Upcoming Events 
Speaker: Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, Climate and Energy Security Envoy, British Government
Date: Monday, 23 November 2009
Time: 12.40 p.m. - 1.30 p.m.
Venue: Seminar Room 3-1, Level 3, Manasseh Meyer,
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy,
469C Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259772
Synopsis: Internationally, there is growing interest in non-traditional threats to security. Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti is the British Government's envoy for climate and energy security. He will examine how climate change can act as a 'threat multiplier' that exacerbates existing tensions and has
consequences for national and international security. He will outline how countries need to ensure that their security strategies address the impact of climate change on stability. He will also emphasise the urgency of the global transition to a low carbon economy, which will limit the threat and explore possible solutions such as areas where militaries can collaborate. The session will also consider how these factors may come into play in South East Asia.
Speaker: David Blunkett, Member of Parliament for Sheffield Brightsid
Date: Monday, 23 November 2009
Time: 6.00 p.m. - 7.00 p.m.
Venue: Seminar Room 3-1, Level 3, Manasseh Meyer, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, 469C Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259772
Synopsis: Mr Blunkett will declare an interest - as well as serving in Tony Blair's cabinet for eight years, he is also a close friend of Tony and Cherie Blair. He will reflect on the development of Labour's radical education reforms in which he had Tony
Blair's complete backing; the welfare-to-work policies which he began; and the traumatic time as Home Secretary in charge of counter-terrorism, internal security, policing and immigration, during and after the 11th of September attack. He will reflect on the seminal changes in British politics throughout the Blair years and what can be seen as a lasting legacy - as well as missed opportunities
Co-Organiser: Information + Innovation Policy Research Centre
Speaker: Dmitry Epstein, Research Fellow, Information + Innovation Policy Research Centre
Date: Thursday, 26 November 2009
Time: 12.15 p.m. - 1.30 p.m.
Venue: Seminar Room 2-2, Level 2, Manasseh Meyer, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, 469C Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259772
Synopsis: The internet has become an integral part of the daily lives and work of over one billion people on Earth and that number is still growing. An ubiquitous resource and a versatile tool, the Internet also poses numerous challenges particularly in
the policy arena; a debate known under the broad title of Internet Governance (IG). In its current form the IG debate is primarily a discursive exercise focused on negotiation of terms, norms, and values that should be at the basis of the governance of the Internet. Whether this discussion has already impacted concrete policy decisions or it will do so in the future, numerous stakeholders, including governments, the private sector and the civil society, invest substantive resources in this exercise. This study is part of a broader research program that raises two main research questions. First, how is the agenda for global telecom policymaking set through a continuous process of deliberation and consensus seeking among the stakeholders? In other words, it aspires to understand what social structures and pragmatic interests the relevant stakeholders bring into the IG discussion; how those social structures and pragmatic interests influence their perception of the Internet and its governance; and how they are re-negotiated in the process of reaching consensus on Internet-related policy issues. Second, what discursive frames and patterns emerge in the fora where IG is being discussed and how do these frames and patterns portray the Internet and its social, economic, and political roles? This study is a work in progress, which seeks to unpack the process through which frames of reference of Internet and its governance are shaped and negotiated. It draws on data collected during the World Telecommunication Policy Forum (WTPF), which took place in April 2009 in Lisbon, Portuga
Co-Organiser: Information + Innovation Policy Research Centre
Speaker: Trevor Pinch, Professor of Science and Technology Studies and Professor of Sociology at Cornell University
Date: Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Time: 12.15 p.m. - 1.30 p.m.
Venue: Seminar Room 2-2, Level 2, Manasseh Meyer,
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, 469C Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259772
Synopsis: Erving Goffman is not usually thought of as a sociologist of technology. In this talk Professor Pinch returns to two of Goffman's earliest studies and argues that materiality and technology are highly consequential for the interaction Goffman studied. Professor Pinch shows how Goffman’s familiar notions of "role distance" and the distinction between "front stage" and "backstage" are both set within examples replete with materiality and technology. He compares Goffman with Latour as
sociologist of mundane artefacts. Then having shown how ordinary interaction is materially staged, mediated, and performed, Professor Pinch argues that the interactionist approach can be useful in the study of Web 2.0 sites. He concludes the talk with examples from his own study of the on-line remixing and mash-up site, ACIDplanet.com.
Co-Organiser: Centre on Asia and Globalisation
Speaker: Dr. Sanjeev Khagram
Date: Thursday, 3 December 2009
Time: 6.00 p.m. – 8.00 p.m.
