Consumer society and the technology of education a case study of the singapore education system

This history may be divided into the following six broad periods, coinciding with the major periods in the development of Singapore: the colonial megamachine period, 1819-1941; the milit

Chapter 5 | Towards Singularity or Apotheosis? 103

Appendix 2 | Baseline ICT standards for Schools in Singapore 124

Abstract

Singapore has been hailed as a model of spectacular economic development, having gone from third world to first world in a mere three decades since its independence in 1965 The Singapore Education System (SES) is at the heart of this economic miracle, being responsible for the development of Singapore’s only resource, its people The urgent development of this only resource to meet the needs of the global hypercapitalist economy is still regarded as a survival imperative today Using the theories of Baudrillard regarding the consumer society and that of Mumford regarding the Megamachine and theories of hypercapitalism, I examine the role of the SES in cyborg development and production I argue that the SES represents a type of technology which has been developed by what Mumford terms the megamachine through the technics of Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP)-state government which I trace from Singapore’s colonial heritage The objects of education which together form the technology of education in Singapore employs what I term as procedural signification to prepare students not just in terms of skills but psychologically and mentally for their roles as cyborgs in the global hypercapitalist economy The case of Singapore is unique because of the degree of entrenchment of the PAP-state government since independence which represents an example of continuous megamachine development since that time The SES thus represents a technology

of simulacra that parallels the formation of the Singapore megamachine which has refined the art and science of cybernetic reproduction Schools are thus sites of production-consumption where the foundation of consumer society, the ego consumans is nurtured and where simultaneously its mirror, the homo machina is developed, both critical processes at the heart of the hypercapitalist project to ensure its own hegemony The development of consumer society is thus inextricably linked to the development of what I term the neo-megamachine in Singapore and education is at the heart of this project Finally, I speculate on the future of this hybrid entity which I call the machina consumans

Keywords: education, procedural signification, hypercapitalism, cyborg, cybernetic reproduction, megamachine, technics, simulacra, production, consumption, consumer society, ego consumans, homo machina, machina consumans

List of Tables

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Table 1: Types of English Boy’s Schools in Singapore, circa 1819-1941 32 Table 2: Types of English Girl’s Schools in Singapore, circa 1819-1941 33

Table 3: Features of the Transition from the old hierarchical dominations

Table 5: Summary of Singapore’s Masterplans for ICT in education 106 Table 6: Summary of Future Schools and their ICT Foci 108

List of Figures

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List of Plates

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Plate 1: Eventual typical 21st century classroom in Singapore 68 Plate 2: 17th – 18th century German classroom at Museum of Molfsee 69 Plate 3: Ohio Girls Industrial School, United States, circa 1910-1919 69 Plate 4: Prussian Monitorial Classroom, circa 19th century 70

Plate 8a: Victoria School, 1986 National Day observance parade rehearsal 73 Plate 8b: Banner hung at Yuan Ching Secondary School, 2010 74 Plate 9: Flatted factory along Commonwealth Drive 74

Plate 12a: Achievement banner hung outside Deyi Secondary School, circa

Plate 12b: Three achievement posters hung on the facade of Zhenghua

Plate 14: Photograph of advertising for top PSLE scorers for 2011 at a bus

Chapter 1 | Introduction

This thesis is an attempt to de-mythologize the scope and nature of education under hypercapitalism and its associated knowledge economy, which Graham defines as “the form of capitalism under which thought itself is produced, commodified, and exchanged within the globally integrated system of communication technologies” (Graham, 1999, p2) The discussion synthesizes the sociological perspectives of Baudrillard with that of various authors in the field of Marxian analytical tradition, communications theory and the cognitive sciences to argue that the Singapore Education System (SES) plays a critical role in not only reproducing structures which facilitate capitalism, but which also deepens and intensifies the hypercapitalistic expropriation of labour

The importance of this exploratory thesis lies in its study of education as a type of technology which is essential to hypercapitalism The essential connection between education and hypercapitalism, by which labour is cyberneticised and expropriated however, is provided by the hegemonic influence of the state megamachine, especially in countries where the state megamachine is pervasive and is tightly interconnected with the capitalist megamachine The historical underpinnings of these interconnections in Singapore are discussed in chapter 2 The resulting cyborganic relations to capital are further governed by the codes of consumer society in which education itself is a consumable object These codes in turn bind cybernetic labour to capitalism through consumption Hypercapitalism accelerates the rate of cyberneticisation of labour and simultaneously the rate of consumption These processes are discussed in chapter 3 Chapter 4 examines the nature of cyborganic existence in Singapore and its implications on the subject Finally, the purpose of this thesis is made explicit in the last chapter which examines the possible implications for society with speculation on what such continued cyborganic development might bring

Singapore provides a good case study of cybernetic social reproduction because of

a confluence of socioeconomic factors As a developmental state, generalized mass public education fulfils two crucial roles Firstly, it was and still is

instrumental to capitalist development by way of valorisation by the state of its only perceived capital resource – human beings Secondly, education in Singapore adopts a process Tremewan (1994, p74) calls “educating for submission”, which creates a pliant and submissive workforce attractive to global capital investment These historical features are important contributors to the characteristic nature of what Vercellone terms “diffuse intellectuality” (Vercellone, 2007, p4) to describe the development of generally educated masses

in what authors like Vercellone have termed “cognitive capitalism” (Ibid) Cognitive capitalism refers to the shift in late capitalism to capitalist dependence

on the cognitive and immaterial aspects of labour (Dyer-Witherford, 1999)

The relation of capital to labour is marked by the hegemony of knowledges, by a diffuse intellectuality, and by the driving role of the production of knowledges by means of knowledges connected to the increasingly immaterial and cognitive character of labour (Vercellone,

2007, p16)

Singapore in its aspirations to become an education and Interactive Digital Media (IDM) hub among others has invested heavily in education to develop the necessary cybernetic capital for these purposes These aspirations and the motivations behind them parallel Haraway’s (2000, p291) ironic faith: “At the centre of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg” Haraway’s (2000, p34) heresy may have been her use of cyborg as a metaphor in her argument for the possibility of a liberal feminist utopia attained through the liberating and supremely equalizing hybridised being of the cyborg:

A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction … but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion

I argue that Haraway’s (2000) metaphor may be closer to reality than most of us realize and that this is evident in the case of the Singapore education landscape Cognitive scientists have made great discoveries in understanding how the human mind works Perhaps one of the most pertinent arguments to understanding the nature of cyber-organic capitalism is the work done by Edwin Hutchins (1995) on distributed cognition Hutchins argues that external objects are used as extensions

of the mind for memory in the performance of complex tasks This argument for cyborgs is furthered by Andy Clark who argues that we are all “natural born

cyborgs” – organic entities which naturally co-opt their natural surroundings into the psyche and consciousness as part of daily life-processes, because the “[m]ind

is a leaky organ, forever escaping its ‘natural’ confines and mingling shamelessly with body and with world” (Clark, 2001, p17)

These arguments suggest that far from being a “metaphor” or an “image”, cyborgs are a reality and furthermore that human beings have always naturally been cybernetic in orientation The term cybernetic was first coined by Wiener (1950, p8) who defines it as the “study of messages, and in particular the effective messages of control” Wiener (1950, p9) further defines control as “nothing but the sending of messages which effectively change the behaviour of the recipient”

A central argument of this thesis is therefore that a cybernetic organism, in the fashion of Wiener (1950), is an organism that is capable of exerting control on animals, machines, humans and other cyborgs through communications – the ultimate all-consuming life-form This proposition is central to the concept of cyber-organic capitalism, which is capitalism based on cyborg production and consumption which has been termed “hypercapitalism” and “cognitive capitalism”

by other authors focusing on separate aspects of this advanced stage of capitalism currently dominating the globe Indeed, mass public education is thus the best platform for both exerting cybernetic control, through the processes of “educating for submission” (Tremewan, 1994, p74), and for selecting those cybernetic capacities for which to develop a cyber-organic diffuse intellectuality, indoctrinated through the syllabi and curriculum

