Ed Leading Edge

a different concept about connecting to people

2009-05-26T12:15:00.005+08:00

Many of us have emails, facebook contacts, twitter accounts, delicious bookmarks... All of these tools are important, and they help order our lives in significant ways.

But I would think that these emails, facebook contacts, etc.. should be thought of as prostheses - things that help us connect to the wider world out there, and help us connect to other people. But when we do connect with other people, we are connecting with the emails, and facebook profiles of other people, not to the people per se. What we are, when we link to emails and all, is that we are linking a prostheses to another prostheses, one degree removed from the reality of the person that we are connecting to.

I would like to think that there could be another way about looking at the social connectivity that we have across the web. I would re-imagine that we are connecting to people, not to prostheses, and a whole suite of applications could be conceptualised based on that ideal. We connect to people, and its just that people are enveloped in our own webs of applications and devices, and we need to recognise that fact. It would be so much better, if we could organise our contacts in a people-centric sort of way, and linking emails and facebook profiles to that person, instead of the other way around.

A possible application could be like this...
(name1)
(gmail)
(msn)
(facebook)
(blog)

(name2)
(gmail)
(facebook)
(blog)
(twitter)
(delicious)
...

and so on... instead of

(email)
(name)
...

Would it be possible?

elaboration of tweets

2009-05-11T16:13:00.003+08:00

Academic subject unimportance and labeling. Knowledge, nt parochial. Depth AND spread. multidisciplinary is only a fluff term if you don't know the disciplines in depth...

I hit on this idea after I realise that all this talk about multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary is all fluff and that talk like that only make sense when people are able to get the different perspectives. I can imagine how that might look like for say, someone doing psycho-neurological research. That person would have to do BOTH psychology and neurology, and only after that, bringing those two perspectives into something more interesting.

Which brings me to the idea that the naming of fields of studies might be commutative, meaning AB is equal to BA. It wouldn't matter if its psycho-neurology or neuro-psychology, both are practically the same.

The unimportance of labels: move past ideology. Its not this ideo vs that ideo. Nowadays, it seems more like, this ideo is nice, combined with that component of another ideo... and then mash things up...

Here I am talking about labels and ideologies, and I'm not sure about all these philosophies, but I'm getting the sense that all of these labels fade away, and the thing that truly matters are the words that compose the labels in the first place, to examine details in every philosophies, and really understand what they mean. Its no longer liberalism vs conservatism, or or pragmatism vs idealism... all these -isms confuse people. And why should people get so stuck on their ideas? Yes, there are some fundamentals that should stay where they are, but after that, argument goes.
Design IS tech! You can't have good design without good technology (note: good, not BEST tech. very different things.)

People dont want tech! People want experience afforded by tech. Apple has been first mover, but MS catching up! Experience is design powered by technology! People DON'T want to know the technology behind their gadgets, they WANT the EXPERIENCE - and that can only be provided by DESIGN!

The two tweets are the result of realising that design itself is technology. Good design has to come from good tech, and there is no one without the other. You can have good tech with bad design though, but that just makes people turned off from the tech.

You have to differentiate between good tech and best tech. best tech refers to the technical advances that have made the performance exceptional. Good tech might refer to optimal performance, one that might not be performing exceptionally, but rather is compatible with the design and user requirements. Good tech also has this sense of optimising for the whole of the product, while best tech usually is about the sheer performance of something in a single indicator rather than throughout the entire product.

And of course, the aim of tech, in a very human-centred way, is to provide an experience. People want the experience of an easy-to-use touch screen, hence the iPhone. People might not necessarily want a device full of functions they don't use... So DESIGN is key!

Should have published this long ago...

thinking about a different kind of journalism

2009-05-07T00:08:00.004+08:00

One of the ways that I'm interested in, is how to bring the realities of the world into Singapore? And so far, the only way I can think of, is to travel around the world, and post it on a blog, and have it carried by the media.

Do something truly bold, that people will follow.

And for me, that means, going around to the worst places in the world, and see how people are coping, and how others around the world are helping. How are MIT students bringing their technology to the villages? How is the OLPC initiative working? How are the UN people doing their humanitarian projects?

By this coverage, I would hope that kids in Singapore begin to realise that what they study, what they learn, aren't simply facts or photographs to be browsed over, becoming just another byline on the CNA news channel, but rather, these stories become tangible in their minds.

Ok. So The New Paper has covered stuff like that before. Journalists from Singapore HAVE travelled across the world to bring these stories. Why would things be any different?

To that question, I have no response, other than the fact that being outside mainstream media, though perhaps augmented by it, that someone might have the freedom to share these personal stories to kids, have it followed by blogs and twitter, have exhibitions in schools and JCs, solely for people to get inspired.

Also, it won't be about the reporting negativity and suffering. These stories will be about hope as well, about the generosity of humanity... For the engineers-, and scientists- to be, to let them know that their research will not be trivial, their subjects are not trivial... To let them know that, for the biggest issues that we face, the solutions already exist, and it is a matter of action to get started. There is a difference to be made, and it is a good difference that can be done.

Ultimately, it is about changing the world, and it is about changing the world one person at a time, about the heart. It doesn't have to be some rural village in Africa or India, it could be inspiring the kid next to us, as well.

My Ideal fantastic university education

2009-05-05T21:57:00.003+08:00

I briefly mentioned my dream university curriculum but I couldn't develop it fully since I had to rush off to go somewhere. And so, more elaborated:

My dream university curriculum:

I'm wondering if I'm a Black Swan myself - the highly improbable freak event that, when happens, causes drastic changes to whatever system the Black Swan is embedded in. But that's just a personal opinion. What I'm really wondering about, is whether I'm a 'statistical outlier' - meaning, the dumb guy who refuses to play by the rules, and wants to do something different, or will I be the leading edge of a tide, the person who will set the trend for others after. But whichever it is, I have in mind, the idea of an ideal university education...

But just before I go on, something very quickly about NUS. I think NUS, in trying to accomodate British and American systems, has instead, become this weird creature that's really neither.The British system of majors works because it was created for industrialism, where specialisation was required. Hence the fixed programme, where once people went through it, they would have attained a high degree of specialty for whatever industry they are studying for.

The American system, however, emphasizes personal freedom and choice. So within the scope of the modular system, people could take basically, whatever they wanted, only focusing in their later years, and where intense effort is required.

So they are very different systems, designed with very different philosophies in mind. NUS, credit to them, has tried to balance the different impulses - by emphasizing the course - which means fixed curricula, and by implementing the modular system, which allows freedom of choice and whatnot.

For most people, it works out fine. Singapore's education system has been that of specialisation anyway, all the way from secondary school to junior colleges, and the entire process could be said to be a narrowing down of subjects. So it works, and I give credit to the people who made it work.

But well... there are this bunch of people who are just... active in their minds, who want to do everything, and are prepared, through their background, to do entirely new things under the sun. This bunch of people would have been really happy in the American system, but they are stuck in NUS. I am, actually.

But I suspect that I won't be the only one. I'm betting that there will be more people who will develop the inclinations that I have developed, who have read up on so much, that they are essentially graduates going through the universities just to get the qualification. But they are in an university, and some of them might see it as the opportunity to do the things they've always wanted to do, with the added bonus of having their efforts recognised. Or rather, that's what I've always thought. But again, I want to emphasize: the current system has worked for many people, and though tweaks are needed every now and then, I do understand that there are constraints, and that not everyone can have the education that they want. However, there is a emotional cost to that, that interests may be killed, bright young motivated people might just lose their spark, and something amazing might just be lost from the university, in spite of university.

So in my head, I fantasize about the kind of education that I've always wanted, and though people might not agree with it, well...

It could be something within USP. But this will be USP to the max, with the ideal of multidisciplinary endeavour pushed to the extreme.

It has to be uber-selective, in searching for students who can move across different disciplines with equal ease. Although there will be people who are aware, this uber-programme needs to have people who have genuine intellectual depth, who have done prior extensive programme before they could even be considered to be able to handle the workload. At the same time, there has to be strong institutional support - it is as dependent on the instructors as it will be on the dynamism of the students. It will be difficult, since good teachers are hard to find, and the context of NUS's priorities make it even harder.

Which leads me to another point before I go onto syllabus design. NUS is currently, almost, fixated on marketing itself as a research university. Which is unfortunate for undergraduate education since there will be many lecturers who will prefer to sit at their desk or at their labs crunching numbers for their experiment, or going through journals for their research. Which is ironic, since, if there are people who prefer to be elsewhere and teach really badly, then NUS is ultimately kicking itself in the foot - by discouraging students to do research, hence decreasing the number of students encouraged to do decent work in their respective courses. Now all of these are just conjectures, but so far, hearing from fellow students, this is what I'm hearing.

Ok, so its not that irrelevant. The system that I'm thinking of requires instructors who are extremely dedicated to the students, who are willing to either, set aside their research projects, OR, include students in their research projects in very close collaboration.

Now, given that there might be students who might somehow have the grasp to handle many many things in one shot... This could be the probable syllabus:

First year will probably be... doing exposures and fundamentals across the major faculties - physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, history, literature, philosophy, writing, statistics, computing... and maybe into second year. Depending on the students, they then start to explore and do research modules on their own, working closely with professors, maybe more than 1 instructor, especially if their research module is across different disciplines. Mashups would be highly encouraged since thats where all the new things are!

The research programme then becomes the main focus from yrs 2 and 3. Their research projects ought to be large projects, consolidating the connections between different areas of knowledge, and go from 8MCs to say, 16MCs. So every sem they might just do 2 or 3 research projects, but the workload required would be rather, large... Whatever they need to learn for their research projects, be it the technical skills to handle the necessary machinery, or the techniques of fieldwork, or the mathematics of statistical analyses - whatever they need to learn will be picked up while on the research project. It sounds huge, and yes it is. If this is impossible, then this dream syllabus remains just a dream.

And then in their final year, they do a uber-thesis, a consolidation of all they have learnt during the years in university.

While majors will not exist, there will still exist clusters - some modules students could do in a certain track in order to attain a body of knowledge they can apply. While they might sit in regular lectures, attend laboratory sessions, they will not sit for their final exams, rather, they will just keep doing research projects.

This idea will definitely have limitations. But then, this concept of education would not apply to the hardcore, focused researchers anyway... And yes, it might even be impossible to implement ever, but well, it is nice dreaming about it...

hedgehogs vs foxes

2009-05-05T00:58:00.002+08:00

Nicholas Kristof, in his column, wrote about Hedgehogs vs Foxes in American foreign policy... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/opinion/26Kristof.html

I love the idea of hedgehogs vs foxes - the idea that hedgehogs dig deep into single issues, are considered specialists while foxes are people who go from idea to idea, explore it long enough but not so deep, and back out again , venturing into other topics.

