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

Table of Contents
Page
Abstract

2

List of Tables

3

List of Figures

4

List of Plates

5

Chapter 1 | Introduction

6

Chapter 2 | History of Megamachine Development in Singapore

24

Chapter 3 | Objects of Cyborganic Social Reproduction

45

Chapter 4 | The Hyper Human Cyborg

85

Chapter 5 | Towards Singularity or Apotheosis?

103

Bibliography

114

Appendix 1 | List of mp3 Projects

123

Appendix 2 | Baseline ICT standards for Schools in Singapore

124

1


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 PAPstate 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.

2


List of Tables

Page
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
to the new informatics of domination

89

Table 4: Characteristics of Hyperspace

91

Table 5: Summary of Singapore’s Masterplans for ICT in education

106

Table 6: Summary of Future Schools and their ICT Foci

108

3


List of Figures

Page
Figure 1: The Singapore Education Landscape

58

Figure 2: The Singapore Education Journey

59

4


List of Plates
Page
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 5: Dunlop Rubber Co. Ltd., circa 1940

71

Plate 6: Nokia handphone factory, circa 2007

72

Plate 7: Digital Office, circa 2008

73

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 10: Fusionopolis Tower

75

Plate 11: Singapore Sports School

75

Plate 12a: Achievement banner hung outside Deyi Secondary School, circa
2000

75

Plate 12b: Three achievement posters hung on the facade of Zhenghua
Secondary School, circa 2000

76

Plate 13: 2011 MOE teaching advertisement

79

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

81

5


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

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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

7


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
8

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

9


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 everincreasing 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

10


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 massconsumption as required to sustain the process at ever increasing scales. Here, I

11


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 ‘lifesize’ 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,
12


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
by their countless electrospatial counterparts, as edifices to this new religion.
13

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
14


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
stupefying efficiency of the outside world” (Ibid, p57). Into this void is emptied
15

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

16


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 parapsychological 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.

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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

18


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
organic and the control of the neo-megamachine, complicity in this ultimate

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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 neomegamachine 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
‘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)

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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 neomegamachines 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 neomegamachine, at which point the rhythms of normal space are best forgotten and
21


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 neomegamachine. Thus, instead of Haraway’s (2000) cyborg utopia, the cyborgs
being reproduced under the present regime of omnipresent TNCs, the global neomegamachines, 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
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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.

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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

24


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
displace the dominion of the local machine.
25