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Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
"A brilliant and empathetic guide to the far corners of global capitalism." --Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing
From FSGO x Logic: stories about rural China, food, and tech that reveal new truths about the globalized world
In Blockchain Chicken Farm, the technologist and writer Xiaowei Wang explores the political and social entanglements of technology in rural China. Their discoveries force them to challenge the standard idea that rural culture and people are backward, conservative, and intolerant. Instead, they find that rural China has not only adapted to rapid globalization but has actually innovated the technology we all use today.
From pork farmers using AI to produce the perfect pig, to disruptive luxury counterfeits and the political intersections of e-commerce villages, Wang unravels the ties between globalization, technology, agriculture, and commerce in unprecedented fashion. Accompanied by humorous “Sinofuturist” recipes that frame meals as they transform under new technology, Blockchain Chicken Farm is an original and probing look into innovation, connectivity, and collaboration in the digitized rural world.
FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.
"A brilliant and empathetic guide to the far corners of global capitalism." --Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing
From FSGO x Logic: stories about rural China, food, and tech that reveal new truths about the globalized world
In Blockchain Chicken Farm, the technologist and writer Xiaowei Wang explores the political and social entanglements of technology in rural China. Their discoveries force them to challenge the standard idea that rural culture and people are backward, conservative, and intolerant. Instead, they find that rural China has not only adapted to rapid globalization but has actually innovated the technology we all use today.
From pork farmers using AI to produce the perfect pig, to disruptive luxury counterfeits and the political intersections of e-commerce villages, Wang unravels the ties between globalization, technology, agriculture, and commerce in unprecedented fashion. Accompanied by humorous “Sinofuturist” recipes that frame meals as they transform under new technology, Blockchain Chicken Farm is an original and probing look into innovation, connectivity, and collaboration in the digitized rural world.
FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.
256 pages, Paperback
First published October 13, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 337 reviews
July 13, 2020
I Went to Rural China and All I Got Was This Valuable New Perspective on the Relationship Between Technology and Geopolitics.
June 15, 2020
Xiaowei Wang is a Chinese-American artist, researcher and activist working on technology-related issues. In this book, they describe their travels through the Chinese countryside, searching for the sources and consequences of technological innovation. While it's interesting how they dissolve the myth of the conservative countryside, it's even more interesting how they confront non-Chinese readers with their prejudices only to illustrate how stupid these cliches actually are, and how close Western technological realities are to those in China. In eight essays, Wang talks about the surveillance state and surveillance capitalism, eCommerce and digital multi-level-schemes, social media and influencers, the title-giving chicken farm that uses blockchain to improve food safety, and some other economic and social implications of technology in rural China.
I liked how the author puts economic phenomena in perspective with an intersectional approach: They are Han Chinese-American, traveling between big cities and rural areas, talking with tech specialists and workers, young people and old people, always trying to measure both the chances and dangers of digital innovation. And they also open up the big perspective: What kind of world do we want to live in, and what does that mean for the way we build and use technology? What opportunities and threats does technology bring for social justice?
Unfortunately, I'm not a tech specialist, but the texts are easily accessible, and the social dimensions are way more important than the details of technological processes. This is an intriguing read for anyone interested in the development of digital technologies and how they can change the face of societies. Plus there are some "Sinofuturist" recipes in the book, so readers can find new ways to engineer their food! ;-)
I liked how the author puts economic phenomena in perspective with an intersectional approach: They are Han Chinese-American, traveling between big cities and rural areas, talking with tech specialists and workers, young people and old people, always trying to measure both the chances and dangers of digital innovation. And they also open up the big perspective: What kind of world do we want to live in, and what does that mean for the way we build and use technology? What opportunities and threats does technology bring for social justice?
Unfortunately, I'm not a tech specialist, but the texts are easily accessible, and the social dimensions are way more important than the details of technological processes. This is an intriguing read for anyone interested in the development of digital technologies and how they can change the face of societies. Plus there are some "Sinofuturist" recipes in the book, so readers can find new ways to engineer their food! ;-)
December 29, 2020
i just read a very angry review of this book by an ayn rand fan about how it's too ideological haha. i'm mulling it over... regardless the facts alone in this book are so interesting. and the ideology is beautiful
i've been fantasizing about becoming a software engineer and (separately) moving to china bc i want to be current... tech is the future, china feels like the future bc it's gone thru both communism and capitalism and is therefore on the event horizon of history... i want to rush headlong into the void... um! but this book is about unpacking that, how behind china's sleek urban tech scene are rural farmers, taobao villages, etc, how behind technology is humans, how thinking about "china" as a discrete concept in the context of tech/the global economy doesn't make sense in that components, investors, employees are global. "it would have been easy to believe the technological arms race between china and the united states... because at least then a person, a company, a country could serve as the symbol of sinister surveillance." but instead your favorite american christian girl autumn influencer sells fake pearls sourced from rural zhejiang (this is not the best example of what i just quoted but was a very enjoyable chapter). as bong joon ho said, we all live in the country of capitalism!