Kristof wrote about it in context to the issue of experts - how experts sometimes get things wrong because they become so single-minded that they fail to realise that the problems they study sometimes are complex creatures that require multiple angles to look at. Hence his writing that foxes ought to be better than hedgehogs.

I felt that such a simplistic dichotomy is fallacious. I mean, its difficult to classify hedgehogs and foxes in the first place, and there are still many problems out there in the world which requires specialists - years of experience in dealing with problems... there is still room in the world for specialised experts who have worked on specific fields for years, even decades.

But there are also obviously issues out there that are not specific, focused issues, and these issues tend to be the ones that plague our world right now, because specialists, by their simplification, might fail to understand the complexities, and by resorting to some simplifications might instead aggravate the situation. I can think of no specific examples, but again, there probably are many anecdotes about it.

Maybe foxes are prized today because of the large issues today - the credit crunch that led to the economic crisis, climate change, energy, sustainable development, poverty in africa, rural development - these are huge multifaced problems that require people who know how to work and coordinate across many disciplines, hence the jumping around that's required.

Alright then. But then I would actually highlight that hedgehogs are still required anyway - people who have been working on the ground, worked with tonnes of experience - these people are still required, and these are the people that education systems tend to produce. I guess now we see the importance of foxes because we realise that issues are too complex. Maybe the truth is, foxes and hedgehogs need to be in equilibrium in any kind of organisation. Too many hedgehogs and the big picture gets ignored, too many foxes and no actual implementation might be accomplished.

Meantime, our education is still going down the path of the hedgehog-centric style of education, with the emphasis of the major still important, if not utterly important. If we need foxes-type of people for the future economy, there really should be serious reconsiderations to the style of education that we give to our kids. Not everyone will be a hedgehog, and not everyone will be a fox. In the rarest of occasion, we might even see the rise of the hedgefox - people who have the capability to move across vastly different disciplines with equal ease. That will be utterly mindblowing.

Mission Statement for my time in USP

2009-03-30T22:48:00.000+08:00

I decided to listen to songs instead for my quiet time just this once, and the first song was: Who am I?

Just moments earlier, I felt compelled to express what I wanted for USP, in the context of the things that I'm trying to do.

A very simple thing came out:

I wanted to leave USP better than it was when I first came in.

And then BAM! - Who am I, that the Lord of all the Earth, would care to know my name....

I won't be able to do that, or do anything fruitful without God. Or without friends, for that matter. And now, I shall start, to gather like-minded people, and begin to see the possibilities.

Two ways:

Academic, and Community.

Academic: Pushing the boundaries of USP so that others after me can find an-already trodden path.

Push the academic boundaries not just in USP, but in NUS and in Singapore as well.

Current ideas: Raise the possibility of even a Singapore Studies minor, open the possibilities for accredited modules with NTU and SMU...

Community: Finding ways to allow juniors to bond within themselves to pool their learning together, and to engage the seniors when they need to. Provide the juniors with the tools to find peers in USP from their own major, and to look for seniors who are willing to do the job of being a mentor like figure...

I think all these just about sums up why I'm pushing all these boundaries...

But why do I even want to leave USP better than when I first entered?

1. Because USP has given me so much, that naturally, I feel compelled to return.

2. Because I want those who come after us to have a better USP.

and... Because its something from God.

An 'affliction'

2009-03-29T02:28:00.000+08:00

Here's how I decided to frame all my academic problems:

Eddie's Syndrome:

ES tends to occur in individuals who have read extensively in both breadth
and depth, and as such, is a multidisciplinary scholar despite not scoring
high scores. Individuals who have this syndrome tend to be slightly angsty
about what major to do, since no single major can accommodate their
interests. It is also manifested in the numerous emails they send to their
academic advisors about their academic dilemmas, especially with regards to
the profusion of academic ideas that they wish to pursue.

When approaching students possessing this genotype, it is advisable NOT to
ask for their majors, lest incurring the wrath of the individual being asked
the question. Such students typically do not believe in the concept of a
'major' and as such, might be more at home in a true-blue liberal arts
college, which might be beyond the individual's economic means to pursue. As
such, it would be more advisable to inquire about the person's interests -
since all of the interests are highly likely to be academic.

Individuals with ES would like to eventually embark on research projects
that make full use of their multidisciplinary capabilities - more than that,
they would also like to change the way the world thinks, not just about
changing how the world works.

Apparently, Eddie's Syndrome is best treated at USP where afflicted
individuals can receive the academic support to pursue all the many things
that they want to do.

techie

2009-03-02T13:16:00.000+08:00

1. Facebook is no longer just a *social network*. It is now a platform which has its own Facebook-verse, which is on its own trajectory that might not correspond to reality.

2. Wouldn't it be cool to have a *smart camera*, a camera that will tell you information on the *things* that you are taking?

the embodiment of knowledge

2009-02-08T14:23:00.000+08:00

I stared very hard at a car and a market today, and my mind begin to drift away into thinking about how social knowledge/information is embodied by food centres and cars. What does a market embody? It embodies the socio-cultural norms embedded in the neighbourhoods, in the food that it contains, in the items that it sells to the residents. What about cars? Still thinking about it though, but I think I am on to something there. I'm now trying to think of EVERYTHING physical artifact as embodying some kind of social/personal information, but I'm not sure how it might all work out.

What kind of informational flows? I imagine cars to be outfitted with sensors and flexible surfaces so they change the aerodynamic profile given different road, temperature, and air conditions. But thats merely autonomous smart systems, and aren't really paradigm busting. Similarly for buildings - how buildings might self-optimise for energy efficiency - but thats not really new. I don't want to be looking at smart systems, I'm looking for relational, social information, and how they are embodied in the physical artifacts in our lives.

What does a car represent as an artifact of society? How does a 'car' reflect the personalities of the user? Ditto for a market - how does a market/food centre represent the neighbourhood and the people living in it? How people are part of a larger community, incorporating them into their identity, creating this personal mosaic, perhaps...

Now, I admit that many of these things sound rather abstract, but all of these thoughts and ideas come down to this: how do we think of institutions as stores of information, and what can we take out from thinking in this way?

Introducing the hypercracy

2009-01-27T13:05:00.000+08:00

I hit upon a fantasy... I wonder if it's possible to have a super-efficient civil service that is nimble and responsive, that has zero barrier with the people being governed. Is that a fantasy? With google-like kind of information tech, perhaps it's not that fantastic, even something to aim for, perhaps...

Something about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

2009-01-19T00:09:00.000+08:00

The New York Times article sure made me think a lot.

Its one of the things that happen that make people question the existence of a just loving God, and why He might allow things to happen. I have no answer to that. Only God has the answer. But I can guess, and one of the things is that, there is still Evil in the world, and sometimes, it win tiny battles, but it will still lose the war in this good/evil conflict.

Sometimes, there are just no clear answer to things. Why did the Israeli shell hit his home? Sometimes there are just no reason to things, only events as they happen. And to learn to accept these events, moving on from there, always developing this compassion and sensitivity to things - thats always a starting point to move from...

So how do I, as a global individual, as someone who has read about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, look at this tragedy, even as this tragedy is but a small tiny event in the entire universe of tragedy that has pervaded the region?

Honestly, after going through history, I can't help but feel a little jaded, but I know this jadedness is simply insensitive when talking about the tragedies that have happened there - of the heartbreak and sorrow, of the anger and hate. Intellect seems insufficient to deal with this, but for a Singaporean thousands of miles, I find it difficult to summon the emotions to think about this. I know that nothing can add or subtract to the sufferings there, but mere acknowledgment seems insufficient. I think about the need for peace - but even that is insufficient... I can only hope - put my faith in - in a God who cares for all of these tragedies, who somehow turns everything for something better. But I am painfully aware that even the idea is insufficient...

But then even these thoughts are overwhelmed by the thought of human suffering all over the world, in Darfur, in Congo, elsewhere in the world...

It is a sad broken world, and today, I'm reminded of it.

thinking about identity, food culture, and culture in general

2009-01-18T10:44:00.000+08:00

I've actually talked about something like this, but today, there's a different epiphany of sorts. I remembered talking about social change with my pals at NS, and they were hardly receptive about the idea. They erm... well... can't really connect to that idea of a different Singapore. All they want to do, was to get on with life, go to university, get a job, have a nice life. The old me back then would hold partially-elitist thought at them being satisfied with the status quo, and try to convince them that a better future was possible.

But now, the present me would go, 'Thats cool!'

I realise that talk about all those abstract things about social and technological revolutions - all of it seems hollow (vacuous) when I look at the guy in front me in a coffeeshop chopping pieces of meat. I wonder what he wants - just a simple life, I guess, save up enough money, buy a house, even a car, have a family, raise kids, send them off to university, perhaps. And its all the same. All of these choices seem to be equally valid ways to live their lives, and there's no badness or wrongness about it. Its only elitist people with their heads in the clouds who would want to impose a different choice for them, and to declare that ONLY these lifestyles are 'good', 'right' lifestyles to live. Which is plain nonsense.

At the same time, I'm starting to not really care about who's in front me when I order food. Be it Chinese nationals (which is beginning to become common) or anyone else - it just doesn't matter. Its a decent job, serving happiness in the form of food - everyone needs to eat, right?

As for issues of integration and assimilation, well... I guess its just one of those things that takes time. Time for them to settle down, to adapt to Singapore society.

And I'm thinking about the need for creativity. Even culinary creativity, and not just the traditional notions of academic or artistic creativity. Thinking about the notion of cultural hacking, looking at how we might change cultural norms of food and rituals, and how they might be transformed in new ways - something unexpected, but pleasant and desirable. In this instance, I'm thinking about how we might hack our food to become unique Singapore variants of food eaten in SEA.

Is it still feasible to think about intelligent jobs? The perspective that all jobs are really a form of information arbitrage between the source and the consumer. Intelligent jobs are suppose to break down the information asymmetry between the producer and the consumer for mutual benefit. How might that work out?

I guess I'll be on this line of thinking for a while...

So, what really is social change? Its more like, social justice - meaning, have equitable jobs for all, even redistributive income system of taxation, political fairness, inclusiveness, openness.

Again, coming back to the point that the average person on the street really just want to get on with life, unless there is something that captures their imagination.

not a good science, on the second day of school...

2009-01-14T00:32:00.000+08:00

Today was only the second day of school and already I'm feeling much negativity.

Already committed some mistakes, many things still undone, and this dreariness in school... Somehow I'm not feeling excited about school and learning, and I'm wondering if its because... there's no more writing module to do? Or is it some lingering sadness that the semester was past, and that things will NOT be the same.

I have to accept a lot of tings. That this is a time to learn about accepting myself, and accepting the role of other people in my life. That personal isolation is not such a bad thing, that out of all the experiences in life, something good will come out of all these, because well, its God. He's in control of everything. As simple as that. The semester will be tough, but He will not give me something I cannot handle. And I must get motivated again, to write and think, to continue to push my own academic and intellectual frontiers.

