8 ms·

The Fantasy and the Cyberpunk Futurism of Singapore

94 points by lelf 6y ago

RyJones 6y ago
Strange place. I was amazed how many homeless there are - which will be denied, when mentioned. I guess the people sleeping on the walkway to Louis Vuitton island were not homeless? The sleeping people in the underpasses, sleeping under signs saying not to sleep there also?
- zabardasth 6y ago
  It is the same in Japan, isn't it? Hikikomori, NEETs, those hiding in net cafes, etc. The culture will hide them from tourists and society at large.
- noobermin 6y ago
  My impression actually is there are far fewer homeless, compared to say portland or LA.
  - Temasik 6y ago
    there are homeless in Singapore seriously?
    - theCodeStig 6y ago
      Yes
  - RyJones 6y ago
    I suspect you are correct, compared to Seattle, as well. However, the War Memorial Park had a couple hundred people sleeping rough every day for the two weeks I stayed there last year. And the year before.
- roystonvassey 6y ago
  Plus, the massive number of the elderly working in difficult or dangerous jobs like taxi drivers, janitors, cleaners at food courts. Very strange and somehow felt like an unkind system for people who are not “productive”
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >Plus, the massive number of the elderly working in difficult or dangerous jobs like taxi drivers, janitors, cleaners at food courts. That said, I've seen the same all over the US, especially on less rich states... 70 year olds tending doors at the Walmart, driving cabs, working this or that odd job, etc...
- JSavageOne 6y ago
  I was in Singapore for 10 days and don't recall seeing any homeless people. Then again as an American who's lived in cities like NYC/SF, no other first world country even comes close to the amount of homelessness we have in the U.S.
  - ValentineC 6y ago
    You won't see them if you keep to the business district or tourist areas. They're mostly in the public housing estates, and it's most apparent at night when you see them lying on a bench with trolleys of their belongings.
- czcar 6y ago
  A point of note - I do believe there a homeless in Singapore. However, I believe what you're referring to is likely workers napping around lunch time. This is very common with a lot of the people who work outside in the day time, under trees, on sidewalks etc.,
- hatenberg 6y ago
  These are people napping during their lunch break dude. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/1000-homeless-people-singapore-study-12076076 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/1000-homeless... Singapore has about 1000 homeless countrywide on a population of 5M. Home ownership rates are the highest in the world and there is ample programs for people who slip through the cracks in this regard. Its orders of magnitude lower homelessness than any western country
HHC-Hunter 6y ago
My biggest disappointment about Singapore is the censorship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singapo... My biggest boast about Singapore are the privacy laws and technology infrastructure. Singapore could be great, if only a few things were to change.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  The PAP is slowly losing popularity. A second political party gaining power could change things. My take on the censorship and police state is that it's there so there aren't significant racial or religious tensions.
- ValentineC 6y ago
  I think we could do better with less self-censorship, but I'm glad I don't have to circumvent a Great Firewall. > My biggest boast about Singapore are the privacy laws and technology infrastructure. Does Singapore really have strong privacy laws?
Causality1 6y ago
"Cyberpunk dystopia" seems very inaccurate to me. Nothing whatsoever about Singapore is "punk" in any sense of the word. "Cyber-utopian" is a better descriptor, with the emphasis on the traditional connotations of the word utopian, that being an aim for perfection at significant cost to principals that don't fit the vision.
- noobermin 6y ago
  Yes, there is a lot more drive to conform just culturally, much less along the sense of "punk" or "rebellion" even in the cliche sense.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Well, the ruling corporate authority in a cyberpunk state isn't very punk, either. It exists as an edifice to be opposed or exploited by such a rebellious subculture. Maybe Singapore is a cybernetic dystopia in search of a cyberpunk movement. Also, the street samurai/cowboy hacker trope isn't ubiquitous to every cyberpunk work. Ghost in the Shell, a seminal work, is about law enforcement officers who uphold the state, and occasionally chase down cyberpunk anarchist hackers. (Blade Runner is much the same.) You can have the trappings of the genre without all elements of it.
Mizza 6y ago
Singapore is a weird place. During the flight, the stewardesses walked around and handed everybody something - I was expecting a wet towel, but in fact it was a card in multiple languages which says "If you are about to bring any amount of drugs into the country, you are going to be executed." Lovely first impression to set the tone. Other than the omnipresent paranoia, the thing that struck me as the most bizarre is that almost nothing in the country is oriented around children. The fertility rate is basically the lowest in the world, as the way of maintaining the population seems to be simply skimming the top few percent of qualified workers from India, China, and other southeast Asian countries, people who will essentially live at the office until they have made enough money to return home, or simply retire and die alone in the country. Another strange thing was the way the city is planned - everything is concentrated to a district. For instance, rather than having record shops peppered around the city, there is a the "record shop area", where there are a dozen record shops in a single place. It's like this for lots of things - books, refrigerators, etc. The food was great though. I'm craving laksa just thinking about it..
- noobermin 6y ago
  >almost nothing in the country is oriented around children. Spoken truly like someone who never left the airport.
  - Mizza 6y ago