re: ayn rand fan, i think this book is certainly ideological but i guess i was moved by the ideology so i don't mind haha. and i think the book generally does a good job of connecting particular observations about rural china w theory. there were some points that felt a little bit disconnected (especially in the chapter on predictive policing in a guiyang urban village, where most of the critiques of technological surveillance/carceral punishment felt borrowed from american critics. i didn't think the author followed the guiyang police station long enough to be able to thoughtfully apply those critiques to it. i was actually fascinated by how grassroots the data collection was, how the community seemed to buy into it for better or worse... though i didn't know chinese police were trained off US models! yikes!). shit that was a long parenthetical. that's really the only spot i felt the critiques were off though. otherwise the book was so clear about observing/conceding the ways in which technology was lifting rural china out of poverty, but in ways that are unsustainable, that overlook these beautiful philosophical nuggets:
"the process of learning doesn't reside solely in our brains, it's environmental, physical, and, most of all, social, carried out through interaction and dialogue"
"an essential part of being human is the ability to enter into commitments and to be responsible for the courses of action that they anticipate. a computer can never enter into a commitment"
the "recipes" were so sci fi and cool to read in a nonfiction book. they made me feel optimistic about the future as one where technology is nurturing. "there is so much potential for AI to serve life, to expand the open systems we do live in." and a concrete example! "there could be scenarios where an AI model helps small-scale fisheries across the world examine weather patterns, getting rid of the need for expensive forms of expertise. this stands in contrast to the current economics of AI, which would learn toward an expensive, corporate AI model that demands small fisheries become industrial fish farms to recuperate costs"
my brother would probably say, well industrial fisheries are more efficient! but "the work of a farmer is [not] to simply produce food for people in cities, and to make the food cheap and available... for thousands of years, the work of these farmers has been stewarding and maintaining the earth, rather than optimizing agricultural production"
i LOVE the analysis of shanzhai, as "an unapologetic confrontation with western ideas of intellectual property"
i've been fantasizing about becoming a software engineer and (separately) moving to china bc i want to be current... tech is the future, china feels like the future bc it's gone thru both communism and capitalism and is therefore on the event horizon of history... i want to rush headlong into the void... um! but this book is about unpacking that, how behind china's sleek urban tech scene are rural farmers, taobao villages, etc, how behind technology is humans, how thinking about "china" as a discrete concept in the context of tech/the global economy doesn't make sense in that components, investors, employees are global. "it would have been easy to believe the technological arms race between china and the united states... because at least then a person, a company, a country could serve as the symbol of sinister surveillance." but instead your favorite american christian girl autumn influencer sells fake pearls sourced from rural zhejiang (this is not the best example of what i just quoted but was a very enjoyable chapter). as bong joon ho said, we all live in the country of capitalism!
re: ayn rand fan, i think this book is certainly ideological but i guess i was moved by the ideology so i don't mind haha. and i think the book generally does a good job of connecting particular observations about rural china w theory. there were some points that felt a little bit disconnected (especially in the chapter on predictive policing in a guiyang urban village, where most of the critiques of technological surveillance/carceral punishment felt borrowed from american critics. i didn't think the author followed the guiyang police station long enough to be able to thoughtfully apply those critiques to it. i was actually fascinated by how grassroots the data collection was, how the community seemed to buy into it for better or worse... though i didn't know chinese police were trained off US models! yikes!). shit that was a long parenthetical. that's really the only spot i felt the critiques were off though. otherwise the book was so clear about observing/conceding the ways in which technology was lifting rural china out of poverty, but in ways that are unsustainable, that overlook these beautiful philosophical nuggets:
"the process of learning doesn't reside solely in our brains, it's environmental, physical, and, most of all, social, carried out through interaction and dialogue"
"an essential part of being human is the ability to enter into commitments and to be responsible for the courses of action that they anticipate. a computer can never enter into a commitment"
the "recipes" were so sci fi and cool to read in a nonfiction book. they made me feel optimistic about the future as one where technology is nurturing. "there is so much potential for AI to serve life, to expand the open systems we do live in." and a concrete example! "there could be scenarios where an AI model helps small-scale fisheries across the world examine weather patterns, getting rid of the need for expensive forms of expertise. this stands in contrast to the current economics of AI, which would learn toward an expensive, corporate AI model that demands small fisheries become industrial fish farms to recuperate costs"
my brother would probably say, well industrial fisheries are more efficient! but "the work of a farmer is [not] to simply produce food for people in cities, and to make the food cheap and available... for thousands of years, the work of these farmers has been stewarding and maintaining the earth, rather than optimizing agricultural production"
i LOVE the analysis of shanzhai, as "an unapologetic confrontation with western ideas of intellectual property"
January 10, 2025
The worst book I ever read was the cleverly-titled Honeymoon With My Brother. This book wasn't nearly as bad as that one, and had quite a few good moments, but if I ever create a bookshelf called "don't judge a book by its title," this one will land there with a thud.
Where to begin? I loved the title, but the eponymous essay contained the worst explanation of blockchain I've ever read. If I were new to blockchain, I would want to know: What problem does it solve? How does it work? Does it actually work? Who would want to use it? And can you provide an example? Instead, we get a lecture on Hobbsian philosophy; Wang morphs from "life is nasty, brutal and short" to an interpretation that all people will cheat and steal if given the opportunity, and that this interpretation is, in fact, wrong. I disagree with the interpretation of Hobbes but agree that people are not innately evil thieving cheaters; but no closer to understanding blockchain. Then we read about a bunch of studies that show that people are not liars and cheats. Well, not all of them, certainly, which begs the question of why people bothered to devise a sophisticated security system in the first place. Which kinda gets lost in all the philosophizing.