Its time to get working again. and to learn to rest too, in the midst of everything. Whatever happens, happens, but it all happens because of God.

a chasm to confess

2009-01-13T01:55:00.000+08:00

There is something that I think I might have said it before in the blog, but I'm just going to say it again. There is this distance between generations, I think, even in my family. Its just this sense of apart-ness that its always there.

Education I guess, is a double-edged sword then. It empowers people with the skillsets necessary to thrive in the global economy, but then, as with the case of Singapore, it does not facilitate in the transmission of cultural artifacts/heritage, and instead, seems to tear people apart from them. Can you imagine Hokkien Opera being an CCA? Yet we allow our kids to sing Italian/Spanish/Japanese/Korean tunes! WTH!

THe cultural heritage of our parents and grandparents have been neglected, even debased, The cultural artifacts linked to our festive seasons ends up being promoted - the lion dancers, the lanterns, the mooncakes... for economic profit? drawing in the tourist dollar? As signs of a 'vibrant cultural city'? Something doesn't sync yet. Singapore still has an emerging theatrical culture, yet its being undermined in ways that are hidden. 2 steps forward 1 step back. Why can't we embrace our dialects? And why is Singlish not tolerated? Perhaps the fluidity of the Singaporean identity - the flexibility in moving from cosmopolitan to heartlander in a single larh - that is the wonder of the Singaporean.

And now that I'm here, I was reflecting about the predominant role of English as the medium of instruction, and the Singlish that young people speak. I talk about this because I've identified in another post that the main problem of Singapore's young people is that they are not immersed in the environment of speaking English, especially in the neighbourhoods. That there are structural problems that are preventing these kids from competing in the global talent marketplace, and that meritocracy, being the mindless efficient selector of talent, just disregards the place where people come from. Sometimes, it is really not that people are not hardworking enough - it really is about not even having the environment and the motivation around them that urges them to work hard. No one is stupid. Its about whether the people around them think they are stupid or not.

I think I've moved too far for one night.

Reading Science Fiction and the inadequacy of our knowledge

2009-01-08T20:27:00.000+08:00

I like Amy Tan, and about the resolution of identities. But I like Sci-Fi too - that genre of fiction that truly pushes the conception of man and who he is, in the face of technological changes. I think sci-fi writers are the real people who think seriously about the human condition and what it means.

But thats just my point of view.

I was going around the various bookstores, and I suddenly picked up 'Rise and Fall of the Third Reich', and Applebaum's Gulag. I'm not exactly sure why I bought these books, but I guess it was just a reflection of my desire to understand history.

I think it was then somewhere during this afternoon, that something hit me really badly. What we know, our knowledge, what we think we know, barely represents the thinnest topmost layer of everything that exists. The knowledge that all of us as individuals know - is barely like dust - that we know so little!

All the books that were lying out there, all the words and the texts - these things mean barely anything, if they mean anything at all! As I furiously twittered the whole afternoon - all that we know is really, truly, NOTHING. All the knowledge that we possess, is truly a chasing after the wind.

Our perception of knowledge, of reality, is so insignificant! And yet, there is a greater reality out there, a reality formed by our collective choices - a reality that is our collective consequences - the sum of the complex web of interactions and decisions. And there too, lies other things, of souls and spirits, flowing all around us. There is only so much that the human mind can grasp all at once, but there is still so much more!

All the data that we have, all the knowledge that we know, all of it is still insufficient to describe the reality that we live in. Sure, the sciences can take us somewhere there, but once will and decisions come into focus, everything changes. Before quantum uncertainty, classical chaos was already known.

So even as I engage in exploring this infinite-land of reality, in the study of sciences (chemistry) - despite all the insufficiencies of knowing barely anything at all... What is left?

The sense of humility of knowing that there is a God, who truly takes care of everything - and then the realisation, the barest, slightest, realisation, of the awesomeness of God.

Book Review: Jared Diamond

2009-01-04T00:43:00.000+08:00

I thought that sometimes there isn't much point in talking a single book in isolation, but rather, it makes more sense to talk about books written by a single author, as I am trying to do here with Jared Diamond. He is the author of 3 wonderful books, and they are shown left to right, in the order they are published.

There is a perhaps, a sequence in the way he has written these books. The third chimpanzee was about the way humans are different and also similar with the other apes. And yes, the third chimpanzee refers to homo sapiens, and the first and second chimps are the chimps themselves and the bonobos.

It was fascinating in the way it talks about the evolutionary psychology and sexual selection, in particular, the differences in the sexual behaviour between the other great apes and human beings. To cut the long story short, there is this balls-to-body-mass ratio which seems to be the key. Gorillas have small ratios, which means that a single dominant male does not face sexual competition and practises polygamy (harems), while chimps have large ratios, which means well, the males are kinda promiscuous, but it also means that there is tremendous sexual comeptition, hence the large balls to dominate the competition. And humans have ratios somewhere in between that of chimps and gorillas, which means, that monogamy with affairs might be deemed to be a middle point between chimps and gorillas. At least thats one way of looking at it.

Then, having tackled the origins of the behaviour of people, Jared Diamond then takes on something much bigger - the progress of humanity since then. Jared Diamond examines the development of civilisation in various parts of the world, and examines why is it that Europeans and their descendants ended up dominating the world. First of all, he examines why Mesopotamia was the centre of the world's first civilisation - due to the diversity in tameable animals and abundance in grains. And then there is the whole part about the dominance of Europe - because of the competition due to the rise of different nation-states which originates from their geographical boundaries whereas in China, a centralised ruler could easily stifled innovation.

In other words, Jared Diamond has tried to bring natural history - geology and the environment, into the study of human history.

Collapse, then is about the various case studies into how different civilisations have interacted with the environment, some for better, and some for worse, and seeks to explain how and why. There is the example of the Easter Islanders, about how they unsustainably destroyed the forests of Easter Island in their construction of the stone statues, and points out to other South Pacific islands where islanders have lived in resouce-scarce areas for much linger time eras. The overall message is clear: there is really no determinism in the environment that says that people will either fail or succeed. Bad choices even in a resource-rich area will lead to collapse eventually. But good choices in a resource-poor area can still allow for a sustainable society.

Taking these 3 works combined, you could say that third chimp was about the basis of humanity, and GGS was about how the present came from the past, and Collapse is evidently about the future.

Jared Diamond is one of those synthetic thinkers that puts various different ideas together into a coherent whole. Evolutionary psychology explains perhaps, the basis of political power, and perhaps the environmental factors manifest those political power, be it the centralised form of power in ancient China or the competition between different states in Europe. And how these different forms of politics can either lead to the downfall or success of a civilisation. To tackle these immense problems, you probably need a mind as immense as Jared Diamond.

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

2008-12-31T16:07:00.000+08:00

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...

Singapore the Nonexistent Nation

2008-12-29T16:46:00.000+08:00

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..

Steven Chu is Obama's secretary of energy!

2008-12-11T21:10:00.000+08:00

This morning, read the news that Obama has chose Steven Chu as a secretary of energy. hmm.. thats a chinese-american... Well, actually, my dear friend highlighted to me, and so I thought it must be interesting. Turns out, he was a nobel laureate, and having read about his work before, he must be kinda of a cool guy. And it just so happens that he shares the same surname as me! haha.

But other than that, I was watching the youtube video, and making mental notes, and one of the things that I realised was that his nobel work wasn't even related to his own field of specialty!
At least, not directly related. He was doing high-energy work related to lasers, but his nobel was about using lasers to trap atoms! hmm... thats one. The other interesting thing was thing he was also doing work in biology, and what he did was, he looked at some small problem of a much bigger problem, and started reading the literature and all. It just appeared to me that what I learnt in writing is the same approach as doing academic work. We can't handle the biggest problem and claim that we have a solution. Interesting stuff have also be done in dissecting a big problem into many small parts, and see how the small parts can contribute to the greater whole of the problem you are looking at. you don't just handle the problem of consciousness - thats too big! You look at the approaches there are to consciousness - such as perception and how the brain works, and maybe you look at how changes in perception translate to changes in the structure of neurons. The point is, you don't tackle a HUGE problem head on. Thats stupid and cliche. Rather, you find your way into a small segment of the problem, and work at it, and more often than not, there will lie opportunities for horizontal leaps - into other disciplines - and thats where the interesting stuff is - between different disciplines.

I think what he did, as he changed fields, is an example of how education itself might be transformed. More likely, education is going to be less structured, in the sense that students will be able to conduct their own kind of learning, structured by interests, pursuing threads of knowledge at their own time and pace, and interacting with other senior students who might be more settled or something. There is still a place for specialty, in the sense as vaults of experience, to know which areas could be more interesting than other areas...

Others ideas come into mind as I am blogging. I realised that the department of energy is just a cover for 'department for basic science'. And I realised that Singapore has no such cabinet position. Perhaps MEWR, but its disappointing. The closest equivalent we have is probably A*STAR, the body that coordinates scientific research in Singapore - but its not a cabinet level position, and I think is subordinate to another ministry - MOE, education. Which... is... well... it can be the subject of an essay...

But just a sidenote, it is interesting that a nation which says so much about 'innovation' doesn't have a cabinet-level head talking about government policies... oh wells.

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

2008-12-03T12:51:00.002+08:00

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...

future of Education

2008-11-22T11:56:00.002+08:00

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...

The Intelligent Society powered by search

2008-11-19T10:04:00.003+08:00

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.

America vs Singapore

2008-11-19T10:04:00.002+08:00

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.

Ideascapes

2008-11-06T23:06:00.000+08:00

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...

Equations as lenses

2008-11-06T23:04:00.001+08:00

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!

Ecology of Ideas

2008-10-24T02:13:00.001+08:00

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,

what thinking, about thinking

2008-10-10T10:18:00.002+08:00

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...

superstruct!

2008-10-09T21:03:00.003+08:00

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!

photosynth madness!

2008-08-27T22:23:00.001+08:00

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.

Extrapolating the One Machine

2008-08-21T00:45:00.001+08:00

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

God's heart for Singapore

2008-08-19T00:50:00.001+08:00

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.

Re-imagining Singapore future

2008-08-06T16:00:00.001+08:00

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)

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

2008-08-05T00:09:00.001+08:00

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

tech reproducing itself

2008-08-02T23:26:00.001+08:00

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...

Thoughts about the Weekend Today, 12th July 2008

2008-07-13T02:20:00.001+08:00

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

The Future of Knowledge

2008-07-11T23:30:00.001+08:00

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

The Spirit of Learning and the Freedom of Inquiry

2008-07-11T02:20:00.001+08:00

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...

a funny idea

2008-06-09T00:49:00.001+08:00

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.

democratising stuff

2008-06-08T02:13:00.001+08:00

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...

Thoughts on a late run

2008-06-08T01:31:00.001+08:00

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.

Neighbourhood and Education here in the future...

2008-06-01T15:42:00.001+08:00

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...

