Greetings from Penang Restaurant, bravo to the Center for Policy Initiatives

Greetings from Penang Restaurant

My dear friends and comrades in the audience and in cyberspace,

Many thanks Dr. Lim Teck Ghee for his willingness to read my note of thanks on the occasion of the launching of the website of The Center for Policy Initiatives. Teck Ghee and I had a vision that the center will evolve as a think tank that will have a flavour of The Frankfurt School of Social Research, a center created as a safe haven for German intellectuals exiled from Nazi Germany, in the 1940s.

I just arrived from PENANG an hour ago -- no, not Penang where Permatang Pauh shines but a Malaysian restaurant in Philadelphia which has chains in major cities in the US. I had visited Temple University and had stopped by for "berbuka puasa" (breaking of the fast") and had thought of what to write for this occasion. I knew that I would get my tenth reminder from Teck Ghee as soon as I arrive home to New Jersey.

How global our world is, how pervasive the Internet has become-- how scary and wide-ranging the implications will continue to be.

Driving home I was composing this speech. Would it be about "creating think tanks that think?", " the need for a government that never sleeps"?, "a final appeal to abolish the ISA to save Raja Petra?", "the rise of the corporate-cybernetic-conspicuous-consuming-crony-capitalistic Malays"? -- I don't know. Or to write about "my life in cyberspace and how to make friends and influence people and to annoy the government"

I have finally chosen to annoy anyone in power that are allergic to "sensitive" issues by making some predictions of what the Internet can do, as a wonderful tool of creative anarchy and social transformation.

Why are governments afraid of the power of citizen journalism - and of the Internet in general? What will be the conclusion of this great war between government bloggers and Guevara-inspired guerilla-like grassroots-based cyber-freedom fighters? Especially the one that is raging in malaysiakini, malaysia-today, and other online portals. A war that is bringing criminals from the battlefields of cyberspace into the real world of the interrogation rooms of the Anti-Corruption Agency. Ones that help expose wrongdoings of elected representatives and bring their downfall. Battles that rage between ideas of totalitarianism in universities and prospects for a freedom of inquiry and anti-fascism in college classrooms. Spaces of knowledge that bring us up to date information on what magnitude of corruption the New Economic Policy has brought us after 40 years.

"Information wants to be free" as some Internet guru and philosopher of this cybernetic age might say. And as information leaves the author and transmits and transmutes itself, it assumes a life of its own. As the historian Ibnu Khaldun would say, to the effect "as the hands writes nothing is erased…" Or, as the physicist Stephen Hawkings would say, even data that transmutes is a life-form in itself.

But why is the Malaysian government afraid of the power of the Frankenstein it has allowed to roam the streets of Cyberjaya. Why is Malaysia's "ministry of cybernetics" afraid of this creature the magnitude of the mythical "Badang" (the strong man of the age of pre-agriculture Malaya) that becomes like "Agent Smiths" of the movie The Matrix roaming the streets exposing brutishly the corrupt practices of men and women, screaming of these people to be brought to justice?

Who can stop our Agents Smiths – even if counter-agents called Malaysian cyber-troopers as those cybernetic soldiers of fortune are cloned and droned and then released into blogs to engage in battles of the cyberfrontier – in this Mahabaratha of Malaysian cyber-rama as the general elections approaches?

There are several explanations I am proposing below- on how the Internet is going to further transform nations, such as Malaysia:

The power of cybernetics

1. In a globalised post-industrialist world, the development of a cybernating nation will continue to follow, to a degree or another the Centre-Periphery perspective of development.

2 .Pure historical materialist conception of change cannot fully explain why nations cybernate; the more a nation gets "wired" the more complex the interplay between nationalism and internationalism will be.

3. The more a nation transforms itself cybernetically, the more extensive the enculturalisation of the word "cybernetics" will be.

4. The extent of the enculturalization of the concept of "cybernetics" will determine the speed by which a nation will be fully integrated into the global production-house of telematics.

5. The stronger the authority of the regime the greater the control and magnitude of the cybernating process. In a cybernating nation, authority can reside in the political will of a single individual or a strong political entity.

6. The advent of the Internet in a developing nation signifies the genesis of the erosion of the power of government-controlled print media. Universal access to the Internet will determine the total erosion of government-produced print media.

7. Creative consciousness of the peoples of the cybernating nation will be centralised in the area of business and the arts, modeled after successful global corporations.

8. Critical consciousness of the people of the cybernating nation will be centralised in the area of political mobilisation and personal freedom of expression, modeled after successful Internet-based political mobilisation groups.

9. At the macro-level of the development of a nation-state, the contestation of power is between the nations cybernating versus the nations fully cybernated, whereas at the micro level, power is contested between the contending political parties/groups.

10. The more the government suppresses voices of political dissent, the more the Internet is used to affect political transformations.

11. The fundamental character of a nation will be significantly altered with the institutionalisation of the Internet as a tool of cybernating change. The source of change will however be ideologically governed by external influences, which will ultimately threaten the sovereignty of the nation-state.

12. Discourse of change, as evident in the phenomena of cybernation, is embedded in language. The more a foreign concept is introduced, adopted, assimilated, and enculturalised, the more the nation will loose its indigenous character built via schooling and other means of citizenship enculturalisation process.

13. Postmodernist perspectives of social change, rather than those of Structural-Functionalists, Marxist, or neo-Marxist, can best explain the structure and consequences of cybernetic changes.

These 13 propositions above I generated almost 10 years ago in my doctoral dissertaion seminar at Columbia University, New York city. These are general ideas of what is happening in the world of cyberspace as it clashes with the worldview of the physical space of the illusive concept of the "nation-state."

Conclusion

Today, I found myself not merely as a non-participant observer and analyst of the changes happening in Malaysia, but an agent of change itself participating in this exciting transformation our nation is constructing, with the blessings of the rakyat.

I found myself not only calling for changes through the more than 250 articles I have written on Malaysia, since 4 years ago, but also dragged into centers of controversy as a consequence of what I have written.

But most importantly, through an agent of "cybernetic change" itself I am grateful to have worked closely with so many wonderful "online colleagues and comrades" I have never met but looking forward to extend my "brothership-in arms" as we continue to push for changes. Among those dear to me are Dr. Lim Teck Ghee, Dr. Syed Husin Ali, Sdr. Purushothanam, and Sdr. Jeff Ooi and those who have given their commitment to the creation and ultimately the launching of this website -- people like Sdr. Desiderata (YenLong), Sdr. Bern Chua, Sdri. Hui Mei, Sdr. Wan Fadzrul, Sdr. Sonny, and many others. Thank you so much for the friendship and your commitment to peace, social justice, and multiculturalism. I look forward to meeting many of you in person some day, if not in Penang Restaurant in Philadelphia or New York City, but in Penang, in the state of Permatang Pauh!

Have a wonderful launch party and never ask for whom the bells tolls, for it toll for thee. Onward to the march of the cybernetic revolution, we do not have anything to lose except our Malaysian ISP providers.

Most importantly, visit our website often and contribute to our good cause. http://english.cpiasia.net/

Thank you for reading this speech, Teck Ghee.

From Srivijaya to Cyberjaya

From Srivijaya to Cyberjaya: Thoughts on the cultural impact of computer-mediated technologies on schooling in Malaysia and preliminary propositions for a Theory of "Cybernating Nations"

by Azly Rahman

In the following passages, structured as a reflective essay, I will discuss the following ideas:

a) prologue; being on the relationship between culture and technology

b) the relationship between historical-materialism and literacy

c) operational definition of "Cyberspace"

d) relationship between the concept of schooling in Malaysia's Cyberjaya e) some propositions concerning the development of "cybernated" nation-states

Prologue

The relationship and interplay between culture and technology has been and continue to be a paradoxical one; on the one hand culture as it is taken to be a system of variegated meanings which coerce and chaotize peoples, and technology, on the other which rationalize and open up new horizons of more systematization of cultural psyche are both mirror images of materiality and ideology. Embalmed within this proposed set of relationships is the classic proposition in modern-day capitalist thought that the fruits of technological and material advancement will "trickle-down" to the masses . I believe we are to rigorously explore these that interplay for us to arrive at an understanding of not only the political-economic, but also the post-structurality of the phenomena of technological change in transcultural settings.

By "political economic" I mean the close relationship between the forces of decision making with the forces of material production and by "post-structurality" I mean the complexity of phenomena can analyze beyond the Structural-Functionalist or the neo-Marxist paradigms. We begin with these questions: At what point does culture cease to become imaginative and become a system of control in its entirety?, And when does technology cease to be shackles of human consciousness and become horizons of the possible, or to inhabit the futuristic meadows of cultural creation? These are paradoxical questions with inherent contradictions when we speak of the aesthetics of technology and the virtuality or even the spirituality of machines when we frame the question of looking at technology from the lens of materiality as well as imaginative virtualities. The discussions which follow is not an attempt to be a fully structured essay as I feel that this will be rather limiting in terms of addressing some of my thoughts on the interplay between technology ,culture, and education from post-Industrial development bringing in Malaysia as a case in point.