This is but one example of an entire chapter being built around an assertion that, to me, just seems completely fruit loops:
"Most of our daily labor in cities has become shopping and consuming online." (p. 177)
On using databases to aid in policing, and what police experience, for example, in a domestic disturbance call: "But it's in the gulf between that number in the database and the visceral, adrenaline rush of responding to a call that fear comes in, a gulf created by the abstraction of numbers." (p. 153)
"The seduction of AI is already palpable in China and the United States, across the political spectrum, as people advocate for a fully automated world." (p. 87)
"I learn that the core belief of a government like China's is steeped in what is called 'patriarchal authoritarianism.' Citizens must trust that the predominantly male-led government has their best interests at heart." (p. 61)
Although the author was thirty-four when the book was written, has degrees from Harvard and Berkeley and (on the evidence of this book) has travelled widely, they seem so very, very inexperienced.
There were a couple of nice essays here, rescued by an actual cogent idea and unconvoluted way of presenting it. There's a solid explanation (with examples!) of how Alibaba has tempted many country-dwellers in China to turn their time and talents away from pigs and soybeans and instead to creating things to sell online, much of which the world could likely do without. Thousands of "Taobao towns" (in which at least 10% of the population is involved in selling stuff online) have sprung up since Alibaba began putting 'information centers' in small villages, showing people how to set up their accounts and create sales pages. Much of this tat ends up in the US, sold by third-party resellers like Etsy and Wish.com. Agricultural land lies fallow, chickens are neglected and all the junk required to build this stuff, plus the leftover waste, is dumped in the creeks and fields. Alibaba handles the sales channels and the finances while deftly transferring all of the risk onto the villagers, who are in a race to the bottom on pricing. I guess I was a little bit aware of this, but Wang brought home the scale of it.
On our side of the ocean, "multi-level marketers" buy loads of this crap and then try to sell it online via livestream shows, and suchlike; these sellers predominate in states with high unemployment. Again, all the risk lies with the "entrepreneurs" trying to convince people to buy stuff they really don't need and likely can't afford.
In some circles, Jack Ma is considered a genius. I'm sure Hobbes would think so.
Where to begin? I loved the title, but the eponymous essay contained the worst explanation of blockchain I've ever read. If I were new to blockchain, I would want to know: What problem does it solve? How does it work? Does it actually work? Who would want to use it? And can you provide an example? Instead, we get a lecture on Hobbsian philosophy; Wang morphs from "life is nasty, brutal and short" to an interpretation that all people will cheat and steal if given the opportunity, and that this interpretation is, in fact, wrong. I disagree with the interpretation of Hobbes but agree that people are not innately evil thieving cheaters; but no closer to understanding blockchain. Then we read about a bunch of studies that show that people are not liars and cheats. Well, not all of them, certainly, which begs the question of why people bothered to devise a sophisticated security system in the first place. Which kinda gets lost in all the philosophizing.
This is but one example of an entire chapter being built around an assertion that, to me, just seems completely fruit loops:
"Most of our daily labor in cities has become shopping and consuming online." (p. 177)
On using databases to aid in policing, and what police experience, for example, in a domestic disturbance call: "But it's in the gulf between that number in the database and the visceral, adrenaline rush of responding to a call that fear comes in, a gulf created by the abstraction of numbers." (p. 153)
"The seduction of AI is already palpable in China and the United States, across the political spectrum, as people advocate for a fully automated world." (p. 87)
"I learn that the core belief of a government like China's is steeped in what is called 'patriarchal authoritarianism.' Citizens must trust that the predominantly male-led government has their best interests at heart." (p. 61)
Although the author was thirty-four when the book was written, has degrees from Harvard and Berkeley and (on the evidence of this book) has travelled widely, they seem so very, very inexperienced.
There were a couple of nice essays here, rescued by an actual cogent idea and unconvoluted way of presenting it. There's a solid explanation (with examples!) of how Alibaba has tempted many country-dwellers in China to turn their time and talents away from pigs and soybeans and instead to creating things to sell online, much of which the world could likely do without. Thousands of "Taobao towns" (in which at least 10% of the population is involved in selling stuff online) have sprung up since Alibaba began putting 'information centers' in small villages, showing people how to set up their accounts and create sales pages. Much of this tat ends up in the US, sold by third-party resellers like Etsy and Wish.com. Agricultural land lies fallow, chickens are neglected and all the junk required to build this stuff, plus the leftover waste, is dumped in the creeks and fields. Alibaba handles the sales channels and the finances while deftly transferring all of the risk onto the villagers, who are in a race to the bottom on pricing. I guess I was a little bit aware of this, but Wang brought home the scale of it.
On our side of the ocean, "multi-level marketers" buy loads of this crap and then try to sell it online via livestream shows, and suchlike; these sellers predominate in states with high unemployment. Again, all the risk lies with the "entrepreneurs" trying to convince people to buy stuff they really don't need and likely can't afford.
In some circles, Jack Ma is considered a genius. I'm sure Hobbes would think so.
January 7, 2023
One of my most cynical and possibly reactionary takes is that the fragmentary meandering form that many recent books take is not a creative break from traditional form but rather evidence of an inability to write a coherent narrative or argument. I’m not disavowing the form entirely, there have been many times where I think it is successful, but I think you have to be a talented stylist to pull it off. It’s like how there is a difference between a jazz musician playing discordant notes and me smashing on a keyboard. The jazz musician knows how to break the rules; I am just making a mess.
