 The creative deficit of the city-state is evident to the author also in the Singaporeans'obsession with consumerism as a pastime, the homogeneity of the retailers and their fare, and in what he characterizes as their other passion: dining (although he finds fault with the diversity of the food, it is, he remarks "something to write home about"). He returns then to the theme of the staid insipidity of the city-state, observing the unsettling cleanliness of the physical environment and the self-policing of the populace. In detailing Singaporean technological advancement and aspirations as an information economy, Gibson casts doubt on the resilience of their controlled and conservative nature in the face of impending mass exposure to digital culture – "the wilds of X-rated cyberspace". "Perhaps", he speculates, "Singapore's destiny will be to become nothing more than a smug, neo-Swiss enclave of order and prosperity, amid a sea of unthinkable ... weirdness."
