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Any new medium attracts a lot of attention, excitement and resistance from existing media. The Internet phenomenon mirrors the PC revolution beginning in the 80s, where I was a radical early-adopter, although the scale is bigger, the pace faster.
A lot of it is hype and a backlash will come about when people realise that the Net doesn't really fulfill all their misplaced aspirations. BUT, it will be here to stay and it will be an important medium for the new era, just as the telephone complemented the atomic age, the tv ushered in the space age and so on.
On changes taking place..
Certainly the most visible changes are the openness of dialogue in the s.c.s newsgroup. s.c.s has been compared to an open-air street corner kopi-tiam where anybody can drop in and say something.
We are not as isolated as we used to be. The mass-media is becoming global and borderless. Events like the Fay case, the Barings scam and the Contemplacion execution have made us known to the world. Events that happen today are reported in tomorrow's papers overseas. Every thing we do in cyberspace is visible to the whole world. The Internet is just part of this media and information revolution. Information about us gets out fast. It can only make us more honest and truthful. We have to be responsible for our words, now that the whole world (well, 30 million people or so) can read it. So I think it is a good thing.
As McLuhan said, form follows content, and as we invent our tools, our tools will reinvent us. We can try and 'tame' the monster and stare it in the face, but a part of our nature will irrevocably change just by the act of confronting it. So change is inevitable.
I leave the political questions to the government representatives and politicians. Some form of regulation and policy might be inevitable, but perhaps to protect those citizens whose rights and morals might be adversely affected. Taming the Net for our kids might be a valid issue, but not for our adults, surely?
Are we ready for it?
Of course we are, despite the efforts of our telecoms regulators and monopolies to retard our entry into the digital information age by keeping costs artificially high, we are not far behind the US and the rest of the world.
We are in the pre-pubescent phase of the Info Age. We should go out into the playground where all the kids are. Sure, it's dangerous, but adolescence is even more traumatic if we don't develop the skills to interact with the world.
As Sandy Sandfort pointed out in an article accompanying William Gibson's examination of Singapore in WIRED magazine (Issue 1.4, Sept/Oct 93), it seems ironic that Singapore, a culture that controls the flow of information to its citizens, should be on its way to adopting a vision of the future that has effects it may be the most vulnerable to. That's the crux, I think, of the question here. Are we ready for what Internet is going to bring us? I remember reading over Sandfort's article and the quotes from NCB officials interviewed and noticing how confused they seemed when the social impact of IT2000 was pointed out to them. Obviously they weren't concerned with what the Internet would bring in terms of societal changes. They simply saw it as a very efficient means of communication that would improve Singapore's economic standing, which was probably how it was pitched to the government.
As we realise, the Internet is more than that. Internet is a means of communication that has far greater implications and applicability than anything else out there. It puts the ability for cheap, international communication in the hands of an individual with a computer and a modem. It allows us to receive information from all over the world and to be able to give information back. In a society where incoming media, music, books, magazines and so on are tightly monitored, this seems surprising that the government would adopt such a policy.
But the government, as usual, is being practical. Everybody sees the Internet as the future of international communications. If Singapore doesn't adopt it, it might as well give up the race to be a communications hub in South-East Asia. The corresponding cost in terms of how society will change is something to be dealt with later.
There will be people who will want to regulate the Internet. There always are. In the soc.culture.singapore newsgroup the thread that there should be laws to prevent people gaining access to pornography, or that nuisance posters should be banned from the newsgroup has risen before, and will rise again. The Singapore Broadcasting Act has been enacted to regulate broadcasting media, and the Internet has recently been gazetted so as to be under the SBA's purview. The Computer Misuse Act has peripheral impact, as it enacts criminal liability for "hacking" offences, but it only as an indirect impact on everyday usage of the Internet.
To this I can only express my skepticism that Singapore, or any country, can regulate the Internet at all. It used to be that the Internet was tied heavily to the "backbone" that was funded by the National Science Foundation of the US and the Department of Defence. Once the DoD pulled out, the portions of the backbone once under government funding were taken up by commercial Internet service providers. Once that process began, and it is still continuing, the number of on ramps to the Information Superhighway has increased tremendously, and will continue to grow. The protocols that govern the Internet, in particular telnet, are so tied to the way the system works that there is no way to selectively exclude certain portions of the Internet. You either take it all, or not at all. And there are always ways around blockages, with alternate accounts available in other countries. This why I believe the Electronic Decency Act being pushed through the American Congress now is going to cause more problems than it solves in terms of enforcement and free flow of information.