I wanted to read this book because I was obsessed with watching those YouTube videos that show a beautiful girl in a rural Chinese village making something from scratch. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvmC-... is a good example) This is a whole genre on TikTok and Youtube. The girl I like to watch always knows how to do every single step of production. If she’s making a sweater, she will raise the lamb and shear it and spin the yarn and dye the wool (and of course she makes the dye herself out of berries from her garden or something) and THEN she makes the sweater. I consider it impressive when someone knows how to knit or sew, like they’ve got one over on machines, but this girl not only knows how to sew but how to make all the raw materials. The videos are so soothing and tranquil, they’re the perfect fantasy of a life of unalienated labor where you can feel and touch every single thing that went into the creation of the object; she’s in a relationship with all the materials that came from land/animals that she lovingly stewarded. Of course at the back of my mind I can tell that the production value of the video is extremely high and that this is likely not just some random girl filming slices of life. It’s a fetishization of idealized rural life. It is just as much a fantasy video as it is to watch shopping haul unboxing videos.
Unfortunately, this book was a disappointment. It suffered from a lack of rigor and provided only tepid insights on the relationship between tech and rural China. The book is divided into sections that are further divided into anecdotal fragments that are occasionally related to one another. They all follow the same format. Wang describes their immediate surroundings, and then provides some milquetoast takes about tech and society and capitalism (“shopping is a religion” ok). They vaguely gesture toward critical theory and then barely get into it. The book has a very juvenile “fully automated luxury space communism” understanding of politics. Though honestly I can’t tell what the author’s ideology is. They’ll place hope and belief in technocratic solutions like blockchain technology, then the next second tech is the root of all evil and we need to return to (unscalable) luddite life. Sometimes they have libertarian ideas, sometimes they’re pushing for collectivity over the individual. They’re generally very anti Mao and anti CCP. Mostly it’s the internet based leftish stance where they’re ostensibly against capitalism but are generally a liberal who wants everything to be the same except without all the bad stuff, and no road map for how to make the bad stuff go away.
This isn’t to say that there needs to be ideological purity, there is value in thinking through contradictions, but this book is scattered and noncommittal rather than an investigation of contradiction. Some of the negative reviews are from right leaning accounts who are probably just mad that the author is nonbinary but I think that this book could benefit from some Marx! There is no definitive description of what the problem is because the examples are so scattered and surface level, and then when they present vague platitudes about “doing the work” of “awareness and care” over “efficiency and scale”. I’m like WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN???? WHAT IS “THE WORK”??? There are 8 billion of us and we all have to eat or we die!
I feel like a hypocrite because it’s not like I’m as well versed in all the critical theory political theory etc as I’d like to be. But I’m not writing a book, I’m someone who is reading a book in hopes of learning! Ultimately if it’s supposed to be a hard-hitting piece of journalism or nonfiction, there should have been more scholarly rigor. If it’s going to be a peripatetic meander, it should have more poetic writing instead of the tone of a Vox article. These sections all felt like unfinished article ideas. And many of the subjects would have made for good articles had they been completed! It was a slog to get through this bc I became so disillusioned with it, I marked this as read for 2022 but I actually couldn’t finish it until today even though I was reading it every day. I’m so glad it’s done. I will now be seeking recommendations for books that cover similar subjects that are better written and with a deeper understanding of politics. And I will go read some theory so I can properly express why this book disappointed me so much.
I wanted to read this book because I was obsessed with watching those YouTube videos that show a beautiful girl in a rural Chinese village making something from scratch. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvmC-... is a good example) This is a whole genre on TikTok and Youtube. The girl I like to watch always knows how to do every single step of production. If she’s making a sweater, she will raise the lamb and shear it and spin the yarn and dye the wool (and of course she makes the dye herself out of berries from her garden or something) and THEN she makes the sweater. I consider it impressive when someone knows how to knit or sew, like they’ve got one over on machines, but this girl not only knows how to sew but how to make all the raw materials. The videos are so soothing and tranquil, they’re the perfect fantasy of a life of unalienated labor where you can feel and touch every single thing that went into the creation of the object; she’s in a relationship with all the materials that came from land/animals that she lovingly stewarded. Of course at the back of my mind I can tell that the production value of the video is extremely high and that this is likely not just some random girl filming slices of life. It’s a fetishization of idealized rural life. It is just as much a fantasy video as it is to watch shopping haul unboxing videos.
Unfortunately, this book was a disappointment. It suffered from a lack of rigor and provided only tepid insights on the relationship between tech and rural China. The book is divided into sections that are further divided into anecdotal fragments that are occasionally related to one another. They all follow the same format. Wang describes their immediate surroundings, and then provides some milquetoast takes about tech and society and capitalism (“shopping is a religion” ok). They vaguely gesture toward critical theory and then barely get into it. The book has a very juvenile “fully automated luxury space communism” understanding of politics. Though honestly I can’t tell what the author’s ideology is. They’ll place hope and belief in technocratic solutions like blockchain technology, then the next second tech is the root of all evil and we need to return to (unscalable) luddite life. Sometimes they have libertarian ideas, sometimes they’re pushing for collectivity over the individual. They’re generally very anti Mao and anti CCP. Mostly it’s the internet based leftish stance where they’re ostensibly against capitalism but are generally a liberal who wants everything to be the same except without all the bad stuff, and no road map for how to make the bad stuff go away.