    I was there for nearly two weeks and explored as much as I could. That was my impression. I just checked, and Singapore actually does have the lowest fertility rate in the world, by a large margin: 0.83. The notorious infertile Japan is at 1.41. I think makes a difference to the culture.
    - noobermin 6y ago
      You actually need to see where people live, hdbs to see schools, playgrounds and such. The low fertility rate is common amongst developed countries. On the other hand, the government has explicit policies to encourage marrying, like not offering hdbs to single people under 35. You certainly won't see families if you don't leave the downtown area. I'm implying two weeks isn't representative of the city as a whole. The article did a better job of it.
pengaru 6y ago
As someone who has lived in several tourist-ridden parts of California, the idea of turning the airport itself into a tourist trap is very appealing.
ordinaryradical 6y ago
And for those of you that want the greatest novelist of cyberpunk, William Gibson, and his take on Singapore, "Disney Land with the Death Penalty."[1] [1] https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/ https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/
- kingbirdy 6y ago
  That link is in the fourth sentence of the article.
  - ordinaryradical 6y ago
    Thought people might want the direct link with “using up your free articles” and all that.
- bitwize 6y ago
  I love how Gibson compared it to Stephenson's burbclaves, which to me is like the literary equivalent of a famous musical artist singing the "Weird Al" Yankovic version of their own song (which has also been known to happen).
  - macando 6y ago
    Which artist did that?
    - bitwize 6y ago
      I know of at least two. The Barenaked Ladies have been known to interject lyrics from "Jerry Springer" into live performances of "One Week". And The Presidents of the United States of America sometimes close out live versions of "Lump" with "And that's all I have to say about that" (the final line of "Gump").
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
The Wired website is a f*cking joke. I clicked to read the story, and I have pop-ups and banners all over the place. I try to click the "X" to close them, and I can't. Goodbye, Wired. I'm not going to read the article and I'm not going to read you in the future.
noobermin 6y ago
I think it's funny how the author says the people sort of go along with the government especially now just weeks after the recent election where opposition parties took a district, which sure in terms of actual governing power doesn't mean much, but means that the PAP is just starting to feel some pressure from the outside, particularly among younger people and families who opted to vote in the WP in sengkang. It doesn't really seem like sg will move beyond a one-party state soon because of it but people are hoping the government moves in a different direction especially after covid. WP taking sengkang was big big news in sg, people have to understand the PAP has dominated singapore's government for decades. In terms of actual power it means little but it was a blow to the PAP's soft power as it was a clear sign that people want the government to reorient itself.
francobatta 6y ago
Interesting... regardless, I'd love to visit SG someday
JSavageOne 6y ago
These comments seem to paid a really dystopian picture of Singapore. Of course there are problems with its government, but in my travels, Singapore was one of the most impressive countries I've ever visited. By far the cleanest city I've ever seen, the most futuristic, most efficient, and my favorite food city. Singaporeans visiting America for the first time are often shocked at how much worse the U.S. was compared to their expectations, almost third-world like. If more Americans visited countries like Singapore and saw how much further ahead they are, maybe for once our people and politicians would have some modesty and fix things instead of just being complacent.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
PandaRider 6y ago
> Many hardworking Singaporeans today resoundingly choose a government that promises economic stability even as censorship laws become more and more stringent and inequality is rife. As a Singaporean, this is the point that sticks out as proof that the author has lost touch with local sentiment. In the recent election, young Singaporean citizens felt " especially agitated by Raeesah Khan being hit with a sledgehammer." and thus many voted against the PAP. [0] Yet, on the author's point of paradox of cyberpunk... there is a kernel of truth. While most Singaporeans wouldn't scrape a temple for a new high tech mall like Jewel, (IMO) most Singaporeans would be okay if it was for a new train station so that we (ironically) can visit Jewel more conveniently. [0]: https://mothership.sg/2020/07/inderjit-singh-pap-ge2020-criticism/ https://mothership.sg/2020/07/inderjit-singh-pap-ge2020-crit...
holografix 6y ago
As draconian and harsh a lot of Singaporean laws seem to be it’s hard to argue with the country’s success. I’ve been to Singapore many times and a lot of south east Asia as well and as someone who grew up in a third world tropical country (Rio) I don’t have a romantic view of SEA as many Euros or Americans. Singapore is a paradise compared with Indonesia, Malaysia etc.
- hatenberg 6y ago
  Given the pandemic its a paradise compared to most of the states too.
aaron695 6y ago
The fact the "Four Floors of Whores" was government sanctioned always fit well with the Disneyland feel to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchard_Towers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchard_Towers I started seeing the beauty in rubbish after visiting Singapore a few times. There's something quite unsettling when there is absolutely none.
- ValentineC 6y ago
  > I started seeing the beauty in rubbish after visiting Singapore a few times. There's something quite unsettling when there is absolutely none. If you were here during our lockdown, you might have seen plenty. Some parts of Singapore's population don't see the civic responsibility in throwing trash into bins, unlike most of Japan and Taiwan. Singapore is a cleaned city, not a clean city.
Proven 6y ago
> Land mass, like capital accumulation, is a zero-sum game. False. Mountain top can help reclaim land from sea without disappearing the mountain. Capital accumulation isn't a zero sum game. Who did Robinson Crusoe steal from?