True to the spirit of it as being reflective moments which somewhat will capture some of my cumulative thoughts concerning the development of nation-states, I have thus loosely structure it. I have attempted to treat it as a piece of writing in the tradition of James Joyce's stream of consciousness which address primarily the question of how the definition of literacy is taking a technological dimension and one in which I am exploring from the perspective proposed by McDermott and Varenne (1995) in which they wrote that " the concept of culture has always had a utility to those with a sense for patterns in the work people do in organizing their lives together" (p.344). Though the authors' analysis primarily focus on the culture of literacy and schooling in the United States, contextualized in the discussion of "culture as disability' in general, I believe the analysis is relevant at the international perspective. I read the proposition above as one which can be appropriately applied to any discussion on technological culture as defined by current trends in cybernetics as they are, as further defined as "new literacies", as a disabling factor on a grander scale. By this I mean the way computer literacy is defined as the literacy of the Information Age and how this consciousness (superstructure, ideology, whatever one may call it) is a juxtaposition of the material development and infrastructural arrangement of the culture in question.

My example of Malaysia as a "cybernating nation" as I call it and how its historical-materialistic development is a case in point of how the new meaning of literacy is extended even to the transformation of the entire nation based on computer-mediated communication technologies. Marx writes about the idea of humans making their own history under existing circumstances based upon the material life they live. By producing their means of subsistence, they are indirectly producing their actual material life, goes the Marxist conception of historical materialism. And later Gramsci wrote of the "common sensical" aspect of the adoption of the ideas of the ruling class by those ruled, when a particular innovation in technology becomes "hegemonic". Hence the idea of technological/digital literacy in this age of computer-mediated communication technologies, becomes a "hegemonized" idea non-conspiratorially produced by those who owns the means of production.

Historical-materialism and Literacy

Pure historical materialists might argue that human beings produce their actual material life by producing their means of subsistence. Ideology emerge as a natural progression of the need to maintain the class distinction and hence to rationalize and to order society into one emblematic of the capitalist formation and formulation. And at every epoch, according to this Hegelian view of social movement and transformation, the ruling class maintains their control over productive forces via the control of the means of intellectual production. There are limitations to this analysis nonetheless. If intellectual means of production can be equated with the idea of literacy, then at every epoch and historical march of Capital --- at every notch carved by the logic of capitalism --- the idea of literacy is shaped by the notion of how this definition "disables" culture. By this I mean, the notion of control exercised by those who owns the means to produce Oral, Print, and next, Digital definitions of literacy so much so that at every juncture of historical materialistic progress those who are enabled are the ones who are in "deep play" with the notion of literacy and those disabled are those who are outside of the pre-defined system of literacy.

McDermott and Varenne (1995) writes about the disabling tendency of culture in which definitions and conceptions of what it means to be cultural, be it from the Oral, Print, and Cybernetic traditions might also mean to be included and excluded from the democratic lives. I read this notion of culture as disability as a radical way of looking at what it means to be literate in this so-called Age of Information and primarily from the point of view of schooling in a technological society, this dimension of disability can be extended as an analysis if we look at education as a means to define the level of development of a particular society as defined by those who owns the means of global production. My interest in this inquiry particularly is to look at and to describe how nations "cybernate". In the process of moving towards a definition of a "cybernating nation" following the road most taken by those which have historically developed and via the philology, ideology, and semanticity of how these nations define "development", how might technological advancement become enabling or disabling? How are the productive forces of the society organized with regard to schooling as mass reproduction and as a means of harnessing human capital? Cui bono? Or who benefits? And what gets enculturalized for what purpose? These are essentially the questions, framed from the perspective of Critical Theory, which interest me and of which I find appropriate as a framework of inquiry into the impact of new technologies on peoples, societies, nations, etc. In this inquiry, I am taking Malaysia as an example of a nation-state and as a unit of analysis of how the evolution of literacy accentuate the question of base and superstructure of the culture and society and how, next, the notion of radical cultural reengineering is shaped as agenda instead as shaped by historical-materialistic forces.

For this notion of literacy, instructive are Conklin's (1949) work on the poetics of literacy, termed as "bamboo literacy" of the Mindoro and of those in Southeast Asia as exemplified by the complexity and aesthetics and systematicity of the writings systems of the people of the region (Kupers & McDermott, 1996.) These findings point to the idea of the primacy of the Print tradition in defining the intellectual tradition of pre-cybernetic societies. I am looking at the nation-state of Malaysia from the historical-materialistic perspective in which I view the development of the nation as one passing from pre-Capitalist, Colonialist, Independent, and post-Colonialist stages. The starting point is the ancient Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Srivijaya as a context of governance in which ideology is maintained via a systematic manner albeit religio-mythical in character and will end in an elaborated discussion on the establishment of a new and "post-modern" kingdom with cybernetics as the nucleus of control and a means to control the minds of those governed. My focus, nonetheless in the discussion of this cybernetic kingdom of Cyberjaya is on the means by which schooling is used as a means of social reproduction in which the productive forces of Malaysia is harnessed, under the name of development and rhetoricized under the banner of anti-Western hegemony, to participate in this global production house of materials and ideology and cultural industry.

Hence this reflection paper "From Srivijaya to Cyberjaya" to contextualize the inquiry into one which will focus on the development of the notion of culture in pre-Capitalist stage in which ideology is one evolved from religio-mythical sources to the notion of culture in a cybernetic era in which ideology is ritualized and disseminated via broadband and terabytes per second. I will first provide a brief history of Malaysia particularly with emphasis on its British colonial history. Brief Concept of Cyberspace Because the overarching and most central theme as well as most used terminology in this essay is that of "Cyberjaya", the following brief discussion is necessary for the purpose clarity: Central to the concept of Cyberjaya as embalmed in the concept of Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor is the idea of "cyberspace" which has become a catchphrase for many a popular writing on technology, as well as a leitmotif of a new from of postmodernist conception of a "digital self". And since in this reflection paper, I will utilize extensively the pre-fix "cyber", it is necessary to look at some of its operational definitions. One of the definitions of "cyberspace" states it as a "metaphor for describing the non-physical terrain created by computer systems." Online systems, for example, create a cyberspace within which people can communicate with one another (via email), do research, watch videos, listen to music, or simply engage in the act of virtual shopping.

Like physical space, cyberspace contains objects (files, mail messages, graphics, etc.) and different modes of transportation and delivery. Unlike real space, though, exploring cyberspace does not require any physical movement other than pressing keys on a keyboard or moving a mouse. This definition however can be further enriched by looking at it from several categories of definition. We look at the nominal, denotative, and connotative definitions of "cyberspace" For nominal definition, we will say that cyberspace mean the environment in which we interact as beings in a digital context. This would allow us to assume that the words surrounding --- words such as "environment", "interact", "beings" and "digital" --- will be primitive terms understood by those in this postmodernist era. For denotative definition, it could be crafted as such: "Cyberspace can mean either of the following; a digital space where text, audio, video and graphic intermingles, or a space wherein human interaction depends on the use of 'clickstream' technology as well as well as the creation, destruction, or recreation of data" And the list of terms which denotatively refer to cyberspace can be extended as it would allow for empirical import as well as fertility because of the availability of primitive terms in it.

For connotative definition which lives and breathes on a combination of primitive and denotative definitions and one which allows especially for the fertility of the concept and attempt to arrive at precise communication so that empirical import can be build in, I would craft the term as such: "Cyberspace is an abstracted area in which the human self participates in the exchange of social messages in an environment characterized by the complex communicative system in which information in digital form and character is encoded, coded and decoded for a particular purpose". Having looked at the operational definition of the word "cyberspace", we now proceed to looking at the unit of analysis by first understanding what Malaysia's project is and how it has evolved historically in response to a range of phenomena such as colonialism, Independence, and national visioning on a grand scale.

Malaysia before Cyberjaya and "Multimedia Super Corridor"

It is useful to look at a brief historical aspect of Malaysia, particularly as a former British colony, as we attempt to situate the development of The Multimedia Super Corridor. Arguably the history of modern Malaysia began with the kingdom of Melaka (Malacca), Islam was the religion of the traditional rulers of the kingdom and the feudal system was the feature of statecraft. Historical records state the founding of Melaka as in the early 1400; the Malay kingdom established by a Javanese prince in exile from a power struggle in Palembang, Sumatra. The kingdom of Melaka was short-lived in that the navigational and gun power of the Portugese was more superior to those of the Melakkans. The kingdom fell to Portugese rule in 1511. The date became the earliest of a series of colonialism which "ended " with the granting of Independence on August 31, 1957 by the British. Melaka, after the Portugese, was taken over by the Dutch who saw the entire region of Southeast Asia as an economic region rich in spices. The superior sea power of the British Empire as well as its sophistication in gunnery, coupled with the slogan of "Guns, Guts, and Glory" led Malaya to be taken over from the Dutch.

