Singapore – a small place with big online influence

Sriram Krishnan talked about media landscapes in Singapore. It was meant to be a joint presentation with his friend Justin Lee in Singapore, but that didn’t quite work out. Probably because the internet connetion here really sucks.
Anyway, Singapore is interesting because of it’s small size yet prominent position online. Sriram showed that out of the top ten search terms on Technorati, two were individuals from Singapore.
The reason? Part of the explanation is that Singaporeans are early adopters, they have good infrastucture, pick up trends from Japan and Europe.
The younger generation want to express themselves more. There are more blogs than youths in Singapore, Sriram Krishnan said.
The government, “Gahmen”, is revamping schools with tablet pcs, podcasts and other high-tech stuff. But they also set limits to what you can say and do both irl and online.
– The sedition act says you can’t speak your mind. If you do and it’s considered to be dissatisfactory to the governement, you’ll be put in jail.
Krishnan showed a site called Stomp, which is the gahmen’s answer to web2.0 for young people.
– In my opinion it’s failed miserably. It’s a bad site.
There’s also content regulation online. The govenment wants to preserve traditional Asian values. Political bloggers needed to register prior to the elections in 2006, and podcasts were banned altogether.

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