94 points by lelf 6y ago

Strange place. I was amazed how many homeless there are - which will be denied, when mentioned. I guess the people sleeping on the walkway to Louis Vuitton island were not homeless? The sleeping people in the underpasses, sleeping under signs saying not to sleep there also?

zabardasth 6y ago
It is the same in Japan, isn't it? Hikikomori, NEETs, those hiding in net cafes, etc. The culture will hide them from tourists and society at large.
noobermin 6y ago
My impression actually is there are far fewer homeless, compared to say portland or LA.
- Temasik 6y ago
  there are homeless in Singapore seriously?
  - theCodeStig 6y ago
    Yes
- RyJones 6y ago
  I suspect you are correct, compared to Seattle, as well. However, the War Memorial Park had a couple hundred people sleeping rough every day for the two weeks I stayed there last year. And the year before.
roystonvassey 6y ago
Plus, the massive number of the elderly working in difficult or dangerous jobs like taxi drivers, janitors, cleaners at food courts. Very strange and somehow felt like an unkind system for people who are not “productive”
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Plus, the massive number of the elderly working in difficult or dangerous jobs like taxi drivers, janitors, cleaners at food courts. That said, I've seen the same all over the US, especially on less rich states... 70 year olds tending doors at the Walmart, driving cabs, working this or that odd job, etc...
JSavageOne 6y ago
I was in Singapore for 10 days and don't recall seeing any homeless people. Then again as an American who's lived in cities like NYC/SF, no other first world country even comes close to the amount of homelessness we have in the U.S.
- ValentineC 6y ago
  You won't see them if you keep to the business district or tourist areas. They're mostly in the public housing estates, and it's most apparent at night when you see them lying on a bench with trolleys of their belongings.
czcar 6y ago
A point of note - I do believe there a homeless in Singapore. However, I believe what you're referring to is likely workers napping around lunch time. This is very common with a lot of the people who work outside in the day time, under trees, on sidewalks etc.,
hatenberg 6y ago
These are people napping during their lunch break dude. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/1000-homeless-people-singapore-study-12076076 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/1000-homeless... Singapore has about 1000 homeless countrywide on a population of 5M. Home ownership rates are the highest in the world and there is ample programs for people who slip through the cracks in this regard. Its orders of magnitude lower homelessness than any western country