British rule was the longest; having its impact on the historical-materialistic and ideological aspect of the once considered glorious Malay kingdom. British colonization of Malaya, much like that of the Dutch in Indonesia, the French in Indochina, the Spaniards in Philippines left a lasting economic impact on the peoples of this nation-state. Whilst it is not the intention of this introductory section to dwell into the details of it, suffice it is to state that the part of the history of modern Malaysia is about, among others, learning how to built a multi-racial foundation of national identity based on the advanced applications of science and technology. History perhaps taught this nation-state that technology is an extension of the "body of this nation-state" and that those who owns the means of (advanced) technological control will survive different forms of colonialism. In the following paragraph we look at the historical background leading to the granting of Independence in Malaya. Malaysia was officially and peacefully granted independence on August 31st, 1957. It was in September of 1963 that the Federated and non-Federated states of Malaya, Sarawak, Sabah, and initially Singapore united to form what is now known as Malaysia. In 1965 however the busy port of Singapore ceased to be a member of the Malaysian federation and became an independent city-state. There were several reasons why the British gave Malaysia its independence. One is that it is costly for the Britain to maintain the states because Malaysia's population was growing, and the ailing British Empire saw that it was no longer profitable to maintain colonies.

Another reason was that trend of self-determinism was gaining momentum especially in the form of nationalist struggles, armed or un-armed, all over the world. In Malaysia, education in various forms was beginning to produce people within each of the ethnic communities not content to leaving their future entirely in British hands. Anti-colonialist attitudes were stirring in the 1930's, heralding strong Malay political organization later . Another reason independence was granted was because the native has been given enough skills and training in the style of British colonialism, to govern the country. Many from the aristocratic class went through the process of education for social and political enculturalization through the British education system. In Malaya itself, English-type schools proliferated in all the states paving way for a systematic form of education for social reproduction and for the continuation of Imperialist ideology. The structuring of hegemony, at the level of education of the nations was a feature of the strategy of colonialism. Of importance as a result of this form of mental colonization was the creation of a class of administrative elite among the "sons of the soil": or the Bumiputras out of the sons of the Malay Sultans. Malaysia's first Prime Minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman Putra Alhaj, was educated in Britain. So, naturally he would govern more like the British, with British idealism, because of his training. Malaysia's second Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, and the third Prime Minister, Tun Hussein Onn, was also British-educated. Malaysia's fourth and current Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, is the only Malaysian Prime Minister that was not British-educated.

The education of Mahathir Mohamad and the system he evolved through, has contributed much to the manner the nation-state's development policies were engineered. His fondness of "Looking East" and "Buying British Last" and his suggestions of creating an "East Asia Economic Caucus" are among the slogans and proposals used to create a sense of identity for in the few decades after Independence.It is against this backdrop of the character of this nation-state's fourth Prime Minister and the his administration's coming back to "Asian values" whilst at the same time seeing the power of Information Technology that the Multimedia Super Corridor was created. In the following paragraphs I shall detail the development of The Multimedia Super Corridor.The medical doctor turned politician has been the Prime Minister of Malaysia for almost 20 years and Malaysia has been independent for 44 years.

Cyberjaya and Malaysia's MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) Project

Malaysia, under the rule of its Prime Minister of 20-years, Mahathir Mohamad has of late embarked upon the creation of a cyber-society run from an administrative capital called CyberJaya within the techno-cultural context of so-called a "Multi-Media Super Corridor" (MSC). The MSC is a built on several hundred square kilometers of area in which "seven flagship applications" will be its feature. It mimics California's Silicon Valley and Singapore's cybercity concepts among others of which Malaysia will be moved to a new paradigm of living based upon the "humane application of high technology" manifested in the sub concepts of electronic government, tele-medicine, electronic banking, electronic commerce, and pertinent to our analysis, the smart schools. The biggest airport in Asia, the Kuala Lumpur International Airport was recently opened to facilitate the development of CyberJaya.

From the "wired-up" capital city as the initial program of mega-structural change, the Malaysian government planned to create cyber-principalities out of the thirteen states constituting the federation. It is envisioned that by the metaphorical year of 2020 the country will have achieved the status of an advanced fully-industrialized nation able to compete with other advanced industrialized economies namely the United States of America, Europe, Japan and Singapore. Accordingly, the notion of such an advancement would however be based upon a strong foundation of religious and moral values. Thus, through its "smart schools" of which the prototype will be operating on January 1, 1999, future generation of this nation will be able to fully and democratically participate in the Information Age grounded in a strong sense of nationalism. The country now has specialized universities among them moving towards the total implementation of the Internet as a mode of delivery. One that was recently established itself as the first "virtual university" in the country prides itself in its total absence of physical interaction between the student and the instructor.

Discourse on Developmentalism

In the rhetoric of change embedded in the discourse concerning Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor, one finds such cluster of words to be more developed, couched in even neutral and positively appealing terms, signifying the nation's unbridled faith in quantum leaping into the era of cybernetics. Words like "world class", "world's first", "leading edge", "high powered", "top quality", "bold initiative", and other "magnificio"-resounding ones are employed in the discourse. Illustrative of the use of these is in the vision statement of the Multimedia Super Corridor; a blend of aesthetics of technology and the drive to be technologically competitive in a borderless world.

In describing Cyberjaya (Malay for "Cyber City") the Prime Minister eulogizes:

Cyberjaya is envisaged to be the model multimedia haven for leading, innovative multimedia companies from all over the world to spin a 'web' that will mutually enrich all those involved with it. Especially created as the first MSC designated cybercity, it enables world-class companies to take full advantage of the unique package Malaysia offers to create an environment that is fully conducive towards exacerbating the growth of information technology and multimedia industries. It offers a high capacity global and logistics infrastructure, backed by a 'soft' infrastructure, which includes financial incentives and competitive telecoms tariffs, as well as a set of new cyberlaws that will form a legal framework to facilitate the growth of electronic commerce. (p.1) And his rhetoric on the importance of accepting the futuristic idea of the MSC is summed as such: … it will enable Malaysia to leapfrog into the Information Age. The establishment of the Multimedia Super Corridor, of which Cyberjaya is the nucleus, is an evolving step towards embracing the future. It's long-term objective is to catalyze the development of a highly competitive cluster of Malaysia multimedia and IT companies that will eventually become world class. (p.1)

And thus, Smart Schools ("wired" schools) is designed to become the means of social reproduction to live with the nation's fantasy of becoming technologically aggressive and competitive and one in which the MSC will become, as the Prime Minister's technocrats say "Malaysia's gift to the world". The setting up of the Smart Schools within the Malaysian government's project to establish Cyberjaya and Putrajaya as two of the world's first intelligent cities, is a technological deterministic step towards further linking the nation to the world's financial capital. And within the perspective of schools as a means of social, economic, political, cultural, and technological reproduction, Smart Schools are aimed at producing citizens able to function effectively in the Information Age.

Discourse on Malaysia's Smart Schools

The idea of the "wiring up" of the Malaysian schools can be summarized by a communiqué from the Ministry of Education (1997) which read: By the year 2010, all approximately ten thousand schools will be Smart Schools. In these schools, learning will be self-directed, individually- paced, continuous and reflective. This will be made possible through the provision of multimedia technology and worldwide networking. (p.1) The plan for such a purposeful change was thus to utilize computer-mediated learning technologies particularly the Internet and World Wide Web so that the national agenda of creating a "cyber society" will be realized by a targeted metaphorical date of year 2020.

Echoing Sarason (1996) on the need to look at changes in the school system as derived from inside and outside of the schools (p.12), the case of the initiated "smart school" concept can be said to be derived not only out of "first order analysis, but particularly apparent and dominant out of "second order " dictates – out of political-economic perception of what constitutes progress and how education must be made to respond to them.

As the "smart school" concept relates to this second order changes, the Ministry of Education (1997) notes that:

Malaysia needs to make the critical transition from an industrial economy to a leader in the Information Age. In order to make this vision a reality, Malaysia needs to make a fundamental shift towards a more technologically literate, thinking workforce, able to perform in a global environment and use the tools available in the Information Age. To make this shift, the education system must undergo a radical transformation (p.1)

The Minister of Education announced that the first Smart School is being built with a cost of Malaysian Ringgit 144.5 million of which, aside from it being "wired", "will also be equipped with a hostel for 800 students, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a hockey pitch, a hall, and other facilities" (Business Times, 1996, p.3). It was also said that the school would start operating in January 1999 and eventually all Malaysian schools will be operating based upon this concept. Within the rhetoric embedded in the discourse on Smart Schools, what is the issue in the larger context of the meaning of "development" for a nation mimicking advanced capitalist countries? Whether the control of high technological production in the hands of the few in the techno-industrialized West and whether nations such as Malaysia plunging itself into this long term program of uncertainty and in the wheel of the international capitalist machine – all these are not issues in the educational and social reform. The idea and implementation of such a controlled paradigm of "progress" and "development", once institutionalized may carry consequences anathema to the idea of reform based upon the use of "available technology and appropriate resources" constructed within a paradigm celebrating grassroots, bottom-up, and humanistic initiatives with philosophies "closer to the people". In what way is Malaysia attempting to realize its fantasy of cybernating its society entire?

