking at these again, I am convinced that I am right. That one of the key difference between America and Singapore is that people in America bother to dream, are given the tools to dream, and given the tools to make their dreams come true. In Singapore, people also bother to dream, but they are not given the tools (encouragement, tacit or overt) to develop their dreams, and these dreams die in an environment that is covertly hostile to their dreams. Nor are Singaporeans given the tools to make their dreams come true. This I refer to the education system, that the education system is more like a dream-breaker, in moulding people to think in certain directions only, as opposed to helping the kids with their dreams, or their basic ideas. 

Looking back, if I was a purely pragmatic person, I wouldn't have come to USP. It is precisely because that I don't really think like 'normal' people that I choose USP. Oh wells. 

But somehow, we are given the tools to make the dreams come true. There are excellent entrepreneurial systems in place that allow people with good ideas to make money 0ut of them. But again, this system is kinda biased towards people with money-making ideas, and is... a kind of anti-emphasis with regards to the thousand other things that people want to do. I want to write for 'fun'. I wonder where the literary networks are. I guess a dance culture is a bit stronger due to popular influence, not to mention songs and songwriting. Those are more developed. But a thinking culture is hard to find in Singapore, and this is one thing that Singapore will have to be develoepd in order to become a truly world-class city full of world-class people, a people who dare to dream really big and act in their own way to get to the place where they want to be. 

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Ideascapes

My time at writing has led me to rethink the idea-imagination concept about how people think. I think in time, there will be tools that will enable us to draw connections between the thoughts and ideas that we hold in our minds. I think there really be some Platonic Essentialism somewhere, but not going to go there now...

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Equations as lenses

I don't really have time to do a proper examination and the entailments, but... i'll just say this for now. equations are really lenses with which we view the world! Einstein was mashing Maxwell's Equation with Newton, and out popped Relativity!

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Ecology of Ideas

Something I've been wondering about:

I've been thinking that people aren't just interested in raw information and data, that what people really want is the meta-data, the information that sets the context for the specific piece of information. People really want to know the connections - they really want an information-rich environment/ecology. The digital personal information ecology (d-PIE) is for everyone! I am thinking of going beyond aggregators, bookmarks and bookmarklets, tags, and such. I am conceiving, i think, of a new way of looking at things, of experiences, and of course, information. I still love photosynth - and there is something emergent in the way it arranges the photos beyond the panoramic it produces, that is viscerally different from videos. Photosynth allows people to immerse themselves in the environment - likewise, with the d-PIE, i want people to be able to immerse themselves in the digital environment they have built for themselves, just as Photosynth creates a representation...

The final product I am conceiving of is something that will change the way people think. To think in terms of ideas and the connectivity between ideas, something that is dynamic and ever-changing, unlike the static conceptions of ideas that we currently have and hold in our own minds.

Of course, I can't write this software, not now, unfortunately. Technorati Tags: ecology ideas, information,

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what thinking, about thinking

A thought came to me on the bus back to PGP.

I kinda realised that people usually just take in the assumptions from the world around, from the opinions manufactured, from the 'facts' created by others... the vast majority of people actually have no idea what their thoughts are, even though they claim to have an 'idea' about something. 

Everyone has an opinion, but only a few actually know what their opinion REALLY is. 

People do by and large, get by swimming in their shallow seas, not knowing that there is a vast ocean of assumptions, philosophies out there, waiting to be explored by them, to know that thrilling sense of discovery what lies out there beyond their own narrow mindsets. It really is thrilling to know your own thoughts, after a while...

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superstruct!

I am playing this online project right now, called 'Superstruct', where people blog, and share their ideas about the future based on a few nightmare scenarios. The interesting thing about this project is that it is based on how today's technologies might fully mature and become really explosive in the near future, and is in some way, an assessment of the power of present technologies in the future! I guess its really a kind of open-sourcing the future, where people can together to contribute to each other, building, modifying each other's vision of the future, and to ultimately change it.

Kinda ties into my potential minor in Society, Technology and Science. Really hope to take it someday!

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photosynth madness!

Am sick. Sick because i made the stupid decision to go running at about 1am going around NUS ferocious uphills and downhills. Think overexerted. plus bad food. makes for a bad combination. but i know God will heal me!

been using photosynth, and its been great! people using windows vista, go download it! find my hotmail nick and see the stuff that i'm doing already! having a goal of sorts to create synths of NUS' lecture theatres and canteens for a start. its a wonderful social tool that has the potential to create new sorts of interactions between people - because i think photosynth is a rather powerful tool to get to te eye of the person - what the person is seeing himself - a new degree of immersion and experience, which i think what photosynth is also about.

meanwhile, gotta go zzz soon. if tmrw symptons persist, i'll make my first trip to UHWC.

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Extrapolating the One Machine

I CAN STILL THINK! hooray!

Anyway, was on the train viewing Kevin Kelly's One Machine talk from The EG (TED's partner conference), AND THIS IS A MUST-WATCH!!!

As I was on the train, there was some stupid glitch that kept delaying departure of the train by a few minutes at some stops. It became quite irritating with the inane announcement of the delay and 'Sorry for the inconvenience caused'. Suddenly, Kevin Kelly's talk resonated with me.

He was talking about the Internet of Things, where objects of our reality become interconnected with one another - ubiquity computing not just in discrete machines, but EVERYWHERE. Everything is information, and that information is shared, edited, created, modified, and directly translatable into physical reality - hacking the rules of physics/reality, so to speak. (Another thought is rising up - how to code for reality...) Information being represented on the physical reality... Consequences are immense.

On a more mundane level, Kevin Kelly postulates the One Machine as a single organism - a living thing of information. It then occurs to me, what if entire nations ARE and SHOULD be organisms too, in the literal sense. Everything obeying simple rules causing complex phenomena - and maybe this is where society should be moving towards - Lawrence Lessig and the concept of Creative Commons, and such. If MRT has glitches, the entire network of public transport responses to this glitch, inasmuch as immune systems respond to foreign bodies and viruses! Buses are activated, ushers come, people are guided to their destinations through this network, especially if people are in a rush.

How might it work for education, information transmission? What we have essentially = effectively centralised centres of power, but decentralised process of information control. Eventually, even political power will be decentralised, the coalescing of political power around productive communities that will take most advantage of the decentralised process of information control, and as a result, more people wishing to take part in that process, and it'll be inclusive. I don't know how everything will work out, but everything will work out.

Thinking about my tagmonster! Initially, files will use titles and statistically significant phrases (that amazon uses), then, incorporating social elements - associating files with people, and associating people with tags as well, and then the graphical interface that allow people to organise by tags and people - people's tag and file associations, tag's people and file associations, and of course file's people and tag associations.