HHC-Hunter 6y ago

My biggest disappointment about Singapore is the censorship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singapo... My biggest boast about Singapore are the privacy laws and technology infrastructure. Singapore could be great, if only a few things were to change.

dehrmann 6y ago
The PAP is slowly losing popularity. A second political party gaining power could change things. My take on the censorship and police state is that it's there so there aren't significant racial or religious tensions.
ValentineC 6y ago
I think we could do better with less self-censorship, but I'm glad I don't have to circumvent a Great Firewall. > My biggest boast about Singapore are the privacy laws and technology infrastructure. Does Singapore really have strong privacy laws?

Causality1 6y ago

"Cyberpunk dystopia" seems very inaccurate to me. Nothing whatsoever about Singapore is "punk" in any sense of the word. "Cyber-utopian" is a better descriptor, with the emphasis on the traditional connotations of the word utopian, that being an aim for perfection at significant cost to principals that don't fit the vision.

noobermin 6y ago
Yes, there is a lot more drive to conform just culturally, much less along the sense of "punk" or "rebellion" even in the cliche sense.
Apocryphon 6y ago
Well, the ruling corporate authority in a cyberpunk state isn't very punk, either. It exists as an edifice to be opposed or exploited by such a rebellious subculture. Maybe Singapore is a cybernetic dystopia in search of a cyberpunk movement. Also, the street samurai/cowboy hacker trope isn't ubiquitous to every cyberpunk work. Ghost in the Shell, a seminal work, is about law enforcement officers who uphold the state, and occasionally chase down cyberpunk anarchist hackers. (Blade Runner is much the same.) You can have the trappings of the genre without all elements of it.

Mizza 6y ago

Singapore is a weird place. During the flight, the stewardesses walked around and handed everybody something - I was expecting a wet towel, but in fact it was a card in multiple languages which says "If you are about to bring any amount of drugs into the country, you are going to be executed." Lovely first impression to set the tone. Other than the omnipresent paranoia, the thing that struck me as the most bizarre is that almost nothing in the country is oriented around children. The fertility rate is basically the lowest in the world, as the way of maintaining the population seems to be simply skimming the top few percent of qualified workers from India, China, and other southeast Asian countries, people who will essentially live at the office until they have made enough money to return home, or simply retire and die alone in the country. Another strange thing was the way the city is planned - everything is concentrated to a district. For instance, rather than having record shops peppered around the city, there is a the "record shop area", where there are a dozen record shops in a single place. It's like this for lots of things - books, refrigerators, etc. The food was great though. I'm craving laksa just thinking about it..

noobermin 6y ago
>almost nothing in the country is oriented around children. Spoken truly like someone who never left the airport.
- Mizza 6y ago
  I was there for nearly two weeks and explored as much as I could. That was my impression. I just checked, and Singapore actually does have the lowest fertility rate in the world, by a large margin: 0.83. The notorious infertile Japan is at 1.41. I think makes a difference to the culture.
  - noobermin 6y ago
    You actually need to see where people live, hdbs to see schools, playgrounds and such. The low fertility rate is common amongst developed countries. On the other hand, the government has explicit policies to encourage marrying, like not offering hdbs to single people under 35. You certainly won't see families if you don't leave the downtown area. I'm implying two weeks isn't representative of the city as a whole. The article did a better job of it.

pengaru 6y ago

As someone who has lived in several tourist-ridden parts of California, the idea of turning the airport itself into a tourist trap is very appealing.

ordinaryradical 6y ago

And for those of you that want the greatest novelist of cyberpunk, William Gibson, and his take on Singapore, "Disney Land with the Death Penalty."[1] [1] https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/ https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/

kingbirdy 6y ago
That link is in the fourth sentence of the article.
- ordinaryradical 6y ago
  Thought people might want the direct link with “using up your free articles” and all that.
bitwize 6y ago
I love how Gibson compared it to Stephenson's burbclaves, which to me is like the literary equivalent of a famous musical artist singing the "Weird Al" Yankovic version of their own song (which has also been known to happen).
- macando 6y ago
  Which artist did that?
  - bitwize 6y ago
    I know of at least two. The Barenaked Ladies have been known to interject lyrics from "Jerry Springer" into live performances of "One Week". And The Presidents of the United States of America sometimes close out live versions of "Lump" with "And that's all I have to say about that" (the final line of "Gump").

