William Gibson - Disney Land with the Death Penalty

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WIRED

Disney Land with the Death Penalty

WIRED sends William Gibson to the future: Singapore

By William Gibson

"It's like an entire country run by Jeffrey Katzenberg," the producer had

said, "under the motto 'Be happy or I'll kill you.'" We were sitting in an

office a block from Rodeo Drive, on large black furniture leased with

Japanese venture capital.

Now that I'm actually here, the Disneyland metaphor is proving impossible

to shake. For that matter, Rodeo Drive comes frequently to mind, though

the local equivalent feels more like 30 or 40 Beverly Centers put end to

end.

Was it Laurie Anderson who said that VR would never look real until they

learned how to put some dirt in it? Singapore's airport, the Changi

Airtropolis, seemed to possess no more resolution than some early VPL

world. There was no dirt whatsoever; no muss, no furred fractal edge to

things. Outside, the organic, florid as ever in the tropics, had been

gardened into brilliant green, and all-too-perfect examples of itself.

Only the clouds were feathered with chaos - weird columnar structures

towering above the Strait of China.

The cab driver warned me about littering. He asked where I was from.

He asked if it was clean there. "Singapore very clean city." One of those

annoying Japanese-style mechanical bells cut in as he exceeded the speed

limit, just to remind us both that he was doing it. There seemed to be

golf courses on either side of the freeway. . . .

"You come for golf?"

"No."

"Business?"

"Pleasure."

He sucked his teeth. He had his doubts about that one.

Singapore is a relentlessly G-rated experience, micromanaged by a state

that has the look and feel of a very large corporation. If IBM had ever

bothered to actually possess a physical country, that country might have

had a lot in common with Singapore. There's a certain white-shirted

constraint, an absolute humorlessness in the way Singapore Ltd. operates;

conformity here is the prime directive, and the fuzzier brands of

creativity are in extremely short supply.

There is no slack in Singapore. Imagine an Asian version of Zurich

operating as an offshore capsule at the foot of Malaysia; an affluent

microcosm whose citizens inhabit something that feels like, well,

Disneyland. Disneyland with the death penalty.

But Disneyland wasn't built atop an equally peculiar 19th-century theme

park - something constructed to meet both the romantic longings and purely

mercantile needs of the British Empire. Modern Singapore was - bits of the

Victorian construct, dressed in spanking-fresh paint, protrude at quaint

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William Gibson - Disney Land with the Death Penalty

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