Society: Everybody knows your name (and number)

In 2018, the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) announced that from September 2019, organisations would generally not be allowed to unnecessarily collect, use, or disclose the number where the law does not require it. (The government was exempt.) Among other warnings in its advisory guidelines, PDPC said: “Indiscriminate or negligent handling of NRIC numbers increases the risk of unintended disclosure with the result that NRIC numbers may be obtained and used for illegal activities such as identity theft and fraud.” The NRIC number is sacred, Singaporeans concluded.

We were wrong. Last Thursday, Bertha Henson, a former journalist turned acerbic social media commentator, revealed the ease with which a visitor to the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) website could access many Singaporeans’ NRIC numbers. On Saturday, the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI), which manages PDPC, said that it had always intended to “unmask” NRIC numbers. But before the government had had a chance to conduct “a public education effort”, ACRA had acted preemptively by updating its Bizfile system. “As a unique identifier, the NRIC number is assumed to be known, just as our real names are known,” said MDDI, an apparent contradiction to PDPC’s earlier guidelines, which remain in place.

In digital security parlance, the two relevant concepts are Identification (Who are you?) and Authentication (Are you who you say you are?). The NRIC number should ideally fulfil only the former—think of it as your digital name—but not the latter, which is perhaps best served by biometrics such as fingerprints. Unfortunately, given Singapore’s inconsistent approach to digital security, individuals and organisations may still be using it for both Identification and Authentication. It could take “several months to a year or more” for stronger authentication tools to be implemented, cyber-security experts told The Straits Times (ST).

This incident has unleashed a wave of fear across society. It’s the biggest challenge thus far facing Lawrence Wong, new prime minister, and his 4G leadership team. Yesterday, a full week after Henson’s initial post, they convened a press conference led by Josephine Teo, MDDI’s embattled minister. The blame, of course, fell on ACRA—misunderstanding an earlier MDDI circular, about ceasing the use of masked numbers, to mean it’s okay to expose them fully. Teo clarified what she sees as “two levels” of confusion: the unmasking is actually an internal government imperative but not one for the private sector; and guidelines for the private sector haven’t changed since 2018. She delivered long word-salad explanations, and non-apologies that seemed more to chide citizens for their anxiety and confusion. In an era of rampant identity theft globally, and in a country with a patchy record for digital security, this NRIC incident is a colossal failure.

Some further reading: In “A torrid December for the PAP: transparency, trust, and truth under scrutiny”, we dissect the NRIC debacle alongside the revelations from Bloomberg that mansion deals are increasingly shrouded in secrecy.

Society: What’s your beef?

No one likes a complainer. Or so they lament. Especially not businesses; ever had a hard time finding the toll-free customer service number on a company’s website? But complain, we persist, having honed the art of venting for millennia. The earliest known record of a complaint dates from 1750 BC—over 3,700 years ago, and was discovered in the ancient city of Ur written on a clay tablet (something, something about copper ingots). These days, we rant about anything from faulty goods and lousy service, to inconsiderate behaviour, bad traffic, xenophobic taxi drivers, noisy neighbours, public transport, long queues, and the weather; from kids “nows-a-day ah” to our bosses, and of course, the government—Singapore residents make 1.7m municipal complaints a year. Lee Kuan Yew once said: “You know the Singaporean. He is a hard-working, industrious, rugged individual…But let us also recognise that he is a champion grumbler.” 

So what feeds our bellyaching, especially online? ST attempted to answer this perennial question, noting that cyber groups like COMPLAINT Singapore, SG Road Vigilante and @sgfollowsall have an “outsized impact” in shaping online discourse here. But does this incessant moaning help or hurt us? Both probably. Complaining is a social act. It greases the wheels of bonding between fellow complainants, releases stress, and may even help validate an individual’s opinions and feelings. But as with everything, in moderation. Dwelling on negative feelings can lead to catastrophising and “contribute to depression”. Feeding off one another’s mutual dissatisfaction may also create frangible relationships built on pessimism and despair. 

When delivered with care, consideration and thought, however, complaining or “constructive criticism” can often be a benevolent process and a force for positive change—essential to improving the quality of services, products, and, hence, life. Agitating for a better society also means looking beyond our petty, self-serving concerns to the broader political, social and environmental landscape. “Constructive complaint requires only two things: that what you are complaining about should be different, and that it can be different,” wrote Julian Baggini for The Guardian. In short, don’t quit the bitching. Just do a better job of it.

History Weekly by Abhishek Mehrotra

It’s almost 40 years to the day since Singapore’s first watershed general election (GE). On December 22nd 1984, two opposition candidates—Chiam See Tong of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) and JB Jeyaretnam of the Workers’ Party (WP)—were elected in a general election for the very first time. Chiam beat Mah Bow Tan of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) in Potong Pasir; Jeyaretnam retained the Anson seat he had so sensationally won in the 1981 by-election.