In realizing this dream, this post-colonial cybernating nation has invited a panel of advisors more impressive than those who sat on the advisory board of the National Council of Educational Excellence (NCEE) of the United States of America whose report "A Nation At Risk" evoked a national debate on the "rising tide of educational mediocrity". In the case of the Malaysia's project those in the panel, among other are Chief Executive Officers/Presidents of the following corporations: Acer Incorporated, Alcatel Alsthom, Microsoft Corporation, Bechtel Group Incorporated, British Telecom, Cisco Systems, Compaq Computers Corporation, DHL, Ericsson, Fujitsu Limited, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Motorola Corporation, Netscape Communications, Reuters, Motion Picture Association of America, Twentieth Century Fox, and tens of others of global giants in the telematics and media-related industries. Professors of Business and Public Policy from Silicon Valley's Stanford University are among those guiding the development of Malaysia's cyber initiatives. Malaysian subsidiaries of these giants in the world of multi-billion dollar club transnational corporations have been set up for such a project. The multi-billion dollar airport recently opened thus is an important infrastructure to help these companies land quickly and safely on the Multimedia Super Corridor. What do all the interlocking directorates and picture of controlling interest have got to do with the discourse on "development"?

Discourse on development: Further questions

The shibboleth of developmentalism embraced as discourse of technological progress by Independent nation-states quantum leaping into the Era of Informatics most often mask the ideology, power relations, and human agents involved in the production of the discourse itself. As it concerns dependency, is the involvement of major Silicon Valley corporations signifying what Latin American dependendistas would call an era of Center-Periphery pan- and virtual capitalist formation, or in what Frederick Jameson would call, a cybernetic era of late capitalist formation? Whilst Marcuse (1941) may see the progressive dimension in modern technology as it may shape social relations, in the case of cybernating Malaysia, will the technological deterministic and hypist mentality embraced become yet another tool for social control and as a cybernetic extension of patriarchal "Big Brotherish" brand of Asian Machiavellian political machinery much needed to be dismantled?

And as it relates to learning, as Turkel (1997) put forth in her critique of computer-mediated learning technologies, will the rapid, massive, unavoidable, irreversible deployment of computers in all Malaysian schools bring schooling closer in meaning to education and liberation – or will it be another means to coerce Malaysian children to help realize and carry forth the agenda of computer hardware and software giants fighting their unending battle over global domination? And finally, in relating to Bakhtin's (1981) notion of heteroglossia, is the term "development via technological progress superficially analyzed by technocrats of the MSC such that much of the "pollutants" which has glossed over a more liberating meaning of the term, are taken ass aura itself? In other words, who defines what the meaning of technological progress mean and in what ways do that definition get embraced uncritically and contextualized and next be turned into policies in a megastructural scale as such as in the case of the MSC?

Closing Remarks

In this brief paper I have discovered more questions on the issue surrounding Malaysia's technological fantasy. Paradigmed from the Critical Theory perspective in looking at power and ideology embedded in the transfer of discourse, I have looked at Malaysia's strategic plan, the Multimedia Super Corridor as a text to illustrate the nature of change and the notion of interplay between culture and technology. The contradictions inherent in the development of pan- and virtual capitalism (see also Kroker & Weinsten, 1998) is alluded to in the discussions on the tension between this nation-state's wanting to be free from the economic label of "underdeveloped and developing". And there are inherent contradictions too in its effort to leap into a more sophisticated world of globalism into a "borderless world"; the world of virtual and post-post-industrial capitalism, beyond the classic Rostowian definition of "mass consumption" as the highest stage of capitalism.

Some afterthoughts and propositions yielded

But is this analysis adequate when looked at from the point of view of culture, communication, and imagination as we meditate into the meaning of the interplay between culture and technology? What would the notion of possibilities mean as a form of utopianism we can derived from this brief survey of Malaysia as a nation experimenting with national development? In deriving patterns and translating them into propositions which will contribute to a possibly new "Theory of Cybernating Nations" what can we uncover? Having briefly analyzed the context of change and situate the discussion within a Critical Theory perspective and anchoring it with the idea of "technological culture as disability", what might also be the poststructural dimension to this character of Malaysia as "cybernating nation"? It may seem peculiar that this reflection paper does not end with a conclusion but instead go in a different tangent in the direction of looking at the aesthetics of technology and offering a proposition that Cyberjaya, Malaysian Multimedia Super Corridor, and The Malaysian Smart Schools Projects may indeed be seen from the point of view of technologizing the nation so that the creative dimensions of living can be realized. In short, cybernetic culture can promise to be a means to communicate and cultivate the imaginative aspect of civilization, somewhat in the context of technology as "exteriorized imagination" and the tools of mind expansion?

Can Cyberjaya also be seen as a form of bricolage by the powerbrokers and policy-implementers in which the deep play of culture is operating at a sophisticated and hegemonic level? To elaborate this further, I would propose that Malaysia as a nation-state is not only attempting to harness the power of digital technologies to transform and communicate a newer form of civilization in order for the older structures --- pre-traditional, Sultanate, colonial, etc --- to be dismantled. It is a form of cultural bricolage when the ideas of development and progress as well as the religious dimensions of it are weaved into the program of "technological determinism" (or "cultural engineering"?) and a newer scenario of progress is created. These, I believe are some of the post-structural questions I wish to further explore as a continuation of the inquiry concerning Cyberjaya. I would like to close these moments of reflection by reporting on some of the propositions I generated out a pilot study conducted in May 2000. Using a some aspects of The Grounded Theory Methods of generating concepts from documents related to Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor Project, I generated the following propositions to be further developed.

Thirteen Propositions on "Cybernating" Nations

1. In a globalized post-industrialist world, the development of a cybernating nation will continue to follow, to a degree or another the Center-Periphery perspective of development.,

2 .Pure historical materialist conception of change cannot fully explain why nations cybernate; the more a nation gets "wired" the more complex the interplay between nationalism and internationalism will be.

3. The more a nation transforms itself cybernetically, the more extensive the enculturalization of the word "cybernetics" will be.

4. The extent of the enculturalization of the concept of "cybernetics" will determine the speed by which a nation will be fully integrated into the global production-house of telematics.

5. The stronger the authority of the regime the greater the control and magnitude of the cybernating process. In a cybernating nation, authority can reside in the political will of a single individual or a strong political entity.

6. The advent of the Internet in a developing nation signifies the genesis of the erosion of the power of government-controlled print media. Universal access to the Internet will determine the total erosion of government-produced print media.

7. Creative consciousness of the peoples of the cybernating nation will be centralized in the area of business and the arts, modeled after successful global corporations.

8. Critical consciousness of the people of the cybernating nation will be centralized in the area of political mobilization and personal freedom of expression, modeled after successful Internet-based political mobilization groups.

9. At the macro-level of the development of a nation-state, the contestation of power is between the nation cybernating versus the nations fully cybernated, whereas at the micro level, power is contested between the contending political parties/groups.

10. The more the government suppresses voices of political dissent, the more the Internet is used to affect political transformations.

11. The fundamental character of a nation will be significantly altered with the institutionalization of the Internet as a tool of cybernating change. The source of change will however be ideologically governed by external influences, which will ultimately threaten the sovereignty of the nation-state.

12. Discourse of change, as evident in the phenomena of cybernation, is embedded in language. The more a foreign concept is introduced, adopted, assimilated, and enculturalized, the more the nation will loose its indigenous character built via schooling and other means of citizenship enculturalization process.

13. Postmodernist perspectives of social change, rather than those of Structural-Functionalists, Marxist, or neo-Marxist, can best explain the structure and consequences of cybernetic changes. These thirteen propositions most obviously need to be refined in order for us to look at the phenomena of transcultural impact of computer-mediated communications from perspectives beyond ones characterized as pure Structural -Functionalists or neo-Marxists.

I have mentioned this idea at the beginning of this reflective paper. I end this reflection paper with the suggestion that technological development as it impacts Independent nation-states must be looked at from the perspective of "interplays and deep plays" and then to look at how these two notions relate to the transformations of social relations. These fertile areas of research are even more interesting for us to engage in precisely because the transplantation of dominant concepts can have both hegemonizing as well as enculturalizing effects with long term-consequences.

References

Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). "Discourse on the novel," in The dialogical imagination: four essays. Holquist, M. ed. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press

Conklin, H. (1949). "Bamboo literacy on mindoro" In Pacific Discovery, 2, 4-11

Fullan, M. & Steigelbauer, S. (1991) The new meaning of educational change, 2d. Ed.. New York: Teachers College Press.

