"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
- Oscar Wilde
"Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try."
- Peggy Noonan
Lately, I am stuck in a condition in what people called blogger fatigue. While I am still able to write about topics which I specialize in, the real challenge is to complete an article which I perceived for sometime in Singapore Angle. I often tell my colleagues in Singapore Angle that for every ten articles in SG Entrepreneurs I write, the amount of effort required is the same for producing one in Singapore Angle. So, while I am waiting for some inspiration, I decide to do some blog browsing and see what others are doing.
Recently, through Intelligent Singaporean, I discovered two blogs written by Kitana and her significant other, Ben. Like many of their contemporaries, for example, Xenoboy, they represent the politically aware young professionals. There are two kinds of emotions that arise from reading their entries. The first is an optimistic one where you applaud them for speaking up about issues and the intellectual courage to present the alternative perspective. That is also accompanied by the pleasure of reading an essay shaped with artistic flair and elegant language. However, what comes after is a frustrating feeling that they are just another group of armchair critics.
Reading their thoughts gave me some thoughts about some issues that I have been contemplating lately and instead of writing long essays about each one, I decide to pen them in a quick way here for my own reference. Perhaps, by doing that, it might help me to find back the inspiration that I need to complete the article. I will start with this piece that I have difficulty in closing for the past few days.
Another World is Possible
Recently, Alex Au aka Yawning Bread delivered a lunchtime talk entitled “From selective wisdom to selective folly: why the future does not belong to bloggers” in the Wee Kim Wee Centre, Singapore Management University. In a short summary, the talk discusses the impact of blogging and how it will change the social fabric of the future. He drew upon an interesting analogy to blogging using a historical example of the Gutenberg revolution, i.e. the invention of the printing press. The Gutenberg revolution created new space for the kings and armies and that space contributed to the demise of the Roman Catholic Church (with different era of thinkers creating different ages in human history for the next 500 years).
Two interesting conclusions emerged from his article. The first is that the propagation of ideas by thought leaders is not enough to change the future. This proposition is believable given how the old order was torn apart by the movers and shakers of their times in history. Action and effort taken by the followers of these thought leaders are required to translate these ideas into the mainstream reality. However he cautioned and painted a grim and dark future where the traditional mass media will not lose its hegemony of selective wisdom because the readers practice selective folly in their choice of content.
The second conclusion is based on his anecdotal evidence on the article selection of viewers in his blog. YB made an interesting argument that the internet age presented people with too many alternatives that the average person will end up in a situation of self selection folly. The easy way to think about this is the following: suppose most people are polarized in their views about a social issue, the existence of blogs will not change their perspective on the subject. Examples of social issues that can divide Singapore might be casino and gay rights. I will take YB's argument one step further that even the group of undecideds will not change their view of the subject.
Taking this view into another perspective, an economic one, is that
market forces are still the main drivers to how the common people
decide their preferences to the kind of content that they want to read.
A simple example is to ask why there are a significant population of
Singaporeans prefer to attend a Singapore Idol event rather than going
to Hong Lim Park. Is it because they prefer Singapore Idol than the
protesters in Hong Lim Park? Or is it because Singapore Idol serves the
mainstream market rather than the protesters who only cater to a small
market of politically inclined individuals?
Upon the basis of these conclusions, YB argued that the future does not belong to the bloggers but rather the movers and shakers who will turn up at an appropriate place and time.
Actually, both conclusions can be contested. I will tackle the first one by going back to the internet revolution. The internet has become a place where ideas never die out and ideas
of quality that may not be fashionable now might become the new
paradigm in time to come. That leads to the creation of the long tail, coined by Chris Anderson, culture unfiltered by economic scarcity. Governments will have problems in obstructing
the users’ search for information. The increasing social mobility of
people due to the forces of globalization will make censorship in one
state irrelevant because the individual is likely to be expose to
alternative ideas. Thus the long tail is a mitigating force against the
selective folly in the long run. The long tail allows the user to look for niche choices, because the
supply is almost infinitely stretched, the ideas cannot die out so
fast.
The future might belong to the bloggers and also people who seek
to carve new spaces and ideology in the world.
Related Links:
[1] Blogger and Parties: Can the netroots reshape American Democracy? by Henry Farrell
Acknowledgements: I wish to thank Grey and Hui Chieh for the discussions prior to this unfinished piece of work.
When I was living in Telok Blangah Heights before I moved to my present home ten years ago, I often exercise or take a walk up to the Telok Blangah Hill Park. Opposite to the hill, is Mount Faber where you find the cable car that connects from there to Sentosa. The honest truth is that over the time when I stayed in that area, I have been to Mount Faber less than three times, while I always like to go up to the Terrace Hill on Telok Blangah Hill and take a look at the view of Sentosa and other parts of the city there. Sometimes, I often dream that a bridge should be built to connect Telok Blangah Hill to Mount Faber. Finally, my wish has come true today. This evening I took a walk from Telok Blangah Hill to Mount Faber via the Henderson Waves, which is the name of the bridge that connects between both hills. While I was there in the evening, I saw the bridge from daylight till it was lit up beautifully when the sky went dark. While I was there, many photographers were gathering their cameras to capture the best view of the bridge. If you fancy a good walk in the nature, do check out the connection of the Southern Ridges. 
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