A cyborg is a hybrid entity comprising an organic component and an inorganic component Suspending images of half-man, half-machine entities rife in contemporary science fiction, and more important than the seemingly obvious physical manifestations, an aspect of this particular hybridisation central to the arguments of Clark (2001), Haraway (2000) and Hutchins (1995) is that the organic component retains control of the inorganic components Only then can the organic mind extend its influence to “external representational devices” (Hutchins, 1995), then the liberating freedoms of the cyborg-being be consumed and then can the mind “mingle shamelessly” (Clark, 2001) with the world This realisation is important because it affirms organic agency over the materially

inorganic, the psyche (consciousness) over machine logic code This natural initial dominance is not uncontested however Constant interface with machine logic code gradually asserts an influence over the psyche, altering the consciousness of the organic agency Thus, “the medium is the message" because

it is “the medium that shapes controls the scale and form of human association and action” (McLuhan, 1964, p9)

Maintaining organic control over the inorganic was relatively easy in the era of the pre-networked cyborg During this period, inorganic components were externally situated and organic control and mental disembodiment was mostly restricted to the inorganic components being physically manipulated in the immediate vicinity Communications with other cyborgs was also limited by relatively crude analogue voice transfer devices and once the communication was ended only a fragment of that information was stored in the cyborg’s internal memory and perhaps some of it was externally noted Pre-network era cyborgs were not required to be proficient in the use of technology Their pairing was predominantly with standalone analogue devices that rarely had the capacity or bandwidth for profound communicative effect

Network era cyborgs represent an evolutionary development in cybernetic relations of control compared to their analogue cousins beginning with and scaffolded by the omnipresence of the Internet Not only is there greater interface potential, this digital interface enables a greater array of interface options and potentialities over a wider affective domain

This [computer/user] relationship is symbiotic: users invest certain aspects

of themselves and their cultures when ‘making sense’ of their computers, and their use of computers may be viewed as contributing to individuals’ images and experiences of their selves and their bodies (Lupton, 2007, p423)

This symbiosis is further enabled by developments in inorganic technology extending and enhancing the external mental disembodiment of the organic through advances in external memory and machine logic code algorithms which essentially erode the psychological space between internal and external In Hutchin’s cockpit example, this may have been accomplished through an

autopilot, which is a programmable extension of the pilot’s intentions for the inorganic partner to fly a certain path A more mundane example would be that of the macro in Microsoft office, another programmable means of automating inorganic partner responses to the organic will There are however two key differences The ability to create such a macro is more extant than creating an autopilot programme and more importantly this erstwhile macro, which represents

an investment of self, culture and experience, may be digitally transferred and copied easily for consumption by other cyborgs, a function that was considerably harder to accomplish in the pre-network era

The argument that human beings have always been cybernetically orientated has important implications for conception of current developments in capitalism It suggests that the current phase of capitalism represents an inexorable development and a centuries old process of fusing the man and the machine, the ultimate appropriation of labour by capital Vercellone (2007, p18) argues that:

the analysis of technical progress as an expression of a relation of forces concerning knowledge is everywhere present in Marx’s work and allows

an alternative reading of some crucial aspects of his thought The conflictual dynamic of the relation of knowledge to power occupies a central position in the explanation of the tendency of the increase of the organic and technical composition of capital This tendency, Marx writes, results from the way the system of machines arises in its totality: ‘This road is, rather, dissection – through the division of labour, which gradually transforms the workers’ operations into more and more mechanical ones,

so that at a certain point a mechanism can step into their places

Have the developments discussed so far been an inexorable evolution? In the context of development-focused, world-class obsessed (that is the constant pursuit

of global recognition as an indication of success) Singapore, the concept of the relentless terminator-like, aggressive cyborg may find resonance in the ever-increasing demands of globalisation placed on its tightly controlled workforce IDM presents the means by which such cyborg fantasies may become reality Yet while cybernetics (Wiener, 1950) seemingly increases external control, it simultaneously increases susceptibility to be controlled – itself susceptible to the same type of cybernetic control, where such control is exerted and executed through cybernetic networks and programmes that enable it The ultimate

consumer now becomes the ultimate consumable As Baudrillard (1996, p51-52) argues:

Freed now from the need to refer to the human scale, to the ‘life-size’, and ever more taken up by the complexity of messages, mechanisms tend increasingly, on the model of the brain, towards an irreversible concentration of their structures, towards the quintessentially microcosmic After the Promethean expansion of a technology striving to occupy the whole world, the entirety of space, we are now entering the era of a technology that works on the world ‘in-depth’ so to speak The reign of electronics and cybernetics means that efficiency, freed from the shackles

of gestural space, is henceforward dependent upon a saturation of minimal extension, governing a maximized field, which is without common measure with sensory experience

His argument is that human life is predicated upon its technological environment Life evolves and adapts to its environment and through adaptation, the gradual mutation of an organism to suit its changing environment, and speciation, the evolution of a new species best suited to the environment, arrives at its essence Conversely, “[t]echnological environments are not merely passive containers of people but are active processes that reshape people and other technologies alike” (McLuhan, 1962, pii) The advent of advanced technics (Mumford et al, 1934, p1; refers to the application of technological innovation embedded within specific social milieu) heralds new spatial dimensions of existence and essence More than extending the realm of normal space, these new spatial dimensions have warped time and shaped reality The techne (artistic implication of knowledge) of the machine age focused on the magnification of muscular power however, the techne of the present focuses, as this case study on Singapore will show, on the acceleration of activity at all scales As Virilio (2010, p6) states:

the revolution de l’emport, or portable revolution, will round off in the transport revolution, and the revolution in transmission will land us in this interactive planisphere that will, they say, be capable of supplementing the overly cramped biosphere and its five continents It will do this thanks to the feats in information technology of a virtual continent, the great colony

of cyberspace taking over from the empires of yore

As Virilio (2010) notes, this acceleration changes the very nature of human existence, albeit unbeknownst to the subject undergoing this transformation The search and conquest for microcosmic spaces is a self-perpetuating result of mass-consumption as required to sustain the process at ever increasing scales Here, I

shall introduce the term micromachine to describe the ever smaller assemblages, such as microchips and silicon integrated circuits that rival the power, capacity and capability of larger machines, miniaturized structures of the microcosmic, thus facilitate and accelerate travel in normal space in its own transport and in the creation of the ‘life-size’ through the articulate techne of interconnection with other such structures Electrical and electronic interconnections in the microcosmic present another dimension of space, extending conquest and consumption beyond normal space Indeed, “[e]lectrospace is to communications today as land is to crops and water to fish” (Armitage & Roberts, 2002, p159) Electrospace is the space within and between spaces generated by simulacra micromachine consciousness (referring to software which simulates the consciousness of human beings), such as automated programs and bots of which computer viruses are a malevolent if not excellent example It exists neither in normal space nor in the microcosmic Portal access to electrospace is possible only through the micromachine governed by its own physical laws and the technological and sociocultural milieu Electrospace too is the space of acceleration, facilitating the conquest of normal space neutering once immutable distances in normal space The micromachines relegated to the world of ‘life-size’ also functions as such but in normal space and at lower rates of activity I use the term hyperspace to emphasize the aspect of acceleration brought about by the time-space compression of such networks

Hyperspace is a facsimile of space(s) and contains facsimiles of spaces In this, sense it is a space of simulacra and of simulation Hyperspace is the space within which simulacra and simulations are created, multiplied and disseminated throughout its network Hyperspace itself is a simulation of physical space Servers store sites of consumption in machine code and travel between sites in hyperspace proceeds at electron speed It is a consumptive simulacrum of consumer and consumed As hyperspace becomes the primary sphere of activity, the rhythm (Lefebvre, 2004) of life thus becomes adapted to the extant structures

of this new hyperspatial environment, the hyperspace operationalised by micromachines but governed by hyperspatially centred megamachines (Mumford

et al, 1934; refers to the centralized control of large amounts of human and technological power) While the megamachines of the machine age, “one evil,

more mountainous than all the rest put together” (Ibid, p293), operated largely in normal space to overcome the muscular limits of the organic through the coordination, organisation and deployment of simple tools and animals to overcome human physical limits, the neo-megamachines of hyperreality are predicated upon accelerated consumption at the global scale The neo-megamachine is a globally interconnected one, unlike its previous incarnations The Transnational Corporation (TNC), with its global networks of unceasing production and supply chains meeting the consumptive needs of globally disparate markets united by continuous demand for its products, is an extant structure of hyperreality, is an example of such a neo-megamachine As cybernetic networks have affected human patterns of perceptions so too, as McLuhan (1964, p19) argues, “money has reorganized the sense life of people just because it is an extension of our sense lives” Human life in the present age is thus dominated by the confluence of simulacra, technology and money through megamachines exert capitalistic control

