Three years ago, I wrote about how delighted I was to read about the discovery of a mysterious cinema, built by persons unknown in the catacombs of Paris.
In the same spirit, let me just pay a hat-tip to the visionaries who – completely illegally – constructed a vast complex of underground temples in the Italian Alps…
I’ve just found Tim O’Reilly’s report from the Beijing Foo Camp, posted a week ago. It chimes with everything I feel about Beijing after my time there, and in particular, this:
There are (reportedly) very large differences between the tech cultures in Shanghai and Beijing. Shanghai is very entrepreneurial, with money as a common language. Beijing is more complex, richer by most opinions, but more difficult. We might have felt more at home in Shanghai, but because of the complex interactions between government, academic institutions (which are centered in Beijing), the artistic revival here, and business, many felt that the future is here in Beijing. Of course, they also said that the rivalry between the two cities is like the rivalry between LA and New York.
I totally agree – and it’s one of the reasons why I keep touting Beijing as one of the most interesting places in the world to be right now – and why I’m going back next year 
The whole of Tim’s post is worth reading for his thoughts on Beijing, China, and the tech/arts scene.
The saying goes “the elephant in the room…” when there’s something that needs to be discussed, but it’s so large and obvious and obviously incongruent that no-one can bring themselves to mention it.
Singapore isn’t an elephant, it’s a “red dot” – but nevertheless, I’ve read a couple of articles recently that were obviously relevant to Singapore, and yet this island wasn’t mentioned.
The most recent is this article in the Times about Dubai, and its rise as a financial capital. I’ve mentioned Dubai as a rival to Singapore before, if you’ll pardon the rhyme. Obviously, it sees the need to diversify away from dependence on oil, and is choosing to go down the road of developing as a financial centre. Key quote:
Dubai has another incentive to succeed in what may be a winner-takes-all game to become the Gulf’s financial capital. Unlike Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, it has scant reserves of oil and gas. To be assured of success, it must be financially clean, and accept principles of accountability, transparency and regulatory rigour. Its development in the past decade has been extraordinary and proves that the Middle East is not, by definition, a basket case. To continue to be a model for the region and the world, it must continue to invest in integrity.
No natural resources, just people; a reputation for integrity, incorruptibility, and the rule of law. Where have we heard that before..?
So if Singapore now has a rival competing on its own turf, it needs to be making the most of its only resource, namely people. Another article that made me think of this regards China, in The China Vortex: Where’s the Fantasy, Creativity and Imagination In China?I know, it’s just about gaming. Yes, I know it’s about China, not Singapore. I know, Singapore is throwing lots of money at developing its creative industries. And yes, I know, Singapore is also trying to attract world-class industry leaders to set up shop here. And yet, and yet… I’m not convinced yet. I hope it will work, I really do. I know for sure that there are lots of bright and talented young people here… but there are so many obstacles in their way, in the shape of ‘B-Arkers‘, the middle managers who don’t contribute much and can’t see beyond “the way things are done”, who fear change and resist it, who try to stifle anything that changes or challenges the rules… These people exist worldwide, of course, but the type seems firmly entrenched here….
Yes, another title to tease you into reading, promising more than it can deliver. I’m at that head-shaking point where I can’t quite believe what I’ve just seen.
In an interview about his latest novel, novelist William Gibson points out that writing science fiction is getting harder, because:
we can’t culturally have futures the way that we used to have futures because we don’t have a present in the sense that we used to have a present. Things are moving too quickly for us to have a present to stand on from which we can say, “oh, the future, it’s over there and it looks like this.”
Here’s the perfect example:
Neurosky, a company that will let us interact with games (and tools, and machinery, and robots, and cellphones…) just by controlling our mental state, blinking, and so on through a device that will be on the market next year – and should only add $15 to the price… Incredible… who thought it would come so soon? And look at how portable the device is! Combine this with the kind of augmented reality I was talking about the other day, and we will soon be seeing some wild stuff happening out there on the streets! Are we ready for this, I wonder…? I also wonder: when will they go to IPO….?
Here’s that augmented reality clip again: watch this back-to-back with the above, and imagine the possibilities when they’re combined….
Update:
My word, and those 3-d avatars of yourself that I mentioned in that earlier post… hehehe, I should have known: they’re going to be on the market later this year!
It’s often said that growing its own cultural industry, and thus creating its own domestic constituency of artists affected by piracy, is what is really going to lead China to enforce intellectual property laws stringently.
I was reminded of that by reading an article in Wired, The Chinese Novel Finds New Life Online, which covers the growth of a new niche, the online novel. It seems that China’s experience backs up that of Cory Doctorow: releasing books for free online actually serves to boost sales of the print version.
The article is also interesting in describing the business models being developed, and how authors and publishers are trying to fend off the pirates….
I’ve been singing the praises of IBM recently, from a social technologies point of view, because of the way they’re using tools like Second Life and Xing. A lot of this is aimed at their growing workforce in China, and I guess India isn’t far behind.
Of course, there’s a downside: this is the migration of those jobs from the West, especially, the US, to cheaper developing economies. In IBM’s case, this has become very controversial following Bob Cringely’s series of articles on IBM’s LEAN process. I took the time yesterday to read the comment thread on his previous article on the topic, and it’s very interesting from an MBA point of view.