Future of Education in Singapore...

2008-05-21T10:58:00.001+08:00

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.

High-Tech, High-Touch

2008-05-16T11:43:00.001+08:00

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...

A future of education

2008-05-15T20:45:00.001+08:00

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.

a mutating thought

2008-05-11T20:35:00.000+08:00
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.

Read a lot

2008-05-11T20:28:00.002+08:00
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.

neighbourhood ecology

2008-04-29T13:01:00.002+08:00
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.

lifelink! Life rocks!

2008-04-27T21:09:00.000+08:00
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?

lifelink!

2008-04-27T21:05:00.002+08:00
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!

why connecting?

2008-04-27T16:13:00.003+08:00
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.

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

2008-04-21T15:00:00.001+08:00
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.

Climate change and geopolitics

2008-04-20T14:44:00.002+08:00
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?

and i realised i just summarized two very big trends in the world

2008-04-19T19:08:00.002+08:00
The two big trends that are ongoing. And there's a third.

1. The shifting of an American-centric world

2. The rise of environmental issues to the forefront, on par with security and economy.

3. The ongoing Web revolution and advancements of ICTs.

Heck, an entire book could be written about about any single one.

Personalised, Individual Information Networks

2008-04-19T18:28:00.005+08:00
I hold many ideas in my head, and I would really love to see those ideas coming together in some tangentially-convergent kind of way. A way of looking at the sum of the ideas we are processing and for us ourselves individually to see how it makes sense for us.

This is the world where we make sense ourselves - no one can do it for us, and naturally, if you want to share it, you could. Its just plainly about self-discovery and self-exploration.

Its about the books and articles that I've read, the things I've written, to see how things connect with one another - to have a clearer picture of how I understand the world, and maybe the world itself.

Really fluffy, castles in the clouds kinda thing... but yeah, can't help it.

the green mood continues

2008-04-19T18:28:00.002+08:00
Lately i've been on an environmentally-inclined mood, which means I'm looking everything through the perspective of sustainable development - politics, life, social, education... ok. It's not that all-encompassing but its a perspective I take on once in a while, and it cycles, evidently. Meanwhile, another phase is coming in, and its about geopolitics and the upcoming phase of a non-american centric world. Books like, Second World, End of Dreams, New Asian Hemisphere, Rivals, are all books about the new Asia-centric century and what it means for the new world.

I think part of my intellect life that is exciting is because I'm holding both geopolitical and environmental ideas at the same time, and I can say that right now, there isn't a lot of intersection between the two, which made me think of current affairs, journalists and the environment, two very different areas, and a chasm developing between the two. Its not very nice to see both worlds so segregated. There really ought to be a book that spans the two. And I think Thomas Friedman's new book in August is the first of its kind - finally, a current affairs book that talks about enviromnment like it does about terrorism, globalization and the like that have been appearing. I expect that in the months to come following the publication, more books of mixed topics will come into the market.

Thats a fairly standard idea. Nothing too revolutionary. But I'm betting that more books about the environment will hit mainstream into the opinion-makers world.

green buildings

2008-04-11T11:01:00.003+08:00
Wasn't too long ago I was rambling about green design, green homes and all. Look what Bahrain did for their World Trade Centres.

Why can't we do the same? Or scale the wind turbines for use on HDB rooftops?

the place for really crazy ideas

2008-04-11T01:21:00.000+08:00
computers embedded into everyday life, when today's processing power is in the size of the wristwatch. what then?

the nature of the informational society is constantly revolutionary. things always change. by the second, by the hour.

creativity becomes nothing special, a trait taken for granted. everyone is creative.

manufacturing power democratized. nano-bio-tech democratized.

sometime in 2040?

dust-processing - literally, dust that has the processing power of today's supercomputer, using techniques we won't fully understand today.

i want to think of that society - how that will look like. but i can't. there's a barrier to being able to think like that.

hyper-individuals. innovation by the second.

when we figure out how to close our technical nutrient cycles.

some crazy kerfunky ideas.

2008-04-11T00:53:00.002+08:00
Twitter is such a useful tool. Microblogging aside, its a great tool to keep track of the thoughts being generated as you surf the web. Kinda cool, to be able to record your mental state and ideas. The second best thing to a mental recorder embedded in the head.

Today I had a couple of really vague ideas, and they centre around the notion of an informational society - that unless society and its individuals actively take part in, and create information content, only then the society can make a move towards innovation. Its an ongoing information revolution, about how information - blog, videos, podcast and all, how all these things are changing the very fabric of our lives.

The other idea I had was that I realised that I'm really a connector. I think I wrote down somewhere, that I would like to know everything, but since thats impossible, I connect similar things together, like the TED presentations I like, the books I read, the websites I surf, and how all of these connect together, first within themselves, then with each other. Towards ever more convergences, no matter how tangential they seem to each other. That's my driving force for the term 'tanvergence'. haha. right.

Connecting everything

2008-04-10T16:38:00.003+08:00
I love to connect information and organise them into something more coherent. So why am I still studying chemistry? Oh well. Maybe I'll end up minoring in computer science. Who knows?

As it turns out, I really am interested in Everything. So I can't study Everything, but I can study how Everything connects inside. Studying the connections - thats what I really want to do. But I don't want to do philosophy and such. Maybe that's why I'm studying Chemistry and Political Science - both are essentially academic subjects which explains how things connect together. In chemistry - how atoms bond together to form molecules, and then on to more complex structures, and in Political Science - how people come together to form complex societies and how these things are run.

Maybe thats how things connect in my life. Maybe.

a wonderful video by al gore.

2008-04-10T14:01:00.002+08:00
i thought this was a nice video!

Its like what I've said and thought before. This thingy is a generational challenge.

'History has presented us with a choice.' 'A sense of generation mission.'

What people say of us a thousand years hence?

introducing my wunderful projects

2008-04-08T22:44:00.000+08:00
these are the projects that have been on my mind...

My wunderful projects

1. Combining Google Earth and Gapminder
Statistic mapped onto geographical data. Have seen Google Maps, not impressed by it. Lacks... interactivity.
Wanting users to know data only when they want to see it - leverages on the user's own curiosity.

2. OLPC in Singapore
-Bringing XO laptops to low-income families to help them escape poverty trap, then scaling it up to the entire country.
Meant to bridge digital divide in Singapore, and bring those lower-income families into the mainstream of Singapore society.

3. Bring ideas from TED, BIL, Seed, Edge, DLD to Singapore
Creating Singapore/regional set of Digerati (Edge people who have gone on to do a lot of other stuff), to propel region to a different phase of economic growth, intensely leveraging on technology.

To bring the ideas of these conferences to Singapore students to let them be aware of what actually goes on at the cutting edge.

4. Creating a geographically-based social networking site,
that deals heavily in maps, so you can literally see who loves near you. (Exists already, am told)

5. A social networking site that focuses on different areas of our lives, organising our relationships.

6. Networked HDB flats.
Integrating digital life with real life. For building better communities.

7. Digital control systems for construction? (a la Gundam, mechas, walkers)

8. Creating tools (digital or otherwise) that will enable the elderly to live more productive lives - a more concerted effort to work on GUIs and machines that will enable easier information input (better keyboards, mouses, Wii controllers)

9. A database of bus routes with pictures.
So that people will know exactly where they are going and match it with the landmarks they see.

10. Connecting people with blogs
Using blogs to connect people - creating a mapping of friend-blog networks.

We have never been this close to a turning point...
Perhaps in the attempt to bring some of these ideas, and in fact, through the implementation of some of these ideas, we might be able to form a network of people who are aware of the trends of the future, and work towards that future. We want to create a community of people who are also socially aware of the things going on in this world, who have a holistic mindset in dealing with the problems of our world.

carbon?? what carbon?

2008-04-08T21:30:00.005+08:00
I was thinking about biofuels and all when something hit me. All of these biofuels and talk of utilizing methane and all, well, aren't they simply releasing carbon still?

And talking about biofuels - it doesn't look very green right now, especially the corn ethanol. And how biofuels have actually contributed to rising food prices, simply because agricultural land that was originally used for crops are now being devoted to fuel production. Which sucks for the rest of us. Meanwhile an agricultural crisis looms ahead for all of us, partly contributed by bad weather which might be man-made, and by bad policies, which are definitely man-made.

We will need to rethink the way we think of carbon and carbon fuels. The only way to lower carbon levels is really to close the carbon cycle effectively. Currently its simply a one way street - we burn the carbon, it goes into the atmosphere, and thats it. Obviously we need technologies to somehow recapture the carbon for its cycling through the entire ecosystem.

I think the best way to actually reduce carbon levels is simply to plant more trees, or seed more plankton in the ocean.

oh well.

We are really facing 2 problems - the global climate problem, and the sustainable development problem, of which I think the latter is actually a much more serious concern.

at the dinner table...

2008-04-06T21:10:00.004+08:00
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...

mechanical monsters!

2008-03-23T17:32:00.003+08:00
Was watching my dad operating the excavator with an electromagnet appendage and it got me thinking, hey, wouldn't it be great if the entire user interface of the excavator could be revamped? We could attach tactile gloves on the user and the user can just use his arms like the control thats really intuitive, kinda like the nintendo Wii. And then we could have it for both arms, and user can use both hands at the same time productively. I know, this might be a huge waste of money, but it might also be a great boost in productively, and it moves machine operators up a little bit in a value chain. If exoskeletons could be built to boost ordinary human strength, then you might not need so many menial labourers. of course, the military would be using that technology first, but eventually, construction industries will use it even more. Simply because the demand will be there. Or that is what i hope. Fat draems

Which brings me to my next point. That we might have walkers derived from such construction machines, and the future of warfare changed. a lot.

Singapore needs a New Yorker

2008-03-20T00:36:00.003+08:00
I think that Singapore needs something like a New Yorker - social satire, good writing, witty jokes and all.

More importantly, Singapore needs a more vibrant intellectual social scence, kind of like the salons during Enlightenment Paris, where smart people hung around and talked to each other. In today's context, it would be TED-like, and keeping the conversation going about ideas and how to do them.

I think of the print media sometimes, and I think that the print media as it is will have to adapt. It is trying to adapt, like, ST has its STOMP, and a lot of popular culture stuff that's user-driven and all.

My worry is that ST becomes just a government's mouthpiece which - sucks - . TOC is doing a rather decent job being an aggregator of news and commentaries from the blogosphere, but, there is a sense of wanting something more.

Of course people love and hate the government, of course all of us has something to say, and today we can have that freedom.

People who make information-aggregating tools - they will be the rich ones for a while. It would be so powerful if tools exist for people to organise their information in an easy manner that is intuitive and easily-accessible.

Oh well. Some dream.

There isn't much...

