Singapore
Small states, like small businesses, often serve as the incubators of new forms of government. Perhaps no state has been so carefully and deliberately managed as Singapore, a multi-ethnic island city-state of 4 million inhabitants in an area of 250 square miles, or about the size of Guam. Because of the ways its management has sought to utilize science and technology to achieve certain social values, which has itself influenced some of these values, Singapore provides a useful case study in the possible relations between science, technology, and ethics.
Background
Located on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula and separated from Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, by the Straits of Malacca, Singapore was colonized by the British in the early 1820s due to its strategic location (for the British, it was the Gibraltar of the East). Important because it served as both a submarine port and had a major airfield, the Japanese captured Singapore during World War II. After the war it evolved toward independence in phases: It elected its first legislature in 1955 and was granted internal self-government in 1959. In 1963 Singapore joined the Federation of Malaysia, but separated in 1965 and has been fully independent since.
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