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Summary. The paper traces the development of Singapore as an 'intelligent' island through an identification of the various social policy arrangements which have harnessed new information technology modes in their delivery. At home, at work, on the road, in public service and in the court room, the emergence of new IT arrangements is a matter of fact in Singaporean lives. Attention is drawn to the 'unencumbered' character of IT policy-making in Singapore, a characteristic which is the outcome of little or no strong political opposition in parliament.
[Paper received in final form, January 2000]
Introduction
"Just a little red dot on the map!" With those words, the former Indonesian President Jusuf Habibie dismissed Singapore in a moment of pique (The Straits Times, 12 February 1999, p. 50). It is understandable coming from an embattled man presiding over 1.9 million square kilometres and referring to a nation occupying just 650 sq. km. Since Habibie's outburst, the `little red dot' label has been bandied about in reference to Singapore, but it is only the latest of many-although not all of them are as pejorative. The tiny little island city-state of Singapore has had regularly to reinvent itself.
Its somewhat murky history suggests that Singapore was actually a small but functioning kingdom at the turn of the first millennium. However, when Sir Stamford Raffles of the British East India Company acquired the island from a Malay princeling in 1819, records show that it was just a fishing village. But Raffles had the vision to develop it as a trading port because of its strategic location at the southern end of the Malacca Straits, a lifeline of commercial and naval significance on the fabled spice route. Singapore did indeed become the Emporium of the East under the British and one of the strongest military bases of the British Empire (for an excellent history of Singapore, see Turnbull, 1989). Bereft of any natural resources, Singapore has always had to live by its wits. Right up to the middle of the 20th century, Singapore's mainstay was entrepot trade and Singapore-based merchants had already acquired an enviable 'savvy' in the middle-- man's role. But a fast-growing population and the aspirations of an emerging independent state could not be sustained on the...