Naturally, businesses seek to cut costs; this is natural. However, of course, you don’t do this if you have a good reason to go the other way and charge a premium. IBM seems to have been in the latter category: the huge amount of experience, domain-specific knowledge, and talent that the company could draw on gave excellent value for money even if the price was higher. If these comments are representative, however, it seems that the current IBM management are cutting their most knowledgable (and most expensive) employees in order to cut costs, and replacing them with cheaper – because inexperienced – hires in developing economies such as Argentina, South Africa, and of course Asia.
This seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater: employee costs are reduced, but customer satisfaction is also plummeting, because the exit of specialised knowledge leads to longer problem resolution times. It seems many customers won’t be renewing their contracts – and at the same time, the remaining talent at IBM is overworked, demoralised, and looking for an exit. IF those comments are representative. If they are, then the future doesn’t look so rosy for Big Blue.
On a broader scope, though, this outsourcing of white-collar jobs is still gathering steam. A common complaint, and one that relates to the IBM comments, is that the Asian employees getting the new jobs are unable to think creatively, and can only do exactly what they are told to do – even if there are errors that they are expected to detect. It’s something I’ve referred to before, and certainly applies even here in Singapore.
I’m talking about this because I’ve just been looking at old posts, and see that even in 2003 I was looking at this trend and wondering where I would fit in – and how I would react to it. Taking the MBA was my response, of course.
As I think about this, I can perhaps see a niche evolving where I could see an opportunity… got to start planning for the next few years…
My MSN slogan is currently the same as my other blog’s subtitle, namely “Sous les pavés, la plage“. That’s sparked a conversation with a friend that led me back to the Wikipedia entry for the Situationists, where I found another great quote:
Down with a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased with the guarantee that we will die of boredom.”
- Anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968
I think I may need to re-read my copy of The Society of the Spectacle….
I’ve never been a tidy person. During my time in Africa, colleagues would sometimes sneak to my room to gaze in awe at the mess. Nevertheless, as one said, “it’s a bloody mess, but he always knows where to find things”. Once, for a joke, they tidied everything up while I was away, and I couldn’t find anything for weeks after that. I always say, it’s not messy, it’s fractal organisation. I just mention this after reading this Scotsman article, about a Dutch author who tidied up one day, and then couldn’t find the manuscript of her novel. For the next fifty-seven years.
Jaron Lanier doesn’t strike me as a tidy person, though for all I know his desk could be totally uncluttered. He’s messy in the best possible way, though, which is to say that his thoughts and ideas wander through all kinds of unrelated topics, making connections that lead to really innovative breakthroughs. How many other people would draw inspiration for human-computer interface design from the behaviour of a minor octopus species?
The lecture on Tuesday was entertaining and inspiring, and I’m glad I went. I unfortunately sat to someone who might be the most irritating person ever (with the natural exception of my teenage self), who fidgeted, coughed, writhed in his seat, fell asleep and then woke up, and so on until he almost drove me insane. Aargh. The lecture was organised by the Augmented Reality Lab at NUS, so Mr. Lanier’s talk was pretty technical for the most part – but I’m a geek, so that was fine by me. I took a lot of notes, which are mostly illegible. I really ought to learn shorthand.
There was a lot of good stuff:
Also, quite a bit of discussion about Second Life, for which he is an adviser. He mentioned that it’s a problem that the only way avatars can communicate is through IM; he pushed for speech, and ‘lost that battle’. Here he was a bit behind the curve: just the day before, I’d seen an announcement that voice is going to be introduced soon. That will be great, but expect to see a lot more virtual fistfights! He hinted that a server will come to Singapore soon to reduce the lag, which I for one would be very happy with.
He gave the audience a choice near the end: he could talk more about the social implications of online networks, or he could take questions. In the end, he went for the Q&A, which was a pity, as the questions weren’t that great. One person even went so far as to ask whether Second Life was for losers, which is pretty stupid considering that IBM and the like are using it for business, but when you’re posing that question to the “father of VR” it’s pretty damn insulting as well. Ho hum.
And no-one asked about sex! Amazing. After so much talk about immersion, and reproducing physical sensation, I was really wondering why he was on a Microsoft Fellowship rather than one from Playboy! After all, the porn industry has driven the technical innovations in all other aspects of the internet… Heh. I might have asked that but well, I was with some of my new colleagues, and I don’t know them so well yet….
Miss Izzy was there, and I said hi afterwards. She didn’t get her interview, but she’s written a good review. She’s also wondering why Singapore doesn’t produce people like this. I think a lot of it comes back to this issue of tidiness: ‘tidy’ thinking encourages compartmentalised thinking, and neatly-defined jobs, and we all know that tidiness is a major virtue here! Innovation seems to come out of messiness, though, where people don’t stick to what they’re “supposed” to be doing.
One last comment: Izzy mentions the NTU adverts… Hehehe, while I was a student at NTU, there was a poster campaign encouraging undergrads to broaden their study topics. The tagline on all of these posters? “Pick up a minor today”, which provoked fits of horrified giggles amongst the foreigners…