Mozilla's Aurora. Something like that. Technorati Tags: One Machine, Kevin Kelly, information, physical reality, tags, reality, augmentation, society, production, power

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God's heart for Singapore

Pastor Khong’s vision

Day of His Power

Transcript

God’s heart for Singapore

This is the defining moment for Singapore. We are entering into seven years of abundant blessing of the Lord for the people of God in this nation. The Lord is about to do more in transforming Singapore in the coming seven years than we have ever seen in our history. God is leading Singapore into her divine destiny. Yet this defining moment is also a moment of decision. Our destiny lies in the choice that we’ll make as a people of God. The devil wants to distort and frustrate God’s purposes for us. God has brought the foreigners to us so that they too, can be a part of this destiny - as the Antioch of Asia. If the church of Jesus Christ arises as one people committed to fulfill God’s destiny for our nation, these foreigners in our midst will put their roots here and make this land their land, this home their home, and enter into the spiritual destiny and inheritance of this land with us as one people. If every leader of the people of God in Singapore will be committed not just to build his or her own church or denomination or congregation or G12 group or your open cell or your tribe, but be committed to build God’s kingdom in this land, the values of God’s kingdom will penetrate into every fibre of our society. However, if we fail to make the right choice, if we decide to be sectarian in our attitude, if we focus only on how we can grow our own church or denomination, we as a nation will lose this destiny of being the Antioch of Asia. The foreigners in our midst will remain as foreigners, using us only as a stepping stone to greener pastures, the true Singapore Singaporean will lose their identity, and they too, will leave this nation and abandon their dream and forfeit their divine destiny. The future of this nation is in the hands of God’s people. This is is the defining moment for LoveSingapore churches, of which we are one of them. To rise up again with a strong national agenda in transforming our land. God has shown us in the past what we can do together when we unite and seek only to build the Kingdom of God. God has shown us in the last seven years that when unity has been eroded, when the vision has not been clear and strong, the spiritual moral fibre of society begins to degenerate. It is time for a national agenda to transform our nation, to align our people to God’s destiny. LoveSingapore is about being a catalyst in spurring God’s people to fulfill God’s national agenda for the nation. Only when this, a national agenda for transformation is fulfilled, can we fulfill God’s destiny for us in Asia and around the world. This 43rd National Day ushers us into 7-year season which will bring Singapore to her 50th Anniversary. That year, could become the year of spiritual jubilee for the Kingdom of God, or that year could become that year of frustrated dreams and unfulfilled destiny. May God humble us, and enable us with brokenness before Him, to cry out for His mercy and grace. May the Lord impart upon us a fire from heaven, to have not only a passion, to win the lost, but a passion to see our nation transformed into the Kingdom of God. May the Lord unite our hearts together to embrace God’s heart for this nation. The stakes are high. When God makes the promise, and we do not remain in Him and obey, we will become a fruitless branch and lose the blessings of God.

-From a recent church service in FCBC.

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Re-imagining Singapore future

How Imagination might change the Sociopolitical landscape of Singapore

We will soon be celebrating the 43rd year of our nation’s founding, yet despite the four decades and three years of independence, we still have no true sense of direction or identity for the future of our country. In these testing times, we have this sense of crises that has become more apparent than ever.

Most of us would know the many crises that afflict us as a country. We are now facing the fact that food and energy may no longer be cheap, and as we see our costs of living going up, we are all worried about future potential food and energy crises. We worry about our political leadership, about the brain drain that seems to be getting worse year by year, and we are worried about the rise of India and China, despite the strategy that the government has to ‘ride on’ their economic rise. Many people have probably have this gut feeling that when the Chinese and Indian economies mature, Singapore might probably be irrelevant, or even disappearing under rising sea levels due to climate change.

All of these worries are all relevant, some more urgent than others. For now, the more current problems might be energy and food issues, as they affect the lives of ordinary people, and especially the middle-class and the less privileged group of people who find it difficult to keep themselves afloat, who don’t see the bright future that the government is constantly trying to portray. For those more privileged, they are considering back-up plans by going abroad, to America and Europe, where their talents might be more highly valued than here. When Singapore becomes an unattractive place to live and work, they simply pack their bags and leave, confident in the belief that they will become highly sought in their adopted homelands.

It is difficult not to say something cliched in times such as these, but Singapore is approaching a crossroad in its route of progress. The decisions that will be made in the coming years, possibly within the next decade, will become extremely important and pivotal to the future of our country for the next 5 decades or so. Of course, all these are but speculations, but given the degree of foresight that our leaders have, it would be quite certain that they would have given thought to all these already.

Given all these negativities, it might be easy to just say, ‘give up’ and become resigned to the state of things as they stand. That our government and form of administration might be out of touch with the needs and aspirations of the common people, while the more privileged classes might no longer find any point in staying in Singapore. The result will be a decaying Singapore that will teeter towards social chaos and eventual collapse.

Some people will say that Singapore as a nation-state is simply a construct, and simply don’t feel anything towards a name. Sure, in some future world of peace and freedom, nation-state might be irrelevant, and all that remains will simply be regional administrations brought under control by some world government. Until that day comes, nation-states will still matter in changing and directing the larger picture of human history, and from this, the hope is that Singapore might somehow contribute to that greater picture of that human history.

Singapore will be able to avoid negative futures, and become a global city by embracing and infusing imagination into her people and creating opportunities within to realise their imagination and fulfilling those opportunities. The only way to do so is to allow every Singaporean to become active agents in the process of nation-building. By being allowed access to actively shape the governance and the social environment, they become stakeholders in the development and future of Singapore, and hence would want to create a better place for themselves and for future generations. For this to happen, a different form of governance is required, a form of governance that believes in the inherent goodness of the people to come up with good ideas, and the willingness to pursue and develop these ideas. For such a transformation to be realised, it would have to nationwide project, not just for the privileged few, but across the entire spectrum of Singapore society. This means that transformation of our education system, the realignment of our economy, and the adjustment of certain beliefs.

The form of Transformation

Having talked so much about the potential transformation of our nation, the obvious question is then, ‘How do we begin?’. This essay/article does not claim to have the antidote, nor do we authors claim full authority regarding this issue, but having exposed to the concepts of social and technological innovation, we do believe that there are certain trends and ideas that can be modified and utilised to transform the culture of innovation into something more powerful in Singapore, thereby enabling Singapore to maintain the edge that it has as being the foremost global city in Southeast Asia, if not the whole of Asia.

We would like to start off by introducing the concepts of Web 2.0, from which we draw most of our ideas from. Web 2.0 has many interpretations, but the interpretation that is most relevant is the fact that Web 2.0 is about the social. By that we mean that Web 2.0 is about the inherent social relationships that people have, and to translate these relationships into more tangible form on the Web. This is most profoundly seen in social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster. In these websites, users are translating their real-world relationships into the Web. Through sharing of photos and messages, people are maintaining their relationships and making new ones, all through the web. At the same time, communities are being created by people with similar preferences, and contributing their own content through blogs and podcasts. Moving up another level, there are projects like Wikipedia, with people coming together to collaborate on a common project, thereby creating another form of community of sorts. This entire aggregation of communities and relationships, and the technological standards that are being created to support these forms of collaboration and communication, is known collectively as Web 2.0.

The principles of Web 2.0 might be used to create opportunities for Singaporeans to step forward and give suggestions how the environment in the local neighbourhood might be improved. Simple voting mechanisms might be in place for citizens to decided between suggestions, as how stories on news aggregation websites are decided.