The pace of human life has accelerated, aided by the automation brought about by the micromachines in hyperspace and the dominating structures of megamachines One manifestation of this acceleration takes the form of multitasking, which is the compression of increasing amounts of activity within normal time and often requiring extensive use of micromachines within hyperspace This acceleration is geared towards meeting the insatiable demands of the global consumer society While megamachines comprise assemblages of life-sized components of control

in normal space, they are matched by their micromachine counterparts, assemblages of microchips and silicon integrated circuits that control hyperspace

Through this control of both the cosmic and micrcosmic, not only has the scale of consumption increased through globalization so too has the rate of consumption at all scales and for all materials Palaces of ‘conspicuous consumption’ (Veblen,

1925 posited that status in society is determined by patterns of displayed consumption), hypermarkets, megamalls and shopping ‘cities’, in a reference to both scale and speed (facilitated by nodal transport provision along hyperspatial corridors) dot the globe on every continent and almost every country, paralleled

Governments, eager to expropriate the hyperspatial and its denizens through the extant use of micromachines, have become neo-megamachines in their own right Normal space is thus relegated Life that will not or cannot keep up becomes irrelevant and extinct in its irrelevance

The inexorable project of capitalism is thus to commodify and render consumable nothing less than life itself, a project driven for its own ends and developed incrementally beginning in Europe since the end of the 16th century becoming the extant system commanding the global neo-megamachine today The acceleration

of the megamachine and the development of advanced technics culminating in the acceleration of life itself for its destruction, reconstruction and commodification, heralds the age of accelerated capital accumulation Hypercapitalism, made possible by its mirror of hyperconsumption, comprising disposability, fixation on novelty and endless “precession of simulacra” (Baudrillard, 1994, p1) novelty as metaconsumption and discounted consumption-in-excess is predicated upon the shifting of the new international division of labour (this is an outcome of the globalization of economic activity comprising the internationalisation of the social and technical division of labour) either in whole or part to the hyperspatial dimension This requires the expropriation of the organic through indoctrinated complicity (discussed in chapter 2) and of digitised consciousness existing as digital memory or micromachines which are themselves simulacra of the organic

“Our materials base is shifting fossil fuels, metals and minerals – the raw resources of the industrial revolution – to genes – the raw resources of the biotech century” (Rifkin, 2000, p64) Human beings have been the indispensable raw resources for the development of Singapore, long recognised as Singapore’s only resource Education is the process by which this cognitive capital is developed and cyberneticised This cyberneticisation process facilitates hypercapitalism with its intensified technological means of production This intensified production is paralleled by intensified consumption Baudrillard argues that life under such intensified consumption is hyperreality It is but a reflection of the precession of and reproduction of simulacra and of the cycles of their associated complicity of the objects caught within its orbit In the age of hyperconsumption, instant replicability and pervasive replication have developed a society of

simulacrum made possible by the ubiquity of advanced communications and new media technologies The age of hypercapitalism is the age of the megamachine

(Mumford, 1934) accelerated ad infinitum through the continuous application of

such technologies and technics (Ibid) – it is the age of the neo-megamachine requiring the concomitant development of hyperlife for its maintenance

Hyperlife thus represents the next step in evolution blurring, as Rifkin and others also argue, the boundaries between the organic and inorganic is but one in which the organic is reduced to a subordinate relationship to the needs of hyperconsumption The appropriation of the genetic code and its subversion to complicity with the capitalist agenda through its objectification was a simple matter of technical prowess, the gene itself a simulacra of the metaphysical properties of the life world, another frontier in the subjugation and expropriation

of life

Beginning with the subjugation and appropriation of plants and animals, the objectification of life has increased in rapidity under the puritanical advanced techne of hypercapitalism to “achieve a mimesis which replaces a natural world with an intelligible artificial one If the simulacrum is so well designed that it becomes an effective organizer of reality, then surely it is the human being, not the simulacrum, who is turned into abstraction” (Baudrillard, 1996, p57) This abstraction thus completes the objectification of man as capital as man the organic

is removed from the equation of life, leaving only the inorganic, like unto Baudrillard’s story of the illusionist who makes an automaton and then “in response to the perfection of his own machine is led to dismantle and mechanize himself” (Ibid, p56), to be valorized by capital and subsequently consumed by society For this is the distinguishing characteristic form of hyperlife, its broad consumptive capacity – global ubiquity, mass-customizability yet locally branded – that comprises its hypervalue of globally accessible mass-customizable, ubiquitously functional consumability “For the real object is the functional object” (Ibid, p48) and “in the face of the functional object the human being becomes dysfunctional, irrational and subjective: an empty form, open therefore to the mythology of the functional, to projected phantasies stemming from the

what I shall term Capitalism In Veritas, the truth of Capitalism, as programming for control of the inorganic “Man has to be assured of his power by some sense

of participation, albeit merely a formal one So the gestural system of control must be deemed indispensable – not to make the system work technically, for more advanced technology could (and no doubt will) make it unnecessary, but, rather to make that system work psychologically” (Ibid, p50) The presupposition

of the separability of the psychological from the inorganic (and even the organic) thus makes possible the illusion of control especially in the machine age

Under the apparatus (here I am referring to Herbert Marcuse’s 2004 conception of large economic entities that tend to concentrate technological power and vice versa in their bureaucracies) of the machine age of capitalism, “[t]echnological power tends to concentrate economic power” (Arato & Gebhardt, 1978, p138), and “individualistic rationality has been transformed into technological rationality

… [that] establishes standards of judgement and fosters attitudes which make men ready to accept and even to introcept the dictates of the apparatus” (Ibid) However the new accelerated rhythm (Lefebvre, 1992) of hyperlife makes such an arrangement cumbersome and unwieldy Hyperconsumption culture demands nothing less than the assimilation of life in its entirety for the consummation of hyperreality This separation is made possible through the separation of the consciousness of the organic from its shell through layers of simulation and simulacra Thus,

the virtual space of Cybersociety occupies the same virtual space as More’s Utopia [a fictitious island created by Sir Thomas More on which there is universal education] These spaces are realised in precisely the same way Both are the fictitious illusions of print media The reader, confounded and numbed by the paradox of cognitive alienation, closes the circle of description that the author of individual experience opens by separating thought from thinker (Graham, 1999, p11) [in brackets, my clarification]

Graham thus argues that thought may be alienated from its embodied mind just as labour may be alienated from its product in Marxian interpretations of labour relations to production, but the process of thought alienation occurs through the dizzying effects of hyperspatial hyperreality – the embodied mind is unable to separate real from unreal or simulacra, and disembodied thought is thus alienated

from its embodied mind Thus the consumer too becomes the consumed Hyperspatial relations facilitated by micromachines have enabled this separation

of consciousness beginning with the arguably primary component of consciousness, memory

Memory is normally thought of as a psychological function internal to the individual However, memory tasks in the cockpit may be accomplished

by functional systems which transcend the boundaries of the individual actor Memory processses may be distributed among human agents, or between human agents and external representational devices (Hutchins,

1995, p284)

Hutchins’ study on the measurement of distributed cognition in the cockpit micromachine of an airplane may have much wider implications then realized The pervasive simulacra of technics and techne have converged technologies over such a broad spectra resulting in a level of ubiquity such that the para-psychological relations with many micromachines resemble that of a cockpit As