Take the SBA. I won't go into a long and possibly boring legal analysis of the legislation but firstly I can argue that the Internet is not a broadcasting medium, at least not in the sense the SBA envisages a broadcasting medium. Internet makes its connections, not through a broadband transmission that people "tune" into, but through individual connections much like a phone network. But be that as it may, it has been gazetted into the SBA, so we must deal with it. The next step is to say that the SBA is a good idea, but when it comes to the Internet, it is strangely impotent.
The SBA places duties on broadcasters not to broadcast programmes that are obscene, immoral or otherwise contrary to public order or the terms of the specific license agreement. However, while this means that the local provider has to check that he does not inadverdently leave porno material to be picked up in his public directories, that does not place any duty on the individual account holder (who has privacy for his own account and email communications). Nor does it preclude the account holder from going to a remote site and taking what he wants. All in all, the SBA places duties on people who are going to abide by them anyway, and changes the problem not very much in my opinion. It's a good idea, it certainly would assuage public fears if people ask - we can always point to the SBA and say, "Hey, well, that regulates it," but in the end it's a placebo.
Of course, there is also the ultimate problem facing any regulation of the Internet - whose Internet is it anyway? When we talk of laws applying to the Internet, whose laws should apply in a medium that does not respect or indeed recognise international boundaries? Enforcement is a tricky thing, and an illusion. Despite BG George Yeo's call for Singapore to carve out a place in the Net we can call our own, that is a goal that may not be realistic. Nobody goes into the Internet looking for a place to call home. We *make* it our home, and we all share the same space. Again, we either take the heat, or get out of the kitchen. Simple choice.
The social impact of Internet probably will not be felt for some time to come. With SingNet the only commerical service provider in Singapore so far (although two more tenders will be released by TAS for bidding this month), the average Singaporean still has little to no net.access - newsgroups and e-mail being primary sources of information, and server access can be blocked for newsgroups easily. Other resources, telnet, IRC, WWW, are difficult to run. The majority of those with time are students, the educated, which is quite frankly a minority. And judging from the state of commentary in s.c.s., petty bickering is more the order of the day than any subversion. Which is to be expected, given that we are all "newbies" to this whole arena, and some confusion is understandable. There's a lot of garbage out there we're not used to.
I look on Internet as a possible inroad into what has always been one of my fundamental needs - information. Freedom of information access and expression is something that, I feel, Singapore needs to recognise if we are to survive into the next century. Information has been freeing up in certain areas over the last few years - and the Internet can only provide a means for us (to paraphrase a Chinese proverb) frogs to peep out of our wells and take in the world outside. We can only hope our brains don't explode... but I have faith that we can learn to deal with it. Singaporeans are pragmatic, and adaptable to a point, after all.
I'm optimistic. I like to think that there will be confusion for a while as people get used to trying to sift out the signals from the noise. But being open to a whole wide world out there can only be beneficial in the long run. We're teaching it in schools, we're giving it exposure in the press, which is great. In doing this, people may actually begin to think in new ways, and maybe free their minds to new possibilities. When brains begin to work on their own instead of repeating what they learn, it's a wonder to behold. I'm breathlessly awaiting that wonder.
Are we ready for the Internet? The answer is irrelevant. It's here whether we like it or not. Like the telephone, and radio, and television, and satellite broadcasting. We either take it with both hands and ride with it, or get left behind.
Is Singapore ready for the Internet? Well, in terms of infrastructure we're certainly almost there. When computers and subscription rates become cheaper and people decide that they prefer staying home to work to fighting the rush hour jams, Internet will become as part of life as the television and telephone. So, in a utilitarian manner, yes quite possibly, we are ready.