Going further, such opportunities might be expanded through citizen journalism, allowing citizens the freedom to note items and events of interest, and then allowing the community of users (which would be Singaporean), to decide among the importance and relevance of the stories.This is about empowering every Singaporean to become stakeholders, knowing that their stories matter to other Singaporeans.

All of these is ultimately creating the participatory framework to allow Singaporeans to participate in the process of nation-building, by becoming observers of their own personal history, and how it might affect or reflect the broader nature of the direction of society. It is about the transformation that must occur in the way we think about the flow of direction, away from a centralised, top-down form of information distribution, to a more decentralised, bottom-up forms of information transmission. Among the assumptions that are inherent in these bottom-up forms of information flows is that people are able to judge for themselves what are potentially important and relevant to the rest of the Singapore community, and that there is a sort of wisdom that arises from this community in its selection of relevant news and information.

It is hoped that this change in the way that we process news might somehow trigger changes in the way we deal with our politics and the way society as a whole processes information.

So far, we have only dealt with the issue of how Singapore might transform its sociopolitical processes to handle challenges of the future. This is only a part of the issues that we will be dealing in the future to come.

As mentioned right from the start, there are the ongoing food and energy crisis, simply because of the scarcity of energy resources, and due to the threat of climate change and the implications towards food security. The overarching issue of climate change is not simply an issue of global warming and resulting temperature, rather the real issue is due to the current rate of unsustainable development, including the profligate use of energy resources.

On this issue, the suggestion is a rethinking of our manufacturing and industry, using the concept of Cradle to Cradle as well as the adoption of renewable energy resources and measures for energy conservation. By Cradle to Cradle, we mean the concept of designing products with environmentally-friendly materials that poses no threat to both biology and the environment, and making sure that the materials in the product can be broken down and reused again to make another entirely new product.

With regard to food security, the concept of vertical food farms should be seriously considered to provide buffer for Singapore’s food security in any event of disruptions, be it through climate change or conflict.

The overall effect of all of these sustainable energy initiatives is not simply about the adoption of new technologies. Parallel developments should also be made in urban planning in issues such as mass transit and green transport systems. Urban planners should not be thinking about ways to reduce road usage by cars - they should be thinking about how to make cars simply unnecessary in Singapore, or reducing car usage to nearly non-existent levels. In such times of crises, incremental paths of thinking simply become unsuitable to due with systemic issues. What will be required are wholly disruptive forms of thinking.

The aim of all of these environment and sustainable development initiatives is not simply for the benefit of Singaporeans and residents of Singapore. The aim also includes the promotion of Singapore as a model for other cities to model themselves after, thereby lifting the imagery of Singapore as not merely a regional city of stature, but a global city, not just in terms of the material prosperity that will exist, but in terms of the culture and the spirit of imagination of her peoples, a hub where global ideas mix and intermingle with one another, creating global solutions for a sustainable world.

The two main ideas thus presented all focus ultimately on one thing: the power and capacity of imagination in transforming Singapore. It is this last aspect that the focus of this article/essay will now turn to, as we begin to explore how imagination will be nurtured and inculcated in our nation, through education.

First and foremost, education is something that we cannot overemphasize. Education will be the means through which all of these ideas will be sustained through the population and through generations, in order for these ideas to last beyond the initial founding years. We expect that technology will continue its current exponential growth, and these will definitely yield exciting possibilities for both the transmission and the conception of Imagination among future students and the future population at large. We believe that education should continually be enhanced through the incorporation of technology, at the same time, with the continual improvement in pedagogy to make fullest use of these technologies. This is not to say that education will become technology-centred, rather, education will continue to be student-centred, with technology and pedagogy as the means to do so. This does not mean that teachers are not required either, rather teachers will become more important as questions of the responsible use of powerful forms of technology become ever more important.

As technology becomes cheaper and more sophisticated, we expect the trend for greater information democratisation to continue. Which is to say, the means for access and creation of information will become widely available, and the engine of this trend will continue to come from the ongoing information revolution on the Web. (Kevin Kelly’s presentation on the One Machine - the Web). As nanotechnology and fabrication technologies become mature, commercialised and widely available, we expect that eventually, more people will be able to obtain the means of industrial production for themselves. That world will be the world of ‘technology for the market of one’ (Neil Gershenfeld’s presentation...). The question then becomes, will Singapore be the leader or follower in these and other potential forms of disruptive technologies? What and how will we look for potentially disruptive developments, look out, and adapt to them as they come? To handle this eventuality, we would like to propose the development of Innovation Labs, where people with ideas will be able to come together to communicate with the foremost technological companies in the world, where money will be poured in to fund promising areas of research, to create forms of technology that will change the way people live, work and play. What Singapore needs to do, nurture and sustain, is a forum or fora, where people with ideas can be matched to people with the funds and the technology to realise these dreams. We believe that Singapore’s current position in the financial world makes it an excellent place for these possibilities to begin and take off.

Once again, we, the authors, do not claim to be the authority in these suggestions to improve Singapore’s future. What we have tried to do here is to present the case that for Singapore to become prosperous, a transformation from the way society, politics and education currently function is necessary, and vital for the survival for the future. There are many other issues that we have not touched on, such as the issue of National Service, and handling the issue of the aging population, but like we said, we do not claim to solve every issue that Singapore will face. We hope that our suggestions will stimulate interest in Singapore’s future, and generate other better suggestions, and ultimately, implementations to resolve threats to Singapore’s survival.


(Insert hopeful quotes of future here)

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the future of computing is mobile, and the future of mobile is Nokia!

While in the midst of my fascination over the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, I chanced upon some concept videos of Nokia latest research. These videos are about the concept, and these gadgets are still years, if not decades later. They are the Morph - which is a dream come true, the Aeon, and the 888. These projects, taken together, represent a company that dares to dream ahead, that dares to define the future of the mobile - no longer just as a phone, but an all-encompassing life-device, and I do mean it in the literal sense. Nokia has obviously envisioned a future where a single mobile device becomes the main way we interact with everything in our life and with the environment, both social and physical. These words are an understatement to the amazing sense of imagination that the people at Nokia have, and the only other company that seems to have that capacity of imagination is probably Apple or even Google, with other companies a long way behind. Yes, that means Samsung, Sony-/Ericsson, Microsoft, HP, HTC, and all that...

Along these lines, the future of hardware is software, and vice-versa. When nanotech redefines the interface between hardware and the interaction, when the hardware becomes the UI itself. The current trend of touch interfaces is only just the beginning...

The future is... Technorati Tags: hardware, software, technology, nokia, mobile, innovation, future

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tech reproducing itself

I tried to think about Technology from its own point of view. I began with the question that Kevin Kelly asked: what does tech want? is it a new form of life that is really about self-survival?

so that got me started. Human beings are constantly consuming technology - mobile phones, internet, information streams and such. And the way we are consuming technology, is moving away from the brute-force kinds of consumption, and we are gradually making it resembling life itself - increasing diversity, increasing specialisation, and now we are talking about adaptive technology, technology that is aware of itself and aware of other forms of technolgoy - might we be really creating a new form of life through technology? That technology are memes that are using human beings to perpetuate themselves? It's fascinating to think of it in terms of - 'mobile phones are taking over the world!', or 'the Internet is taking over the world!'. So the question is, is technology really taking over the world, and just trying to perpetuate, reproduce itself? Does technology have its own agenda of self-survival? Is technology merely adapting itself to suit the functions of man? Hmm...