2008-03-16T20:40:00.003+08:00
I haven't been writing, I know, but I have been thinking still. Here I am, here all the yong people are, with all of these technologies - I think right now we should begin to see ourselves as actively building the future that we will own. I think that right now, we really can do something, and all we need is to DARE ourselves enough and we'll do it. Not just big macro changes, like revolutions or whatever, but if we can start micro-revolutions of our own, like talking to people enough, eventually, things can get done, and things will happen. We just need to believe it.

I know I haven't walked enough of Singapore and all, and I haven't known enough what goes on everywhere, but I'm just extremely distracted. I'm torn between high-tech and low-tech stuff, and I'm just torn and divided everywhere. I am unfocused, because I can't decide where to put my focus on, and I'm just, hesitating all the time to commit to anything. Which isn't a good place to be at.

I guess I'm really just waiting for university. Aaargh.

mnstr: I know this is old shit, and I know I really need to go and do something. But I will. And I need time.

Lessons from running a camp at MGS primary

2008-03-10T21:39:00.002+08:00
That the inequalities in Singapore are more complicated than I expected. Apparently, the divide between the elite schools and the non-elite schools are much deeper than I expected. I mean, I sort of already anticipated the kind of issues that I would come across, but I didn't realised the complexity that actually causes the inequalities. As it turns out, income inequality is only one kind of inequality that exists in Singapore.

The real factor that causes extreme elitism, or simply elitism of the worst kind was that, the culture between neighbourhood schools and elite schools ARE really different. And elite schools ARE really better, in terms of inculcating MORE POSITIVE values to the students, giving them self-belief and confidence, THINGS THAT ARE SORELY MISSING in neighbourhood schools other than the exceptions. What are also missing in neighbourhood schools are GOOD teachers who believe in students, and a POSITIVE culture for achievement, where students are more than another statistic, but are treated as whole persons.

It was an eye-opener handling those kids who are barely 10, 11, 12 years old. At their age, I feel like a DUNCE now. I think I BARELY made it to where I am today. There were too many opportunities for me to fall through the cracks. Already I can see why Tan Li Feng could be a president's scholar, because I am seeing people of her kind of assertiveness and dominance, focus and drive, things I barely recognised as important till late secondary/JC level.

So the main learning point is: HOW DO YOU NURTURE A CULTURE OF PERSON-CENTRED EXCELLENCE IN SINGAPORE EDUCATION, SO THEY CAN EXCEL FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES? How would it look like? What are the steps? What are the obstacles?

(On another note: It would take a different kind of NIE to produce a different kind of teacher who is more than just concerned about the big fat bonuses. Though it is an incentive, it is an incentive of a wrong type. )

And last of all, I think that LOVE IS THE REAL BUILDER OF COMMUNITIES.

olpc and some other stuff

2008-03-05T00:40:00.003+08:00
I am beginning to be interested in bringing OLPC to Singapore especially to the lower-income group. Of course I did my homework, and it's rather disappointing the way MOE has done its ICT. It's frankly speaking, bullshit that allows vendors to gain extra profits at no value-addedness to the kids. Its sad that our children have to withstand shit like that.

Oh well. lately I've written 2 essays about my life and how it has led to me where I am today, on the edge of everything. It's great that I have found a group of people to relate to, to talk to, people who have the dare and the courage to fight for their ideas and live every moment of their lives to see it becoming a reality. I don't know why, but I just don't have the guts yet, probably because there are too many things pulling me in different directions.

Things won't work out so well yet, I guess, and for now, my life is this mess that's struggling to self-organized.

Till another time.

Interesthink and more!

2008-02-24T11:08:00.003+08:00
The past few days have been partially insane. I have come to accept that being in SYINC requires a level of commitment that I have never anticpated, and part of me screams out , 'I never signed up for this'. Meanwhile, Shaun is relishing in all of these, and I'm glad for him in that way. At the same time, there are forces both internal and external that are driving all of us apart. But those things are more personal things and not meant to be shown here.

What I want to talk about are the crazy things that have gone on. Like, having to work on an executive summary in like 8 hours before the deadline. So we came up with something, which was rather... draining and amazing and exhilirating at the same time. So its fun in a way.

I want to talk about Interesthink, and it was a truly marvelous event. It was like being at TED, except its in a Singapore context. And it was truly amazing, for all the people there, and I had a sense of all the passion and excitement that is going on. The speakers were great, and the people were excellent. I kind of sort of need to learn to talk to people with greying hair. Otherwise it was all cool. Picked up a lot of contacts especially a namecard designer, so - hah!

I guess at the Interesthink it was a Shaun-show. Shaun was there making his usual pitches about the webmonster and Pangea Day. So it was all great. And it was inescapable to talk about SYINC, so inevitably, Bernise would come into the picture and everything would be just.. jamming.

So meanwhile, I was covering ground, seeding ideas for TED and for cradle-to-cradle design, get people excited about TED and to talk about how the ideas could be made relevant to Singapore, get people excited and thinking.

The other more memorable things was a filmmaker sharing his life story, and being stuck for 10mins with Leong Sze Hian, who said some rather powerful statements about the situation of Singapore, that eventually, something's gotta give, and then, that the young people will eventually have to do something about it all. So that kinda left an impression on me. And not to forget Grant Pereira and his hippy-antics and for all the things that he has done, about his friends who lost their passion and got 'bought' over by the government, who went on to settle down leaving him alone. So yeah.

And there were people out there who think they can't do anything because they don't know anything. I think its just plain laziness not to go out there and look at life out there in Singapore - which is what I'm trying to do right now. Issues are all over the place actually, and its not just a matter of even looking at the right places, no, its just BOTHERING TO LOOK WITH 2 EYES WIDE OPEN and LOOKING AT THE LIVES OTHERS ARE LIVING. Its just that simple. It takes a different kind of heart, a different pair of eyes and all. And a different pair of hands.

And cheers to Leong Sze Hian, who writes for all the Singaporeans who will be disenfranchised, who will have their future robbed of. Thanks! And keep on writing. And hope others will stand up in his place. I could always try. Haha.

The future. That's what I'm fighting for too.

integrating technology into everyday life

2008-02-14T23:30:00.003+08:00
I know this might sound as a crazy idea, but I imagine this is how technology might be integrated with our HDB life, for now. Of course ideas like these could always be broken down into smaller and smaller elements all the way to the individual, but hey, just try to stay with me for a while.

Technology thinking has mostly been centred around the individual, like how the individual can be empowered using devices, or how technology can be integrated into shirts and accessories and all. These are exciting no doubt, but I would like to think of something else.

I want to imagine the connected HDB flat and the connected HDB estate, or a connected residential estate, for that matter.

Its rather simple, actually. Its simply social networking brought down to a more physical reality. It means linking every homes to every other home, into a network. This network would allow people to communicate with each other like how they would for a normal networking website, instead now, you are communicating with people just next to you.

This is at the same time, breathtakingly stupid and breathtakingly smart. Its breathtaking stupid, because since all of us are together, why would we need these tools to stay connected? Well, the thing is, I think urban people stay online with distant people more than they stay in touch with the people next to them. So what my idea does, is simply putting people closer to each other in the digital sense. People say that living in HDB flats took away the whatever-kampung spirit. Well, here's my stupid solution. Wire up all the houses together, have a user interface simple enough that people will commit to using it to tell their neighbour what they are doing. Live IM in the HDB flats. Allow people to communicate to each other easily!

And still better. Connect all the flats to each other so people in adjacent blocks can be connected to each other. Wouldn't all these nurture better ties to each other?

And the thing is, it has to be simple, intuitive, and accessible. I'm sure this idea will be implemented sooner or later....

Its fun, isn't it?

Of course there are problems, the main one being, whether people are keen to do this or not? Will people be willing to IM each other? If people are willing to Twitter in the public, I don't see why not. This is going to cater to young people to share with each other their lives' experiences, this is going to cater to parents who want to discuss with each other about parenting and education, this is going to cater to suppliers of household stuff - so this is where money might come from. It could all work! theorectically.

hah.

motivations...

2008-02-14T15:14:00.003+08:00
The basis for social change is HOPE and HOPE alone. That God gave us hope to believe, hoping in HIM, and similarly, in the hope that things can happen if we HOPE in it enough to do something about. The reason I'm doing what I'm doing is not really about enabling Singapore to move on to the next phase of the future or whatever. My deep desire is to give people the hope that they can do things for themselves, and they can do it to the best of themselves, that they should always be striving for that. And through this process, coming to know Christ - at least for me...

Social change is not just change for the sake of change. Social change, is again, the hope that there is something better out there, that we can work towards a better place to live in. This is the main driving force behind the people that do these, that we may not be Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi, but with enough dedication and a community, we might be able to achieve something that improves the lives of many. Another possible theme might even be: People Deserve Better! Or something like that.

We want to live in a place where people believe that they can do something more, something greater than themselves, something great in itself. But we aren't. And this gap between expectation and reality is really one of the core reasons why people find life in Singapore unsatisfying, always having half a mind to emigrate if not for the costs involve. So what if our friends and family are here? There's always Skype and Facebook to keep track. If not just fly back every now and then and spend some time together. Lots of people do that already. Or maybe it could be just the lack of guts. But whatever it is, I'm beginning to see myself not just as part of another social change project that promises nothing in terms of action, but just another dude trying to make living more bearable in Singapore...

Morning thoughts

2008-02-13T10:35:00.002+08:00
It just dawned upon me that good design is the product of aesthetics, with considerations to the human and social aspects, and that a good design product will also be ultimately linked to good science. aiyah. this is really just common sense.

Anyhow, was wondering if it'll be possible to adopt some of Google's office practises into the civil service. Would that be possible? Dreaming of slightly random things..

Mainly I keep thinking about ideas and concepts and how to make them real.

And more ideas. Imagine carrying a giant piece of a writng medium of any material - paper, canvas, whatever it might be, bring it to the street, give people markers and other writing materials, and just ask them to express themselves, their ideas, of if you want a theme, 'What do you think of Singapore?' have it at places of heavy pedestrian traffic, like Orchard Road or any other place, and then... just let people freely themselves! Especially schools! woohoo! So on that surface, people could write about their complains, their gripes, their thoughts, fears, or even what they think about the government and things like that...

Bet that'll beat the heck out of the Feedback Unit!

education, inspiration and innovation

2008-02-12T10:47:00.000+08:00
One of the things that has bothered me a lot in Singapore is our education. But before I go any further, I would like to say that even though our education is far from perfect, it actually is pretty good, having brought us to where we are today. Come to think of it, the criticisms that I'm making are actually applicable to the education system of many countries.

This is obvious, but for a start, there is a tension in most education system between the needs of the individual and the community. Its a resource allocation problem, I guess, that the education systems of all countries are such that resources are utilized to maximize the benefits to most kids - to use what the country has to improve the whole population of children rather than focus on a few bright sparks who might be einsteins. That's one the major tensions in most education systems.

