In school, digital streams take the place of student discussion.

“If you’ve seen the world blow up once, you just don’t know what’s going to happen a year from now,” said one former Facebook employee, referring to the dot-com crash a decade ago.

I have no words to describe how I feel.”

intelligence/ROGer cOHen

The death Of diplomacy

New York

Richard Holbrooke, a great

American diplomat whose achievement in ending the Balkan wars at Dayton in 1995 brought peace to the European continent, died recently.

He was a friend, I’ve thought about him a lot, and one conclusion I’ve reached is that his demise came as diplomacy in a conventional sense died, too.

I’m not suggesting the United States Foreign Service be disbanded tomorrow. As WikiLeaks has attested, it is full of smart, savvy and ethical people. They are still needed. But diplomacy as conceived over centuries — negotiations between hierarchical states with defined borders leading to great accords and treaties that changed the course of history — has almost certainly had its day.

The main reason for this shift lies in some numbers given to me the other day by Jared Cohen, who worked for the United States State Department before joining Google.

He told me there are now over 5 billion handsets in the world, compared with 907 million in 2000. The number of users of the Internet has grown in the same period from 361 million to over 2 billion. There are now more than 100 million mobile phone users in Pakistan alone, compared to 300,000 a decade ago.

The impact of this unstoppable connectivity is, in his words, “completely disruptive to every polity.”

Diplomatic cables have been bypassed by networks that observe no borders and respect no hierarchy.

Goodbye to Potsdam, Yalta, Shanghai, Dayton and all that.

The distinction between the real and the virtual worlds — one that people over 40 insist on making — is simply non-existent to the 52 percent of the world’s population that is under 30. They move seamlessly between the two. Any attempt to divide them just seems quaint.

When people live freely online they do not want to live in confinement within their physical borders.

That is the first great lesson of the Arab Spring. The online sophistication of Tunisian youth, living close to Europe but far from its political liberties, became incompatible with the country’s dictatorship, whose efforts to suppress revolt proved as clumsy as resistance was nimble. The second great lesson has been that connectivity equals organization moving at speeds no state apparatus can match. The most revolutionary idea of our age is that technology equals empowerment. That empowerment can be used positively or negatively.

It can enable people to overcome repression, seek justice, find medical help, secure credit, or even find needed love.

It can also be used by terrorists to recruit and by brutal states to track their enemies. Both Iran and Syria have expended enormous efforts on trying to control the Internet and limit connectivity.

Their ruthlessness is physical and virtual.

The efforts of Cohen, who heads a new unit called Google Ideas, are focused on ensuring technology is a net positive. The basic idea behind Google Ideas is that if you bring together people who understand the tools of our age with people who understand the challenges of our age, the benefits will be large. That sounds persuasive to me.

It is also clear that diplomats are a very long way behind in understanding how they can build on social networks.

If empowerment is becoming increasingly universal, if a hierarchical view of international affairs structured around relations between states is out of touch with the way most people in the world relate to each other, then one of the most pressing questions for the State Department and other diplomatic services must be: how do we adapt our efforts to shape these forces in favorable directions?

At a memorial for Holbrooke in Berlin, the former American ambassador to Germany, John Kornblum, said, “We are coming in to a new kind of world. One where networks will be more important than treaties.

A new kind of diplomacy will be necessary.”

Defining that diplomacy is the work of the next decade. Holbrooke is not a bad example. He never stopped looking forward. And he liked to compare diplomacy to jazz — a constant improvisation on a theme always looking for new harmonies.

MILLER

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What If You threw a $41 million party and nobody came?

A start-up company called Color knows how that feels.

In March, Color unveiled its photo-sharing cellphone application — and revealed that it had raised $41 million from investors before the app had a single user. Despite the company’s riches, the app landed with a thud, attracting few users and many complaints from those who did try it.

“It would be pointless even if I managed to understand how it works,” one reviewer wrote in the Apple App Store.

Since then, Color has become a warning sign for investors, entrepreneurs and analysts who fear there is a bubble in start-up investing.

They say it shows that venture capitalists, desperate to invest in the next facebook or LinkedIn, are blindly throwing money at start-ups that have not shown they can build something useful, much less a business that can provide decent returns on investment.

Color, which says it is overhauling its app, is just one of the start-ups that have driven fears about bubbly excess in Silicon Valley.

The Melt plans to sell grilled-cheese sandwiches and soup that people can order from their mobile phones.

It raised about $15 million from Sequoia Capital, which also investedalo alto, California

LOHR

At 100, I.B.M. looks remarkably spry.

Consumer technologies get all the attention these days, but I.B.M. has thrived by selling to corporations and governments.

Profits are strong, its portfolio of products and services looks robust, its shares are near a record high. Its stock-market value passed Google’s this year. Yet, in the early 1990s, I.B.M.’s survival was at stake. It nearly ran out of money. Its mainframe business was reeling under pressure from the lower-cost technology of personal computing.

“I.B.M. faced the challenge that all great companies do sooner or later — they dominate, they lose it, and then they recreate themselves or not,” says George f. Colony, the chief executive of forrester Research, a technology and market research company.

I.B.M. moved beyond the mainframe and built a business increasingly based on software and services. And the company holds lessons for others.