Kroker, A. & Weinstein, M. (1998) "The political economy of virtual reality: pan capitalism". Available:http://www.ctheory.com/com/apolitical_economy.html.

Kupers, J.C., and McDermott, R. (1996). "Insular Southeast Asian scripts,"In P.T. Daniels and W. Bright. The world's writing systems, 474-484. New York: Oxford University Press.

Marcuse, H. (1941). "Some social implications of modern technology" in Studies in philosophy and social sciences, Vol. IX

McDermott, R., & Varenne, H. (1995). Culture as disability. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 26, 324-348.

Ministry of Education Malaysia Communique (1997) "Implementation of smart schools" Available: http://eprd.kpm.my/imp smart.html.

Ministry of Education Malaysia Communiqué (1997) "Smart schools in Malaysia: A quantum leap" Available: http://eprd.kpm.my/prosmart.html

Multimedia Development Corporation (1998) "Overview" in What is the MSC? Available: http://www.mdc.com.my/msc/index.html

Sarason, S.B. (1996). Revisiting the culture of school and the problem of change. New York: Teachers College Press

"Smart schools will start in January '99: Najib," Business Times, September 23, 1996. Available: http://www.cmsb.com.my/subsil/ubg/smart99.htm

Terkel, S. (1997) "Seeing through computers: education in a culture of simulation" The American Prospect no. 31 (March-April 1997)

167] Raja Petra: A Bohemian Rhapsody

Raja Petra: a bohemian rhapsody
A Tribute to a republican of virtue
Dr. Azly Rahman
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2734287104054737756


"Is this a real life.. is this just fantasy
Caught in a landslide.... no escape from reality
Open your eyes... look up to the skies and see...I'm just a poor boy.. I need no sympathy.. because I'm easy come.. easy go...
"
-- Freddy Mercury, Bohemian Rhapsody


There is so much sadness in our nation as we bemoan the imprisonment of a voice of conscience manifested in this individual called Raja Petra Kamaruddin.

There is so much anger in our consciousness as we wonder what justice denied can do to us as we see the rot in our cultural values and political lives -- right in front of our eyes, feasted through the media.

Raja Petra is seeking deep in his inner self and journeying deep into the archeology of his consciousness and into the history of his self and his ancestors, seeking solace and guidance in what next to be done in this world in which the self argues and revolts against systems of oppression. His psyche and the journey of his soul perhaps bring him to a hill in Melaka some several centuries ago -- a place where the legendary philosopher-king and the Bugis warrior stood on a hill riddled with bullets from the advancing Dutch colonials. Raja Haji died standing.

Raja Petra is a gifted human being who is showing us what Henry David Thoreau, the American transcendentalist, spoke about "civil disobedience. He is what the philosopher Karl Jaspers reminded us of the urge to disobey and ideology that has become corrupt to the core and has employed the state apparatuses to silence those who speak truth to power.

Raja Petra is what Che Guevara means to Malaysians, a gung-ho revolutioner whose interest in motorcycles helped him craft his own hugely successful "motorcycle diaries" and helped him symbolize and embody the free-wheeling spirit of Americanism of the "Easy Rider era".

Raja Petra is the symbol of the yearning in us to break free and to let out these "screams of consciousness" so that we may learn to understand better what actually is the problem with this nation that needs therapy as a consequence of its obsession with law and order it creates and it destroys. It is the Brahma-Shiva-Vishnu of politics that we are seeing at play in the cosmic cycle, this karma of Malaysian politics that is meeting its end of the yuga as consequences to the production of many duryodanas (Durjanas) in the process of birth and rebirth.

Raja Petra is a Bugis warrior who installs kings and umpires and players in this game of politics we all are asked to play for fifty years. He make us conscious of the complexities of power relations, the roles of individuals in installing ideologies, the power of institutions in designing "inscriptions that alienate people" and helps us understand the nature of Malaysia's interlocking directorates -- of who owns what and what are the consequences of these.

Raja Petra is a commander-in-chief of a movement that exists in cyberspace and orchestrates the powerful dialogues that send shivers to the spines of those who cheats in this political game.

Raja Petra has shown us what jihad means and how we must carry on this revolution to its final destiny -- a republic of virtue in which philosophy reigns supreme over ideology, whatever the ideology may be.

Raja Petra will be out soon, to carry on the revolution in the consciousness of men and women -- a perpetual revolution that forces us to look at ourselves as historical beings and wonder "what have we done to make this country as it is in which justice is denied, delayed, and dictated by the few."

But there will always be Divine Justice, if one believes in the power of the Divine -- in a Just God and God of Mercy and Compassionate who works in mysterious ways and one who works through the agency called human beings -- that will make things end well, even if all is not well in the beginning of things.

"Man proposes God disposes", many have said. In us all, in the humiliation wrought upon this human being called Raja Petra and in the imprisonment of this voice of conscience, lies the mystery of revelation of justice. We shall see what lies ahead. We must, however continue to become makers of history -- to protest either silently or out loud either in solitude or with others in pomp and pageantry, protest we must as we are essentially human beings born free with natural rights endowed by the Creator. Borrowing Rousseau, we believe that "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains..."

Protest we must. Investigate we must too. Demands we will orchestrate in order to have corrupt men and women, powers abusers amongst us, and swindling robber-barons amidst us to be brought to justice in the court of law that shall be governed by the people, through the will of the rakyat.

The rakyat awaits your homecoming, a candlelight vigil will adorn the street in front of the prison-industrial complex built by those who designed architecture of structural-violence, unseen by the naked eyes of the rakyat. Like the candles that await Sita Devi and like the candle-lights that bathes Jelaluddin Rumi, the light from the rakyat soothes and calms your bruised spirit in their patient wait for your freedom.

A grandchild of that Bugis warrior prince, a philosopher-ruler, better that many a prince Machiavelli pays tribute to-- you are a voice of conscience and you shall be free. Free at last.. free at last...

Welcome back to the bosom of society. This is your bohemian rhapsody.

Welcome back, Saudara RPK.

This is my humble gift to thee. May these words renew your spirit.

158] Of "badangs" and "blogoticians"

Of 'badangs' and 'blogoticians'