Venue: FTSE Room, 9F Capital Tower, 168 Robinson Road, Singapore 068912
Synopsis: The impacts of the global financial-cum-economic crisis were more profound and pervasive than originally predicted. In Asia alone, if growth had not been stalled by the crisis over the past year, there would be 60 million fewer people living below the US$1.25 a day poverty line and around 100 million fewer living below $2 a day.
The global economic crisis was caused by overwhelmingly excessive levels
of leverage in the financial system. Some argue that more transparency
will lead to appropriate levels of self-regulation by banks and other
private financial sector firms, while others argue for much greater levels of government regulation, without which future global financial crises will not be mitigated. While the debate and corresponding action for formulating principles and norms to stabilise the global financial system continues, it should also take into account social and environmental objectives. This could aid in the design and implementation of innovative forms of hybrid regulation that go beyond the false binary options of state commandand- control versus market self-regulation. Finally, those engaged in the debate, must consider the dramatic increases in corporate citizenship and new social enterprise models of private financial institutions.
Speaker: Dan Hunter, Professor of Law & Director, Institute for Information Law & Policy, New York Law School;
Adjunct Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics,
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Date: Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Time: 12.15 p.m. - 1.30 p.m.
Venue: Conference Room, Level 1, Oei Tiong Ham Building, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, 469C Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259772
Synopsis: The rise of virtual worlds and massively multiplayer online games has brought with it an understanding of how people treat property in online spaces. This, coupled with the rise of social media games, has seen the emergence of a billion dollar market for assets that don't exist. This presentation maps out what we know about virtual property, and present some theories about what this means for the nature of online markets, intellectual property systems in Asia and the rest of the world, and the way that humans will live in a computer-mediated future.
Speaker: Toyoo Gyohten, President of the Institute for International Monetary Affairs, Japan
Date: Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Time: 4.30 p.m. - 6.00 p.m.
Venue: Seminar Room 3-1, Level 3, Manasseh Meyer, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, 469C Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259772
Speaker: Zeger van der Wal,
Assistant Professor, Department of Governance Studies,
VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Date: Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Time: 12.15 p.m. - 1.30 p.m.
Venue: Seminar Room 3-5, Level 3, Manasseh Meyer, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, 469C Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259772
Synopsis: The major role that moral norms and values seemed to have played in the last two U.S. elections, but also in the latest Dutch, German and French elections, has recently intensified the debate on which values and norms
should guide societal, political and administrative conduct. As Geoffrey Nunberg, a Stanford-based expert on language and politics has pointed out: “Everybody is using the ‘V word’ now.” This goes for modern-day
business discourse as well, with corporate social responsibility as a key concept and the current global financial crisis as an accelerating force. All this enlarges the need for more understanding on what we are
talking about when values are concerned and which values are actually important in different spheres of society. This seminar addresses the values and norms that should have weight in public and private sector
conduct according to theory as well as the actual norms and values that dominate administrative and corporate decision making, based on van der Wal’s empirical research. Attention is also attributed to studies
on values and norms of the prospective elite in both sectors: MPA and MBA students in the Netherlands and abroad. The last part of the seminar will have as its topic the international comparative research project, elite ethics, which will run from 2009 until 2012, in the US, the EU and the Pacific region. The project aims at answering the following central research question: Which personal, institutional and public values and motives drive and guide political and bureaucratic leaders in Western democracies?
Speaker: Greg Lastowka,
Professor of Law at Rutgers School of Law-Camden
Date: Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Time: 12.15 p.m. - 1.30 p.m.
Venue: Conference Room, Level 1, Oei Tiong Ham Building, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, 469C Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259772
Synopsis: Current legal research on massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) intentionally marginalizes the fact that the majority of these new social arenas are structured around game-like rules. Yet even virtual worlds like Second Life owe a great deal, in their architecture and guiding logic, to social practices of games and play. Legal scholars studying virtual worlds should not ignore the way in which the unique characteristics of games and play shape the rules of virtual worlds.
Virtual worlds are governed, to a significant degree, by rules of play. When we consider the work of Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois, Bernard Suits, and other theorists of adult play, we find a strong consensus that ludic rules are specially crafted toward procedural and hedonic ends rather than instrumental and efficient ends. As a result, the guiding rules and software codes of virtual worlds inevitably diverge in important ways from the guiding logic of law.
This divergence has important practical implications for the application of law to virtual worlds. For example, standard presumptions about property rights, negligence, criminal law, and contract can be wholly inappropriate when applied to the rules of virtual worlds. This is problematic, given that law will not intervene effectively in virtual worlds if it insists on ignoring their true ludic nature. To the extent the law recognizes the ludic nature of virtual worlds, it must take a more modest and more nuanced approach to their regulation.