But can our national psyche take it? This barrage of information, this world without borders - this unmediated reception which goes directly from source to reader, unfiltered and uncouched by or in any third party context. We can now read about successful welfare projects, participate in discussions on civil liberties, anarchy and conservatism, receive reading lists on bomb-making, mythology or racism and mail order banned books. In one fell swoop, all borders have seemingly fallen and we now have thousands of alternative points of views with as many agendas on completely untraditional topics which has previously never been made commonly available to us - either because the traditional media has not carried it or because publications which would have were banned. Now with a little money NGOs and other individuals can actually publish their information as they would in a pamphlet and disseminate it they would with television - the exception is that this television is world-wide. They no longer have to court or go through the press in order to reach a wider audience.
Having said this, there is the need to qualify this and not lionise the information available in terms of either its breath or depth. There should be no illusions that the Net is still a very exclusive tool and certainly not an exhaustive repository of world information. In fact, information on the Net, though much better than the editorialised and heavily mediated type received through the newspapers and television, is highly disparate and disorganised and still reflects a bias. The WWW is a portrait of the concerns of the developed, English-speaking world (or at least one that employs the Roman alphabet) which is mainly youthful and male (20 percent of Internet subscribers in the States are thought to be female.) For instance, there is little about senior citizens or the African Continent and it would be interesting to know the percentage of BBSs which originate from the US. The popularisation of the Internet is also increasingly driven by commercialisation - a commercialisation that differs little from the present capitalist system. As it is profit run, money is required to obtain an account and publish. So not only can't you say anything you like (because those who run the server which you run off can always pull the plug on you), but you also require money to say it with ie richer organisations can put out more garbage than poorer organisations for a longer time. The email is one of the most insecure methods of communication ever devised (being susceptible to tracing and tapping with little or no effort) and NewsGroups can be filtered out and monitored.
In other words, information is still limited and subject to control. However, in no way does this mean that the Net as a tool for communication is not unique and/or more democratic. Quite simply, it is better than having nothing. While the traditional mainstream media has always offered the illusion of choice (what is different from the television programmes on channel five and channel eight, only that they are in English and then in Mandarin?), the Internet makes an exceedingly wide variety of material available. Also, for the first time, the media is not entirely advertising driven.
How does all this impact the individual and society? (Aside from the fact that there is now another method with which to make money), the information on the Internet confronts us with different world views, which makes us question the basis of our beliefs and what have come to know as familiar, tested truths. In order to retain a sense of self and identity - namely as human beings with some code of integrity, against this onslaught of information, certain paradigms must be built. These paradigms should ideally be modelled on beliefs which have been questioned and tried, not forced or blindly bought. People will actually be forced into 'opinionising' and responding - actively or subconsciously.
So, quite possibly, it means that for the first time, the individual is truly empowered - both to publish and to read. Those who stand to gain from this empowerment and those who will find their advantage threatened must be prepared for this dramatic shift in power relations. Because information is power - and power (on its own) has no conscience. It is what we do with this power that makes the difference - we must therefore learn responsibility.
The problem is that for too long, and not only in Singapore, the power and responsibility (or irresponsibility as is sometimes the case, we can't always be perfect) has been concentrated in the hands of a few - and not for the most altruistic of reasons either. From the monopolised media conglomerates like Rupert Murdock to an education which emphasises rote learning and teaches responsibility, analysis and independence in thought poorly. Education, in general, has prepared people for an economy rather than life - emphasising and depressing different traits in different people, in the name of efficiency. This results in the general neglect of more useful and enduring skills such as the ability to contextualise, discuss and decipher social dynamics and make parts whole.
This system may work in preserving the stability of the country if the groups who may possibly see themselves as disadvantaged are kept dormant through various means and the media remains silent against an establishment which is based on a complex and subtle system of several inequalities. As a result, no real questioning takes place. Firstly, because there are no real avenues in which they may occur. Secondly, because people only receive information which reinforces what they have already been taught to believe. And thirdly, because they have never been confronted with a logically and rationally argued alternative.
Into this system, enter the liberating quantity of the Internet. Despite its shortcomings, it allows, for the first time the reading of positive alternative views and the public discussion of it. It is truly information as power in the hands of the public. No longer is an editor filtering out letters, or a producer shooting from an angle - views are given in the raw. Discussions take place over space and time and actual texts get various treatments. What is the result of such an introduction?