This isn’t to say that there needs to be ideological purity, there is value in thinking through contradictions, but this book is scattered and noncommittal rather than an investigation of contradiction. Some of the negative reviews are from right leaning accounts who are probably just mad that the author is nonbinary but I think that this book could benefit from some Marx! There is no definitive description of what the problem is because the examples are so scattered and surface level, and then when they present vague platitudes about “doing the work” of “awareness and care” over “efficiency and scale”. I’m like WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN???? WHAT IS “THE WORK”??? There are 8 billion of us and we all have to eat or we die!
I feel like a hypocrite because it’s not like I’m as well versed in all the critical theory political theory etc as I’d like to be. But I’m not writing a book, I’m someone who is reading a book in hopes of learning! Ultimately if it’s supposed to be a hard-hitting piece of journalism or nonfiction, there should have been more scholarly rigor. If it’s going to be a peripatetic meander, it should have more poetic writing instead of the tone of a Vox article. These sections all felt like unfinished article ideas. And many of the subjects would have made for good articles had they been completed! It was a slog to get through this bc I became so disillusioned with it, I marked this as read for 2022 but I actually couldn’t finish it until today even though I was reading it every day. I’m so glad it’s done. I will now be seeking recommendations for books that cover similar subjects that are better written and with a deeper understanding of politics. And I will go read some theory so I can properly express why this book disappointed me so much.
March 1, 2022
~gentle reminder that the author's pronouns are they/them~
my most vivid childhood memories with my dad and of china are when my mom took me and my brother (from taiwan) to visit dad in china (who worked in tech there throughout the 2000s to early 2010s) and he would take us on factory tours and shanzai cd/dvd stores. i remember feeling emotional those summer days in my early teens, relating to lyrics for the first time, attached to sony cybershot, feeling small and big at the same time, wondering about china, wondering about taiwan. i stayed up late listening to shanzhai avril cd while staring out at chongqing's brand new, glistening skyline.
these memories of my very first days with personal tech rush to me when i read wang's nostalgic, empathetic, meandering takes on their travels and observations of rural and urban china. i felt a mix of gentle daze and gratitude that they took the time and yearned to visit again myself. some stories in here are much more nuanced and coherent than others. their points could be more critical and thorough, right now it reads like a journal for those who already agree with them and are in on the same things.
rough ranking...
2. on a blockchain chicken farm - food probs, west vs china, most coherent story in this book
7. gone shopping in the mountain stronghold - taobao
1. ghost in the machine - hukou and chengzhongcun (talked to dad about this)
8. welcome to my pearl party - scattered journal about pearl industry and livestreaming and peppa
3. when ai farms pigs - agricultural meat industry vicious cycle tea
6. "no one can predict the future" - Real Population Platform, data
5. made in china - naomi wu and shanzhai and other topics
4. buffet life - exploitation of workers
my most vivid childhood memories with my dad and of china are when my mom took me and my brother (from taiwan) to visit dad in china (who worked in tech there throughout the 2000s to early 2010s) and he would take us on factory tours and shanzai cd/dvd stores. i remember feeling emotional those summer days in my early teens, relating to lyrics for the first time, attached to sony cybershot, feeling small and big at the same time, wondering about china, wondering about taiwan. i stayed up late listening to shanzhai avril cd while staring out at chongqing's brand new, glistening skyline.
these memories of my very first days with personal tech rush to me when i read wang's nostalgic, empathetic, meandering takes on their travels and observations of rural and urban china. i felt a mix of gentle daze and gratitude that they took the time and yearned to visit again myself. some stories in here are much more nuanced and coherent than others. their points could be more critical and thorough, right now it reads like a journal for those who already agree with them and are in on the same things.
rough ranking...
2. on a blockchain chicken farm - food probs, west vs china, most coherent story in this book
7. gone shopping in the mountain stronghold - taobao
1. ghost in the machine - hukou and chengzhongcun (talked to dad about this)
8. welcome to my pearl party - scattered journal about pearl industry and livestreaming and peppa
3. when ai farms pigs - agricultural meat industry vicious cycle tea
6. "no one can predict the future" - Real Population Platform, data
5. made in china - naomi wu and shanzhai and other topics
4. buffet life - exploitation of workers
January 3, 2021
Xiaowei Wang does the tough task of critiquing tech-religion while being a tech-optimist. The marvelous part is that the book works as a travelogue, as a short survey, and as a general critique of the present.
Much recommended to my Indian friends, who may see in TaoBao's rural initiatives the radiations of the track that Indian agriculture may soon be pushed towards.
Much recommended to my Indian friends, who may see in TaoBao's rural initiatives the radiations of the track that Indian agriculture may soon be pushed towards.
December 30, 2021
AI is not the balm to any problem—it is just one piece of the ever-hungry quest for scale.
The purchase of Halloween costumes in suburban United States fueling the replacement of growing wheat with chili peppers in Dinglou is one of the many cases in Blockchain Chicken Farm of how technology and globalism are changing the ecology of rural China. The book is an exploration of the changes in land, ecology, and migration in rural china as a result of technology, consumerism, and globalism. Xiaowei Wang highlights the resulting precarity of life for gig workers and the exploitation of that precarity by internet platforms and government policies.
