No one accuses Malaysia Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad of thinking small. First he transformed a sleepy backwater of rubber trees and palm oil estates into one of the world's hottest economies. Now he wants to make it one of the most wired as well, with a 250-square-mile cross between Silicon Valley and Multimedia Gulch carved into the rolling hills outside Kuala Lumpur.
Mahathir's Multimedia Super Corridor plan - or MSC, in brisk Mahathirese - calls for the construction of both an IT City for 100,000 inhabitants, and Putrajaya, an "intelligent" seat of national government (goal: the world's first paperless bureaucracy by 2000). Built-in 5-Gbps fiber-optic cabling will keep everyone wired. Buffeting the MSC on both sides will be two other "megaprojects": the world's tallest buildings - the twin 1,480-foot Petronas Towers - and Asia's largest international airport.
Estimated cost: US$20 to $40 billion. Expected completion date: 2020. Grandiose plans, but Mahathir, a spry 71-year-old, usually gets what he wants.
