Strategic Issues
The difference between a pre-eminent strategy for our future survival as industrialised nations and what we shall leave our children and grand-children if we continue on our present path-dynamic expansion vs. decline or continual stagnated growth at best. Which will it be?
If the ORE-STEM Complex was operational now and considering that Singapore less than 25 years ago had not the technology the free West now commands, we would be looking at a vastly and far greater economic engine than we see today. When we also consider that the basis of all businesses (even multi-nationals at the beginning of their cycle were small) we comprehend that small businesses are the fundamental life-blood of all wealth creation and eventually advanced development. Again, one has to consider that all new products and services are in the main the creation of individuals at the lowest level in terms of corporate development. An inspired person's creative innovative thought mechanism is the secret and nothing more. Just contemplate that the ORE-STEM Complex discovers and creates six new scientific and technological inventions over a five year period that brings into being six new global industries. Based on the developmental examples of Intel and Microsoft we have a new wealth creation potential for new employment of some US$100Billion or the equivelance of another Singaporean economic miracle every 25 years or so. Considering the rapid transitional growth and accelerated pace of technological advancement over the past decade one can postulate that it will not be a further 25 years but a mere 10 years or less to develop the recent equivelance of 3 new Intels and 3 new Microsofts. These targets are the achievable minimum deliverance of the ORE-STEM Complex. But just consider for a moment, not the Intels or Microsofts of the present world but the ORE's propensity to discover new phenomina, possibly new, revolutionary and unknown energy sources that manifest themselves in a little black box that sit on the coffee table and create no environmental pollution, time dilation technologies, the exploitation of nanostructures, new, revolutionary ways to communicate on a higher technological plane or far superior technologies than electronics, then the ORE would create hundreds of Intels and hundreds of Microsofts. That is the real quest of the ORE; to change the face of the Earth and accelerate the socio-economic and eco-technological progress of the world. It is time to do something. Education for all thoughout the world is a priority for every nation over the next 30/40 years. Through this major effort, especially by the merging economies to become on level terms with the West, illiteracy will decline on an unprecedented scale (take Singapore, Taiwan or South Korea as examples of what has already happened). This will create a plethora of innovative thought that will flourish in the dynamic Eastern economies as they dash for technological supremecy over the next 50 years or so. With the theoretical potential of a further 4,000 to 5,000 million enlightened and previously un-educated minds by that time and probably at leats a minimum of 1,000 million, now is the time to start the process of building the ORE so that all humankind can reap the benefits of this creative threshold in mankind's future destiny and especially the free industrialised nations of the West. We have already had pointers of what the East can accomplish. If it had not been for one person from the Asian economies, the Internet would not have been possible. Charles Kao led the way for the epochal breakthough that allowed the multi-use of fibre-optic communications. Therefore, what education and open learning has done for Singapore over the last 20 years and the West over the last 75 years, will happen in all the Eastern economies over a relatively shorter period of time. We are therefore on the verge of an epochal time zone in the history of the world. To not build the ORE would be a mistake of gigantic proportions. The ORE's envelope of pre-eminence will seek out new creative life forms, new innovative systems, new intelligent medicines and advanced theoretical technologies that are presently beyond man's power of understanding, thereby developing and sustaining a stifling planet that humankind helps to destroy by the year. What we do now therefore is the most important part in the development of the future world. The early days of the ORE's very creation is of the greatest significance and importance. The members of the institute will be the eventual source of enlightenment to undertake these epochal steps forward for mankind. What we shall be doing, therefore, in the not too distant future is literally pulling together the creative forces of all human endeavour. This can be excercised in the mind and what one great man of the 20th Century recently said and remarked upon, and can only be described as 'What we are in the process of evolving is the very existence and creation of God's own laboratory'. Time will tell if he was right.
If the ORE-STEM Complex was now operational
The ORE's probable change in the Economic Engine of the USA, China and the UK.
Comparison
True growth taking ingto account inflationary pressures. Theoretical expansion of GDP based on Singapore's growth over the last 25 years, taking into account of inflation running at 2.5% and 3.5% for the USA and UK respectively and present growth rates of economic expansion.
The probable scenarios if we do not take action now. These are not fictitious figures but are based on factual growth of dynamic economies when new technology is readily avaliable.