In Singapore it's the same. The education system is such that it affords most people with the basic knowledge of the workings of the modern world. Unfortunately, Singapore now faces a potential 'Innovation Gap' with other countries. The strategic challenge that Singapore faces today is regarding innovation. It's about whether Singaporeans can innovate fast enough in the future, competing with people in the region, in Asia, in the world, as a whole.

The key to that question lies ultimately in our education system. Its about whether our education system can provide our future leaders with the skillsets required for the innovation race in the future and even today.

The recent changes made to our education system I hope, will be only a start. The changes in syllabus and curriculum are such that young people are educated of the various fields and since it is compulsory to study both the science and humanities, it will better equip our future leaders to deal with the complexities of the present and future.

I hope there will be more changes - changes that will better equip teachers as well for this innovation challenge. Without innovative teachers, all these talk about education inculcating innovation among our future leaders will be just that - talk. For the whole education system to work, it is obvious that we need innovative teachers as well.

In this post, I don't want to talk about just the syllabus, curriculum, teachers and students. The whole theme of this entry has been about innovation in education, about the 4 things mentioned above. But lately, I've realised that the education of innovation is not the school's responsibility alone. Ultimately, for innovation to thrive, you need people to begin the process of integrating innovation in their lives by themselves. The future leaders that I'm talking about - the kids still schooling today, they are going to come out of school and realise all of these things that they've missed about, about the world out there and all the synthesis that have been going on between different areas of knowledge, the connections that are being made, and the silent ongoing revolutions in technology, entertainment and design. And when they've realise just how much they've been missing out, they will ask themselves the same question, 'why didn't my education prepare me with all these?'

On the Internet, there are already amazing resources that can equip students with knowledge of all the latest happenings, about the going-ons at the forefront of innovation. An when they do find out about it, they will want to share with their friends, with their families. All we have here in Singapore are just pockets of people who are in the know about all these, and it's simply not enough. It has to begin somewhere, and I believe that it should happen in the schools. It should begin in the schools to tell kids about the existence of these things, and it should begin in the schools where they can share and discuss these things with their friends, and t should begin in the schools where they can explore some of these ideas... But for all these to happen, some tenets of our education here in Singapore will have to change.

Our education system is efficient. It is good at producing people who are prepared for the world of manufacturing and service industries. But as we are slowly finding out, it won't be enough in the present and future environment that will be innovation-centred. This is why ITEs are reinventing themselves, not just producing technically competent people, but people who are able to move up on the value ladder and begin to seriously innovate and produce new products or methodologies. And even our polys are rebranding themselves too, as potential hubs of innovation, and the same goes for our universities.

I think there is a need now to revise the way we look at our schools. Our schools are no longer factories producing cogs and gears for the giant machinery of our economy. We need to know look at our schools as Hubs of Innovation, not just as places where we teach thing and inculcate values and all.

the chicken and egg question in singapore social change

2008-02-11T20:45:00.000+08:00
The thing about Singaporeans is that they aren''t actually politically apathetic. There are a lot of people actually who are genuinely concerned about the state of the politics in Singapore, and they talk about it among themselves in their own private circles, half the time they celebrate the fact that CSJ exists, half the time they laugh at him for his antics, or shake their heads. Maybe its because of the legal actions, but people know that here in Singapore you can't challenge the PAP head on a la the revolutions of decades past. People think that for social change to seriously happen in SIngapore, there must be changes in the external environemnt before anything can happen. They mean that the PAP should relax the rules for political and social debate, even to the extent of degrading the ISA, they mean that some sort of change must happen in the attitude of the Singaporeans on this island, they mean that change must come from the outside - that the trigger for social change would not be from the people...

Well, but the fact is, social change IS for people, BY PEOPLE. Without people to to even begin to think about social change, there would be just, nothing. The fact is, for there to be substantial social change, for Singapore to have a participatory democracy or even a civil society, then Singaporeans themselves must step up to the fore and encourage others to do likewise. We live in an age where we have all become connectors - to people, to things, to causes. What we need now are initiators, people who can and will transform all our connectivity - all our FaceBooks, our gmails, into social causes. We already know, and already some have begun acting.

If we want to have genuine participatory democratic civil society, then I think we should start actling like we are one. Rules can always be changed.

No one, especially not the government, will tell us, 'eh, we can have a participatory society now, go talk politics leh'.

Start now...

Innovate, Innovate!

2008-02-10T22:46:00.001+08:00
Statements like the following one have been made so many times that it seems cliched: that innovation is going to be the key to success in this century.

Innovation has to become part of the DNA of any society or country in order for that particular society or country to be economically successful in the long run. In order words, innovation has to be part of the education curriculum, so that every generation of children that has gone through schooling will be ready to innovate solutions...

I don't know how else to put it - innovation is something that can never be overemphasized, and the same regarding the urgency, right here in Singapore. Are we adapting fast enough? Are we nurturing innovation?

Which brings us to the entire issue of the patterns of innovation, the factors that nurture innovation and things like that. Are we adapting our society for innovation? I think these are some of the questions that are keeping policy-makers up at night. Well, at least I hope they bother to think of these things. Because I think that the challenge to innovate is one of the most important and urgent problems, and a long term one at that, that Singapore will have to face in order to become successful as a global city.

And innovation will be closely tied to our education, society and culture... how we adapt them for this century...

maybe we could adapt more Montessori philosophies into primary school education for a start...

an extension of 'Questions Never Answered' - the psyche of the NS to be

2008-02-10T01:53:00.000+08:00
I thought about the content of Questions Never Answered, and I've come to realised how outdated I've become.

The generation of kids today haven't exactly watched Black Hawk Dawn or Saving Private Ryan. No for them, the images of war come in a far more visceral manner, and faster, and with greater interactivity. No, today, war for our younger kids mean Call of Duty 4, Company of Heroes, Gears of War, and other military-themed FPS games. They see the bullets, hear the gunfire, experience the chaos of war and battle, but all in a 32-inch flatscreen tv. War has become a game for them, but even the war that they experience is nothing compared to the actual circumstances of war. Game-war, is completely different from war as it is fought in physical reality. Real War is slower, infinitely times more messy - even though I haven't fought in a real war, but war from a console is definitely different from war as it is fought with real guns and bullets.

Ok. So we all know that console war is different from real war. So what's the deal? The point is that, from here on, there will be huge gulf between expectation and reality, and truth be told, not many people will accept it. Young men who have never had any real military experience save for the console would be in for a rude shock when they enter NS, and realise that military life isn't the point and shoot in the FPS games. And then, what you get - disillusionment, low morale...

For these young sheltered people... it will really mean something for them, who have already had high expectations of the military.

writing project concretized

2008-02-08T22:17:00.000+08:00
I'm beginning to have a clearer conception about this project that I want to do. It's about going around Singapore, and going to the places that we are familiar with, but I won't be writing about its history and heritage and all the usual stuff, but I want to write with an eye to the future, about its present and its future. So much has been written about their pasts that we might have forgotten to look at its future and its possibilities. Below are the places that I want to write about for this project...

-geylang
-chinatown
-civic district - clarke quay
-city hall, raffles place - CBD
-neighbourhood schools vs elite schools
-neighbourhoods - tampines, hougang, boon lay, my own
-places of worship - temples, churches, mosques...
-about the elderly, the youths, the kids, the working adults
-about tradition and the future
-about life as lived in Singapore
-about NS
-about the future of Singapore
-food culture
-shopping malls
-urban planning in general
-about education
-social equality

not sure what else, but that'll be all for now...

Past acaedmic projects

2008-02-08T13:18:00.000+08:00

I was looking at my older notebooks, and a past entry jumped out at me. It was something of a more academic nature, and it reflected my past interest in a lot of things.

I went to check out the modules offered at NUS, and was kinda underwhelmed at the things they offered. Arh well. As it turned out, the modules offered wheren't exactly what I had in mind, when matched against my academic interests. Arh well.

I thought civilisation studies would be about the overarching concepts about what defines a civilisation and the factors that made it so. Apparently, the people at NUS who created the module turned into case studies into specific civilisations...

I don't know. I looked again at the modules offered in the special term, and I'm underwhelmed again. Maybe now I'll just take like 2 modules or something, especially maybe that USP module on 'emerging global politics' which I hope it will be about what it says and not some specific case study once more, and something else, which I can't see yet.

Anyway, what inspired the post was this diagram that I drew of the ideas that were in my head, ideas that basically revolved around how the sciences and the humanities were connected. So there was this whole mess of lines and words...

Which brings me to my interest now. Trying to learn Java so I can make my own programme to illustrate this mental map in a digital sense, and being able to manipulate it, zoom into it, and see how ideas are connected to one another. And now I can't really learn Java due to some cock-up with my com, hope to get the problem fixed after I get my laptop.

Anyhow, there is an emerging connectedness between myriad branches of academic disciplines. Research into brain science is converging with ethics - the processes that are going on in our brains everytime we make an ethical judgement. Research in networks has led to breakthroughs in economics, neuroscience, ecology, among others. The academic world is abuzz with interdisciplinary talk.

I only hope NUS might be an epicenter of such buzz in Singapore...

Twilight Industries

2008-02-07T20:58:00.000+08:00

In our world today, I think this quote is true: Anything that isn’t digitised will eventually die out.

Well, obviously historians will be very much bothered by this. In their museums, they have relics from a time way before computers. So what gives me justification to say something like that?

Well, in our present day, especially in Singapore, there are whole varieties of cultural artefacts that will slowly become extinct, becoming only tourist exhibits, to be seen and no longer experienced. And today, these cultural artefacts are disappearing before our very eyes.

The reason that I’m talking about only Chinese cultural artefacts is because I’m most familiar with them. I’m talking about the Chinese temples, lion dances, getais, puppet shows, Chinese Operas, and other aspects of traditional Chinese art.

To just state generally what these things are, these are remnants of the culture that our immigrant forefathers brought with them as they came to Singapore. These things are essentially pieces of cultural China that they brought with them. You might be thinking, since these arts are still flourishing in China, why should we bother about preserving them in Singapore? That’s a rather good question, and I think that my attempt to answer them will be rather pitiful and fall far short of an actual justification.

Yes, these arts are still flourishing in China. That’s why performing troupes from China come down to Singapore regularly for some art performance or another. The reason that I want to highlight this little cultural nugget is because these artefacts of culture represent an immense treasure trove with which we could redefine Singapore’s identity.

I’m not an artist, nor am I a student of art history, which makes me rather unqualified to make statements like these. But I feel that the old parts of Singapore, both intangible and tangible, should be thrown away that easily just because of their age. We talk of our ‘Asian-ness’ so much that we hardly give attention to what it actually means. Redefining our traditions might be a place to start redefining ourselves.

We should start first and foremost, by going digital, make it available to everyone on the Internet. Set up communities who are dedicated to the preservation of these arts. Have a generation of art students interested in them and allow them to gradually redefine these arts with contemporary interpretation. Have national recognition for traditional arts and recreations. Better yet, suggest how these traditions can be revitalised today. Can we fuse them with Western ideals?

