Tag: ethnography

Book Review · Starting Up in Shenzhen

Looking at China and Seeing Ourselves: Two Ethnographies of Tech in China

Posted on by Jason Li

Two book covers. The first is for Blockchain Chicken Farm which features an agragrian landscape. The second is for Protoype Nation and features a ballerina in the middle of a factory.

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside
By Xiaowei Wang
FSG Originals, 256 pp.

Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation
By Silvia M. Lindtner
Princeton University Press, 288 pp.

It’s really hard to get an on-the-ground view of…

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Ethnography of Tech

Debunking myths about China state control & surveillance in the age of COVID-19

Posted on by Tricia Wang

Editor’s note: Starting in January, Tricia re-connected with her former colleagues and contacts in Wuhan (where she did extensive fieldwork in the past) to find out more about the COVID-19 pandemic and the truth behind some popular myths that have been floating around on the Western mainstream media. Here, we document her debunking two such myths (with the help of Shayla Qiu and Reginald…

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Ethnography of Tech

Ethnographic dispatches: Spring 2015

Posted on by Tricia Wang

Editor’s note: As some of you might know, 88 Bar members Tricia Wang and Christina Xu spent the spring of this year doing research and fieldwork around people and technology in China. Here we’ve excerpted some of the highlights from Tricia’s Instagram account.

 

First stop – a Tencent conference in Beijing headlined by a talk on “user research…

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Ethnography of Tech

Inspiration for the future of cars from resource-constrained vendors in China

Posted on by Tricia Wang

A father-son team work together in a workshop modifying three-wheeled vehicles in Guizhou, China.

China is now the largest car market. But many Western companies are discovering that simply transferring cars designed for Western users do not always appeal to Asian users. Point in case GM’s Cadillac, a car…

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Ethnography of Tech

Trust, social networks, and how the guy who threw his shoe at the Father of the Great Firewall got away

Posted on by Jason Li

Tricia Wang’s delightful talk at LIFT 12 touches upon a variety of subjects:

  • The full back story and epilogue of the person who threw his shoe at the Father of the Great Firewall. Fun fact she mentions: Because the scandal was censored within China and not a big deal, the shoe thrower was only chastised lightly by local…

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Ethnography of Tech

Tricia Wang, undercover migrant worker extraordinaire

Posted on by Jason Li

Follow Tricia in her adventures to put herself in the shoes of migrant workers in Wuhan and to understand youth at the borders (economically and geographically) are using technology in China.

First stop: Room, board and internet in an underground tunnel:

I’ve been touring underground tunnels looking for a short-term…

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China’s digital underdogs

Posted on by Jason Li

Tricia Wang just posted her presentation from SXSW called “睡在网吧 [Sleeping at the Internet Bar] The Next 300 Million Chinese Users.” It has some great insights on the fringe community of migrants around China and how they are adamantly connected. Tricia observes that these migrants spent lots of time in internet bars/cafes because they’re cheap and because they can connect…

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