Azly Rahman | Feb 25, 08 2:20pm

The mythical Malay Frankenstein, Badang, has now morphed into "Agent Smiths" of movie The Matrix, fame in circa Malaysian 12th general election. If one is to believe in the Last Supper, the next one will see a banquet of a new regime. It might take the 13th general election henceforth to install a good check and balance system, in tune with "the scales" - the symbolism of the current ruling regime. Badang is a monster created by human imagination—the technocratic fantasy of Man. It is a surrealistic being; meaning that Badang was created by a mad Majapahit scientist in antiquity, to help human beings extend their capability of roaming rudely but justifiably into cyberspace. The Malays are not poor in Nostradamic ideas of change – the Puteri Buluh Betong was the first test-tube baby, Hang Tuah was a prototype of a Robocop and disguised as an over-glamourised fool, Hang Nadim was actually a clever investment banker who fooled the King of Temasik into importing banana trees to be planted along the shores of Singapura during a pre-meditated swordfish attack, Si Tenggang was a warning to Malays not to venture into frontierland and not challenge autocratic regimes. Raja Bersiong was a warning to modern Malaysians to be aware of blood-sucking leaders who control the oil-rich country's wealth and leave the poor of all races to protest on the streets and get arrested and pepper-sprayed. As one who grew up in Johor Bahru, perhaps Si Bongkok Tanjung Puteri reminds me of the Malay's Beauty and the Beast—trapped in a dungeon waiting for the right time to come out and runamuck protesting against the rape of Johor through the newly-built corridors with a hegemonizing name "Iskandar Development Region". When I begin my doctoral studies analysing the impact of digital communication technologies on "cybernating nations" such as Malaysia, I had statements I made in my weekly seminar on dissertation writing at Columbia University; that hypothesised the possibility of the Internet as a major player in the changing landscape of Malaysian politics. I was studying the web "Laman Reformasi", run by Raja Petra Kamaruddin, way back in 1999 and sympathized with the plight of Malaysiakini when their servers were confiscated by the current regime. Little did I know that, through Fate decreed many years later I would be a columnist for both online portals. I decide to become a columnist after watching the story "A Beautiful Mind" about John Nash, the Princeton professor and Nobel Laureate in Mathematics. I have since enjoyed sharing my views on many aspects of Malaysian politics, true to my calling as an academician. This is my contribution to society, from far. Major force Back in the year 1999, I made the prediction that the Internet will be a major force in "cybernating nations" such as Malaysia and that democratic spaces will be widened. In politics, the government, I hypothesised will be challenged by this protean technology and will be made aware of the death of distance and the birth of 'digital proletariatism". There will be creative anarchy in the nature of Malaysian democracy evolving. I do not consider myself as a blogger in the real sense of the word, merely an archiver of some of my own writings. But I do see a role I can play in raising the level of political, cultural, and philosophical dialogue to a challenging level. As campaigning begins, I see the impact of digital communications technologies increasing. I see bloggers you have never met, running for political office. One that will be the prototype is perhaps Mr. Jeff Ooi, an interesting case study of Malaysia' first "blogo-tician". Broadcast media might be supreme as long as the rakyat is not yet fully digitally-literate. Government-owned and controlled television stations will be useful when the rakyat can be made to be stone-glued to their television sets. Hegemony of the ruling regime can continue to be maintained as long as the rakyat is given bread and circus (or roti canai and fun-fairs). This is the feature of the success of the previous 22-year old regime; one that began to crumble after the fall of the Thai Baht of 1997, after the Tom Yum Effect of 1997. Why are governments afraid of the power of citizen journalism - and of the Internet in general? What will be the conclusion of this great war between government bloggers and Guevara-inspired guerrilla-like grassroots-based cyber-freedom fighters? Especially the one that is raging in Malaysiakini and Malaysia-Today; war that is bringing criminals from the battlefields of cyberspace into the real world of the interrogation rooms of the Anti-Corruption Agency. Ones that help expose wrongdoings of elected representatives and bring his downfall. Battles that rage between ideas of totalitarianism in universities and prospects for a freedom of inquiry and anti-fascism in college classrooms. Spaces of knowledge that bring us up to date information on what magnitude of corruption the New Economic Policy has brought us after 37 years. "Information wants to be free" as some Internet guru and philosopher of this cybernetic age might say. And as information leaves the author and transmits and transmutes itself, it assumes a life of its own. As the great historian Ibnu Khaldun would say, to the effect "as the hands writes nothing is erased…" Or, as the physicist Stephen Hawkings would say, even data that transmutes is a life-form in itself. But why is the Malaysian government afraid of the power of the Frankenstein it has allowed to roam the streets of Cyberjaya. Why is Malaysia's "ministry of cybernetics" afraid of this creature the magnitude of the mythical "Badang" that becomes like "Agent Smiths" roaming the streets exposing brutishly the corrupt practices of men and women, screaming of these people to be brought to justice? Who can stop our Agents Smiths – even if counter-agents called Malaysian cyber-troopers as those cybernetic soldiers of fortune are cloned and droned and then released into blogs to engage in battles of the cyberfrontier – in this Mahabaratha of Malaysian cyber-rama as the 12th general elections arrives? Informational hegemony The Internet is challenging the very root of informational hegemony; one that is built upon totalitarianism as a consequence of the 22 year-rule of the previous regime. The current regime is trying to create the same formula, not realizing that our Berlin Wall is crumbling. The younger politicians in the ruling regime are not reading the signs on the wall. They are still lulled by the ideology. The middle class has evolved. To demand for respect is wrong, the politicians need to earn them - not force the rakyat to accept them via threats. This is still happening even in our public universities, let alone in schools and the rural areas. The Internet is going to be the biggest winner in the GE-12. "I blog, therefore I am" as I once said in a gathering of Malaysian students in Washington recently. The rush to become powerful by the younger politicians is not going to be a smooth journey. Alternative media will play its role in checking them and also check-mating them. But what changes do we see are going to happen to policies, after the general election? Already we are seeing that the current regime is like a Santa Claus, bringing goodies to the people. I hope the universities are asking the current regime to release them from the shackles of the UUCA and the Akujanji and to teach our students how important it is to be politically conscious and to have the ultimate freedom in choosing their political future. In America, any student group can be formed based on political affiliation - so that college students can decide the next government free of threats. We are doing the wrong thing in Malaysia. Terribly wrong for the students and lecturers to be threatened if they are involved in raising political consciousness. What will be the student/faculty respond to this threat? Whatever the outcome of the GE-12 will be, demands for more freedom will continue to be made. Since four years ago, we have seen how the current regime has been "deconstructed" and made accountable to what they have done. Of course things have worked quiet well but many are still terribly wrong. Criticisms on our democratic practices is an evolving act. Ultimately, I think, race-based politics and political arrangements is going to lose its relevance, making way for a truly multicultural two party system that is going to be evaluated based on the merit of their honesty and commitment to humanistic and humanitarian ideals. In all these, the Internet has played an important role in deconstructionism. Essentially, through education for political consciousness in cyberspace, Malaysians are beginning to educate each other that race, ethnicity, and color are merely "constructs" and works well with the ideology of "social dominance" such as "ketuanan Melayu" or the "ketuanan of any race". The real basis of human nature is the DNA. It is with this premise that we can look a the children of all races as "gifts of the Creator" to be fully developed, nurtured, and educated out of the prejudices of their parents. Through the lens of the DNA, we will not need the NEP, nor any form or mutation of race-based politics. Even the "myth of the lazy native" will remain a myth. The real winner in Malaysia's general elections is again, technology of the body - the Internet and cyberspace. Badangs and blogoticians are the forces that will be with us.

156] Mantra of the 'super corridor'

Mantra of the 'super corridor'

Azly Rahman | Feb 11, 08 1:38pm

Now we are aiming to be a major player in the Information Age industry. For this we will welcome with open arms foreign investments. Those who have experience doing business in Malaysia know that we are ever willing to listen and to act to meet the multifarious needs of foreign investors. And so the Multimedia Super Corridor is created to become a giant test-bed for the soft and hard products of the cyber age.- Dr Mahathir Mohamad, speech to MSC investors, 1998 Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers. - Karl Marx, circa 1880s In Sanskrit, the word "mantra" (mentera in Malay) means formula. Mantra is correlated to the idea of a grand strategy or a belief system in the form of political ideology that permeates the consciousness of the leader and the led or the author and the authored. Inscribed onto the consciousness of the people, via print, broadcast, and electronic media is the mantra of economic success rapidized by information technologies. The formula for success many developing nations, such as Malaysia, is undertaking is one characterized by the dependency on Informational Communications Technologies (ICT) particularly on the technology of the Internet/broadband to fuel the engine of capitalist development, relegating the state as a haven for cheap pool of labor in the microchips industry. The mantra of success is one driven by the belief in the formula of "cybernetics." I will discuss how the "cybernetic chant", one orchestrated and broadcast by the government, permeates through the social environment. Let us first look at the geneology of "cybernetics" I shall relate the idea and genealogy of cybernetics to the idea of what is currently known as "Information Age" or its varying and more fanciful terms such as "The Age of Cybernetics," or "The Networked Economy," or "The Digital Age." I will then relate the idea of this "formula" of cybernetics to the notion of "inscription" of the ideology onto the landscape of human consciousness since the beginning of the second half of the twenty-first century. On Cybernetics The idea of "Information Society" or "The Network Society" stems out of the revolution in computing and has transformed our psychological, ideological, and material landscape of humanity. Social relations of production are altered and transformed as a result of new patterns of division of labor in what many a Chaos theorist would call patterns that arise out of randomness and chaos. There are different levels of meaning of cultural change as it is impacted historically by "technologies of the body," such as the Internet. In the case of cybernetics as technologies of the mind, this seems to be a "natural progression of late stage of capital formation" and in fact, as the Critical Theorist Herbert Marcuse and many a Frankfurt School analysts would call an age wherein technologies are at its final stage of development which will actually liberate humanity out of mundanity as a consequence of automation. Hence cybernetics, as a foundation of artificial intelligence and a philosophy close to the Cartesian philosophy of the mind and appealing to the "philosophy of human liberation via technological feats," is at the present, the highest stage in the development of techno-capitalism. This proposition is reminiscent of Vladimir Lenin's conclusion on the analysis of capitalism made almost a century ago. Writings on social structures and political theory have primarily centered on the relationship between Capital, Humanity, and Nature. Many sociologists have written on how capitalism appropriates natural resources through the creation of labor and surplus value, which will then establish classes The debates that rage between the proponents of free market enterprise and command or controlled economies revolve around the issue of human nature, and who gets to control the production and dissemination and the monopoly of capital. At times, on a different plane there is also the reflection on the need for capital to be interpreted not only as physical or material, but also as cultural, and metaphysical. The central issue of these writings and debate and reflections is of equality and equity; an issue that continues to plague humanity in this age of rapidized technological developments, as echoed by many a contemporary social theorist. In the age of cybernetics, French social philosopher Rousseau's notion of the discourse on the inequality amongst men can be used to explain the evolution of contemporary social problematique such as digital divide, architecture of power, and the erosion of the Self into fragmented and miniscule selves. Other themes also include the furtherance of protectionist democracy via the use of tools of cybernetics, the control over the coding, encoding, and decoding of information by those who monopolize information, and a range of other tools of imperialism and domination and hegemony deployed and employed to the fullest advantage of those who owns the means of social reproduction. And those who own the means to control these processes can also own the means to engineer cultural reconfigurations The nature of thought formation and consciousness production in the world of broadcast media can be exemplified in the media capitalism of Rupert Murdoch whose empire span Britain and the United States made possible by the modern oligopolic system of capital accumulation The scientific paradigm of cybernetics, by virtue of its origin in the mathematical and exact sciences, out of the Copernican Revolution, of Newtonian physics and of Principia Mathematica, onwards to its march of Classical Physics, and next, Quantum Physics and Informational and Decisional Sciences and so on - is a science which has appropriated the "Natural-ness" of the art of being human. Being a paradigm subjected to the development of propositions, verification by the testing of hypotheses, falsification by the rejecting and accepting of the null, and replicating these processes and so on and so forth, cybernetics creates a "space" between what is Natural and what is Artificial. In-between these spaces, Technology as the motivator of civilizations to progress and to dominate, to extent the limits of what otherwise is impossible (for example the navigational technology of Christopher Columbus which made it possible to open up European colonization of the Native Indians of Amerigo Vespucci's America) is also psychologically, a way to create the Technocratic and Authoritarian self. In between these spaces of Nature versus the Artificial lie Media as technology of the mediated self. Technology, as it is developed not by the hands of the "Author" has thence become a powerful tool of the surreal - of inequality amongst men. Popular culture presents technology as a colonizer of humanity, as exemplified by the theme of the movie, The Matrix. Cybernetics as a paradigm of thinking about the technology of action and feedback and the loops they produce is an interesting synthesis of three theoretical orientations: logical positivism, critical theory, and phenomenology The paradox is that on the one hand, it is derived from the Classical and Quantum Physics, on the one hand, it is a good foundational philosophy of technologism which combines many fields to form a unified theory of living things (like Critical Theory's attempt to universalize and integrate the disciplines, albeit in a dialectical fashion), and on the other hand, Cybernetics too is phenomenological. Precisely because we can derive three clusters of theories out of the paradigms above makes Cybernetics appealing and hegemonizing. The Internet as a manifestation of the ideology of cybernetics is a good example of how it is both a technology of advanced logical-positivism, and at the same time, one that is employed to make the concept of democracy more "accessible" when one goes into the study of free speech on the Internet. Cybernetics and the idea of Cyberjaya What is the link between the mantra of Cybernetics and the creation of Malaysia's Cyberjaya? I propose the existence of a possible link between Cybernetics and Cyberjaya; on how the idea of cybernetics, as Systems Theory (employed to explain the nature of how living systems operate in a loop-feedback fashion) suggested undergoes transcultural evolution. The idea is now interpreted and transmutated by the government of Malaysia to mean the base and superstructure of hypermodern digital cities such as Cyberjaya, a city that embodies a new spirit of national development. Hence, the term evolved from the description of the physics of living things to the politics of domination and control in what I argue, is commonly known in the world of militarism, as the science of Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C³I). In each phenomena of social transformations, lies the history of dominant idea and of power, technology, and ideology. In the case of Malaysia's corridor, the idea is alien and alienating to the masses. It is a transplantation of a mantra not understood by the local elites who benefit from the real estate projects associated to "cybernetics".