Wang talks about pearl parties where American shoppers pay to have direct sellers livestream the unboxing of low-grade pearls artificially sealed inside an oyster. The industry is a pyramid scheme that offloads all the risk on to the direct sellers of the oyster-pearl experience while the company procures these “wish pearls” from rural Chinese farms. While Wang doesn’t directly describe or quantify the precarity of life for the sellers, they do note that the states with the greatest number of direct sellers – North Dakota, Iowa, Wyoming, Montana – are also states with a high unemployment ranking. At the same time, the increased cultivation of pearls in these rural farms leads to excess nitrogen and phosphorus in the waterways around the farms, changing the local ecology of these regions.
Xiaowei Wang, through these stories, says simply that technology and the internet are having serious impact on the natural world. It is something to seriously reckon with if we are to address the climate crisis. However, Wang isn’t trying to definitively make a case of what the solution or even the problem is. They suggest an adoption of Shanzhai in tech development, building community, and letting go of the future. It was a loose coming together at the end, one that felt more personal than a direct conclusion. However, it’s one that resonated deeply with me.
--
December 2020
March 31, 2022
This has been a very interesting read over the week. The book was packed with so many surprises and new knowledge about how large technological companies backed by the government are shaping people's lives all across China. To me it read like Silicon Valleys arms race on the surface but just replicating the Silicon Valley model everywhere in the end. I heard somebody saying, "Sillicon valley is a mindeset." And this mindset is spreading and scaling up people's lives, livelihood, living condition, trust, empathy and everything all across the globe.
The book calls out to our lack of imagination in conceiving altenative future. It questions the way how emotional thinking isn't recognized at all while desigining "optimal", "effective" models based on the perceived notion of human "rationality". It discusses how big tech companies most often give its customers and users the delusion of freedom and safety that further dehumanizes people. In contrast, Shanzhai emerges as an attempt to decolonizing technology and giving more agency to the people living in the margins.
The book calls out to our lack of imagination in conceiving altenative future. It questions the way how emotional thinking isn't recognized at all while desigining "optimal", "effective" models based on the perceived notion of human "rationality". It discusses how big tech companies most often give its customers and users the delusion of freedom and safety that further dehumanizes people. In contrast, Shanzhai emerges as an attempt to decolonizing technology and giving more agency to the people living in the margins.
March 2, 2021
This book was not so much a book, but more of a weird art project masquarading as a book.
I really am having difficulty knowing where to start.
I was very excited to see someone writing about agriculture in China, a topic that I have actually published on and is too often ignored in both Chinese and Western media. But I was disappointed when I read this.
First, from a stylistic perspective, Wang is a shitty writer. There was really no variation in terms of her sentences, this is 250 pages of straight Subject-Verb-Object declarative sentences. I get it, this is a work of journalism and not literature, but still, the writing was mind-numbingly repeatitive.
Second, she does not actually seem to know that much about Chinese agriculture. Sure, she went on this trip to write this book, but, as far as additional research, she misses some pretty basic concepts. She notes how badly the Chinese government screwed up the economy, then, on p. 46, she has this weird thing where she seems to blame the cost-cutting nature of capitalism for the food-safety problems in Chinese agriculture. When talking about the tiny plots of 98% of Chinese farmers, she never notes that these are kept small and poor peasants are kept impoverished by governemnt diktat.
Weirdly, when discussing the concept of the "tragedy of the commons," she says that "the concept was disproved with in-depth data and careful science in 1990 by Elinor Ostrom..." (p. 57). First off, how does one 'disprove' a concept in social science...you cannot disprove anything in this field. One may have concepts that are more or less part of the concensus of economist, but you cannot prove or disprove any concept like this.
But even if I were to be charitable and overlook this, she is completely misreading Elinor Ostrom. Elinor Ostrom does not do anything like disproving the "tragedy of the commons." Rather, what she shows is that it is sometimes possible, under the right conditions, for a group of people to come together and avoid the tragedy of the commons. But she certainly would never say that the tragedy of the commons does not exist, nor that these tragedies of the commons are not currently occurring throughout the world. Rather, she would just say that there are sometimes ways around it.
I also was bothered by the virtue signalling she engages in from the very beginning. She starts out by talking about how, in describing technology companies in China, she is not endorsing the oppression of the Uighurs. Fine, me either, but it did seem a little unnecessary to put this statement before the book even begins. She continues by saying, "I oppose and condemn all forms of state violence, and I encourage readers to critically engage with the work of scholars and journalists in order to understand the role that tech companies play in maintaining racial capitalism worldwide."
Hang on, racial capitalism worldwide? What does that have to do with the Uyghurs, an ethnic group that is being gulaged by a Leninist Communist Party in the part of China that is least connected to global capitialism? Of course, the reason she does this is not because she is making a well-thought through point, but rather she wants to put her sanctimoniousness on display, linking two left-wing causes, ethnic oppression and a call for anti-capitialism.
She is a shitty writer, she does not really seem to understand her topic, all of that is there, but the thing that really typified the book for me is the way, at the beginning, she sanctimiously claims that she is going to be examining critically her metronormativity, that is her tendency to valorize the central urban areas and ignore the rural areas. Her narrative begins contemplating this problem when a farmer asks her a question on page 4, "Why are you here?" Ironically, she spends the next three pages engaging in highly theoretical bullshit discussion around metronormativity, but, by page 7, when she repeats the farmer's question, she still has not actually engaged with the farmer. So, just to keep track of what has happened, she has claimed she is going to engage with rural people and spaces, but actually, she spends these three pages babbling about some highly theoretical mumbo-jumbo cooked up by a scholar in a major university (what could be more metropolitan) while simultaneously telling the reader nothing of what the peasant actually said.
