Third Culture Kids

August 8, 2004 1:06 AM

Singapore is trying to duplicate its IT success in Biotech (billions of dollars in predictive economics, a masterstroke -- or perhaps a mistake -- for the leaders of the Simcity-run island). Good for the huge numbers of foreigners lured with research money and benefits, but what about their kids?
posted by Tlogmer (3 comments total)

Very interesting Tlogmer, check out these links as an introduction to the Biopolis mentioned in the Wired article.

Whilst the post concentrates on the effect on the children I did a bit of looking about on the Singapore biotech side of things. It seems that despite a huge variance in religion (Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Christian and Taoism) there are a number of agreements about the ethics of stem cell research and cloning. Most surprising to me was that Muslims were for stem cell research (pdf - page 3 of 4). This was in sharp contrast to Catholics/Christians.

Looking at this article indicates that the manufacturing/technology sector of the Singaporean economy accounts for nearly a quarter of their GDP. It seems Singapore may be onto a winner with this concept of hiring away talent to a country with less stringent ethical/moral guidelines to biotechnology.

While we may be a fair distance away from working molecular engineering or major genome tinkering the probability that our lead in the sciences could be so quickly bypassed could be disastrous for us economically. Being locked in the whole ethics/morals dilemma may see the west being left behind.
posted by longbaugh at 9:16 AM on August 8, 2004

Cool! Singapore might become the first of the engineered nation-cities with satellite enclaves worldwide, Stephenson's Diamond Age-style. Strategic location + small, manageable size + fewer infrastructure and social problems + real corporate-style management on the national scale = agility and competitiveness unmatched by the big old nations.
posted by azazello at 12:31 PM on August 8, 2004

Interesting links about Singapore and growing up there. I was born and spent may years as a kid in Singapore, but then again it was as part of the NZ military, in the north of the island, it was still very colonial. My father still lives there, I like visiting but couldn't stay in Singapore for any length of time.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 3:20 AM on August 9, 2004