Several scenarios are possible, but supposing, if based on this information, the realisation that what has been taught and accepted is not gospel truth but a single perspective occurs. That this perspective was accepted, not because it was agreed to, but because no genuine alternative was ever presented. The effect which a rational, alternative argument may not only debunk a certain viewpoint, but also unravel the credibility of present arguments. It is from here then that a society is judged by how mature it is - has it equipped it's members with the ability to discuss these issues publicly or will they fester till they explode?
The enduring solution in the face of this is education - to educate people into confronting different situations and making decisions which eventually reach consensus. Real education is the chief ingredient in a mature and stable society - not laws which irrationally establish cordon sanitares. Enfranchising the citizenry so that they take responsibility for the laws which have been passed on the lives which they lead. It is here that education has been sadly deficient. Yes, we can still have laws, but they should be truly effective. Take our attitude towards pornography as an example.
Why does one ban pornography? Presumably not because there are pictures of naked people, but because (from a feminist point of view) it objectifies women and reduces them into subjects of sexual attention. Pornographic picture essays are photo cuts making parts of a whole. It also reinforces a lack of respect of women as empowered individuals and endorses misogyny. This is sanctifies sexual crimes which in turn infringe upon women's rights. (This is a personal explanation of why pornography has been banned, there has as yet been no official sociological explanation as yet, apart from the usual moral outrage.)
However, we see that sexual crimes, sexism and indeed misogyny, still exist in a society which has officially banned pornography. I put it to you then, that given the possible above reason for the ban, this law has not worked. Things will not change one iota if tomorrow we let in pronographic material. An educated policy would recognise that pornography is not about pictures, but a mentality - and obviously it is possible to suffer from a pornographic mentality without the wide-availability of such material. Pornography is not the cause of misogyny, but rather the product of it, and banning pornography will not reduce rape, molest or child prostitution. If these problems were real concerns, the reason of education not the brute force of law should be used to solve them. An education which will employ discussion, perhaps using pornographic material, will bring about an understanding about why pornography, as we know it, is demeaning and disgusting. These discussions will inevitably address wider issues such as sexism in general and violence in society.
Slamming down a ban accompanied by unreasoned moral outrage and without real explanation is easy - but it results in a poor understanding of what was done and why it was done, a complacency which enables laws to be passed without explanation and allows the problem to pass unsolved. Most of all it insults a people's dignity by depriving them of the opportunity to participate and analyse, and imposing rules on them the way some would impose rules on animals. A mentality, encouraged by this method of social-engineering, when faced with an other than familiar perspective will result in blind embrace, complete ignorance, attack or defence. This is the recipe for an unstable and non-progressive society - a society whose idea of peace is based on default not understanding, where differing views are never aired, constructively or otherwise. Imagine what would happen if racial harmony was based on an indifferent tolerance instead of the intrinsic understanding that all human beings are equal? It would take a whisper to unravel the threads.
In this sense, the Internet has called our bluff - here as in elsewhere. If we had a truly educated and empowered culture, where issues are discussed openly and frequently, the Internet would not be unique in that these conditions of apparent freedom have been instituted already. In a more mature society, where the qualities of equality and democracy, respect and trust have been internalised, the Internet would be a powerful new media - and only that. It will be a tool of convenience and not the refuge it is now where concerned and impassioned discussions, spiced with the most outrageous suspicions, exaggerated rumour, blatant threats and self-righteous assertions, take place. There would also be the strength of understanding behind the morals and principals which will either prevent the proliferation of irresponsible/'immoral' information or the irrational absorption of it. Profit, which we use presently, is a poor moral referee (pornography on the Net is listed under 'Business') - it values the dollar over the basic human dignity.
The Internet is indeed a troubling and inconvenient - or liberating and miraculous tool. It poses us with new methods, new possibilites and new perspectives. Are we ready for it? We have no choice, we must be for it is already here.
What should we do then? Ban it outright, as we have had with information which has been too difficult to explain and handle? Make it only accessible to a select minority which have always had a monopoly over the media or mainstream views? Pass laws which merely plaster the cracks and neglect the structural problems? Vilify it and have people discover that it isn't all that bad (and then loose credibility)? Or educate, truly educate ourselves into becoming a responsible, concerned and mature culture?