That really sums up this book, she claims she is going to engage with the rural, but, instead she just performs a critical theory striptease while simultaneously ignoring actual peasants.
Made it 25% of the way through before giving up.
I really am having difficulty knowing where to start.
I was very excited to see someone writing about agriculture in China, a topic that I have actually published on and is too often ignored in both Chinese and Western media. But I was disappointed when I read this.
First, from a stylistic perspective, Wang is a shitty writer. There was really no variation in terms of her sentences, this is 250 pages of straight Subject-Verb-Object declarative sentences. I get it, this is a work of journalism and not literature, but still, the writing was mind-numbingly repeatitive.
Second, she does not actually seem to know that much about Chinese agriculture. Sure, she went on this trip to write this book, but, as far as additional research, she misses some pretty basic concepts. She notes how badly the Chinese government screwed up the economy, then, on p. 46, she has this weird thing where she seems to blame the cost-cutting nature of capitalism for the food-safety problems in Chinese agriculture. When talking about the tiny plots of 98% of Chinese farmers, she never notes that these are kept small and poor peasants are kept impoverished by governemnt diktat.
Weirdly, when discussing the concept of the "tragedy of the commons," she says that "the concept was disproved with in-depth data and careful science in 1990 by Elinor Ostrom..." (p. 57). First off, how does one 'disprove' a concept in social science...you cannot disprove anything in this field. One may have concepts that are more or less part of the concensus of economist, but you cannot prove or disprove any concept like this.
But even if I were to be charitable and overlook this, she is completely misreading Elinor Ostrom. Elinor Ostrom does not do anything like disproving the "tragedy of the commons." Rather, what she shows is that it is sometimes possible, under the right conditions, for a group of people to come together and avoid the tragedy of the commons. But she certainly would never say that the tragedy of the commons does not exist, nor that these tragedies of the commons are not currently occurring throughout the world. Rather, she would just say that there are sometimes ways around it.
I also was bothered by the virtue signalling she engages in from the very beginning. She starts out by talking about how, in describing technology companies in China, she is not endorsing the oppression of the Uighurs. Fine, me either, but it did seem a little unnecessary to put this statement before the book even begins. She continues by saying, "I oppose and condemn all forms of state violence, and I encourage readers to critically engage with the work of scholars and journalists in order to understand the role that tech companies play in maintaining racial capitalism worldwide."
Hang on, racial capitalism worldwide? What does that have to do with the Uyghurs, an ethnic group that is being gulaged by a Leninist Communist Party in the part of China that is least connected to global capitialism? Of course, the reason she does this is not because she is making a well-thought through point, but rather she wants to put her sanctimoniousness on display, linking two left-wing causes, ethnic oppression and a call for anti-capitialism.
She is a shitty writer, she does not really seem to understand her topic, all of that is there, but the thing that really typified the book for me is the way, at the beginning, she sanctimiously claims that she is going to be examining critically her metronormativity, that is her tendency to valorize the central urban areas and ignore the rural areas. Her narrative begins contemplating this problem when a farmer asks her a question on page 4, "Why are you here?" Ironically, she spends the next three pages engaging in highly theoretical bullshit discussion around metronormativity, but, by page 7, when she repeats the farmer's question, she still has not actually engaged with the farmer. So, just to keep track of what has happened, she has claimed she is going to engage with rural people and spaces, but actually, she spends these three pages babbling about some highly theoretical mumbo-jumbo cooked up by a scholar in a major university (what could be more metropolitan) while simultaneously telling the reader nothing of what the peasant actually said.
That really sums up this book, she claims she is going to engage with the rural, but, instead she just performs a critical theory striptease while simultaneously ignoring actual peasants.
Made it 25% of the way through before giving up.
December 27, 2020
This book is a visceral disappointment.
For anyone planning to read this book, please understand that it is only maybe 40-50% about tech in China's countryside, 10% random prose (which is actually quite good which further fuels the disappointment), and 30-40% garbage tier takes on politics and social theory. The remaining percentage contains bizarre recipes and speculations on the future.
In a way, I am glad I read this book. We all pretend we like to expose ourselves to the opposing viewpoints to become more well rounded thinkers, but rarely do we actually read entire books by someone we disagree with. When I saw this book was by a "non-binary" person I considered putting it down because of the assumptions that come to my mind regarding how such a person might write and interpret events, philosophy, and the like. Well that would be prejudiced wouldn't it, so I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.
As usual my presumptions were correct, but it always feels good to be right and it also led to a contemporary twist on an old joke: How do you know if someone is non-binary (replacing vegan, or "does Crossfit", etc)? Answer: They will tell you. Sure enough, the author shoehorns how technology is not really all that advanced because the facial recognition cameras in China cannot recognize the author to be non-binary. The thought that the author misses the supreme irony in such a statement (and the fact that some reading this review might as well) makes it all the funnier.
It is not even that I give a shit that the author is a far left non-binary progressive. But that is not the bought I wanted to read when I bought something called Blockchain Chicken Farm. I wanted a book on technology in rural China with an emphasis on blockchain. The part about blockchain chickens is only maybe 10 pages or less and it might be one of the longer anecdotes from the countryside. I did NOT want an ill-informed progressive take on modern technology. There are much better modernist critiques, like pretty much anything published by Urbanomic.