I am typing this thesis, I am constantly aware of myriad levels of information – time, electrospace available on the page, availability of micromachine functions – much like a Heads-Up-Display (HUD) of cockpit functions, while myriad processes operate in the background executed by simulacra micromachine consciousness which I draw upon as my external memory While such extensions may be possible with basic technologies such as a hammer and nail, the crucial distinction between cybernetic technologies and rudimentary instrumentalities is the hyperspatial nature of this form of hybridisation and speciation

In terms of external memory, every vivid audio-visual historicity may be captured for posterity in hyperspace and accessed at any time almost instantaneously But the enormity of such a data produces another problem of selection As Vannevar Bush (1945) states:

[E]ven in its present bulk we can hardly consult it This is a much larger matter than merely the extraction of data for the purposes of scientific research; it involves the entire process by which man profits by his inheritance of acquired knowledge The prime action of use is selection, and here we are halting indeed There may be millions of fine thoughts, and the account of the experience on which they are based, all encased within stone walls of acceptable architectural form; but if the scholar can get at only one a week by diligent search, his syntheses are not likely to keep up with the current scene

Bush thus calls for new means by which technology may help man develop a transformational relationship with knowledge Indeed, bots, programs which perform automated functions, representing the wishes of their human makers and thus are simulated human consciousness, may provide one such means of achieving this

Such memory fragments comprise fragmented remnants of simulacra consciousness but only fully programmed autonomous agents that constitute micromachine simulacra consciousness (bots) may execute the tasks which maintain hyperspace and its concomitant structures Smart-phones and various mobile internet devices coupled with 3G data networks, satellite and fibre-optic cable connections facilitate the transmission of ever large amounts of data from anywhere at any time These abilities are gained through the process of hybridisation and speciation “We – more than any other creature on the planet – deploy non-biological elements (instruments, media, notations) to complement our basic biological modes of processing, creating extended cognitive systems whose computational and problem-solving profiles are quire [error from source] different from those of the naked brain” (Clark, 2001, p21)

The multiple drafts theory of consciousness (Dennet, 1998) proposes that consciousness is an outcome (Dennet, 1991), the components of which, may thus

be commodified and expropriated Indeed, “[h]ypercapitalism, with its

‘knowledge economy’, is the form of capitalism under which thought itself is produced, commodified, and exchanged within the globally integrated system of communication technologies.” (Armitage & Roberts, 2002, p2)

Immortalization in hyperspace reifies these fragments of consciousness which are soon subjected to one of the abilities of life – replication Continued replication, accelerated in hyperspace, heightens the relevance of each successive copy relegating the original to obscurity, completing the reproduction process of simulacra consciousness Nowhere is this heightening more evident than as expressed by Haraway (2000, p294):

Modern machines are quintessentially microelectric devices: they are everywhere and they are invisible Modern machinery is an irreverent

upstart god, mocking the Father’s ubiquity and spirituality … Miniturization has turned out be about power; small is not so much beautiful as pre-eminently dangerous, as in cruise missiles … our best machines are made of sunshine; they are all light and clean because they are nothing but signals, electromagnetic waves, a section of a spectrum, and these machines are eminently portable, mobile – a matter of immense human pain in Detroit and Singapore People are nowhere near so fluid, being both material and opaque Cyborgs are ether, quintessence

Baudrillard’s (1994) death of the original is at hand due to this cybernetic allure, the seduction of near total if somewhat facile control offered by micromachines is itself another simulation, one that facilitates the generation and intensification of simulacra in society, one which accelerates the disembodiment and commodification of thought, rendering the embodied original a remnant of hyperreality civilization The emphasis on the reducibility of normal space and the objects therein thereby encompasses the organic as well Through emphasizing the relevance of simulacra, the organic is reduced in complexity, to its constituent components genes; to fragmentary disparate components of consciousness, as expropriate-able resources, refining the capitalist project of exploitation of the organic which began so long ago Haraway (2000, p295) suggests another perspective: “a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints”

All is hyperreality Simulacra consciousness and micromachine simulacra consciousness dictate hyperspatial imperatives which ripple through normal space-time warping reality to the hypercapitalist whim Indeed, the megamachine

“not merely served as the ideal model for explaining and eventually controlling all organic activities, but its fabrication and its continued improvement were what alone could give meaning to human existence” (Mumford, 1934, p293) Mumford continues to argue that an even more efficient megamachine predicated upon cybernetic control to replace the ancient megmachine, achieving apostheosis through the mystery unravelling powers bestowed by the “Sun God” (Mumford, 1934) of science and technology (Ibid, p294) Apart from the irrelevance of the

process of what I call procedural signification, or as Baudrillard argues, “the mental indoctrination of the masses to a planned calculus and a ‘basic’ capitalist investment and behaviour” (Baudrillard, 1988, p53), has been secured through the hyperspatial metaorgnizational consciousness of consumption This collective consciousness, developed through diverse consumption of simulacra consciousness and micromachine simulacra consciousness, which is predicated upon novelty, is itself a simulacra of hyperreality, hungry for an ever dizzying array of products The results of this metaconsumption (Ibid) is evident in the results of global consumption-in-excess – climate change, obesity at an unprecedented scale especially in home-regions of the neo-megamachine, global financial crises, systematic and inexorable extinction of all non-complicit organics, for it is only in complicity that relevance is found and existence assured

The politics of hyperreality is thus one of simulacra The ethics of the megamachine reign supreme The irrelevance of normal space is further evidenced by the seeming nonchalance of its inevitable destruction, the piecemeal, half-hearted and often token steps taken to mitigate its degradation despite aggressive calls for affirmative action by international panels setup by the united mandate of global governments, have yet to see fruition despite decades of research, observation and investigation The latest 2011 ‘resolution’ to prevent global temperatures from rising by 2 degrees Celsius, contrasts with the previous

neo-‘resolution’, which came to sensational global significance circa 2009, was to prevent global temperatures from rising by 1 degree Celsius In years before that, the emphasis was to reduce emissions of temperature raising gases The refined repetition of these and related pronouncements by global neo-megamachines form the fabric of the metanarrative matrix in hyperreality, its relevance relegated to the mass-resignation of impending disaster in normal space For, all is well in hyperspace, where consumption proceeds unabated and unhampered by occurrences in normal space The lure of the microcosmic is the lure of instant and constant perfection in a sea of consciousness, surrounded by the comforting presence of fragments from the past yet summoning the successes of the future in the present instance Perhaps it is through consumption and instantiation that the remnants of the organic find an illusion of the emancipation Haraway (2000)

longs to celebrate, an illusion maintained by hypercapitalism to secure the continued complicity of the organic in its subjugation to the neo-megamachine The rhythm (Lefebvre, 2004) of hyperlife is thus the combined rhythm (the regular occurrence of events) of hyperspace and normal space For each unit of hyperlife, the specific rhythm is the confluence of the global neo-megamachines that dominate it and the intersection of the rhythms of the organic The primacy

of hyperspatial rhythm occludes that of normal space and the organic In the age

of hyperreality with the pervasiveness of simulacra, it becomes impossible to measure Lefebvre’s (2004, p12) notion of the presence, which refers to original