For those who didn’t know, Curse of the Golden Flower, yes – that movie with jay Chou and Gong-Li’s boobs – was actually a rehashing of a play written by a Chinese playwright written in 1934. The message is still the same, but the settings have changed, and made for a modern audience. We need more mishmash like that if traditional arts are going to have a foothold in our iPOD era.

I was at a temple this morning, supposedly to give respects to ancestors and all the usual traditional Chinese thing. It then struck me, what will happen to all these if, supposedly, everyone believes in the Christian God? What will happen to all these structures? They represent a great cultural wealth - as art to be appreciated maybe...

Thats for something else. There are really just so much to be seen, felt, experienced in Singapore...

questions never answered

2008-02-04T00:15:00.000+08:00

So here we were, young and fresh to the world still, having been sheltered from the outside world for almost 2 decades, and now the forces that be threw us all together on these island, all not knowing what lies ahead in our lives. The question still remains to be answered. Just what on earth were we doing on this Island?

Other fresh faces abound, some tired, some not caring the least, all of us only knowing that NS was just… something that had to be done. That if you were a Singaporean, that you needed to go through this NS in order to be properly called a Singaporean, especially a Singaporean man. So we were told, by our fathers, by our brothers, by our uncles, by our grandfathers who suffered untold suffering from the Japanese. And then a history lesson would follow about how small we were, how weak we are, that we need to own the land and the only to own what we you have is to protect it. Even after 2 years doing what seemed to be a little bit waste of my time, it somehow still triggers some pangs of patriotism. But then all of it just fades away after a night’s sleep.

Senior commanders would come and talk to us, about how we felt serving our nation. We are the Black Hawk Down generation, the Saving Private Ryan generation. I don’t a lot of us had watched films like, We were Soldiers by Mel Gibson about the Vietnam War… We had watched Jarhead, and we thought that Jarhead was the most realistic of films actually, because it represented what most of us felt and did during our time. We are trained to fight, but we never do. A taut string can’t stay taut for long. If a taut string remains taut long enough, it becomes slack and never taut again.

Feeling high on those images of war, it never occurred to us that people don’t become soldiers overnight, never occurred to us that it takes a special kind of person who is willing enough to take on the mental and physical punishment that soldierhood entails. Yet there we were, in the cinemas, taking it all in, as Eric Bana and Josh Hartnett went about their business in Mogadishu. Why didn’t we appreciate Jarhead more?

All of days there, in military camps or in the outfield, in the jungles, in the mud, never really quite answered our most burning questions in our hearts. Why NS? Why the commanders? Why here? Just what the heck am I doing here?

These questions were always with us, all the time. Yet, they were never really quite answered. In defence of this country? In defence for our family, for our loved ones? In defence for our way of life? Just what exactly was it we were defending?

‘In event of war, you will be here to protect the country and your loved ones’. That was the most common thing that we heard. Well, because you guys have been militarily trained, you guys will do really something useful here.

It makes sense for like 5 seconds, until you realise that in event of war, my parents would be trying to get on the ticket to Australia, China, Indonesia, Taiwan… anywhere but stay here. And once I know that they are safe, well, there’ll be nothing left for me to fight for but to scramble for that last transport to… anywhere but war zone.

What is Singapore to us? Is it anything at all? If what we have here can mean nothing, then NS would be for… nothing, ain’t it?

Why are we dissatisfied?

We are not satisfied simply because we can’t see beyond the lives that we live. We don’t have hope for our future in Singapore. It is not that we don’t have hope for the future of Singapore. Deep inside every one of us, we want to believe that things can be better, and that things WILL be better. Yet in all of us, there is still a longing that we can do something else, something greater than the things that we are doing today, something that will really define our existence in Singapore, as Singaporeans. And that is the key thing that is missing in this country.

We want our voice to matter, that as individual persons, we can make a difference – to belong to a community, for the happiness of the people around us in that community. We want to make our own meaning to our lives, not merely as economic machines constantly growing our GDP, but as real persons, not just as another face in a crowd, but as unique individuals, all of us. In other words, we want to be valued as persons, not as another cog in the Singapore machine. Until and unless we are valued as persons, the dissatisfaction will always remain, and Singaporeans, in their deepest of hearts, will always want to emigrate, and NS will always seem a waste of time.

While we serve National Service, are we serving for a machine, or are we really serving a Country of 4 million people?

Is this the country worth defending?

the sea change in social innovation

2008-02-02T20:32:00.001+08:00

The landscape of social change in Singapore has had a sea change compared with a decade ago. Today, opportunities abound for young people fiery with passion wanting to turn their ideas into reality.

The bulk of our youths may still be apathetic, but like Alexander Pope says, ‘Hope springs eternal from the human breast’. It is in the passion found in the hearts of our youth today that Singapore will rest her future hopes upon.

I was born just before the 1990’s. I no longer know exactly which letter of the alphabet denotes my generation. I only know that there were the baby-boomers after the war, then there were the yuppies in the 70-80’s, and then, generation Y, which could be me, but I sincerely don’t give a heck. Whatever my generation was, heck, I’m starting to feel old already. That’s what technology makes you feel. Can’t exactly grok FaceBook and all, but I guess its just me.

I’m not sure about my peers. They seem to be always many steps ahead of me when it comes to embracing technology. I guess I must have been one of the last dinosaurs walking around with a Sony Discman before I swapped it for an iPOD touch. Hang on, what? My friends are now grabbing for the iPOD classic? WTH! Meanwhile, all of them seem to be busy, occupied on their PSPs and Nintendo DS while talking about the specs for their games on their computers that I’ve barely heard before. And guess what? All of them have profiles on FaceBook and they all have more friends than me!

So the conclusion is, the generation that I belonged, I believe, is the most technologically integrated generation. And the second is that, I might just be the most backward among my generation here, but that’s something else.

Meanwhile, what we have today are I believe, the greatest tools for social innovation on the planet, the aforementioned, FaceBook, the Internet, the connectivity that we have today is simply astounding. And this is the hope that I have.

Yes, Singaporeans, young or old, might still be caught in the old materialistic rat race of many generations past. And it is still with us, no doubt about it. Yet at the same time, people today are more connected to each other than we’ve ever been. And that’s something to be excited about. That means that people with passion will find it easier to get connected, get together and think up some social innovation for the community.

I talk to my friends a bit, and in actual fact, many of them are really concerned about Singapore, about the communities they live in. Some of them live in Opposition wards, and this somehow becomes an identity to them that hey, they didn’t want to vote for PAP in the last General Election. Others seem to have gotten a little tired of living here and strongly desire to emigrate – yet they still want to live in safe, secure environment that Singapore has. A lot of my friends do have passion, it’s just that they haven’t found an avenue to express it, or just don’t feel that there are outlets. The thing that bugs them most is that, well, no one will listen to me, so, why should I care?

What we have here today is a tension among those born in this connected times. Maybe the grass does look greener, maybe it is greener, and maybe it really isn’t, on the other side. We live in Singapore, and just maybe, we may have taken its many wonderful aspects for granted. It’s such a shame, really, that it took an expatriate leaving in an HDB to tell us, Singaporeans about the wonderful aspects of living in Singapore. When Notes from a Small Island came out, my first impression was, how come a local wasn’t writing it?

I might not quite speak for my generation – they are an amazing bunch, and eventually, a few of them will become ministers some twenty years down the road, but we are one of the first few generations where so much has been shaken. We are no longer so much in sync with our parents but we are still connected to them. As there are bonds that tie us to our families, there are also forces there are making us more estranged from them. Not every baby-boomer from post-WW2 knows how to use the Internet. Not every parent understands the struggles that our generation will have to face, yet some of these parents ask their children not to be involved in the issues of our time. So that’s one thing that might still be holding back my peers from acting boldly.

Here’s how a conversation might go…

Mother : So, what’s your job about?

Child : Its about social change in Singapore, mum.

Mother : WHAT! Why aren’t you getting a proper job at the bank? 4 years accountancy for what?!

Child : Mum, I’m doing accounts for this social change organisation

Mother : And how much are you earning?

Child : Oh, two thousand per month

Mother : What! And all your friends are earning 5k a month!?!

…

And so it goes…

We are all familiar with the above, and I think that it has happened so many times that we know, in our own way, how the scene above would look like for ourselves. Despite all of these, hope remains. At no other time in Singapore’s history has there been so much opportunities, so much potential for all the young people slowly taking up the reins of leadership in society.

And what are we going to do with it?

The clarion call for my generation will not go unanswered. Bet on it.

social entrepreneurship in singapore

2008-02-02T11:44:00.000+08:00

The whole landscape of Singapore is changing, not just physically. Increasing, young Singaporeans are become quite discontent with the status quo. No, it is not that they are dissatisfied with the material state of things, but with the psychological state of things.

Materially, we possibly couldn’t have been better. Apple and Steve Jobs just made us salivate again with the ultra-thin MacBook Air, and already I think I can see eager fingers rushing to click on the ‘Buy Now’ button on the online Apple Store. I think I can also see the eager hands and the cheerful chirpings of Chinese New Year greetings from the young mouths of children as they receive their annual red packets from relatives. Not to mention the holiday some of us might just had riding on the big fat bonuses from last year.

I mean, hey, at the present, we should be happy people. Even on the whole, generally. The ugly side of race issues reared its head again just across the Causeway. Yet, things are just fine, here in Singapore.

Yet something has been going on for quite a while actually, and it has actually gained some degree of acceptance here in Singapore. Wait, that was an understatement. There has been already a wide degree of acceptance already. That’s social entrepreneurship actually.

For the uninformed, social entrepreneurship is really just making innovative solutions that meet a social need. It may or may not make money, but in this, fiscal profit is not the emphasis, but rather, the social profit. It seems that in Singapore, only things with some sort of profit motive become accepted.

Years ago, talking about social activism and social change in Singapore would immediately lead to raise eyebrows and the usual jokes about the ISA having spies in the midst of your table, who will immediately pounce upon you the moment you uttered ‘revolution’ and ‘PAP’ in the same sentence. That was the past, when social change and social activism were highly charged phrases that would be immediately connected to so-called subversive activities. Then, social activism only had political connotations. Look at where we are today.

Today, there is a whole range of activities that are available and are still related to social activism and social change, yet not having the same stigma. That’s the new phrase - ‘social entrepreneurship’. But this is not just a change of words. The whole landscape of social activism has been revitalised as a result. Whereas the discussions in the past usually centred on policies and politics, today, the discussions emphasizes around action, viability and sustainability. Social entrepreneurship has given new life to the social change and social activism. The latter two are now talked about not as abstract ideas but as basis for concrete action.