Evolving beyond past success is a daunting task for all companies. But that problem is magnified in the technology arena, where companies can quickly rise to rule a market, until a technology shift opens the door to a new generation of corporate dynamos.

That is the test facing Microsoft, Google and Apple.

So, what broader insights are to be drawn from the I.B.M. experience?

One central message, according to industry experts:

Don’t walk away from your past.

Build on it. The crucial building blocks, they say, are skills, technology and marketing assets that can be transferred or modified to pursue new opportunities.

Those are a company’s core assets, they say, far more so than any product or service.

I.B.M.’s prime assets included strong, long-term customer relationships, deep scientific and research capabilities, and an unmatched breadth of technical skills in hardware, software and services.

It is the technology surrounding the mainframe that pays off for I.B.M. today.

Mainframe hardware alone accounts for less than 4 percent of its revenue.

But when the software, storage and services contracts linked to mainframe computers are included, the figure rises to 25 percent — and as much as 45 percent of operating profit, estimates A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, a global wealth management firm.

I.B.M. has refocused its research labs and sales force on services and software.

from running smart-grid projects for utilities to traffic-management systems for cities, I.B.M. acts as a general contractor whose expertise spans research, software, hardware and services. These projects

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Acting Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports Chan Chun Sing at the Family Day Out Carnival

Realigning my trust-o-meter

It’s not that I attract unreliable people, I just need to rethink who I trust to spare me the pain of cutting them off later

I have a trusting nature and believe in the benevolence of people. I’ve faith that people want to be sincere, honest and kind.O magazine that said if you often find yourself in disappointing relationships, it’s because your “trust-o-meter” is misaligned and you ignore glaring cues that his conscience and ethos might be disparate from yours.

Sadly, I’ve been hurt, betrayed and devastated.

Friends have backstabbed me, guys have lied to me and relatives have forsaken me.

I concluded that life’s vicissitudes and harrowing lessons were necessary to let us mature and evolve into better people. So I accepted my dismal plight and chalked it up to “character building” events. Like shoes, one can never have too much character, right?

I continue to be trusting but to protect my heart, I now do a Lorena Bobbitt. I cut off anyone who betrays me with an imaginary carving knife, and throw them out of my life into the dark field of the universe.

Then I read Martha Beck’s piece in Oprah’s

She says that it comes from trusting caregivers with undesirable behaviour, like an alcoholic parent, and taking that as the yardstick of reliability.

Often, I’m also guilty of justifying deplorable behaviour because I like the person.

She’s so stressed at work that she has to take out her malice on me, or he really didn’t want to hurt me so he lied repeatedly.

Beck advises that to prevent future duplicity, just look out for obvious indicators of a person’s trustworthiness.

For example, does he usually show up on time?

I was flabbergasted.

I’m usually fashionably late, thinking it enhances my rock star image and I don’t like to stand around waiting. Also, tardiness was a common occurrence in my family. My sisters often turned up an hour after the appointed time. It was funny. Once, I was late and missed a flight. When I went home dejectedly with my suitcase, my mother roared with laughter. I saw that as approval.

To realise that my constant lateness actually put my integrity in question mortified me.

I drowned my sorrow in two large chocolate desserts immediately, then I asked my good friend Shannon, who is solidly reliable and objective, if I was untrustworthy.

She assured me that I wasn’t, as I often gave prior notice if I was going to be late and, more importantly, I turned up when I said I would.

Will the pro-Establishment vote be split between the two Dr Tans if there is a three cornered fight?

It is  highly possible Dr Tony Tan and Dr Tan Cheng Bock appeal to different segments of that voting bloc.

Is such  voting bloc throwing their support behind, for  Dr Tony Tan, in order not to allow  a third candidate to be elected?

There is already the active use of the Internet and social media platforms since this enables ease of access between the 2 million more  voters, in particular many Gen Y voters who are digital natives.

The candidates will also have to reach out to the electorate in person. This will be the crucial part of the campaigning — engaging Singaporeans face-to-face, connecting with them in a way that online platforms cannot, and securing their support.

In this regard, the message they put forth is vital. We should expect the Presidential Election campaign to be qualitatively different from the parliamentary elections — it is nothing to do with  ideologies policy.

Thot from teeth53:

How will the candidates campaign?, will they sacrifice the lamb?, my biggest worries.

Presidential Candidate elected must  1st gain basic trust. aspiration, hope and earn the touch  of it ordinary folks.

VOTERS concern. The Internet was non-existent back then - 18 years. This year’s Presidential Election comes hot on the heels of a polarising May 2011  GE resulted in...

(60.1% voted for PAP ideologies with unfinish remains residual unhappiness and staunch 39.9%  voted against) 

All three hopefuls have a PAP background.

Dr Tan Cheng Bock was a well-liked and outspoken veteran PAP MP.

Mr Tan Kin Lian, former NTUC Income CEO, a former PAP branch secretary. In May GE 2011, Mr Tan spoke at the rallies of the NSP and  at SDP. So Mr Tan also has his work cut out.

S’poreans should not distance themselves from govt: President Nathan

It's  S’poreans govt that distance themselves from S'poreans for too long: Supreme teeth53