Intelligent island discourse: Singapore’s discursive negotiation with technology

• Main Author: LIM, Alwyn
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2001
• Subjects: Intelligent Island; technology; discourse; nation-building; crisis; utopia; International Relations; Political Science
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2477; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/3734/viewcontent/027046760102100303__1_.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The small nation-state of Singapore has increasingly been referred to in the popular media as the Intelligent Island of the future. With significant state investment in the promotion and dissemination of information-communications technology and attendant social ramifications, this has become an area that can no longer be ignored or taken for granted. This article intends to map the conditions of possibility on which Singapore can be conceived of as an Intelligent Island, in situating the role of information technology and Intelligent Island discourse within the discourses of postcoloniality, technocapitalism, late modernity, and globalization. In particular, this article attempts to show how, in Intelligent Island discourse, the processes of the construction of a Singaporean nation are intricately linked to the shift in political discourse from mobilizing a rhetoric of crisis to one of utopianism.