“facts of both nature and culture, at the same time sensible, affective and moral”, however, Lefebvre’s (2004) concepts may be useful constructs with which to gain insights on the nature of the rhythm of hyperlife There is an obvious arrhythmia (referring to dissonant rhythms) between the rhythms of hyperspace and that of normal space and hence between that of the neo-megamachine and of the organic Examples of such conflicts occur among the hyperlife units of transnational neo-megamachines that typically cross global temporal zones Units communicating

in real-time tend to communicate out of organic sync with their local temporal zone Even within the same temporal zone, the primacy of hyperspace means that messages may be sent and action demanded immediately at intervals that are out

of sync with either the rhythms of normal space or of the organic A concrete example of this is the director of an organisation sending an email to an employee demanding a reply at 3 am local time This rhythm logic is consistent with the rhythm logic of hyperspace and that of the neo-megamachine but totally inconsistent with that of normal space or of the organic Applying Lefebvre’s (2004) rhythmanalysis, as the organic accelerates its own rhythms, polyrhythmia (conflictual co-existence) occurs where the employee becomes used to the temporal rhythms and demands of the director, though a satisfactory response to the director’s demands may still not have been achieved After further acceleration of the organic, the employee may well achieve eurhythmia (constructive rhythm interactions) and respond favourably to the director’s demands But to achieve promotion, the employee would have to attain isorhythmia (synchronous rhythms that are rare), the state in which the rhythms of the organic are synchronous with the rhythms of hyperspace and that of the neo-

the rhythms of the organic best viewed as hindrances to be overcome for success

in hyperspace, the turning of the screw of simulation and hyperreality thus complete for that unit of hyperlife Hyperlife units that are unable to accelerate become irrelevant despite the organic reality that dissonance is ultimately detrimental to the organic which attempts to constantly accelerate to the hyperspatial But this organic reality is irrelevant This is but the genesis of the project of hypercapitalism to subsume (Vercellone, 2007) life which begins with cybernetic social reproduction Vercellone prefers to use the term subsumption because “it better allows us to grasp the permanence of the opposition of capital to labour and the conflict for the control of the ‘intellectual powers of production’ in the unfolding of the different stages of the capitalist division of labour” (Ibid, p15) McLuhan argues, “the effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts but alter sense ratios and patterns of perception steadily and without resistance” (McLuhan, 1964, p18)

Hypercapitalism thus changes the very nature of life through acceleration The definition of hypercapitalism thus focuses on both the speed of capital accumulation, production and consumption and the commodication of disembodied consciousness made possible by cyber-organic union The infinitesimal copies made possible by this regime of neo-megamachine accumulation thus generates the artifice and construct of hyperreality The dissemination and exchange of human consciousness through cybernetworks further intensifies this hyperreality matrix This consciousness has not been eradicated nor has it been fully subdued by the machine Such technology does not yet exist though mass public education performs a primitive form of this function through programming which facilitates subordination to the neo-megamachine Thus, instead of Haraway’s (2000) cyborg utopia, the cyborgs being reproduced under the present regime of omnipresent TNCs, the global neo-megamachines, have more in common with the T-101s of the movie “The Terminator” – having flesh and bone on the outside but on the inside the undeniable programming of the neo-megamachine in constant communications with its “skynet” equivalent – the ultimate killer instinct married with the ultimate killer application Perhaps this is why Berger (1998, p157) argues that the terminator represents our deepest fears regarding technology because of its

immanence or very presence in our midst? As McLuhan (1964, p21) argues, “our human senses of which all media are extensions, are also fixed charges on our personal energies, and … they also configure the awareness and experience of each one of us”

In this chapter, I have assembled theories from disparate fields to justify the theoretical argument that the cyborg is a contextualised entity This argument builds upon and integrates the theoretical arguments from the sociology of education, philosophy, political-science, and cognitive science to exemplify that research from all these fields is needed to study the complex development of cyborganics in society today

The SES facilitates the logics I have described above through processes of indoctrination into the procedure of being a successful cyborg worker in the Singapore economy Through the use of technology, teachers affect the sense ratios and patterns of perception of their students as argued by McLuhan Such indoctrination is carried out subtly through the entirety of the school system from the processes of each school to the processes of each class and the environments each creates which reduces resistance to the influences of technology at youth and simultaneously scales the rhythm of life to that of hyperlife The logics of cybernetic control and consumer control are embedded in the curriculum and the syllabus supported by the system of academic rewards and scholarships The next chapter examines the evolution of this system in its socio-cultural context

Chapter 2 | History of Megamachine Development in Singapore

This chapter chronicles the history of megamachine development and development of the machine civilization in Singapore It begins with an account

of Singapore before the arrival of the colonial megamachine The chapter then moves towards understanding the complicity of foreign capitalist relations to the megamachine in Singapore central to its functioning today by tracing it to its colonial roots This history may be divided into the following six broad periods, coinciding with the major periods in the development of Singapore: the colonial megamachine period, 1819-1941; the military megamachine period, 1942-1945; the return of the colonial megamachine period, 1946-1958; transition to the local megamachine, 1959-1965; consolidation of the local megamchine, 1965-1986; and the development of the Neo-megamachine, Post-1986 to the present Throughout the chapter, the development of machine civilization, a prerequisite for the megamachine, will be discussed applying Mumford’s concepts of eotechnic, paleotechnic and neotechnic (Mumford et al, 1934) Given the word limitation of this thesis, I have decided to focus on the primary sources in this chapter for a deeper discussion

Ancient Singapore

Archaeological evidence shows the existence of settlement on what is now known

as Singapore as early as the third century (Sheppard et al, 1982, p1) As early as the seventh century, it had been established as an important trading city in the region Indeed, the “eminent position of Singapore as a Focus of Communications

… was well known as far back as one thousand seven hundred years ago” (Ibid, p5) Even then, the island was populated by both Malays and a seemingly large population of Chinese immigrants brought to the island by the vicissitudes of trade (Ibid) The city thrived under the constant threat of pirate attacks and invasions, successfully resisting a siege by seventy Siamese junks prior to 1349 By this time, the city was called Temasek or Lung Ya Men (Dragon’s Teeth Gate) by the Chinese The city fell to Javanese invaders in 1376 in what has been called “The great sack of Singapore” (Ibid, p65) By the late fourteenth century, the island had been ruled by no less than five kings but the island city never regained its former importance in the region after the sacking of 1376 (Ibid, p66) This

account provides evidence that ancient Singapore was an important part of what Mumford would call the eotechnic (Mumford et al, 1934, p107) civilization (which in Western civilization occurred around 1000-1700 according to Mumford

et al, 1934) of the region, with the technics of wood and maritime navigation used

by the machine of trade and military conquest While the island city would not have developed the same level of eotechnic civilization as that of Western civilization as described by Mumford (Ibid), Temasek would have been greatly influenced by the parallel developments in eotechnic civilization of its closest regional powers, Siam and Malaya China too would have had some if not great impact in this regard as well given the significant maritime presence of the Chinese It is likely, given the function of the island city during this period, that there was no system of public education and that children apprenticed in the occupations of their parents becoming fishermen, traders, businessmen or pirates This served the social reproduction of the machine of trade and commerce adequately as the focus was on the goods and material being traded

The Colonial Megamachine Period, 1819-1941

By the time Sir Stamford Raffles landed in 1819, which marks the beginnings of modern Singapore and 123 years of unbroken control by the colonial megamachine, the population of the island consisted of about 150 fishermen and pirates (Sheppard et al, 1982) This time period coincides with two phases of development in western civilization according to Mumford – the paleotechnic (about 1700 – 1900) and neotechnic (about 1900 – Mumford’s time of writing, circa 1930s) Singapore on the other hand, even though it had regressed from its former significance, in the context of the influences of Malaya, Siam and China discussed above was still in its eotechnic phase of civilization The arrival of the colonial megamachine meant the imposition of the western paleotechnic civilization upon the local eotechnic one Just as England was less resistant to the

“new methods and processes” (Mumford, et al, 1934, p152) of the paleotechnic because “the eotechnic regime had scarcely taken root” (Ibid) the imposition of colonial paleotechnics met with little resistance on the regressed post-great sacking society of Temasek The effect of the colonial megamachine was thus to

This period, in which capital accumulation was accomplished mainly through colonisation and extraction of raw materials and other valuable resources through colonial ports, represented the end of the colonial era, beginning in the 15thcentury by Portugal and Spain and which England began in the late 16th century (Sheppard et al, 1982) Colonization was also a crucial means by which new sources of raw materials could be secured relatively cheaply for the fledging and expanding factories of the industrial revolution, which generally started in the late