Maybe not. Maybe we are still on top of this meme-chain, and still having the ultimate power to stop the spread of our memes...

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Thoughts about the Weekend Today, 12th July 2008

I thought the Weekend Today had something worthwhile. Ravi Veloo has decided somehow to stick his/her neck out and question the values today. Sorry, a bit of an ignoramus at following the news and the columnists, so can't really know the gender. Anyway, the interesting thing is that the Grand Old Man also features a few pages after that, the usual stuff about our talent, leadership and future challenges - all the usual nonsense about why liberal democracy won't really work, yah dah yah dah...

I'm sure all of these isn't new to you guys at all. In fact, its all old stuff that gets recycled over and over again, depending on the 'national mood'. Anyway, was mulling on such things when it just hit me...

I had this thought that the source of all these nonsense comes from a few things. We tend to think that administrators in Singapore are all-powerful people, and if we talk some sense into them, maybe they will do the right thing and move things in a better direction. I guess I'm slow to this, but I realise that our administrators are just slave to this system that emphasizes ECONOMICS above everything else - ie, GDP growth, manufacturing growth, numbers and more numbers and such. And its not just that - they see only a few set of these numbers, so they probably won't do anything about rise in cost of living, homeless rates, bankruptcy rates, etc. The former we are tired of, and the latter worries us most. Naturally, we tend to think that, if the latter is becoming so poisonous, why isn't the bigshots doing anything about it? It really is simply this - to the administrators, the latter issues are simply irrelevant and inconsequential. To pander to us, they set up committees and pretend to do something, you know, give some million there, give another million here, and pretend the issue is solved. In actual fact, people couldn't give a damn, or forced not to give a damn. Their hands are tied, shackled to the single-mindedness of a constructed 'economic necessity'. Of course, it doesn't help that some Grand Old Man is still alive and his Golden Army of Ancient Warriors are still alive, or reincarnated in various forms. But the keypoint is, because of this single-mindedness, everything else gets pushed to the periphery, even debates about national identity and our future... Think about it - all our social conditioning, all our political restrictions - the prevention of chaos in our society all for the pursuit of 'economic growth'...

The other thing, that GOM is still relying on that narrative of survival since independence. Which means, even though we don't have to worry about economics as an existential angst, deep inside his aging mind, I think he still thinks this way. Maybe his mind got stuck in 1965 and has been in this mindset ever since. Or for some other reasons, he still wants to keep us scared about Singapore's survival so he can still use that teeny-weensy bit of fear in us to condition us and whatever nonsense. I think what we are experiencing right now as a nation, is a national existential angst. We no longer need to think about the fear of non-existence in the economic and political sense, so... what else is there left? Maybe the GOM is still trying to keep us scared so maybe his... progenies can survive or some other vested interest. So maybe the narrative of 'terrorism' and 'leadership' crisis.

If the GOM is truly concerned about the survival of this country, he should be thinking about renewable energy and the feasibility of vertical farms right here. Maybe we can use renewable energy to power desalination processes to increase our water independence, and vertical farming to improve our food independence. Maybe we should be investing more in our education to power next-generation industries in recycling technology. Maybe there are good and powerful reasons for our own survival. We still have good people even if the best stay in the US. Maybe, if we can tell them, that Singapore is an exciting place of opportunities from the stringents of a 'crisis' mentality, maybe good things can happen.

Maybe, if the administration is so heavily influenced by the money side of things, the maybe, the government is the wrong place to go for our grievances. Maybe we should be pressuring the global companies, and maybe that will scare the government into doing something. By pressuring I mean, writing letters harassing them, issue threats of boycott, or maybe even just simply persuading them to pressure the government on issues such as education - it might help them make more money - , housing - so they can cut costs when bringing foreigners over - , any single bit that can help them improve the profit margin over the long run, maybe if we can get that message through, it might persuade the govt to enact legislation in the direction that we want. Why not?Technorati Tags: education, future, change, environment, growth, leadership, values

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The Future of Knowledge

Before this disappears into some darkness in my mind, I'm going to note it down here.

The future of knowledge is knowledge itself. It sounds like, 'duh', right now, since for example, the future of people is about... 'people' itself.

Or rather, data, or the acquisition of it, will become rather irrelevant, and will probably take second place to the management of the information itself. As it is becoming blindingly obvious, it won't be about the information itself - it won't even be about what the information means - it will be about the relation of some knowledge to other areas of knowledge. It will be about connections, the link of a piece of knowledge to another - that's what the future of knowledge will be about.

On surface, it might seem rather innocuous, but gradually, I believe/hope, universities will begin to think in this direction, and start to think about different areas of knowledge in completely different ways - instead of being separated, I believe it won't be too long before the walls come down, and hopefully - an explosion of explorations, of multidisciplinary research begins.

For now, these are only dreams, but it won't be too long before it becomes reality. I can only hope to be there when it happens - or better yet, making it happen...Technorati Tags: education, university, knowledge, connections, connectivity, multidisciplinary

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The Spirit of Learning and the Freedom of Inquiry

Now that I'm in higher education, I thought I would just say something about it.

First of all, constraints.

Since we don't live in a world of infinite abundance, we have to live with constraints. Constraints of material resources, of human resources. With respect to education, it would be great if people could do what they really love to do, but of course there are sometimes, not-so-good teachers/professors, so we're a bit stuck.

Then of course, there are other contraints, of personal disposition, limited ability. We can only do a few things that we are good at. And the tragedy is, sometimes the situation doubly handicaps us - forcing us to do something we're not good at being taught by people not good at teaching.

But anyway, I'm encountering some problems in NUS, that the spirit of learning is badly deficient simply because in Singapore and the obsession for good grades is simply too much. The pragmatist attitude is still rather strong, and it impedes the quality of self-driven learning. I'm still trying to stick to my own generic passion for learning about everything, but there is the other problem that in academia, people don't do crazy things like jumping from biology to sociology to political science, or talk about the intersection of technology, philosophy and political science. It just doesn't happen.

It seems that the world has no taste for multidisciplinary thinkers, at least in academia. But at least the greater world out there needs holistic thinkers, in business, and in analysis. At least, that's what I hope...

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a funny idea

i was thinking about the fact that animals that are considered living fossils, whose body shapes haven't really changed for the past few millions years, such as sharks, and other examples of adaptation pushed to the extremes, for some of these cases, i think they don't evolve simply because they are too well adapted - any other kind of significant mutation would reduce their adaptive fitness.

i think one factor in why people got huge brains is because we were ill-adapted to survival. of course, in some areas, we had advantage, like the ability to reduce our temperatures, but other than that, maybe we got a huge brain in order to maximise the environment, and since we didn't have inbuilt adaptations that allowed us to do that, we had to 'think' to create those tools.

but this is a lame idea.

