at the dinner table...

thoughts about the old world status quo and the birth pains of the new world.

Just as a starting thought, what if a dollar less on military spending today could actually mean 5 more bucks at the same rate in the future? What if the economic growth that results from investing more on education could actually result in more funds for the military in the future?

Investing in innovative, enriching, and empowering education would boost our economic growth so much, that it would result in more money to go around everywhere.

We should be thinking about an rearrangement of our government ministries, those that deal with strategic issues of people and development, and those about short-term acute-issues management. Short term 'tactical industries' would be defence, finance, manpower, interior affairs, trade and industry. Longer term 'strategic' ministries would be education, social, environment, community, development. With such a lensing or framework, it might change the way we look at budgeting. The more we spend on tactical ministries would mean less on strategic industries. This is obviously a dilemma that we face - how to balance short term needs with long term needs.

And I think we should be investing in disruptive asymmetrical military tactics. That means, more power projection capabilities. We might have less boots on the ground, but we'll leave one heck of a bootprint when we do. I think that should be our goal in mind. I think that conventional warfare as we think of it today, with armies and movements and tactics - that kind of conventional warfare is slowly changing, especially when even conventional warfare learns to fight like insurgents and guerillas.

Anyhow, on another note, every country is constantly racing against each other with regards to education and competitiveness. There is a new global construct that is being created. It's about the new forces of collaboration and cooperation vs the old forces of the status quo.

This new world would need more people in the basic sciences, and I'm looking at engineers who are working towards both innovative low-tech and high-tech solutions to the problems we face today, and to start thinking about creating and realising the possibilities of the future. The future is now, that better world is now. And we should start believing in it and in making it happen. Singapore has spent quite a lot of money already in the life sciences. Isn't it time we do a little bit of basic research in the other sciences as well? We need to move away from the money-oriented view when appropriating funds for research, and instead to think about the needs of the future. Our intermediate moves of IR and service orientation are but short-gap measures to the long term strategic problems that Singapore faces.

I'm thinking that Singapore is still stuck in the old world, and is only slowly trying to think of ways of how to get out of this old world. we have only just begun to explore the frontiers of this old world. I seriously think that we are not doing enough to empower students in this new age of creative work. This is a serious innovation gap with the future that we have to engage.

When I think about the more important trends going on in this world, I can only think in terms of the technological aspect - simply because it drives every other form of change in this world. And there are these two, that I think will shape the world in the decades to come. They are those of sustainability and collaborative, cooperative innovation. The future hereon will be one where everyone can create, and there'll be minimal barriers to stop people from creating. In fact, creating will probably be the only way to make a decent living in the future. And to do it in ways that'll be environmentally sustainable, and reduce our footprint. If Singapore can ride on these two things, I think it'll be largely set for another half-century.

If the young today are going to be the ones who will bear the consequences of the older generation, shouldn't they be the ones helming the dialogues, shouldn't the youth be the ones calling the shots on objectives and targets, instead of greying technocrats? Wouldn't it make more sense if the youths were the ones discussing the problems that they'll face? Its a weird weird world...

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