With the Internet and its near democratic distribution of information, we finally turn and face the demons (and angels) which we have run and protected ourselves from for so long. Face them, by arming ourselves with a real education, a real understanding of what makes us not only Singaporeans, but human beings as well.
I would try to be a little more specific and ask what is it that we are getting ready for? Using TV as an example, instead of asking are we ready for TV, my question would be: are we ready for TV evangelism? We will never be ready for a nuclear holocaust but we are certainly quite happy to put nuclear technology to medical uses. Contentions arise usually because of the use a particular technology is put to, not so much the technology itself. This is an important distinction to keep in mind.
Looking back into the past, we could construct this partial history of technology: telegraph, telephone, radio, television, computers & Internet; and notice that it is a progression in communicative power -- from a restrictive tool requiring special skills limited to a small set of people, to a wide ranging tool requiring skills (typing and elementary computer knowledge) that many already have and many more are acquiring each day. Granted that most people still do not have a computer, a modem and an account, but this is changing quite rapidly. In a sense, Internet is not all that different when it is put into context in that it is only a step in the same direction that we have been going during the whole of the 20th century.
What sets Internet apart (and the same could be said of all the technologies at each moment when they were the latest development), is its vastly increased reach and versatility. Communicative power now transcends national boundaries (in the way that telephone does not because of high cost and its limited 1 to 1 nature, and TV does not because of reception) and has become interactive. Let's think up some ways in which this power can be put to use which a government might want to have control over.
You can run a political campaign on the Internet. A political party can post its views in bulletin boards, make them available on the web, run mailing lists and do their terminal to terminal 'walk about.' You can send out surveys and announcements, and you can do it in imaginative and entertaining ways and what's more: at low cost. Furthermore, once political issues take on international significance -- for example, human rights in China -- it will immediately become clear how porous national borders have become. Once you hook up to it, a closed door policy becomes almost impossible.
You can assemble diverse groups of people from across the globe to work on a project, cutting through the traditional divide between businessmen, academics, professionals, politicians etc., which increases not only the efficiency of a project, but also the efficiency of all individuals since virtual presence now solves the previously insoluble problem of trying to be at two places at the same time. A corollary is that exiling people will now be less effective.
Leaving aside for the moment the desirability of control, let's briefly think about the feasibility. When talking about feasibility, we must be careful not to assume that just because complete control is not possible, any form of control must then not be feasible. For example, the control of pornographic magazines was never any where near complete in Singapore, but most will agree that these policies do have their effects. Certain things will be easier to control than others. For example, controlling a local web site running on Singnet or censoring the mail of specific persons would be quite easy although censoring personal mail in general would be quite difficult. Even so, random spot checking of personal mail will still have some effect. A computer whiz will always find ways round them, but how many of us are computer whiz?
And now, we come to the desirability issue. Let's be upfront. No doubt this technology can undermine the balance of power in the nation state, tilting it towards society and tempting the state to impose restrictions. However, for a technology so new and its potential only just beginning to develop (I'm probably more optimistic than Kian Jin in the potential of Internet), premature control on our part will likely set us back in this global race towards the information age. Unlike Terence, I don't think Internet is entirely an all or nothing proposition, but will lean heavily towards the 'all' option nonetheless because not doing so at this early stage of the game is simply gross short-sightedness. Whatever ills we might want to prevent by erecting restrictions are imaginary -- there are, for example, no known case in the world of racial riots incited through the Internet although there is no lack of race sensitive issues flying about in there -- but the gains we might lose in doing so are very real. Consider how telephone, TV and so on had vastly aided the development of capitalism and any nation's economy and you'll begin to see the phenomenal impact of new technology. Invent a new way to use this global super connectivity, and you may well become a millionaire. Hence to me, the issue of control seems to be largely one of political expediency vs. long term national interest. The above argument holds for any other nation. Even China, arguably the one nation on Earth most able to persue a closed door policy, is now eagerly embracing Internet. Singapore had always come out on the side of long term national interest. I do not see any reason why it should be any different now.
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Last Updated 18/05/95 by Thong Wei