So what does this all mean? Sure, we will still have a dominant political party for the foreseeable future. Yes, a viable political opposition might eventually become more than just another choice on the balloting slip, but today, we are seeing the formation of a civil society that is growing rapidly and legitimately – not only from a political/national sense, but from a social sense as well, as more people become aware of the groups, their activities, and the real impact that they result in.

For the idealistic among us, I believe there is no better time than the present in Singapore to start figuring out ways to translate their ideas into action. What we’ll do now from here, I believe will make all the difference there is for the future of Singapore and her people.

the idea that i've been having about singapore...

2008-01-28T22:07:00.001+08:00
I guess I never really revealed the bigger picture that I've been having for a long time in my head. I talk about environmental change, social change, education, Singapore, external challenges and all, but I've always done it in bit pieces - every topic in isolation, without regard for its context with respect to many other things. A few days ago I had this epiphany that it would be simpler for my life and others, if I'd just tell them what is exactly on my mind. So here it is:

I am afraid for Singapore.

Now why am I afraid? Simply because of India and China. Their growth will be THE story of our time, of the 21st century. But what will it mean for Singapore? It means a loss of relevance in the world, the loss of relevance to China and India. What happens, around 2050, when China and India become fully developed? What will happen to Singapore?

What's happening now.

Singapore is trying to position itself as a point of entry into China's markets. That is losing its point, because investors can just stream into China directly, bypassing Singapore totally. We are exporting public administration to Chinese government officials - but in time, they will establish their very own Zhu Rong Ji Institute of Public Policy, so even LKYSPP will lose its shine. We are using exporting our developing model for their industries and economy as a whole, but in time, they won't need it, when they're done learning our lessons. They will eventually find their own way, and we'll be left in the dust of their development.

The only hope then is that we would have moved on in our development.

But how?

The only way to do that is to INNOVATE, and I cannot emphasize itself. We need an education system and a society that encourages innovation, and does it by the truckload.

My friend, Shaun, and I agree, that Singapore is really good at being efficient and sometimes, adaptable. Because we are small, we can push through with projects faster than almost any other country. That is something we need to keep. Our education system is superb at churning efficient people - and that's a good thing too. We are very good at doing the things TODAY, but we suck seriously at innovating.

The main point is, we need visionaries - people who can see beyond today's situations and anticipate what lies ahead in the future, and create innovations for tomorrow - not just incremental changes, but something radical, even game changing, something disruptive, like the Internet, the wheel, the iPod, and more...

And more importantly, we need to link visionaries with the efficient people that we have today. We need to be fast at what we do, and at the same time, to be able to innovate something completely new. We need a society that can nurture visionaries and match them with the suitable efficient people to create innovations that will keep Singapore just that little bit ahead. If we start now, we will enjoy another say, 20 years of growth, before China and India match up with us again. Until then, what?

Thats for the next generation to think, and we have to prepare them for that moment. Meanwhile, we have challenges like sustainable growth, urban planning, and all... SIngapore needs to seriously innovate, and come up with sustainable models for future growth - how do we retrofit our buildings to become eco-friendly, cradle-to-cradle style...

and an idea that can help make the innovative, dynamic society into reality...

and an IDEA CAFE!!! now that would be great! a place where people could talk freely about their ideas, get together and discuss them, and maybe even come up with something...

forgot to add that the Ideas Cafe will be different, because when people are discussing, they will decide whether they want people to just come in and contribute to a discussion... and then hopefully, this will allow different people to meet each other and come up with immense synergy they can take to... whatever their dreams take them...???

then we can set up a community, where people can continue their discussions online and further develop their ideas into full-blown projects of potential social change - all these for changing the social landscape of singapore into something really more dynamic than what i have here.

It does not need a new cafe, any cafe today can implement these things if they want to...

ten years

2008-01-27T23:08:00.000+08:00
I was looking at the young people in my neighbourhood today, and started talking to them for a very short while... and after that I went back home and I thought of something.

Ten years ago, people my age would have hardly the opportunities that I have today. I expect that ten years on, people my age would have opportunities I can hardly imagine today. So I think one of the challenges is, how do we prepare our young people for those opportunities that would otherwise blow our minds today?

Ten years on, we'll see even more innovations about the social-technosphere, and more opportunities for growth. Then... what will we do with our young people?

What kind of education will exist for them? How will the social landscape look like? How will the world have changed? Will the education catch up with the global transformations by then? Will our young people be ready for all these?

Innovation from a previous age

2008-01-26T12:33:00.000+08:00
Was at this conference about start-ups and alternative energy. There were 5 men seating as panelists and a crowd of people with money in their eyes, all trying to catch ways to earn money and strike it rich youtube-style, you know, the kind where eventually you hope to see your company to google and earn billions.

Which is...

I won't be judgemental this time, but let me just say that, well, this kind of conferences, discussions, and all... they seem rather, old, like we're still stuck in the previous generation of talking about enterprises and start-ups. The dot-com boom was like, ten years ago, and I would like to believe that we have moved on since.

I don't think its possible to discuss 'alternative energy' by itself, and even when you're thinking about bio-diesel (which has its own conceptual problems) or solar power, I think that all the same, we're still in this stupid mindset. I think that in reality there is really a really large issue and where opportunities are really all just there. It's whether we are capable of this imagination to actually see these opportunities. The field I'm talking about is sustainability, building bright green cities and all. How do you turn Singapore green? How do you implement things like cradle to cradle concepts - everything from alternate energy to matierials recycling, and reusing them for top-quality products - how do you design pollutant-free products - all of these, will become vital for the future, yet there is scarcely anyone in Singapore looking at them. And I think, this is a tragedy...

Oh, and something from yesterday... the thought of chronicling Singapore's green spaces and and cool buildings, and then further on to see how Singapore could develop to become a sustainable Bright Green City that is able to minimize its impact on the environment as well as letting people feel more satisfied about the environment...

It's going to take more than bio-diesel to change our consumption...

an epiphany 23rd jan

2008-01-23T23:38:00.000+08:00
This whole idea just struck me as I was searching for the book, Stuff, The hidden lives of everyday Things. Then I found, Cradle to Cradle, a book by William McDonough, whose presentation about his development of 12 green cities in China was... simply... jaw-dropping. Then I found, Worldchanging: The User's guide to the 21st century.

Today, we are witnessing the intersection of politics, social technologies, and the environment. I believe that we are entering into another Enlightenment more enlightened than the previous one. I think today, we are in the Green Enlightenment. Our era will be defined by how we were able to tap on all of our technologies to solve issues of sustainability. Because I think, even the issue of climate change pales in comparison to the isse of sustainability. What must we do in order to survive this century and the next? Climate change is only part of the problem - there is this entire disaster that stems from our immense consumption of the resources of the planet...

I'm not Thomas Friedman, so I can't fly around the world asking for the opinion of TEDsters and other movers and shakers of the world. I do not believe that all these problems are too big to solve - it is rather, that the size of the problem should make us want to solve it even more. All the more we have to take this problem to the global level.

Just maybe, this is what our generation will have to do...

brainwaves on 23rd janueary - adaptive software and... the NS reflection

2008-01-23T19:54:00.000+08:00
Is it possible to have software harmonising with the hardware environment for better performance, without external inputs? Is such programming possible? Is it possible for all software in a computer to adapt, by themselves, with each other and with the hardware environment, to produce better performance for the user?

And something else. Today I felt resolved to write out the NS reflection and the meaning of living in Singapore. This is going to take a while, I'll be trying to write it as soon as possible, and have it out during uni time. Hope this time, things will work out well...

after watching too many ted videos...

2008-01-20T13:44:00.001+08:00
My 'TED' wish, is to set up a TED community in NUS. This community will come together to share ideas, about the things they are passionate about, and it'll be held like every month or so at some lecture theatre there. This thing will be entirely voluntary, the most difficult thing is to publicise this thing.

Anyway, here's something else - its slightly bigger and many more times more ambitious. My second 'TED' wish is to transform Singapore into a leading edge global city that does not merely want to catch up to other cities, but carve a place for itself in the world. Get what I mean? Its going to be about technological literacy, getting more tech companies to set up centres here, not just for marketing, but for research and all.

Here are some ideas - consolidate our education system - education should be more dynamic, not only restricted to schools, and teachers should not be limited to the classroom. Give our teachers more space to do their work. Who joins the teaching profession to do things other than teach? Schools should be seen as a public good. We should revise our ranking systems - seems to commercialise schools. Ranking system has become counter-productive. Schools emphasize ranking over the education of their students - which sucks for our kids. What we need may only be some indicators of areas schools are good at.

If the children of a village in Peru can all have laptops, why can't we do the same? OLPC!

Implement the open-source learning for teachers (from TED).

We cannot just mouth words like 'innovation' and 'creative'. Watching TED videos have seriously revitalised my belief in the power of innovate and create. but in order to do either, we must first open up ourselves to possibilities. I believe Singapore can be a cutting edge city. Do others believe? The world will move faster and faster....

Singapore is Not Green Enough

2008-01-19T20:06:00.000+08:00
I was walking along Orchard Road today, and I was surprised at the developments that are going on there already. Ion Orchard is being built, and some other construction projects are ongoing, so there's this sense of development, that yeah, things are moving, and hopefully, are being improved. In the past, I would have been excited at the developments. But like I said, that would have been in the past. Right now, I'm concerned about the environmental impact of all of these and I'm concerned about whether new sustainable technologies are being used, whether environmental considerations are being factored in the construction of these new projects. The thing now is that we are merely going after the aesthetics - that the building should JUST look nice. But here's the deal, looking nice ain't enough no more. We can't just keep putting concrete blocks arranged in some nice way. If Singapore really wants to be a leading global city, if it really wants to be a world-class city, then, it should take that Garden City concept, and push it to the next level - really becoming a Garden City, not just in terms of aesthetics, but in thinking and in outlook. The question today is, how do we continue our growth, and at the same time, how do we do it in a green fashion, that doesn't add to our ecological impact?

The technologies are all available today. We need only today to look at the TED presentations, and look, for example, at the innovative architectural designs established for 12 Chinese cities that are being built along ways that are designed to limit the impact to the environment. Gardens on rooftops, closed-loop cycling of waste products, using our sewage to feed methane-producing bacteria, using incentives to implement wider recycling schemes. If we can have dish out Baby Bonus, why we can't we dish out a Green Bonus? More importantly, we need to invest more in greentech, not just in terms of researching on alternative sources of energy, but how to make our daily lives more energy efficient in terms of usage. Every little bit will count.

Making Singapore the foremost green city in the world is only the beginning. We need to share this know-how with the region, with India, Indonesia, the rest of Asia, with the rest of the world. I hope I'm wrong, but I believe its already too late for climate change. I believe its now a matter of sustainability, of how we can survive and grow despite climate change, despite diminishing resources - all these without killing each other and ourselves. This is the foremost challenge for all of us - to survive the 21st Century.

The first post

2008-01-19T12:06:00.000+08:00
This is the first post of the blog thats supposed to be... more serious. See how it goes...