1) " The chapters in this volume examine practices in technical domains ranging from the life sciences, to urban planning, to social administration, to finance. But it is clear that their goal is not to understand technical operations per se. What, then, draws them together? In what follows, we suggest that despite the diversity of objects and sites that these chapters consider, they are linked by a common interest in examining processes of reflection and action in situations in which ‘‘living’’ has been rendered problematic. These situations provoke reflection on questions such as: What is human life becoming? What conventions define virtuous conduct in different contexts? We propose the concept of ‘regimes of living’ as a tool for investigating how such situations are structured today"
2)"The cyber-hub is primarily a switching station between the global scale of high- technology applications and adaptations at the regional scale. It is a portal between global and regional scales of technological innovations whereby local actors are enrolled to make useable in local markets. Bruno Latour uses the term ‘‘translation’ to denote the interpretations by actors of their own interests and that of the people they enroll. By providing a series of translations, the cyber corridor hopes to become an important detour for global companies. First, the combination of impressive infrastructure and low costs makes the corridor comparatively attractive to software companies from India, but also from Australia and the West, that seek to test and develop their products for small and emerging markets. For Indian software servicing, the corridor is also an ideal site for expanding offshore business in South-east Asia"
3) "The ecology of expertise is thus a ‘‘high-tension zone’’ of constant cross-referral between the recent past and the projected future, between rigidity and flexibility, between insiders and outsiders. Singaporean citizens are used to considering themselves among the most Westernized Asian subjects, and yet they must now compete with educated expatriates from post-socialist China and impoverished India. There is mounting intra-ethnic Chinese strain as mainland Chinese students and professionals seem to enjoy greater benefits, scholarships, and jobs than local ethnic Chinese. Students are concerned about career chances, and they believe that they have become less eligible for university scholarships"
4) "Wealth, a Singapore official declares, is now ‘‘generated by new ideas, more than by improving the ideas of others.’’Marketable ideas depend on exploiting specific qualities of the population. However, the government faces the problem of a small but steady outflow of its own talented elite, while trying to maintain a critical mass of well-educated people who can be the basis of new knowledge industries. To attract international expertise, clustering infrastructure is built to localize world-class institutions and experts in technological zones. The ‘‘cluster-development’’ strategy connects the state, as venture capitalist, with foreign research institutes and global companies, creating a network that fosters interactions, risk-taking, and innovations among expatriate and local knowledge workers.
5) " Whether in the creation of a biotech center or a digital corridor, the two cases are concrete examples of the assemblages of neoliberal reasoning, authoritarian rule, and governmentality that have created distinct regimes of human worth. In the new ecology of belonging, schemes that coordinate market or scientific skills with social citizenship have privileged foreign experts over most citizens. New ethical dilemmas are generated as local people feel themselves perilously close to becoming second-class citizens or biological resources made available to global drug companies. At the same time, the recent expulsions of foreign workers indicate the complex and contingent outcomes of such assemblages of power, and the ethical claims of ethnic majorities and religious groups that have to be negotiated in ecologies of expertise"