148] Rock and Roll Days!

My years of living in rock

Azly Rahman Dec 3, 07 1:55pm Adjust font size:

Doesn't anybody remember laughter…? - from Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven "Oh baby it's a wild world…" - Cat Stevens This weekend I did not think deep profound thoughts about my column. I was thinking about rock and roll. Yes – that music that was part of the wave of "yellow culture" our parents warned us about. We have known "sin" through rock and roll, some wise men would conclude. I want to share something about a passion I once had – about the passion of living in rock. So, I washed myself with the experience – through several YouTube videos on rock music. A visual of Queen's guitarist Brian May tormenting his Gibson Les Paul atop Buckingham Palace excites me. Imagine Hillary Ang of Malaysia's rock group Search or Man Kidal of Lefthanded playing a Jimi Hendrix-rendition of Negaraku atop the Istana Negara – that'll be the day when things have already runamuck! That'll be a serious latah-ization of this nation. I wanted to feel how old ideas can teach me what newer realities mean. "Old school versus new school", as these say these days, I wanted to test how my perception of the present can be altered by the music of the past. I was experimenting with my own stream of consciousness, as the Irish poet James Joyce would term it. If this column is a stand up comedy, it would be a Seinfeld; if it were an artwork, it would be Andy Warhol's' Campbell soups. Or "Urination", perhaps. No, I did not think about the three upcoming rallies, the government's accusation that the Hindraf leaders lied, the potential loss of GE-2008 seats by the ruling party, the UPM fiasco of the suspended student, the long term impact of mass protests and street rallies in relation to mass and democratized form of human rights education, the continuing intellectual saga of the UUCA and the Akujanji, my invitation to speak to students in Boston, Washington DC and Stamford, and the documentary on Jacques Derrida I am yet to watch. I sought solace in rock music. I "chilled" with it. I had so much fun chilling - away from the "chilling" national issues of the day. I have "sinned" again, perhaps. It is said that the guitar is the instrument of the Devil. I went into nostalgia-mode - I felt that I had long hair, tight Levis blue jeans, smoking a Marlboro, had Fonzie's "Happy Days'" leather jacket, and felt 'groovy'. And I had "Fung Keong" sneakers on too. Yes, the language of the mid-1970s came back. "Fag" was for cigarettes", "stoned" and "steamed" was for the feeling drug abusers had after getting "high", as sung by the group Deep Purple in "Smoke on the Water". The song immediately brought me thinking of Frank Zappa and his Mothers of Invention. This auditory and visual experience further brought me to my growing up years in Majidee Johor Bahru where I joined the elders in listening to an album called Rolling Stones' "Goat Head's Soup" (?) - in my head the tune "We Are an American Band" by Grandfunk Railroad playing. Energy and inspiration And yes, the Malay youth then were smoking something that smelled strange. In between running around barefoot in the kampong I would stop by at the favourite hangout of the older "kutus" (wayward youth) in my kampong – to take a peek of what they were smoking. But boy – they really had good, fun, and they had uncomplicated and unpretentious album covers back then. "It's a wild, wild, world…" as Cat Stevens would say. I could have been one of them (the kutus) if not because of an "imaginary friend" I had with me, all the time. Western influence was so pervasive – so addictive. It takes a new paradigm of consciousness to break free of its shackle. I drowned myself in the wave of old favourite music of "my generation". Raja Petra Kamaruddin of Malaysia-Today would say that The Who – Roger Daltry, Peter Townshed, and Keith Moon – is the band of his generation. Perhaps our most celebrated cartoonist Lat would choose Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock" as his musical human semiosis. My kind of music was the "Stairway to Heaven" genre. The music of Led Zeppelin, Yes, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Rolling Stones (now 'The Strolling Bones"), Carlos Santana, Rush, Queen, Genesis, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and Rainbow. And Eagles too. I explored "committed rock music" at one point in my life – the music of the Irish band U-2. Of late too I have been analysing the music and lyrics of the most celebrated Indonesian rocker Iwan Fals. These are the lyrical poets of my generation. There is so much energy and inspiration in rock music of the mid-1970s that I had refused to listen to rock of this Rempit generation. I hope our generation is not practicing he strange dance of the death metallists. I would prefer to listen to the sound of the whispering wind and my heartbeat than listen to bands such as Linkin' Park, Korn and Peter Pan of Indonesia. My apologies to this generation for my confession. I think the global music capitalists have become too greedy to produce good, sensical, rock and roll music. The children of this generation I think are more stoned and are gathering more moss as an after effect of the over-consumption of today's junk rock and death metal music. They do not know how to value the lyrics of the great rock and roll pieces such as "Stairway to Heaven", a three-part Led Zeppelin classic that every youngster of my age the were trying to learn to play on the old beaten Chinese-made "kapok" guitar. They have not listened to Queen's operatic masterpiece "Bohemian Rhapsody", Pink Floyd's simple yet profound "Wish You Were Here", or Yes' mystical magical "Turn of the Century" – or even Simon Garfunkel's lyrical poem "I am a Rock" to appreciate the philosophical messages behind the lyrics that are serenaded with, at times shrieking and Earth-shattering guitar riffs. The youth of Cybernetic Malaya need to go back to listening these classic and understand what freedom to think and explore means. I do not know what the Mat and Minah Rempits and Mat and Minah Reformasis are listening to. I would assume that there is a difference – the rempits listen to death and thrash metal and maybe gangsta rap and the reformists listen to soft rock, and urban and alternative music. I might be wrong in labeling them. Readers may email me to enlighten me on this. Back to Led Zeppelin - and what went into my head to shape my consciousness. Hey, I wrote about something here – about my generation and how the spirit of rock music can also inspire one to embody and promote free speech. Now I am energised to continue with equally serious issues for my upcoming columns. Long live rock and roll? Maybe.