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

The Wired website is a f*cking joke. I clicked to read the story, and I have pop-ups and banners all over the place. I try to click the "X" to close them, and I can't. Goodbye, Wired. I'm not going to read the article and I'm not going to read you in the future.

noobermin 6y ago

I think it's funny how the author says the people sort of go along with the government especially now just weeks after the recent election where opposition parties took a district, which sure in terms of actual governing power doesn't mean much, but means that the PAP is just starting to feel some pressure from the outside, particularly among younger people and families who opted to vote in the WP in sengkang. It doesn't really seem like sg will move beyond a one-party state soon because of it but people are hoping the government moves in a different direction especially after covid. WP taking sengkang was big big news in sg, people have to understand the PAP has dominated singapore's government for decades. In terms of actual power it means little but it was a blow to the PAP's soft power as it was a clear sign that people want the government to reorient itself.

francobatta 6y ago

Interesting... regardless, I'd love to visit SG someday

JSavageOne 6y ago

These comments seem to paid a really dystopian picture of Singapore. Of course there are problems with its government, but in my travels, Singapore was one of the most impressive countries I've ever visited. By far the cleanest city I've ever seen, the most futuristic, most efficient, and my favorite food city. Singaporeans visiting America for the first time are often shocked at how much worse the U.S. was compared to their expectations, almost third-world like. If more Americans visited countries like Singapore and saw how much further ahead they are, maybe for once our people and politicians would have some modesty and fix things instead of just being complacent.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

PandaRider 6y ago

> Many hardworking Singaporeans today resoundingly choose a government that promises economic stability even as censorship laws become more and more stringent and inequality is rife. As a Singaporean, this is the point that sticks out as proof that the author has lost touch with local sentiment. In the recent election, young Singaporean citizens felt " especially agitated by Raeesah Khan being hit with a sledgehammer." and thus many voted against the PAP. [0] Yet, on the author's point of paradox of cyberpunk... there is a kernel of truth. While most Singaporeans wouldn't scrape a temple for a new high tech mall like Jewel, (IMO) most Singaporeans would be okay if it was for a new train station so that we (ironically) can visit Jewel more conveniently. [0]: https://mothership.sg/2020/07/inderjit-singh-pap-ge2020-criticism/ https://mothership.sg/2020/07/inderjit-singh-pap-ge2020-crit...

holografix 6y ago

As draconian and harsh a lot of Singaporean laws seem to be it’s hard to argue with the country’s success. I’ve been to Singapore many times and a lot of south east Asia as well and as someone who grew up in a third world tropical country (Rio) I don’t have a romantic view of SEA as many Euros or Americans. Singapore is a paradise compared with Indonesia, Malaysia etc.

hatenberg 6y ago
Given the pandemic its a paradise compared to most of the states too.

aaron695 6y ago

The fact the "Four Floors of Whores" was government sanctioned always fit well with the Disneyland feel to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchard_Towers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchard_Towers I started seeing the beauty in rubbish after visiting Singapore a few times. There's something quite unsettling when there is absolutely none.

ValentineC 6y ago
> I started seeing the beauty in rubbish after visiting Singapore a few times. There's something quite unsettling when there is absolutely none. If you were here during our lockdown, you might have seen plenty. Some parts of Singapore's population don't see the civic responsibility in throwing trash into bins, unlike most of Japan and Taiwan. Singapore is a cleaned city, not a clean city.

Proven 6y ago

> Land mass, like capital accumulation, is a zero-sum game. False. Mountain top can help reclaim land from sea without disappearing the mountain. Capital accumulation isn't a zero sum game. Who did Robinson Crusoe steal from?