Coincidentally, I just finished reading The First Wave: JBJ, Chiam & the Opposition in Singapore, Loke Hoe Yeong’s study of opposition politics. It’s fascinating. With the period between 1985 and 2011 as his canvas, Loke describes the hope inspired by the 1991 GE, when the opposition increased its tally from two to four (thanks in part to the SDP’s ingenious “by-election effect” strategy); the intriguing debates on the Town Councils Act and the Group Representation Constituency (GRC) scheme; and Chiam’s relentless questioning of the government following the arrests in the 1987 “Marxist Conspiracy” case. All essential reading for anyone interested in Singapore’s modern political history. As is Loke’s expertly woven narrative of the internecine warfare in the 1990s that arrested the opposition’s momentum.

What struck me most though, was his depiction of Chiam and Jeyaretnam in Parliament soon after the 1984 GE. This is how he sets the scene for the former’s maiden speech in March 1985: “But the PAP members—over 70 of them—were not just in front of him but also behind him and all around him. Chiam’s only compatriot, J.B. Jeyaretnam, the MP [member of Parliament] for Anson, occupied the seat next to him.”

A natural bond existed between the two opposition MPs. But on many occasions, writes Loke, “…Jeyaretnam would brusquely gesture to Chiam not to rise to speak on issues Jeyaretnam felt he could articulate and argue better, to Chiam’s mild annoyance.” In other places, Loke describes the frequent hectoring and mockery that they, and Chiam in particular, had to endure in a ridiculously lopsided house. Not only were the two vital in holding the government to account—to some degree—but intriguingly, they also became an outlet for junior PAP MPs. “Occasionally, Chiam and Jeyaretnam found themselves unwittingly dragged into the fray when PAP backbenchers wanted to state a point against government policy.”

In India, the country of my birth, politics was (and continues to be) a national obsession—discussed, dissected, and pontificated upon in bungalows and shanties alike. In contrast, when I first came here in 2002, the political landscape felt bleached. The feeling was misplaced. Chiam’s inner steel, and his political missteps; the fire that animated, and then consumed, Jeyaretnam; the fissures in an opposition straining under overwhelming one-party domination are all sagas worthy of being told, and retold, and then told again. The First Wave is hopefully part of the first wave—Loke is also the author of Chiam’s biography—of an emerging literary canon.

Arts: Central Arts Library reshuffles the cabinets

The art and design collections of the former library@esplanade and the library@orchard have found a new home: the new Central Arts Library, which opened last week on the fifth floor of the National Library Building in Bugis. library@esplanade shut its doors in June and has since been replaced by office and commercial spaces; library@orchard is getting spruced up and will reopen, in stages, by 2026. The National Library Board (NLB) says that this move will allow it to centralise its arts resources, ostensibly for a cluster of arts institutions nearby whose constituents may find its amenities and archives useful: the newly minted University of the Arts Singapore (comprising the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and LASALLE College of the Arts), the School of the Arts, Singapore, as well as various arts centres and companies along Waterloo Street. In addition to checking out over 50,000 books and audio-visual materials, visitors to the new library can try out scores on a baby grand piano or book dedicated spaces for a small fee—a “silent” studio for a quick jam session, or the screening room for dance, theatre and opera recordings.

“Performance’s only life is in the present,” Peggy Phelan, the performance studies scholar, famously declared. The performing arts can be remarkably difficult to archive. Its forms are, by nature, ephemeral, and the constellation of texts, recordings and other memorabilia around it (such as costumes and programme booklets) only ever offer us a still snapshot of a decidedly un-static thing. The Central Arts Library’s programming spine, as did the library@esplanade’s, acts as a kind of live accompaniment to its repository, with a jazz appreciation and music improvisation lineup, workshops on developing the performer’s body, and an open stage series for local artists to showcase their work. The library@esplanade, once perched atop the national performing arts centre, will be missed. But this makeover also presents opportunities for the Esplanade to consider how it might configure its own extensive archive in its 22nd year. Scattered across the island are various other chronicles of how our performing arts landscape came to be, housed in the back rooms of arts companies and organisations. There’s no one-archive-fits-all approach to documenting and studying the performing arts, and as many arts groups mark significant anniversaries next year, it may be worthwhile to consider how their annals and artifacts are creatively consolidated and presented to their audiences.

