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Philosophy

This category contains 95 posts

Woo, the Lucky Economist

For some reason, Penang has produced many economists who have made substantial impact on the global stage. Prof Woo Wing Thye of Thean Teik Road is one of the foremost among them. As a young boy, he was curious about the outside world, and managed to clear his own path to the top, always helped … Continue reading

Can cultural identity travel?

By Ooi Kee Beng [Article for the photograph exhibition by Wei Leng Tay — Discordant Symmetries, held at Baba House, Singapore on September 2011 to March 2012] WE ALL TRAVEL more or less nowadays, and every good trip tweaks our perspective of state, society and self to some extent. Numerous short trips leave us with … Continue reading

The search engine revolution (PEM Editorial June 2011)

By Ooi Kee Beng I REMEMBER fidgeting for endless hours on the Internet back in the mid-1990s. To be honest, that was the reason why my studies took so long to complete. The browser available then was a little application called NCSA Mosaic. There were very few pages to go to at that time, to … Continue reading

Urban parochialism, rural cosmopolitanism

Editorial for December 2011 By Ooi Kee Beng, Something that increasingly troubles me is the received supposition that urbanites are cosmopolitan by virtue of being urbanites. Not only does that bias attribute what in modern eyes is a morally desirable quality to the mere experience of living in densely populated areas, it also assigns the … Continue reading

What Brain, What Drain?

Editorial, November 2011, By Ooi Kee Beng IN THE DAYS before nation states, polities in Southeast Asia were largely trading ports. These dots, constituted the maritime routes along which fortune-seekers of old travelled. All sorts – those with brains as much as much as those with brawn – went where conditions were most promising for the moment. … Continue reading