18th century This marked the beginnings of the megamachine in Singapore Raffles sought to establish a British presence on Singapore in favour of the British East India Company (EIC), a machination of the colonial megamachine – programmed with the single-minded purpose of colonising “lesser” geographical areas for the extraction and repatriation of raw materials, precious stones and other items of value back to the monarchic home country of Britain The EIC thus functioned like an early Transnational Corporation (TNC) in its search for profit but unlike modern TNCs, it also extended monarchic influence throughout all its possessions worldwide, achieved through treaties, favouring the colonial megamachine To break the Dutch monopoly on trade in the Malay archipelago, Raffles made Singapore a free port, thereby attracting trade and commerce from the region (Tremewan, 1994) By 1824, recognising the commercial importance

of Singapore, the Anglo-Dutch treaty, signed in the same year, established the island as a permanent British possession (Ibid) The Treaty of Friendship and Alliance between the EIC, Sultan Hussein of Johor and the Temenggong in 1824 ceded sovereignty of Singapore to the British (Ibid, p6) With the commercial success of Singapore, immigrants from the region arrived The population jumped

to 5000 by 1821, increased to just over 16,000 by 1827 and doubled to about 35,000 by 1840 By 1853-4, 13,000 male labourers arrived from China annually The total population reached nearly 82,000 by 1860 and increased to about 96,000

by 1871 (Ibid) The majority of immigrants, who formed the backbone of the Singapore economy in this period (Thulaja, 1997), were Chinese labourers recruited by coolie-brokers and packed into 1400-men junks, known as hell ships, headed for the straits-settlements Able-bodied Chinese men were also kidnapped and sold This human trade became known as the “pig-trade” (Crone-Arbenz et

al, 1988, p45) Upon arriving at their destination, they were put to work as

indentured workers, general labourers or coolies, rickshaw pullers and other menial occupations for little or no money, paying-off the price of their transport or purchase (Ibid) Even though, the contract system was the rule for employment after 1877, “the indenture system continued till 1914 when the British finally prohibited it” (Ibid, p44) Indeed, the pursuit of profit was the driving force of the colonial megamachine, for example, while the British recognised the dangers of gambling and opium farms, they were “allowed to exist to raise a profitable revenue” (Ibid)

This account is consistent with what Mumford calls “the new barbarism”, for which he states that “there was a sharp shift of interest in life values to pecuniary values: the system of interests which only had been latent and which had been restricted in great measure to the merchant and leisure classes now pervaded every walk of life” (Mumford et al, 1934, p153) For many of these immigrants, except those who managed to escape to work as shop-helpers or craftsmen, life comprised living at or next to their place of toil in over-crowded coolie quarters or

on the streets and “lived and died without either memory or hope” (Ibid, p154) If the “servility of the mine” (Ibid) was the bane of the workers in paleotechnic England, in Singapore it was the servility of entrepot trade This indicates an important aspect of the colonial megamachine, that the nature of paleotechnic barbarism and brutality differed with geographical distance from its source, the heart of industry based on what Mumford terms “carboniferous capitalism” (Ibid, p156) – based on the burning of fossil fuels The task of the colonial megamachine then was to extract more resources for industry at its core and through this process spread at the global scale, “the new habits of disorderly exploitation and wasteful expenditure” (Ibid, p158) with the accompanying

“psychological results of carboniferous capitalism – the lowered morale, the expectation of something for nothing, the disregard for the balanced mode of production and consumption, the habituation to wreckage and debris as part of the normal human environment” (Ibid)

These results were all observed in the operation of the colonial megamachine in Singapore The colonial megamachine had ready adherents among the local

pecuniary values, willing serfs of the colonial megamachine – Chinese businessmen, whom Crone-Arbenz et al described as “relentless seekers of wealth” who “were equally keen on spending it on the good things in life” (Crone-Arbenz et al, 1988, p44) Epitomising the colonial megamachine’s expectation of something for nothing, their value to the colonial megamachine was noted by Francis Light, who according to Crone-Arbenz et al, claimed that “the Chinese were the only people of the East from whom a revenue may be raised without expense and extraordinary efforts on the part of the government” (Ibid, p43) Indeed, “labour was a resource to be exploited, to be mined, to be exhausted, and finally to be discarded” (Mumford et al, 1934, p172) The need for the colonial megamachine to maintain purity of identity resulted in “a policy of ‘divide and rule’ allied to territorial separation” (Christopher, 1988, p233) Such a policy no doubt made it relatively easier to discard alien labour as labour in the colonial homeland was discarded

The mechanisation associated with the eotechnic phase was, according to Mumford “for perhaps the first time, a direct ally of life” (Mumford et al, 1934, p247) But, despite Mumford’s euphoria at the possibilities of neotechnics to improve human life, he recognises and laments that “not alone have the older forms of technics seemed to constrain the development of the neotechnic economy: but the new inventions and devices have been frequently used to maintain, renew, and stabilize the structure of the old order” (Ibid, p266) Whether in the Western core or in Singapore, this persistent habituation of paleotechnic barbarism continues to rear its ugly head in the execution of the megamachine The status of Singapore was maintained as that of a vassal, providing profit for the colonial megamachine with few if any of the benefits described by Mumford, such as the displacement of the proletariat or the conservation of the environment which were evident from the supposed dawn of the eotechnic phase in England in the 1700s through to the 1900s or beyond The growth of the middle class comprising of local English-educated elites and the opening of the Ford motor factory in Singapore in 1941, the first in Southeast Asia, supports the notion of growing wealth in Singapore and the region However, the vast majority of the local Asian population remained in subservient

proletarian positions in colonial megamachine society and were kept so by divide and rule policies

During this period, there was no structure of universal public education (Tremewan, 1994, p75) and the British were not interested in establishing one as this was neither required for their processes of resource extraction nor social control as these were exerted through direct control of the commodity trade (Ibid, p74) The efficient and effective functioning of the colonial megamachine depended on a docile divided population as part of the larger British divide and rule strategy The colonial megamachine depended on a bureaucracy comprising the British elite and ethnic locals forming the middlemen and working classes

“Unskilled, migrant workers were adequate for commerce and services” (Ibid, p75) Even a rudimentary educated local populace would have threatened the status quo of elite status accorded to the British elite Indeed, the education policy

of Raffles maintained this status quo through the formation of the Singapore Institution:

1 To educate the sons of higher order natives and others

2 To afford the means of instruction in the native languages to such of the

Company’s servants and others as may desire it

3 To collect the scattered literature and traditions of the country, with whatevernmay illustrate their laws and customs and to publish and circulate in a correct form the most important of these, with such other works as may be calculated to raise the character of the institution and to

be useful or instructive to the people (Lim, 2008, p62) [in bold, my emphasis]

It is clear that Raffles’ education policy emphasized to benefit a select few But

by 1826, the Singapore Institution had not yet been set up because, as quoted by Lim (2008) “the native inhabitants of Singapore have not yet attained that state of civilization and knowledge which would qualify them to derive advantage from the enlarged system of education … establishment on the footing originally contemplated would be to incur heavy expense without any prospect of corresponding and adequate benefit” (Ibid, p63) In 1834, the Singapore Free School, the first English elementary school in Singapore opened at the foot of Fort Canning upon the approved proposition by Chaplain Darrah and had “32 boys in the English classes, 18 boys in the Tamil classes and 12 in the Chinese” (Ibid) In

p64) By 1867, the first school reform was conducted in the Straits Settlements, comprising Singapore, Malacca and Penang which were amalgamated in 1826 This school reform resulted in the appointment of an Inspector of Schools for the Straits Settlements in 1872, the establishment of free Malay vernacular education and paid for English education improving on the pre-existing grant-in-aid system

By 1899, there were no less than 14 English boy’s schools in Singapore, of those only 3 were government schools, 9 were mission schools and 2 were ethnic based Chinese schools In addition, there were also 5 English girl’s schools, all of which were mission schools (Ibid, p66) The University of Cambridge Local Examination was introduced in these schools in 1891 The total enrolment for all these schools, totalling 2466 (see tables 1 and 2) students was miniscule compared

to the population at the time, suggesting that they mainly catered to children of the colonial masters and the local elites But even then, these schools were modelled after the schools developed in paleotechnic England The prevalent industrial schools designed for the children of labour were, according to Mumford,

“regimented like an army, and the army camp became the universal school: teacher and pupil feared each other, even as did capitalist and worker” (Mumford

et al, 1934, p195)

