What does an Apple have that the Government doesn’t have?

(To increase the font on this essay – hold down the Ctrl key and keep pressing +) It’s a simple question: why do we give names to some things, but not to others? OK lah, let’s just for the moment discount crazy people who are named after freaky weather patterns like deadly thunderstorms, twisters and hurricanes.

The subject has always intrigued me – as what it actually reveals is how our minds work, specifically: how we typically form emotional attachments and association to stuff and people.

I believe one reason why it’s easier to give, let’s say a corn yellow Volkswagen bettle a name rather than a metallic silver Toyota – is the former doesn’t suffer from the condition of facelessness that’s so often afflicts mass produced products. In other words, the bettle or for that matter any of those objects that are regularly churned out by the Apple stable, all have one thing in common. They all don’t have that factory made feel about them.

Coming to think about it; one reason why those objects can successfully whirl their way into our hearts and minds is precisely because they provision so much room for us to stamp our personality on them – that’s to say they appeal to our innate yearning for individuality i.e they represent the direct opposite of the generic. Thereby successfully embodying that elusive human touch – that could be the reason why some things just feel right to be named, while others are just plain unlovable and have to make do with serialized alphabets and numbers  - have you ever considered, no one would ever name a bus, the cheetah or the mule; makes far more sense to give it a boring number ranging from 1 to 1,000, but try doing the same for a boat and it just doesn’t come off the same way – strange eh. Never mind the inconvenience of naming buses, who in their right mind after all wants to be known as the guy who commutes to work on a mule? And what of the driver of the mule? How happy would he feel? But I digress…that’s another story.

Granted it may seem as though this whole discourse about why we can successfully form emotional attachments about some things while others just provokes terminal ambivalence is really one giant waste of time – but I am not so sure the case is cut and dried. In fact, I happen to be one of those who believe it’s even tactical and strategic! And if deployed wisely can even be a wonder weapon to win over hearts and minds. I ain’t kidding!

And why should that be so?

Consider this - we all know when people can successfully form an emotional attachment to something or someone – that thing or person immediately ceases to be intimidating  and the threat level goes down, that it turn tunes us to be more receptive, agreeable and congenial to what it or they have to say and offer.

Could that be one reason why the vast majority of us don’t seem to have any problems throwing rotten tomatoes as Wall Street bankers – for starters, they all come across as lifeless,  card boardish and so distant, they might as well be hacking away on the surface of the moon – is it such a wonder most of us don’t seem to have any moral hang-up’s labeling them evil, selfish and greedy?

Try taking the same aggressive attitude towards any of those doved eyed Disney characters and you will probably be labeled a bully and chased out of town – you get my drift – my point is it pays dividends to cultivate the human touch in whatever you choose to sell, market and put across.

Take another case study that involves the recent survey conducted by the Economic Intelligence Unit, which cited how 52 percent of public officials cited the lack of proper technology as a barrier, but almost as many also pointed to citizen mindset against online transactions as a major barrier to e-government initiatives – I mean why should that be the case?

Doesn’t make an ounce of sense if you ask me – as we all know given the obvious advantage of what e-transactions have to offer.

Unless of course you consider how difficult it is for most of us to relate emotionally with the persona of everything that has to do with the whole idea of government – once again what we may be seeing here is a classical replay of how most of us react to mass produced goods manufactured by faceless automatons that simply guts out everything lovable. Result: most of us (consciously or subconsciously) refuse to give them the benefit of the doubt or cut them any slack – all our defenses go up to combat mode and the rest is really history.

One reason why relationships in cyberspace between netizens and government has always been uneasy may lie in how our government since time immemorial has modeled itself as an infallible machine that’s not dissimilar to a super duper computer – that formula of cool calculating efficiency and hard nosed pragmatic effectiveness may have worked in the past when folk just gravitate towards basic needs like food, warmth and shelter – but as we move on higher up the Maslow scale to wants and desires beyond the basic needs – I am reminded a new sort of thoughtware needs to kick in.

As trying to get a handle on emerging problems whipped up by globalization and financial uncertainty – along with trying our level best to get on top of problems such as income disparity; wage inequality and the perennial problems of those who have and have not – usually require a combination of both hard and soft kills – and what’s being under utilized in the past is the gamut of soft skills that the government simply doesn’t feel the need to cultivate let alone project.

Maybe the question is not whether the government should get a soul. Maybe the right question that should be asked is whether they can afford to continue projecting a cold metallic mask of indifference? I really don’t think so….welcome to the brave new world.

Darkness 2010

“Darkness, we don’t want that psycho computer in the Intelligent Singaporean…do you hear us?”

“Cool it, you people are overeacting….we all know it isn’t a real HAL computer….it’s probably managed by a few computer geeks who are really just incredibly good at impersonating machine language.”

“Hey screw you Darkness! Do you hear us! That’s what you keep telling all of us! If it’s not a real HAL unit then how come it always wins in chess? How do you explain that! How can it compute quadratic equations in a blink of an eye? Can you do that! How can it calculate the probability of whether we slam into a planet right down to the exact inch whenever we fold space?”

“I don’t know – but what you really need to ask yourself is, if a group of people in cyberspace wanted to impersonate a multi-billion dollar HAL computer – how else do you think they would go about pulling off that sort of song and dance? Wouldn’t they regularly whop you and I in chess? Wouldn’t they regularly perform mind boggling quadratic calculations? And how seamless do you think the act would be, if they can’t even calculate the probability of whether we slam into a planet right down to the exact square millimeter whenever we fold space?”

“Aha…so we got you…you admit it’s a real HAL computer then!”

“Nope, what I am saying it’s all one big show involving smoke and mirrors…that’s all I am saying…you just need to go back stage and see it for what it is, not what your mind thinks it is…then all this talk about efficiency would be sterile.”

Conversation captured by an auto-bot in a thread taken from the Intelligent Singaporean 2007 – The Brotherhood Press 2010