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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