From the business point of view, we want our business
to grow and become bigger and bigger. In view of creativity and entrepreneurship,
we want to have free hand to develop our business. Perhaps, this is not the
case in Singapore. Perhaps, you will see the opposite, especially in social
media.
The bigger you are you will encounter more official controls
and obstacles. So, whether TRE or TOC, this business model will not work in
Singapore.
The government only allows MSM and its websites to
grow. When they are not able to compete,
the government will help to control the growth of alternative social media.
This is the business environment in Singapore. So, you cannot expect business models like Malaysiakini
or The Huffington Post in Singapore.
Hence, the question is how Singapore can have a
sustainable creativity and entrepreneurship environment. Singaporeans are
creative but the environment is very different.
The game rules are not set by the market and its growth has to be
approved by the authority.
No supporting environment for creativity
From Creative Technology to Ilo Ilo, how can we
sustain our creativity?
No
wonder our creativity cannot sustain for too long as we have a government likes
to control ….
Starting
from this Saturday, websites that regularly report Singapore news and have
significant reach will require individual licences to operate. Even you want to
grow big in the internet; you can’t as there are always visible and invisible hands
over your heads.
By winning the top honours and making history for
Singapore film industry at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Anthony Chen’s Ilo
Ilo has once again demonstrated to the world the creativity of Singaporeans.
But can this creativity last? And how can we sustain it?
If you remember the story of Creative Technology, one
of the best known Singapore technology company in the 1980s and 1990s, how come
we, Singapore as a whole, cannot help and push the company to a new height?
Like Ilo Ilo, Creative Technology and many of our
artists have achieved honours first not in Singapore but elsewhere. And we know it is very difficult to have the
breakthrough. For example, the City Harvest Church’s crossover project had
spent multi-million dollars in the USA and has yet to see significant
achievement for Sun Ho.
Monopoly in social media
We are happy to see the success story of Ilo Ilo at
Canes. But with the kind of movie industry and appreciation culture in
Singapore, how long can the success last? The issue of creativity sustainability
is always there. We can’t solve it in
the past and how can we solve in future?
To add salt to the wounds, the new MDA licensing is
telling netizens to self-control your activities in the social media. Try not to be too creative or too smart to
outdo others.
Instead of preventing monopoly in social media, the
government is trying to tell Singaporeans that monopoly of MSM is good for Singapore.
In the nation building, MSM not
alternative news will be necessary and required. So, if you want to be creative, you can join
the MSM or SG Conversation. This is safe
environment and you are protected but with a trade-off of your creativity.
The new MDA licensing is not only bad for social media
development. It also reminds creative
people their limited space in Singapore and the difficulty they will face if
they want to be enterprise or develop business models in social media.
No need to be creative, the AIMgate has already shown
you the importance of political association and correctness.
For the future good of Singapore, do we really need
creativity and entrepreneurship? Perhaps, in the view of the PAP, only
politically correct creativity and entrepreneurship have a place in Singapore.
What do you think?
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