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democratising stuff

At first we democratised information through learning - universal education is now something achieveable within the next few decades.

Then we democratised information through technology - technology was pushed to the users, in the form of internet and the PC.

then we democratised the production of information - blogs, youtube, podcasts, the like.

the next landmark is probably the democratisation of the methods of production of the machines we use.

is there a trend of any sort?

-first there was learning, and then we made it available - passive intake of information

-then there was free access

-there there was free access to production

-then free access to the means of producing the production?

Sounds rubbish, but i think in time, people are going to start hacking the way we make computers and the technology through which we interact with information. At first there was only the keyboard and mouse, but now you have touch screen interfaces, and with the wii, you have motion tracking and infrared tracking devices. pretty soon you would have gestures tracking and then on to brainwave tracking. but of course we relate to information in just that few simple ways, so the future diversification of information production would revolve around these few components - the viscerality of interaction, tactile feedback - the feel of pressing against something and seeing something happen - like the first time you see the cursor move as you move the mouse.

it sounds like an incredible future when i'm all too comfortable in the present...

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Thoughts on a late run

I went for a late run, and a deceptively simple idea came to me.

The title of the idea was: the Singapore survey of futures and values.

Like what it says, the aim of the survey would be to ask Singaporeans across a wide demographic range about the futures they imagine and the values they live by. It is deceptively simple, because as usual, it is actually extremely complex, and the key is to make it simple and doable within 30s, and be able to capture the gist of Singapore's challenges in the future and the kind of place they want to live. Questions must not be leading or require too much thought, and maybe a pre-survey pamphlet would have to be given out to ensure that people know what they are doing. It must be easy enough to capture a snapshot of the hopes and aspirations of Singaporeans and what they might want to see.

I can imagine that there are many 'Singapores' out there, according to the demographics, according to income gaps, education level, affiliation to religion, the like...

It is so simple, yet so difficult. Sigh.

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Neighbourhood and Education here in the future...

Thinking a ‘bit’ more concretely about a Future Singapore

I don’t want to write about the usual stuff I’ve always written, not like climate change or social change or whatever. I want to move beyond those paradigm and move on to something else.

There are things happening around Singapore that should be of concern to us, but somehow they are not within our radar of focus.

An example would be the change in the neighbourhood atmosphere, like foreign workers coming to play soccer with the kids. Prostitutes and their clients chatting at HDB void decks, seeing the foreign workers dressed in their best on friday nights and the weekends hoping to fulfill their sexual needs. It must be lonely for the Bangladeshis, Thais and whoever else is coming here to Singapore and work. But they are disturbing my neighbourhood. If only residents in my neighbourhood bothered to come down more often and bothered to fill the social vacuum, and keep and eye on the kids playing as well.

And my neighbourhood? It’s a small place, 5-minute walk from the MRT, and a further 10-minute walk to the library, and the nearest community centre is another 10-minute walk away. But those timings are of a healthy young man in the prime of his youth, not an old lady who wants to just socialise. In other words, my neighbourhood is not a very socially friendly place. There are hardly any places of community, other than a market and a few coffee shops. My neighbourhood has the barest of amenities, as if the planners planned on people doing nothing else but holed up in their homes. What my neighbourhood essentially need, is a sheltered place for gathering, but I guess that’s what the coffeshops are for. But I’m thinking about something more, for want of a better word, interactive.

I think I’m really dreaming about how an ideal neighbourhood would look like, how ideal civic mindedness would look like, a thought experiment into the Singapore that we want as well. Is infrastructure enough? How would the schools look like? Have we ever, in our criticisms and complaints, ever think of the Singapore that we truly want? Defining Singapore in the image of Singaporeans, as unique as it is, a place that we can identify with, instead of the propaganda every 9th August.

The other challenge that I want to think of, is how to live in a sustainable manner, reducing our climate challenge but at the same thing, the core of the issue is really about reducing the costs of living, not just green for its own sake. It isn’t enough to have green infrastructure, but to have green mindsets as well.

So with all these considerations, how would neighbourhoods, schools, libraries, communities, even the whole country look like?

The obvious people to target are the housewives, the baby-boomers who are parents or even grandparents. They are really the core of the neighbourhood, their informal networks forming the social backbone for the entire community. My neighbourhood is an old one, well on the way towards its forth decade, and so people have been growing up, starting families here. My neighbourhood has gone through two generations of people, living here.

At evening time, the elderly come to the spaces and walk about, chatting with the other old folks they have met. Practically every knows everyone else. But the neighbourhood is well on its way to middle-aged irrelevance. And this might even be an analogy for Singapore. The reason is because the neighbourhood as it is now met the requirements of those who lived in 1976, when my parents got the house. It has been 32 years now, and despite the facelifts of upgrading, the core of the estate has not changed. Only the outside looks better, but the things inside are now different, and as such, my estate as it is now is barely moving into the 21st century. Sure, the plumbing, electricity, phone and internet cables have been improved or added, but these things are do not add anything of significant value to the way the community lives.

I think there might really be a need for a working space, with electricity, internet access, for kids to come and study. A comfortable room, much like the study rooms they have in community centres, except that my neighbourhood has hardly any space for a community centre, and when the nearest community centre is a 10-15 minute walk away. Or any other place where people can gather together in relative comfort, a mini-community centre of sorts, to complement the spaces already existing, a place where people can share , an information hub of sorts for the entire community - a space for health and exercises for the elderly, a space for the kids to come and play together, a place for students to gather and study together, a place for working adults to unwind.

The facade of the flats have been upgraded, but it doesn’t seem to matter much. Physical infrastructure matters, but the more important dimension should be the quality of social life that is happening as a result of the physical infrastructure. Community infrastructure - physical constructs where people can come together and catch up with each other - that’s is extremely important, obviously.

Starting at the micro/local level, I imagine my estates, as minimalist as it is, with the market that it has already, with the flats that it has, the open spaces and all. I see my mum, going to the market, chatting with the other aunties about the prices of meat and vegetables and all, and now they are talking about their families a little, about the grandkids they are helping to take care of. ‘Yes, its all rather tiring...’ Everything can be the same as they are, the current infrastructure. But for more enduring relationships, for a more vibrant place, it would require a formalised network to be in place, instead of being stored in just the auntie’s heads. That might mean a virtual neighbourhood to be in place, akin to Second Life, but a real Singapore with real neighbourhoods, with real people and profiles on the Internet. But of course, privacy issues would quickly end that. And clearly, an electronic/virtual system would be insufficient. But any infrastructure would have to consider all of these considerations, and examine how to facilitate their happening in order to make more close-knit communities. This is the foundation for a better neighbourhood. This is a design problem, a creative problem, but it is a problem with people at its core.

It would be great if barriers to civic participation can be lowered. Chief of these barriers would be the willingness to participate. I think this is where incentives can come in. Non-political, pure grassroots people can come together, maybe have some prize for most-active-in-organising-block-parties sort of thing. I hate to do this, but if it’s possible to put a prize or incentive on civic-mindedness, and when it becomes natural, it isn’t required after... It can all be done, really.