While the schools in Singapore were no doubt less harsh because they were meant for the elite, they were likely run along similar disciplinarian and regimental over-tones, especially those associated with the precepts of mission-style education For the majority of the local children, apprenticeship was likely the dominant form of education with some attending ethnic based schools, set up by prominent members of their ethnic community or for the Chinese, their clan associations or Huey Kuans and which became ideologically influenced by the rise of communism in China (Tremewan, 1994, p76) According to Lim (2008, p70), there were 41 Boy’s and 16 Girl’s English schools in Singapore 1937 By comparison, according to Crone-Arbenz et al (1988, p53), there were more than

40 Chinese schools in Singapore by 1920 (Crone-Arbenz et al, 1988, p53) However, English education was to produce the next generation of local elites who would become clerks in the local merchant houses and the colonial civil service (Ibid) The educational “needs” of the Chinese were thus largely ignored

by the colonial government, more concerned with the Malay aristocracy

(Tremewan, 1994, p76) and the revenue-making activities of the Chinese, for which education had little significance Some of these elite would later return to leadership of the fledging local-based megamachine Thus did the colonial megamachine form the basis of education as a tool to meet its purposes for capitalist subsumption of labour

Tables 1 and 2 on the next two pages provide a general idea of the state of education in this period and are not meant for detailed comparison The data on government and government-aided schools shows that only a small number of girls and boys were educated in this period in a mix of mission schools and Chinese schools Those who attended school were predominantly Chinese for boys but Europeans and Eurasians for Girls The total numbers educated were relatively much smaller than compared to present enrolment rates though the relatively disproportionate amount of Chinese boys enrolled in this period suggests that the confucianist logic also accompanied the largely Chinese migrant labour Since it is safe to assume that schooling in this period was a luxury, it would also tend to suggest that there was already in existence a relatively wealthy class of Chinese in society More research into these inferences would be interesting but is not the purpose of this thesis

Table 1: Types of English Boy’s Schools in Singapore, circa 1819-1941 (Lim,

2008, p70)

Table 2: Types of English Girl’s Schools in Singapore, circa 1819-1941 (Lim,

2008, p71)

By 1939, the world was at war, and the colonial megamachine focused its machinations on making war against the military megamachine of Japan

The Military Megamachine Period, 1942-1945

This period provides an opportunity to compare two foreign megamachines vying for control of the region and the world Like the Western colonial megamachines, the Japanese magamachine sought the riches of Asia Taking lessons from the Western colonial megamachines, in 1940, the Japanese megamachine advertised their honourable intention of creating the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity sphere extending from China to New Guinea and Singapore

And also in a similar vein, according to Crone-Arbenz et al (1988, p80), “Why couldn’t Asians rule Asians … [and] Why should Caucasian colonialists be allowed to exploit and export tin, rubber, oil, tungsten, etc to their home-countries, leaving the 450-odd million natives half-starving, depleted, heart-broken, dependent, obsequious and God-forsaken? On their part the Japanese believed in themselves – in their Emperor, their gods and in the superiority of their youth who were among the toughest and fiercest” Indeed, the ramblings of a rival

megamachine, Japan resolved to take by force what they were late to acquire opportunistically The Japanese megamachine had made preparations utilizing the Japanese citizens who were working in Singapore at the time and “had studied everything – from the eccentricities of the locals to the secrets of the impenetrable Malaysian jungles Dead bodies sent for burial in Japan contained maps and other vital information” (Ibid, p81)

Singapore was invaded on 1st Feb 1942, and by 15th of that same month The British had surrendered even though they possessed military superiority, their love

of coin probably outweighed by their love of self-preservation (Ibid, p83) Perhaps this too could be added to the list of brutalities meted out by the British colonial megamachine? It is a matter of historical irony, that the humiliating British surrender took place at the very site which represented western eotechnic prowess (American) in Singapore – the Ford motor factory The island was renamed Syonan meaning “Light of the South” but despite the Japanese pre-invasion indications to the contrary, they began the systematic slaughter of any and all resistance showing special brutality for the Chinese, exacting revenge for their support of China against previous Japanese incursions “Thousands were machine-gunned on beaches and buried in self-dug-out graves” (Ibid, p116) Under the constant eye of the Kempeitai or military police, public executions were implemented for lesser crimes such as robbing, whose unfortunate heads stuck on poles in prominent locations became warning posts for other would-be criminals

All schools were appropriated by the Japanese occupation forces and according to Lim, The Cairnhill school was “used as a ‘comfort station” for officers and other ranks” (Lim, 2008, p71) It is safe to assume that all public services including education ground to a virtual halt Intensifying the divide and rule policy, the Japanese favoured one race, despising another, namely the Chinese, and turned even family members into would-be informants If the paleotechnic factory in western civilization became a “house of terror” (Mumford et al, 1934, p174) because of the inhumane treatment and regimentation of life, then the Japanese military megamachine also turned Singapore into one The significance of this period in the development of the post-colonial megamachine life-sense was that the emphasis on pecuniary values at the expense of life values was a virtue

compared to the wanton disregard for non-Japanese life But “what began as a nightmare had to continue as such for three-and-a-half years” (Crone-Arbenz et al,

1988, p119) At the end of which, the previous colonial megamachine would return to re-claim their prize

The Return of the Colonial Megamachine, 1946-1958

The British Military Administration (BMA) was set up to return Singapore to the normalcy that existed before the Japanese occupation Many basic necessities were in short supply “Could history then blame them if they had behaved a little like the Japanese military administrators” (Ibid, p139)? For example, the contractual system was adopted to supply the needs of the local populace, but as Crone-Arbenz et al (1988, p140) reported, “the army and the contractors seemed

to have and enjoy everything” The youths who completed their university life in this period “had justifiably been anti British colonialism” (Crone-Arbenz et al,

1988, p141) including some of the pioneers who would later form Singapore’s first independent government, among whom was Lee Kuan Yew (Ibid, p142) The irony was that the return of the previous colonial megamachine sparked the desire for freedom from the local populations, especially after having the opportunity to compare the experiences of brutality inflicted by the foreign megamachines Although “the direct reaction of the machine was to make people materialistic and rational: its indirect action was often to make them hyper-emotional and irrational” (Mumford et al, 1934, p284) This desire for freedom, though long in the making, could be seen in terms of what Mumford calls the

“resistance to the machine” (Ibid, p285) The first of the attempts to wrest freedom away from the British colonial megamachine came in the form of what is now known as the Communist Emergency This referred to the state of emergency declared by the British to prevent a possible communist insurgency led

by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and its militant armed wing formed during the occupation, the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) – a group that had been instrumental in resisting the Japanese both in Singapore and Malaysia Use of force and detention without trial were imposed on any and all suspected members of the MCP and MPAJA and their collaborators (Tremewan,

1994, p14)

The communists responded by launching attacks on British concerns and were responsible for the murder of the second High Commissioner of the Communist Emergency, Sir Henry Gurney (Crone-Arbenz et al, 1988, p154) In essence, the emergency was “really an undeclared war between the British colonial government and the MCP” (Ibid, p157) which conducted a war of guerrilla terrorism, used during the occupation, against the British Militant communism was the culmination of nearly two centuries of megamachine rule, in which a large poverty class had been created, with some improvement towards the end of the British colonial megamachine but which ballooned again during the reign of the Japanese military megamachine, exacerbating the conditions of poverty and human degradation Indeed this was a centuries old class struggle renewed and surfaced by military conflict As Crone-Arbenz et al observed, “communism thrived richly in poverty” (Ibid, p159) The British had attempted to address this root cause by revising wages “to reflect the post-war cost of living” (Ibid, p149) but this was too little too late

The MCP launched a major military offensive in December of 1948 and the MPAJA was renamed the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) The British response was swift and fierce, imposing anti-guerilla warfare, resettling thousands of Chinese squatters, strafing villages and even torturing prisoners (Tremewan, 1994, p16) The importance of Singapore and Malaya, relating the global interests of the neotechnic colonial megamachine was clear from the

