Hard to say. And therein, perhaps, lies Singapore's real importance. The
overt goal of the national IT2000 initiative is a simple one: to sustain
indefinitely, for a population of 2.8 million, annual increases in
productivity of three to four percent.

IT, of course, is "information technology," and we can all be suitably
impressed with Singapore's evident willingness to view such technology
with the utmost seriousness. In terms of applied tech, they seem to have
an awfully practical handle on what this stuff can do. The National
Computer Board has designed an immigration system capable of checking
foreign passports in 30 seconds, resident passports in fifteen.
Singapore's streets are planted with sensor loops to register real-time
traffic; the traffic lights are computer controlled, and the system
adjusts itself constantly to optimize the situation, creating "green
waves" whenever possible. A different sort of green wave will appear if a
building's fire sensor calls for help; emergency vehicles are
automatically green-lighted through to the source of the alarm. The
physical operation of the city's port, constant and quite unthinkably
complex, is managed by another system. A "smart-card" system is planned to
manage billings for cars entering the Restricted Zone. (The Restricted
Zone is that part of central Singapore which costs you something to enter
with a private vehicle. Though I suspect that if, say, Portland were to
try this, the signs would announce the "Clean Air Zone," or something
similar.)