What can people do from the ground up? It’s a chicken-and-egg problem, really. People don’t want to participate because no one else wants to participate because no one else wants to participate. Maybe some kind of external push is required, but then people won’t want to commit to these projects. It really takes a lot of hard work...

This is simply a vision to work towards, and it’ll be great if a grassroots awakening of sorts can be apolitical and working purely for the local community, serving their needs, finding out what residents really want, like a safe place for their kids to grow up in, have places where the elderly can gather, where I might not have to see prostitutes using void decks at night...

The transformation of our communities would also require the transformation the way we teach our kids. I think in the world today, new tools exist already, and there is a need for kids to be empowered with the knowledge and the utility of these tools so they can work better in their own little groups they might form. Kids today swim in a giant ocean of information, and there is an ever more important need to teach the kids discernment with regards to the information that they swim in. Culture and values become more important as information becomes less important. It is not the mere passive intake and regurgitation of information, but the processing inside that leads to information become genuine knowledge and then on to application. A knowledge-based economy is going to require a knowledge-based society to create that economy. On this basis is the route for Singapore’s future growth.

How would that education look like? I envision textbooks being almost entirely references, not as teaching materials in themselves. Every student would have a 100-dollar-laptop or something similar, allowing for mesh networks and learning both within and between groups. Then, basic skills like handwriting and penmanship would still be taught. Key basics in languages, mathematics, and sciences would still be taught at the lower level. Moving on, students begin the in-depth studies required in whatever fields, be it music, biology, mathematics, language, dance or sports. A few subjects would be studied in depth, and then on, the key focus would be on cross-disciplinary topics and subjects, synthesis, not specialisation. Classrooms would be full of interactivity technology as teachers facilitate immersive learning experiences, bringing students in-depth into a particular, but then pulling out again to enable students to see the broader picture. This would utilise large multitouch screens that might only be available for large scale implementation sometime in the next decade or so. But with the availability of these technologies it is exciting to explore the possibilities that are being opened up as a result of advances. But multitouch is not the end-all or the be-all. Eventually, the technology is about new form of user interfaces that will enable greater interactivity between the user and the information. Multitouch is just another step along the way. Eventually something else will come along that will replace or supersede multitouch.

Talking about the education of the future, obviously the syllabus for the sciences will have major changes. As nanotech and biotech become commonplace, they would have places in the curriculum, just as really basic quantum mechanics will have their place in secondary school some few decades later. Students will learn the basics of nanotech just as we learn the basics of Newton’s Law. So will studies of complexity theory, where simple laws can cause emergent phenomena. All of these is just a matter of time, if I were to put a date, it would be sometime about the 2040s.

The end result, hopefully, would be to inculcate students with the core skills needed for the workplace, and for the kind of economy that is arising. Other intangible objectives would be students who are learning all the time, eager to explore fields and to find out more, because of the immersive learning experience. Students who are critical about the world around them, and are constantly thinking about making things better. These, I think is the kind of person that every education system truly wants to create, a person who is critical and at the same time, hopeful and optimistic about the world around them, that they can do something good in this world. Every education system has to come back to this somehow, or education would be meaningless in itself. But unfortunately, somewhere down the line, politics enters the picture and distorts the purpose and meaning of education.

The only ideology that should be present in education is the ideology of education and the belief in the values inherent in man, the acceptance of both weakness and strength, for his propensity for both good and evil, of the entire person, the belief that good - the cause for the welfare of the other, always triumph over the bad...

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Future of Education in Singapore...

What I think about the future of Education in Singapore

We all have our grouses about education, especially about the examination-based kind of system that we have, and we constantly say that its a highly stressful and competitive system and the like. But in some sense, it’s inevitable. I would just say that examinations have their place, but an over-emphasis on examinations can instead become a liability towards the process of learning.

If I’m not wrong, Singapore falls into the category of objective-based learning, where examinations are used to verify that students have understood whatever topic there is. The most extreme case of this kind of system are the cram schools in Japan, where students just cram whatever there is on the syllabus. But since Singapore is nothing like that, but there are similar processes at work. In order to ensure their academic success, they are willing to go to that extent of institutionalise cramming. I mean, Singapore students do that on an informal basis, and it basically makes people hate what they learn, since rote learning is hardly fun, and does not fully utilise the value of our mental faculties. So our education tries to institutionalise other things, such as critical thinking, which is so vague, and so varied, that any attempt to try to assess these abilities generally fail and instead increases the necessity to use rote methods in order to get the correct response, which in the end, defeats the purpose of the original objective.

So there is no easy transition from a ojective-based education. The key question that we are struggling with here is how do you assess something that is going on inside that mind? And here, present facts end, and speculation begins.

We all know the deficiencies of our education system. We talk about it so much that we got tired of it, until we feel we need to talk about it again.

And since this is speculation, I would take the freedom and run away with it...

I would first of all, start with the simple things - the physical infrastructure of learning. For one thing, as Moore’s Law continues on, technology in the form of laptops and other forms of sexy electronics will get cheaper and cheaper, until maybe today’s high-end laptop falls to just a few hundred dollars. At that point, I would expect nearly every schoolkid to have a laptop with them, preferably those that have been optimised for the learning process, to encourage technology literacy, and to open up whole new areas for learning - creating new possibilities. And this is not just about the access to technology, this is about immersive learning, about the whole learning experience, and how to create the experience. oh, and when I talk about laptops, I am not talking about the laptops that we have today. I think that laptops in the near future will look more like touch-tops, going even further than today’s tablet, but also incorporating multi-touch capabilities. And from there, it is only a matter of time before the interface from Minority Report becomes a reality, and teachers teach with gloves and moving graphics on a multitouch board.

But this is only the hardware, the basis for greater interaction between the learner and the subject. In due time, we would also see advances in graphics software to fully utilise the hardware capabilities. It would be graphics-intensive, and information becomes transformed into something that is truly interactive. Games like Spore would only be the beginning as hardware capabilities continue their exponential growth. Some facilities that might be possible might be the capability to watch live ongoing expeditions, allowing students to almost participate in the exploration and discovery process. It would be simply amazing, if the capabilities for discovery become democratised, when everyone man, woman and child have that ready access to the technology to explore the cutting edge at their own time and pace. This is the future that I’m talking about, and I know it won’t be coming soon, but it will.

And I forgot to mention the unimaginable possibilities when schoolkids have access to Fab Labs - places where students can make their own high-end design capabilities. For example, the kind of access where students can make their integrated circuits or flesh out their design concepts. It’s the future equivalent of what we know today as D&T or Technical Studies, but instead of the carpentary and plastic work benches, here, we are dealing with cutting-edge manufacturing process akin to those in a chip factory.

The next thing that I’m talking about is sort of abstract, but I think it is also one of the major disruptive technology area. I’m talking about the gap between computation and physical reality. That gap is going to narrow as computing capabilities become more integrated into the digital world. The easiest example would be simply sensors for everything in everything. IR sensors that look at body heat and change the colour of clothes to dissipate heat; materials that change colour in response to physical-emotional factors - the like. All of these things are possibilities for learning as well, when they learn about the physical processes that manifest themselves in tangible things. Most often, the biggest challenge in concept is in its visualisation. It’s become not that easy when you are learning about something you can’t really see. But if physical processes can be made easily tangible, then I think students would be more receptive to it, instead of just learning by rote about something abstract.