“ferocity of the British military response”, as Tremewan (1994, p17) rightly states, resulting in the defeat of the MNLA by 1955 Singapore was spared the open British military response to preserve the economic interest of the colonial megamachine, relying mainly on police enforcement and detention without trial for suspected communists (Tremewan, 1994, p16)

Into the midst of this militarised class struggle, Lee Kuan Yew brought the interests of the local “bourgeois nationalists” (Ibid, p17) to the fore In a student discussion group in 1950, Lee said: “But if we do not give leadership, it will come from the other ranks of society, and if these leaders attain power, as they have the

support of the masses, we shall find that we, as a class, have merely changed

masters” (Ibid) [in bold my emphasis] Tremewan (1994, p17) argues that their

upper-class status would be elevated to that of master by “making a deal with the colonial power” thereby setting the stage for the post-colonial megamachine

In addition, Lee had surmised that the British would have had been more accepting of a leadership which shared “certain ideals in common with the Commonwealth” (Ibid), thus supporting the principle tenets of the megamachine Realising that canvassing the support of the masses was a prerequisite to political success, Lee established himself as an activist lawyer for more than 100 unions and associations The unions were the traditional platform for communist canvassing (Ibid) Lee persevered in this endeavour despite being ridiculed for his bourgeois background and his inability to speak Mandarin and/or Chinese dialects but was able to form the People’s Action Party (PAP) in 1954 including mainstream communist leaders and elements (Ibid) The non-communists controlled the Central Executive Committee to prevent British sanction while the communists had the support of the masses in the party (Ibid) At the same time Lee established close ties with the British Special Branch and especially the Director of the Special Branch (Ibid) These alliances were crucial if the PAP was

to achieve victory in the 1959 elections and formed the basic raw materials of the fledgling local machine

The British megamachine sought to enhance its divide and rule policy through education According to Tremewan (1994), the “British educational policy in Singapore after the war must be seen in the context of its broader strategy to defeat the left throughout Malaya and Singapore by manipulating communal factors of race, language and religion to prevent further development of unity among the lower classes” (Ibid, p76) This was done by taking control of the Chinese schools which had prospered before the occupation without British involvement to control the spread of communist ideologies, improving the English education to create a locally sympathetic capitalist class and widening the gap between the Chinese-educated and English-educated Chinese, eventually

“destroying the social base” (Ibid, p77) of the former Upper class occupational positions were reserved for the English-educated while the vernacular educated were relegated to technical positions (Ibid, p78) Thus the British megamachine

education as the vehicle for transmission But, according to Tremewan (1994), this policy could not be made explicit because “the Chinese education system still had considerable power to mobilize the masses.” In what Tremewan (1994, p78) termed the “pretense of accommodation”, “the colonial administration used the ideological cover of a multilingual education policy to move towards its goal of a centralised, state controlled education system which would be most likely to produce a cooperative [but small proportion of] English-educated capitalist class (mainly Chinese but including a few Indians and fewer Malays)”, thereby transforming the “vast majority of the population … into wage labourers, an industrial working class” (Ibid, p79) [in brackets, my addition] According to Tremewan (1994, p79), this was “the legacy on which the PAP-state refined to suit the contingencies of its political ambitions and its alliance with foreign capital” (Ibid, p81) The PAP would build on this legacy when they won a resounding victory to gain independence for Singapore in 1959

Transition to the Local Megamachine, 1959-1964

On 31st May 1959, the PAP which “had secured 43 out of the 51 seats in the first Legislative Assembly of the new self-governing state of Singapore, polling 53.4%

of the votes cast” (Crone-Arbenz et al, 1988, p204) addressed the masses at the Padang Interestingly, “the English-educated voters had largely rejected the PAP” (Ibid, p206) This was due to anti-PAP sentiments built-up in the English-

language newspapers, the Singapore Standard and The Straits Times (Ibid) By

1961, however, growing divisions in the uneasy alliance with the communists had begun to unravel and “after Lee forced a vote of confidence in the legislature on the merger proposals” (Tremewan, 1994, p27), the communists split from the PAP, taking 80% of the PAP membership including most of the cadres, and formed the Barisan Sosialis This proved a fortuitous development, because as Tremewan (1994) explains “the Lee faction had finally isolated its opponents so that the full weight of the security apparatus could be brought down upon them” (Ibid) And indeed, the communist leaders were systematically targeted and imprisoned without trial throughout this period under Operations such as

“Coldstore” (Ibid) After virtually eliminating its opposition, the government sought to strengthen and entrench its power base The PAP, as Tremewan (1994) explains, had “begun systematically to extend the role of the

PAP-state and to tie in its parliamentary political organisation to the Singapore PAP-state administration From this period it becomes appropriate to refer to the ‘PAP-state’, a key characteristic of the local megamachine, to describe this characteristic

of PAP governance” (Ibid, p31) To counter the declining entrepot trade and rising unemployment, the local machine pursued a policy of Import Substitution Industrialisation (ISI), as did many other Asian Tigers, in which dependency on foreign imports is reduced by manufacturing the imported products locally In this way, “foreign capital could retain its interests, continuing to profit from the acquisition of raw materials and also from the provision of technology and credit” (Ibid) The formation of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) helped in the regulation of the growing industrial working class that resulted, carefully excising communist elements ISI however, required a large hinterland to make local mass production cost effective, but Singapore’s expulsion from Malaya in

1965 caused an initial setback (Ibid)

Education in this period also reflected the struggle between the political right and left Extending state control to education, all content of vernacular education was replaced with a “standardised state approved syllabus” (Ibid, p81) The syllabus would ensure that the system produced workers with the required skills for the ISI policy Standardisation was not implemented without resistance, especially in the Chinese-vernacular schools which provided the base for the intellectual left, and was not limited to the syllabus but to political ideology as well As Tremewan (1994) reports, “students and faculty [of Nanyang University] were arrested, expelled or deported for their political activities The imposed curriculum reorganisation of Nanyang in 1964 led to widespread protest, which was summarily suppressed” (Ibid, p83) [in brackets my addition]

Consolidation of the Local Megamachine, 1965-1986

By 1965, the communists had been politically defeated and social control of the growing industrial working class was achieved through tripartite relations, comprising government, industry and worker representatives, under the auspices

of the NTUC The loss of the Malayan hinterland after expulsion in 1965 meant the impracticability of ISI However, this period coincided fortuitously with a rise

seeking favourable locations overseas The amount of autonomy the local megamachine had secured through its PAP-state apparatus, the zero-tolerance it had showed for communist elements, as well as the extensive social control it exerted through the NTUC and education, all foundation elements of the local megamachine, proved ample incentive for it to secure FDI from capitalist countries such the USA Indeed, as Tremewan (1994, p87) observes, “the new strategy [of] Export-Oriented Industrialization (EOI), became the economic alliance between the PAP-state and foreign capital from 1965 onwards”

In 1966, the implementation of the bilingual policy meant that “all first-year secondary pupils were required to learn a second language From 1969, “all students had to offer a second language in the school certificate examinations” (Tremewan, 1994, p87) The bilingual education policy assured the ascendancy of

English as lingua franca, a neutral language which would improve cohesion and

provide a gateway to the science and technical knowledge of the west

Development of the Neo-megamachine, Post-1986 to the present

In this period, the Singapore megamachine emphasized the attraction of foreign capital making Singapore an “offshore centre for foreign capital” (Ibid, p39) The policies successfully positioned Singapore as a regional if not global financial hub, with its attendant multiplier effects As money and investments flowed into Singapore, more employment was created and the retail sector expanded as incomes rose, leading to continuous virtuous cycles of economic growth But the transition to a knowledge economy intensified the megamachine’s processes of human capital development Continued upgrading of skills and lifelong learning became key phrases of the new economy Education was heavily emphasized as the path to success in political rhetoric and annual heavy investment in education contributed to the legitimacy of the PAP-state But thus legitimacy was derived from the inseparability of PAP-state orchestration of the economy, economic success and educational success with increasing rhetoric as a package deal Unlike the development of the PAP-state apparatus which transformed the local machine to the megamachine, and apart from the development of colonial impulses through the emphasis on overseas branches, the development of the neo-