129] The Internet Unplugged

The Internet unplugged

Azly Rahman Jul 16, 07 2:54pm

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Take seven more deep deep breaths. Stabilise your breathing. Go deeper into the word of your supra-consciousness until your reach a space. A space of bits and bytes. Welcome to cyberspace. Malaysian cyberspace. Think of two cybernetic landscapes – Malaysiakini and Malaysia-Today. Think of these questions below: Why are governments afraid of the power of citizen journalism - and of the Internet in general? What will be the conclusion of this great war between government bloggers and Guevara-inspired guerilla-like grassroots-based cyber-freedom fighters? Especially the one that is raging in malaysiakini and malaysia-today. A war that is bringing criminals from the battlefields of cyberspace into the real world of the interrogation rooms of the Anti-Corruption Agency. Ones that help expose wrongdoings of elected representatives and bring his downfall. Battles that rage between ideas of totalitarianism in universities and prospects for a freedom of inquiry and anti-fascism in college classrooms. Spaces of knowledge that bring us up to date information on what magnitude of corruption the New Economic Policy has brought us after 37 years. "Information wants to be free" as some Internet guru and philosopher of this cybernetic age might say. And as information leaves the author and transmits and transmutes itself, it assumes a life of its own. As the great Islamic historian Ibnu Khaldun would say, to the effect "as the hands writes nothing is erased…" Or, as the physicist Stephen Hawkings would say, even data that transmutes is a life-form in itself. But why is the Malaysian government afraid of the power of the Frankenstein it has allowed to roam the streets of Cyberjaya. Why is Malaysia's "ministry of cybernetics" afraid of this creature the magnitude of the mythical "Badang" (the strong man of the age of pre-agriculture Malaya) that becomes like "Agent Smiths" of the movie The Matrix roaming the streets exposing brutishly the corrupt practices of men and women, screaming of these people to be brought to justice? Who can stop our Agents Smiths – even if counter-agents called Malaysian cyber-troopers as those cybernetic soldiers of fortune are cloned and droned and then released into blogs to engage in battles of the cyberfrontier – in this Mahabaratha of Malaysian cyber-rama as the general elections approaches? There are several explanations I am proposing below- on how the Internet is going to further transform nations: The power of cybernetics 1. In a globalised post-industrialist world, the development of a cybernating nation will continue to follow, to a degree or another the centre-periphery perspective of development. 2 .Pure historical materialist conception of change cannot fully explain why nations cybernate; the more a nation gets "wired" the more complex the interplay between nationalism and internationalism will be. 3. The more a nation transforms itself cybernetically, the more extensive the enculturalisation of the word "cybernetics" will be. 4. The extent of the enculturalization of the concept of "cybernetics" will determine the speed by which a nation will be fully integrated into the global production-house of telematics. 5. The stronger the authority of the regime the greater the control and magnitude of the cybernating process. In a cybernating nation, authority can reside in the political will of a single individual or a strong political entity. 6. The advent of the Internet in a developing nation signifies the genesis of the erosion of the power of government-controlled print media. Universal access to the Internet will determine the total erosion of government-produced print media. 7. Creative consciousness of the peoples of the cybernating nation will be centralised in the area of business and the arts, modeled after successful global corporations. 8. Critical consciousness of the people of the cybernating nation will be centralised in the area of political mobilisation and personal freedom of expression, modeled after successful Internet-based political mobilisation groups. 9. At the macro-level of the development of a nation-state, the contestation of power is between the nations cybernating versus the nations fully cybernated, whereas at the micro level, power is contested between the contending political parties/groups. 10. The more the government suppresses voices of political dissent, the more the Internet is used to affect political transformations. 11. The fundamental character of a nation will be significantly altered with the institutionalisation of the Internet as a tool of cybernating change. The source of change will however be ideologically governed by external influences, which will ultimately threaten the sovereignty of the nation-state. 12. Discourse of change, as evident in the phenomena of cybernation, is embedded in language. The more a foreign concept is introduced, adopted, assimilated, and enculturalised, the more the nation will loose its indigenous character built via schooling and other means of citizenship enculturalisation process. 13. Postmodernist perspectives of social change, rather than those of Structural-Functionalists, Marxist, or neo-Marxist, can best explain the structure and consequences of cybernetic changes. These 13 propositions above I generated almost 10 years ago are general ideas of what is happening in the world of cyberspace as it clashes with the worldview of the physical space of the illusive concept of the "nation-state." Now take a deep breath. Take seven more deep deep breaths. Open your eyes. Welcome back to cyberspace—again! You have just finished reading a piece from ILLUMINATIONS.

112) An Ode to Bloggers

An ode to bloggers

Azly Rahman Mar 19, 07 12:41pm

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. Denis Diderot, French Enlightenment thinker There was non among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No: from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery. 'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley-Wollstonecraft Sometime ago, after reading Plato's narration of a conversation between King Thamus and the inventor Theuth concerning the impact of new technologies on society, after reading media guru Neil Postman's work Technopoly, and after deep reflection on the idea of the Luddites (a movement that "raged against the machine" during the Industrial Revolution), I penned verses which I find suitable to honour Malaysian bloggers in their onward march towards creating a spectre that will haunt the state-owned print media. Here it goes: P H A E D R U S II The Last Judgement of Thamus Circa A.D. 2020 Lines composed near the banks of Hudson River, New York city Background notes: They say that there dwelt at Naucratis in Egypt one of the old gods of that country, to whom the bird they call Ibis was sacred, and the name of the god himself was Theuth. Among his inventions were number and calculation . . . and, above all, writing. . . . To [the king, Thamus] came Theuth and exhibited his inventions . . . when it came to writing, Theuth declared: "There is an accomplishment, my lord the kind, which will improve both the wisdom and the mentory of the Egyptians. I have discovered a sure receipt for memory and wisdom." "Theuth, my paragon of inventors," replied the king, "the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practise it. . . . Those who acquire [writing] will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful. . . . What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory . . . ( Phaedrus, 95-96) And it was in the year 2020 In a not-too-distant cybercity As Socrates' narratives on cybertechnology Laments King Thamus's concern for the fate of academies And Theuth my inventor par excellence What say you concerning educational excellence? Of the methods and principles of teaching Brought about by new technologies of communicating? O' Thamus, Wise King of Cyberjaya Indeed our children will undergo Karma Of one imbued with Dharma Which will bring us all to Moksha Karma is Rebirth Dharma is Devotion and Duty And Moksha is art of being one with Creation Of which educational practice will assume a new reality This invention called blogging Of which for many ages we have waited so patiently Will transform the meaning of Reality and Democracy as it marries Virtuality More than what print media has guaranteed O' wise King Thamus We are witnessing the death of Papyrus the demise of Gutenberg legacy As we witness the birth of PERSONACRACY A deeply personalized form of postmodern democracy In the brilliance of anarchy To be cultivated with the media of blogging By way of this ideology called PERSONACRACY, O' King Our children, the true song of democracy they will sing Of which the teacher will die a slow death Like the first teacher Socrates whose fate was a choice he once had Our children will be Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu The Creator, Destroyer, and the One who Renews Our children will make history and create Knowledge Destroy paradigms and like Vishnu, preserve what is old and what is new They will be Renaissance men and women In their mind neural connections will be made, synapses will be woven And the boundaries of the Real and the Imagined we can no longer ascertain In this onward march towards Virtuality Classrooms will cease to exist nor too the concept of teaching The sage of Russia Illich will be singing In honor of this day when education means deschooling O' Thamus wise ruler of Cyberjaya The days wherein authorities rule capital cities Will be gone with the advent of my invention called blogging Pedagogy will be replaced with METAPHYSICAL TRANSITION THEORIES And Plato's academy will be history Buried underneath the magnificence of blogging Gone will be the idea of faculties In their place will emerge knowledge patterned like fractal geometries And Chaos will be the order of the day And Complexity will be king of pedagogies For the sage Mandelbrott did once spoke Of the patterns inherent in knowledge and wisdom O' Theuth my kingdom's most honored inventor, What say you of the blogger's impact on the teacher? One who holds the key to any civilization's treasure And who guards the principles of a moral character? Wise King Thamus, this is my conjecture: My invention is Frankensteinish in nature Aren't we already at the end of history? Wherein the Knower and the Known has no longer a boundary? This technology will destroy authorities Including values we guard with jealousy Slain like the dragon in Beowulf's story Buried with Socrates and Dante Alighieri A further elaboration concerning the death of authority: O' King, I call this an Age of Subalternity In which we will witness the dawn of PERSONACRACY Of which with the help of blogging, the child constructs his customized version of democracy O' Theuth Master Inventor Yours is a song of conjectures For, can you as a creator Be the judge of what good and bad blogging will bring into our future? My greatest apologies Wisest of all Kings Do you not remember that we are in the year 2020? In which kingdoms have been crushed under the weight of technologies of virtual realities? And you dear king - are you not already ancient history? You and your kingdom destroyed by technologies of Virtuality?