The key concept that I want to bring across is that the process of learning is effective when students can contextualise, when they can relate the piece of information to something they can directly experience. Technology is going to play a major part in this process, of transforming information into knowledge.

I know that I have been heavy on the science, but I think similar things can happen and transform the process of learning in the humanities, especially the usage of games such as Sims, or even spore when learning about communities and economics and such. It is all about the application of these technologies in whatever field of learning, and with a bit of creativity, it can be done.

So I’ve talked so much about technology, so the next question invariable is about the role of the human teacher in this whole experience of learning. So with so much technology being applied, would that make teachers obsolete? I mean, it’s only a matter of time before you have avatars that can simulate teachers and the teaching process in giving instructions and all. That might be true, but no, the process only makes sense if students can relate to a human person, a teacher, who can assure and guide students in the process, to inspire and facilitate the student’s entire process of learning. There is all that wonderful technology, but it also means that the potential of abuse isn’t going to go away. There is something irreplaceable with technology and its about things like, moral guidance, about right and wrong. And because the human capacity to learn is so powerful, so unmachine-like, it’s going to require a teacher’s personal capability to assess the capacity of students to learn and advance. Also, I would imagine the rise of social networks of learning, where students would share what they have learnt with a larger community. And the only person capable of monitor these information flows is that of a teacher, who can contextualise what the students have learnt and to guide the community of learners created. And naturally, you would still need subject specialists to have the kind of academic authority. Moreover there are still areas, such as language instruction, that requires a human figure to guide students.

I would actually say that when technology explodes into the classroom, the role of teachers would become even more important, not less, and they would have slightly different roles.

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High-Tech, High-Touch

I love TED. And I love all the stuff that's somehow related to TED. As I found out, TED is only one of the many conferences that attempt to be interdisciplinary and all-encompassing of the many developments that are ongoing in the world today. Inviting all the high-powered people, thinkers and doers. And I just recently found out that the creator of TED created another conference called EG - Entertainment Gathering.

This amuses me, of course, and after seeing the German/European version of TED - DLD, and a freer version of TED - BIL... There are... many conferences out there, but so far, there isn't one for Asia. Then of course, there's Kelvin Quee's InteresThink, but he hasn't got the money or the impact, which is kinda... sad.

There definitely should be a TED-like event for TED, where the leading global thinkers and doers, or even Asian thinkers and doers, come together to share developments in their society and technology. I can think of inviting the Asian Nobel Laurates, Asian cultural icons, Japanese Anime artists and directors, writers such as Murakami, bringing them all together under one roof. And of course, Asian musicians. And other leading academics in Asia, or even Russia. And then even inviting South American, even Australian...

It might not be as high-class as TED, but it would be truly representative of the kind of clout and influence that Asia should have, in our time, to have another perspective. And I can already think of people like Li Ka Shing, NUS, ChannelNewsAsia as sponsors or something like that. Or even ask some rich sheik from Dubai or Abu Dhabi or Doha to sponsor as well. How to remain corporate and national neutrality when you have so many competing influences... I think that would be the biggest challenge of such an Asian conference.

Oh! And invite Hans Rosling too!

I thin the issue with such a conference is not 'if it would be done', but 'when it will be done'. Eventually, people with genuine power and influence will make it happen, unless RSW - the creator of TED and others like it, step up and do it...

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A future of education

Technology is definitely creeping into the classrooms, not just on the student's side, but also, I think, technology ought to eventually be more heavily utilised on the classroom side.

I once dreamed about 'digitial whiteboards', but coming to think about it, multitouch screens are becoming a reality, and just awaiting massive adoption by schools, I think. And at the end, it's about empowering the teachers to empower the students, through technology.

At the same time, there should be this process of evaluating the role of a teacher. In this era where information is so readily accessible and democratised, at least in the more developed countries, I think textbooks should eventually be done away with. Education boards should be more concerned about the quality and access to information, and not just continually sell propaganda wholesale to students. Most of what I knew in my secondary school with respect to economics have proven to be bullshit, and SS, or Social Studies, might as well be called, Stalinist Satire...

The syllabus of the humanities subjects are laughable and reflects a very outdated mode of thinking. Students are better off using Wikipedia as their source.

And the other thing is, I forsee subjects that are considered advanced now to be taught at lower and lower levels. It has to be. There is no other way. Like, quantum mechanics, the subject of Nobel Prizes five decades ago are now routinely taught at JC and Poly levels. And Information Literacy should be a subject taught in schools - information literacy - awareness of web 2.0 phenomena, and though might not be taught as an examinable subject, should still be imparted to students.

Teachers should really just teach students how to acquire and critique the knowledge that they know - to do stuff with what they know rather than just learning stuff - but to do cool stuff with what they know. This is the era where information is becoming super-abundant - we don't need to know that now, what we need to learn is how to make that information into knowledge effectively.

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a mutating thought

There is an idea that I have that is continually evolving. This time, it's about information flows of an individual, and even mapping the day to day decisions of what an individual does. The question that I want to ask is, can you map out the information flows of a person in everyday life?

I think somehow, I'm rather interested in information flows, at the intersection of different areas of knowledge and subjects, and trying to grasp synergies between different areas of knowledge. I think that would be the key challenge of our time, to be able to make new connections between different disciplines, to be able to flow from one field to another.

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Read a lot

I've been reading again, this time about the balance of power in the world today, and there isn't really much anyway, just the same power games of interests. Not much has changed, but then again, everything has changed in the world, and it's fun to be caught up in how everything is moving but then again, you withdraw from it and realise that you've learnt nothing new, just the same old things re-manifested and resurfacing in our present day.

The thing that strikes me most is that there are so many gaps to be filled in terms of perspectives and worldviews, and despite the plethora of current affairs and political writers, there is such a dearth of writing that links climate change to the changing political dynamics of the world. And there isn't anything at the intersection of emerging technologies and politics too.

I think this is where I might find a niche for myself in this information ecology, of thinkers and writers. And I'm going to try out these concepts in USP. If it doesn't work, I'll just stick to concocting chemicals.

Hah.

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neighbourhood ecology

I was running an errand, taking a walk in the neighbourhood, and I started to wonder about the elements and compenents that made a lively, vibrant neighbourhood. Then I started to think - the neighbourhood community is like an ecosystem. People are the push-pull factors - they have needs, and businesses, public sectors - all of these are essentially species of organisms that try to trive in the ecology of people.

There are obviously a few needs people have. People need access to postal services to pay bills and other elements of everyday life, people need a place to eat, to shop as well. And then the other functions, such as library and community centres, and importantly, open spaces that allow people to come together and play. Also important is the night lighting conditions. Where to have lighting for maximum impact for security. If it's too dark, people don't want to go out much and this attracts criminals. A good neighbourhood is one that encompasses all of these for a vibrant neighbourhood, a vribant community, where needs are met, where people ca enjoy living in.