Arts: One for the records

We’re living in a material world, and your material girl sounds better on vinyl. The 3,000 people who thronged the first-ever “Side A, A Singapore Record Show” last month would tend to agree. Vinyl is experiencing something of a revitalisation here. In a world of automated Spotify algorithms and digital clutter, music lovers are turning to the analogue joys of vinyl pressings, and the pleasures of cultivating and curating one’s own taste. “I think the younger crowd is starting to appreciate older music,” record store owner Cherry Lim told ST. Last year, Gen Z siblings Kathy and Kevin Chu opened Slow Boat, the first vinyl-listening cafe in Singapore, joining a handful of other new-ish eateries that take pride in playing vinyl, including Appetite in Amoy Street, RPM by D.Bespoke in Duxton Road, and Vertigo26 in Seah Street. 

Passing fad, or permanent following? Long-time store owners, while buoyed by the sales increase, aren’t exactly b-side themselves with the current trend. Richard Wan, who’s run Roxy Disc House for 30 years, remarked: “I think it is a trend that will continue for a few more years, but eventually fade.” But there’s a different kind of longevity to the intergenerational inheritances of vinyl. Mohamad Shahrem of Ronggeng Records, for instance, built his Tiong Bahru Market record store on the vintage foundations of his late father and uncle’s collection; he inherited out-of-print vinyls and an extensive library of South-east Asian musicians and bands of the 1960s and 1980s. And the father-son duo of CK Teo and Teo Ming Yang have amassed a 248,000-strong following on Instagram, where they pull records, curate recommendations and bring excited followers on deep cuts of their eclectic 9,000-strong collection. “I’m blessed to have a 15-year-old boy who shares my passion,” Teo mused. “I see so many of my friends who don’t talk to their teenage sons any more.” Collections and obsessions passed down from parent to child, it seems, are the most precious pressings of all.

Tech: Can Trump stop the clock for TikTok?

In April this year, Joe Biden, US president, signed a bill that gave Chinese firm ByteDance 270 days to sell off its most successful business: TikTok. Failing this, the platform would be banned from American app stores. TikTok has appealed to the US Supreme Court to delay the current deadline for sale, January 19th 2025. It’s easy to see why. Donald Trump, president-elect, takes office the next day. On the campaign trail, Trump made repeated promises to save TikTok, asserting a personal connection to the app and its influence on youth engagement. 

“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” he said this week, adverting to the social media giant’s role in him winning the youth vote in the presidential elections. On the same day, Trump met Chew Shou Zi, TikTok CEO, at the former’s Mar-a-Lago residence. All this points to the likelihood that TikTok could avoid divestment and remain operational in the US market under his administration. Furthermore, as tech leaders like Chew actively seek to build rapport with Trump, they may collectively influence his administration’s regulatory approach. The incoming administration is being steadily wooed by tech stalwarts. Meta and Amazon will contribute US$1m (S$1.36m) to the Trump inauguration fund; as will OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

Tech: Laying the bricks for AI

As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies spread, high-quality, clean data becomes crucial. Enter Databricks. The analytics firm, founded in 2013, offers tools for cleaning, organising, and analysing big data, enabling companies to derive insights in real time. The Databricks platform runs on top of popular cloud infrastructures like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, acting as a bridge that connects raw data with powerful AI models. Databricks leverages its own proprietary technology, Apache Spark, to process large datasets quickly and efficiently, making complex analytical tasks more accessible for organisations. Its collaborative environment allows data scientists, engineers and business analysts to work together seamlessly. The platform’s potential uses are dizzyingly varied, from medical research and fraud detection to supply chain optimisation. 

Small wonder then, that the company’s fundraising round saw twice as much interest as the available allocation of US$10bn (S$13.6bn)—itself one of the largest in Silicon Valley history. The company is now valued at US$62bn (S$84.3bn), with heavy hitters like Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and DST Global backing it.

This infusion of capital is pivotal for Databricks as it aims to enhance employee liquidity, pursue strategic acquisitions, and facilitate global expansion. With an impressive anticipated revenue run rate of US$3bn (S$4.05bn) and a year-over-year revenue growth exceeding 60 percent in the previous quarter , the company is positioning itself for sustained financial health. Positive free cash flow is expected for the first time in the quarter ending on January 31st. This is particularly important in an era where competition for top talent in AI is fierce, prompting Databricks to plan competitive compensation to attract skilled workers. As Ali Ghodsi, the company’s CEO, noted: “It’s peak AI bubble”, and the war chest of cash that Databricks has amassed should help the company outmanoeuvre competitors for talent and customers, and likely tide it over any bubble bursts.

The fundraising also signals a potential IPO, as parched investors eye Databricks amid a scarcity of strong tech investments. They’ll be licking their lips after Ghodsi said: “I do think the majority of the lifetime of Databricks will be as a public company, even though we’re not public yet.” 

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