What Singapore needs is smart Singaporeans, not smart city

The story of a smart city is the way to go forward, so much promise like having paradise on earth. On the other hand many have rightly said that an infrastructure that is going to do every small little thing for the people would take away the people’s instinct to think and make them stupid in the process.

What Singapore, or any country, needs are smart people. If you are still not sure what that means, look at Japan. Japan is a country of smart people. Smartness in this case is not like making everyone a super talent, but making everyone a thinking person, a caring person, everyone thinking that he is a Japanese and Japan is his country, his home. When the people, like the Japanese, think that way, you would have very little need to have to depend on computers to keep the country in order. The people would not only be disciplined, responsible and proud of being citizens of the country, they will keep the country clean and in order. No more littering, no more graffiti and would even pick up litters left by careless people.

Smart people would transform a country into a garden paradise with very little effort and very little mechanization or computerization. Alas, you can only have such a country like Japan when the people are of one mind, think alike and acting and responsible, and very country proud, like home proud.

How could this happen in a country where half the population is made up of prostitutes and vagabonds? Would the building of a smart city help to turn it into a better place to live in when the prostitutes and vagabonds, people who have no attachments and ownerships in the island and would just treat the island like a cheap hotel? Even an expensive hotel will be turned into a rubbish dump after the guests checked out.

And the sad part, we are getting dafter while the new hotel guests are not any better either. Smart city or smart people which way to go forward? When the people are daft and cannot be taught, then smart city is the way to go, provided the daft people can still be taught to press buttons and follow instructions. And provided the city is not filled with prostitutes and vagabonds that have no attachment or concern to the city’s state of affairs.

Taiwan and South Korea are probably the next to rise to the level of the Japanese, with smart people and not totally dependent on smart machine and smart city that would make them more daft. The social achievements of Japan as a country and people far outweigh all the economic numbers that other countries are chasing. Japan as a well organized country and a nation of smart people is an act that is very difficult to follow and impossible for a country that has turned itself into a cheap hotel filled with 3^rd world inhabitants and daft citizens that don’t even know that this is their country.

And to make the situation more depressing is that any Sinkie that turns 55 also loses his brain, becomes irresponsible and mindless, stupid is the word.

Kopi Level - Green