Poorly designed urban spaces on the other hand, are mono-function, they exist for a sole purpose such as to provide residential areas as a buffer for an industry or something like that - where there are minimal amenties for residences. It is kinda sad that my mum has to walk ten-twenty minutes to get to the closest grocery store.

What led to this thinking was also about the mushrooming of Internet cafes in the neighbourhood. Who are they really serving? These places are serving the maids and other workers who might have limited access to computing and information at home. Heck, there are tonnes of these places in Geylang, catering to sex workers and to the foreign workers who go there. Let's get real there about whats happening there. But then again, it is also fascinating to see how an ecosystem of services are sprouting up to meet the various needs, economic and otherwise.

And it's all organic growth, non-centralised, everyone just doing their own thing, and gradually, some kind of emergent phenomena occurs. woah. amazing how something from books can actually become real - or at least the realisation.

cool day.

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lifelink! Life rocks!

It'll be cool how the things we do, our hobbies, our friends, our studies, how they all interrelate together into this thing called our life. The ultimate life manager programme/software.

Iy's a pretty concept, but it'll take a lot to like add beef into it to make it into a reality.

Its the ultimate information management challenge, ain't it? To investigate how our lives connect?

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lifelink!

I think about it, and possibilities surround us with every breath we breathe in. Serious. We can wallow in despair or think creatively. And now I realise that's so true. Might as well use the energy from despair to do something really creative.

Since I'm doing accounts for my dad, I can access the ecology of industries that my dad works in. Why not? That would be an interesting exercise.

Also, hobbies - my dad collects stamps. Why not organise his stamp collections and see where the connections lie? My dad somehow has NKorea stamps - wth! How did he get it? And then, there's his Dutch collection, British, Bangladeshi, Indian, Thai... It'll be another interesting project. Something I can do. And accessible...

Lifelinks! Life in the context of everything!

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why connecting?

I'm getting this feeling all the time, to enable people to connect with information, to contextualise information to individuals, and contextualising the things they read into their lives. Like a life-mindmap. How everything in their life connects. And to make the tool that will allow people to do just that. And share this connections with their friends.

This is like so loopy, but I would like to think that I try to think of everything in the context of everything else. I like the self-referential theme, because it's really what I think about most often. Information in the context of my own life, my own life in the context of the information, and how the information that I come across everdyday, how that information makes sense within themselves in the whole ecology of ideas.

I think I need to read up slightly on Tony Buzan and Mindmapping.

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it doesn't get any more pessimistic than this...

The World's Future isn't as possibly as bright as I think it might be.

I fear that the future might be really be an apocalyptic one. I base this pessimism on the premise that we are not acting fast enough on issues of climate change and sustainable development. Actually, I would think that both issues are really intertwined, but I would actually put sustainable development on a higher priority, because it really ought to be that - the biggest priority right now in our civilisation. Of course, that is the coarse-graining kind of viewpoint. Sustainable development is the overarching idea that our human civilisation should be based upon. Its implementation will transform the way we view our lives, societies, industries, politics, economics and more. It requires both this coarse-grained idea, and the fine-grained details, how small revolutions in the way we live our lives will affect that bigger picture as whole.

I'm excited about technology and its revolutionary, transformative way it changes and upends the whole order of things and our lives. I think in a way, technology is really about serving human needs, and it has done so, albeit in sometimes destructive ways. It has only come to me only just then, that since technology is so human-centred, since it is a human process, the process of technological evolution is going to be highly dependent on human motivation. And that motivation is going to come in the form of economic incentives - laws and other social processes that might either promote or retard the development of technology.

But here's the scary thought. What if technology can't keep pace with our emissions? What if we don't have the political and global will to act on climate change? What if consequences far worse than those predicted come into reality?

This is the world that I fear, a world of droughts and storms, a world of scarcity, of strive and suffering. How would that world look like?

This writing is inspired by Mark Lynas' book called Six Degrees, where he illustrates what every degree rise in temperature would mean. He has done extensive research about how the weather patterns might change due to the warming effects, and what it means for the world.

I mean, we all hear about the degrees and the rises in temperature, and the rise in sea levels, but we hardly think about the actual human consequences and the fallout from rising temperatures. Similarly, we hear of economic contractions and we don't realise the loss of jobs, unemployment and the resulting ruptures in social fabric. But this time, changes in the climate corresponding from the rise in temperatures - this is about the ultimate rupture in human civilisation and the end to life on Earth.

There was a time when life nearly died on Earth. That mass extinction occurred about 220 million years ago, at the boundary of two geological time eras, the Permian and the Triassic, and as such, that mass extinction event is known today to scientists as the PT mass extinction event. That event wiped out 95 percent of all life on Earth, on land and in the seas. It was caused by a period of warming that released huge amounts of methane into the atmosphere.

We are doing something of the near-equivalent today. The warming that we are contributing into the planet might eventually be enough, within the century, to cause the release of huge amounts of methane gas into the atmosphere and cause the next major mass extinction event of the planet.

But I think before those events actually happen, mankind might have already wiped itself out from the strife caused on a warming planet. There might not be a man left to see the final death of life on Earth.

Climate change from warming is going to have disastrous effects to humanity if continue unabated. At current rates, the water sources of major cities in the world, whether Europe, Asia or American, might become depleted by the end of this century. In a world where water is scarce, don't expect people to die of thirst. People will take up arms and force water for themselves.

But not only that. Loss of water and drought is going to reduce water for agriculture and food. Without food, people will go hungry, and they will not wait to starve. Again, they will take up weapons and take food for themselves by force.

Is it that simple? Yes. It is essentially simple. But people will clothe their struggles for food and water with ideas of history and religion to complicate matters, and will use that justify total war as they see it. By then, people's hate and anger would have clouded their judgements so much, their quest for survival so strong, that by then, no amount of peace process will resolve peace in areas of conflict.

Countries with strong militaries will act to secure resources for their own country and leave out food and waters for others, and they will do so using both language and imageries to justify their actions.

By then, the links of globalization will be severed one by one, as regions of the world become insular and isolated. Countries will look inwards to themselves, impose authoritarian rule and impose heavy censorship. The Internet, so reliant on links, will wither. Countries will fight wars of utter destruction, design to kill, not to rule, simply because the leftover resources will not be enough to feed those in the invaded lands.

Its a new world of anarchy, a world in parched darkness, a world, nearing its end.

The climate crisis is the ultimate crisis for the entire human civilisation in our time.

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Climate change and geopolitics

I think this is just a follow-on of the previous post about climate change and the ensuing conflicts that will arise - specifically, conflicts centred around dwindling resources that turn into political-military conflicts, ie, full scale war. In the ensuing decades to come, the world will lurch from war to war, as the globalization reverses and the world's regions become increasingly isolated from one another, except for a few refuge or safehavens, far from war or resource depletion - ecologically sustainable places. That world is scary. And unthinkable. Billions will die by the century's end. And the world will leave that century much poorer, and more importantly, irreversible. We won't be able to undo what we've wrought and mankind will eke on this depleted existence for the next few millenia - assuming we can survive this bottleneck at all.

So now the thing is, can we avoid the most grim of possibilities?

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