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The 2011 Singapore General Elections was a water-shed event in Singapore's political history. Not because for the first time ever, an opposition party (the Workers' Party or WP) managed to secure a Group Representative Constituency (GRC) from the PAP. Nor was it because the PAP's popular vote had fallen from 67 percent in 2007 to 60.1 percent. Rather, it was a result of Singapore's political landscape being dramatically altered with the advent of social media and the Internet. The Internet and Social Media sparked a new way of thinking for Singapore, especially in the political arena. While older Singaporeans relied on state controlled media agencies for their news and information, the Internet opened up a source of independent information that could not be tightly regulated or controlled  as  traditional media platforms. Singapore's World Press Freedom Index ranking is a dismal 136th out of 178 countries (assessed by Reporters Without Borders) and 151st out of 196 countries according to the Freedom of the Press 2010 Global Rankings report. As Singaporeans began to seek alternative viewpoints that were not expressed in the local media, websites like The Temasek Review and The Online Citizen cropped up. These sites gained popularity and support for publishing articles that were critical of the local government for the first time.

"The conditions under which our armed forces conduct operations are rapidly changing with the spread of blogs, social networking sites, and media-sharing technology, and further accelerated by the proliferation of mobile technology," writes Darpa in the SMISC announcement document. "Changes to the nature of conflict resulting from the use of social media are likely to be as profound as those resulting from previous communications revolutions. The effective use of social media has the potential to help the armed forces better understand the environment in which it operates and to allow more agile use of information in support of operations."

Singapore is one of the most "evolved" social media markets around the world, according to market research firm Firefly Millward Brown. The global study, which was conducted in 15 countries between October and December last year,

The We Love Wool campaign, with its Facebook and Twitter pages, up to Tuesday this week had more than 14,000 followers since it began on June 1. Decked out in his grey wool sweater, Adrian is among more than 70 woollen garment wearers who have clicked on www.fashionbyfeelings.com to upload his "look" as part of a competition to win Sydney airfares, accommodation, a $3000 gift card and other prizes.

International Network of Crisis Mappers

In looking at the world around, us, the shift that is the most apparent to many is the pace of technological change, with in the order of 100-fold increases in processing power, storage efficiency, and fixed and mobile bandwidth over the last decade. However I believe that the degree of social change over the last decade has been at least as much as that of technological change, if not more, across countries, cultures, and contexts. On the face of it, much of this social change has been driven by technology. The freer flow of information, enablement of expression and participation, ability to connect across boundaries, and rise of powerful open source technologies have helped to shape new values. Openness, transparency, authenticity, participation, opportunity are values that stem from the technologies that have dominated the last decade. Yet it could rather be that our shifting social values (or perhaps our underlying values that have long been yearning for expression) are shaping the technologies we develop.

The merger of globalization and I.T. is driving huge productivity gains, especially in recessionary times, where employers are finding it easier, cheaper and more necessary than ever to replace labor with machines, computers, robots and talented foreign workers. It used to be that only cheap foreign manual labor was easily available; now cheap foreign genius is easily available.