US venture capitalists invest in green architecture

Revisiting a favourite theme, albeit one I haven’t written about in a while, the Guardian tells us that the US construction industry is investing heavily in green construction techniques. Good news for sure – but the most critical issue from where I’m sitting is to get these techniques and materials out into the developing world, and especially Asia, where construction of brand-new buildings and even cities is going on at a frantic pace.

It still bemuses me that this isn’t a huge industry in Singapore, where there’s a large construction sector, and a government that appears to have money to burn when it comes to investing in R&D that may bring economic benefit to the country in the future. Although they’ve taken some small steps in terms of the way they build public housing, and some regulatory requirements for private developers, I’m not hearing much about R&D into new techniques and materials. Perhaps it’s not sexy enough – or perhaps the local construction lobby is too powerful. After all, the Straits Times published a leader opposing seatbelts for the foreign workers who travel in the back of trucks – because it would impose excessive costs on the construction companies….* Of course, I would be delighted if someone better informed than me can point me towards a source of information about R&D into green building in Singapore!

* I can’t find an online source for this, but it made a big impression when I read it…

Solastalgia

In a Wired article about environmental change in Australia (and on his blog), Clive Thompson discusses a concept known as solastalgia:

the distress caused by the lived experience of the transformation of one’s home and sense of belonging and is experienced through the feeling of desolation about its change.

Apparently, the term was coined by one Dr Glenn Albrecht; the definition is continued with:

The diagnosis of solastalgia is based on the recognition of the distress within an individual or a community about the loss of ‘endemic sense of place’ and the loss of a sense of control of its destiny.

I think this could explain a lot about modern Singapore…

The firewall’s bureaucracy

I’ve had problems of my own with China’s Great Firewall (see here and here). That was an instance of the Firewall not working even on its own terms, since the site I was running was a perfectly inoffensive business site. The way my then-colleague in China got it sorted out was essentially bureaucratic: he submitted a form, it went to “the proper authorities”, and we were fairly quickly unblocked.

However, what if you want to say something that the Chinese government doesn’t want you to say? That’s what the Great Firewall is really for: monitoring, controlling, blocking. Wired has a very interesting article on how this is playing out – the Firewall’s technology and methods are getting ever more sophisticated… but so are the activists and techies who are trying to subvert or avoid it. According to the author, it’s the latter who are winning, especially when students in cybercafes will teach you how for only USD1/hr!

It’s also interesting that Singapore gets a mention: Singapore, with just 2.4 million regular Internet users and very deep pockets, might have a chance at quelling Internet-fueled popular revolts. In contrast, the article concludes, China is just too big, and the Chinese people are too practical and determined. They will always find a way past the censors. That’s the only time Singapore is mentioned, so I’m not sure why the author chose to throw that in.

Anyway, I found it a very interesting – very cyberpunk – snapshot of the bureaucracy of control on the one hand, vs the DIY ethos of the techies and students on the other.

Singapore’s main competitor?

Whenever I think about Singapore’s future and its competitiveness, the name of a potential challenger keeps coming up: Dubai. I’ve mentioned this on a number of occasions, so I’ll add in a link to a long and insightful article from the New Left Review: Fear and Money in Dubai. It gives a detailed account of Dubai’s strategic direction, and looks at some of the methods used to achieve it – and some of the consequences. Singapore gets mentioned a few times. Hmm, I wonder what an article with the title Fear and Money in Singapore would say?

The enduring power of… memory

I was discussing computer game design recently with a young Singaporean, and asked him: if he were to design a computer game for his grandmother, what would it be like? Without missing a beat, he said “Killing Japanese”. Thus, the enduring memories in South-east Asia.

Asian space tourists

It’s quite a long time since I wrote about the global race to set up commercial spaceports for (sub)orbital tourism. It seems that the Singapore Spaceport is still going ahead, although I haven’t heard anything more about it in the local media. The Spaceport’s own web site has only one solitary press release, dated February 20, 2006.

Last time I posted on this topic, it seemed that Singapore would have a competitive advantage through being the only Asian provider of cheap sub-orbital flights, and thus attractive to wannabe-astronauts from all over Asia who didn’t want to go through the hassles of US Immigration. Now, it seems, I was overestimating the deterrent effect of the American border! According to Asia Times, Virgin Galactic are finding a large market in India, and their early flights are already fully booked. It looks as if Virgin Galactic are going to get first-mover advantage, and leverage their brand to capture the affluent sector of the market. How many of these will want to repeat the flight, I wonder? Will they go back to the US to do a repeat launch, or be happy to switch to Singapore? I wonder what the effects for the Singapore Spaceport will be.

The invisible red dot in the room

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….

Looking for a new phone

A year ago, I bought a Nokia 6708, largely for the stylus input and Chinese dictionary. I was pretty happy with it at first, but I have to say that I gradually became more and more dissatisfied. It blue-screened quite a bit, frequently hung and needed a reboot, and regularlt seemed to just turn itself off. It took ages to boot. The lack of letters on the keyboard gradually became a real nuisance. I found that I hardly ever used the Chinese dictionary. The USB connection to my Windows XP laptop was really fussy, and hardly ever seemed to work, so I couldn’t transfer files. The camera quality was pretty lousy. I began to think about getting a replacement.

Then two weeks ago I accidentally left it in a taxi. I’ve filed lost property reports, but it hasn’t shown up and probably never will. I’ve been using my old Nokia 6108, but it’s really obsolete now – especially as I can’t transfer my contacts from my laptop, and there’s no way I’m going to type them all in manually! I had been planning to hang on a few months until Meizu MiniOne is released, but now I can’t wait that long.

Actually, the timing is a bit serendipitous. I’d also been thinking that I need:

• a music player. The Zling Nax (Chinese clone of an iPod Nano) that I bought as an experiment is actually pretty crap, with terrible battery life and sound.
• mobile internet. The 6708 was actually internet-enabled, but my current phone plan doesn’t include data transfer; I signed up for this plan when I first came to Singapore in 2002! My contract has long since expired, but I’ve never got around to changing anything

I’m even more convinced that I need mobile internet after reading this O’Reilly Radar article by Peter Brantley. The points he makes about the way the Millennials (he just says “younger generation”) work – constantly online, social, self-organising, flat hierarchy – are spot on, and remind me of things I was thinking about quite a bit last year: how is this going to work out in Asia? The cultural changes and power shifts that are being driven by ubiquitous multimedia technology, social tools, and mobile internetmean that it’s not just about management styles any more. Here in Singapore, the government is reaching an uneasy modus vivendi with the internet-enabled voice of its citizens, but I’m not sure how it’s going to work out. During the recent protests in Myanmar, we’ve seen how important mobile phone cameras and internet access were – to the extent that the junta were forced to simply cut off all internet access to the outside world. China, of course, will be watching all of this very carefully indeed. However, I’m straying into what’s going to be a separate blog post!

So: I need a new phone, mobile internet, and an mp3 player. To get internet access, I need to sign a new contract. If I sign a new contract, I get discounts on a number of handsets, one of which is the Nokia N73 “Music Edition” which, to be honest, seems to cover all bases, except that it doesn’t have wifi… Seems to be a good choice, though, at S$368, which is what M1 are offering…