Anyway, here are some specific issues I had with the book:
- The claim that the blockchain is turning food into a commodity instead of a human right. Mind-blowingly stupid, this claim ignores the fact that many foods are already commoditized on modern financial markets and quasi-commoditized in grocery stores. The author provides absolutely no rationale for food being a human right. This is the same mistake the far left makes with healthcare and education. They prescribe positive rights which entitle some to the labor of authors. Positive rights are self-defeating as even the simplest of thought experiments can illustrate: if I am stuck on an island and get sick, but nobody comes to provide me healthcare, are my human rights being violated? No of course not. Likewise, I can survive an infinite amount of time on an island while retaining my negative rights (like free speech), as those need malicious actors to infringe upon the rights of others. This is basic stuff, but shows how important axiomatic thinking is instead of the free-wheeling nonsense common in this book.
- The claim that Hobbesian philosophy has been disproven by "the research". The author then bizarrely links Hobbesian philosophy of a strong central authority being necessary to control the savage nature of man to the philosophy of crypto-anarchism. Crypto-anarchism is simply a tool to bypass authoritarian structures altogether. Instead of debating banking regulations or having lobbyists influence legislation to have banks do this or not do that, cryptocurrency provides a way to ignore that altogether with peer-to-peer anonymous (quasi on some coins I suppose) payment systems that leave government out of the picture entirely.
- The general lack of rigor the author has with defining terms. Sometimes China is the best, sometimes they are the worst (insert mandatory We Stand With the Uyghurs blurb at the beginning of the book, the easiest kind of lip-service that leftists love paying to social issues without actually doing anything about it (see: BLM)). Sometimes the author understands libertarian philosophy and the desire to be free from authoritarianism, sometimes the author wants the entire world to be based on communal feelings, whatever the hell that means.
There is one positive aspect of the book however, although it was unintended I am sure:
- While reading this book, China launched an anti-trust probe into the business restrictions Alibaba places on their 3rd party partners. I had the realization that there is no reason whatsoever to allow the ineffective agency, the government, to look into the practices of the most effective agency, Alibaba (or substitute Amazon in the USA). If anything, our governments are so ineffective that Alibaba or Amazon should look into their respective government's systems and try to fix them to meet even the most basic of free market baselines. Our governments are almost completely free from accountability, as is evidenced by all the hypocrisy exhibited by our legislators during the covid pandemic. Any of the archaic attempts to recall legislators available to us today are too slow for the modern world. Here is an idea that would hold legislators accountable: all bills passed must be digitized for the public to read which EACH provision in the bill being hyperlinked to the primary legislator who added that provision. Place a limit on the number of provisions per legislator and the number of legislators per provision.
The author then ends the book with a banal whimper for a better world, which reads more as an admission of the author's own short-comings in life (5 digits in debt, why are you buying MLM pearls?). They do mention an incurable disease, which as far as I know was not explained elsewhere in the book, so I do wish them the best with that.
Overall, a very disappointing experience. If the entire book was like the anecdote where the author buys the condiment from the rural farmer who asks her to pay in WeChat, the book would be at least a 3 and maybe a 4. Some of the prose is very well-crafted. But as it stands, it is merely a testament to the fact that socialism will never work because people who can't guide their own lives surely should not guide the lives of others.
For anyone planning to read this book, please understand that it is only maybe 40-50% about tech in China's countryside, 10% random prose (which is actually quite good which further fuels the disappointment), and 30-40% garbage tier takes on politics and social theory. The remaining percentage contains bizarre recipes and speculations on the future.
In a way, I am glad I read this book. We all pretend we like to expose ourselves to the opposing viewpoints to become more well rounded thinkers, but rarely do we actually read entire books by someone we disagree with. When I saw this book was by a "non-binary" person I considered putting it down because of the assumptions that come to my mind regarding how such a person might write and interpret events, philosophy, and the like. Well that would be prejudiced wouldn't it, so I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.
As usual my presumptions were correct, but it always feels good to be right and it also led to a contemporary twist on an old joke: How do you know if someone is non-binary (replacing vegan, or "does Crossfit", etc)? Answer: They will tell you. Sure enough, the author shoehorns how technology is not really all that advanced because the facial recognition cameras in China cannot recognize the author to be non-binary. The thought that the author misses the supreme irony in such a statement (and the fact that some reading this review might as well) makes it all the funnier.
It is not even that I give a shit that the author is a far left non-binary progressive. But that is not the bought I wanted to read when I bought something called Blockchain Chicken Farm. I wanted a book on technology in rural China with an emphasis on blockchain. The part about blockchain chickens is only maybe 10 pages or less and it might be one of the longer anecdotes from the countryside. I did NOT want an ill-informed progressive take on modern technology. There are much better modernist critiques, like pretty much anything published by Urbanomic.
Anyway, here are some specific issues I had with the book:
- The claim that the blockchain is turning food into a commodity instead of a human right. Mind-blowingly stupid, this claim ignores the fact that many foods are already commoditized on modern financial markets and quasi-commoditized in grocery stores. The author provides absolutely no rationale for food being a human right. This is the same mistake the far left makes with healthcare and education. They prescribe positive rights which entitle some to the labor of authors. Positive rights are self-defeating as even the simplest of thought experiments can illustrate: if I am stuck on an island and get sick, but nobody comes to provide me healthcare, are my human rights being violated? No of course not. Likewise, I can survive an infinite amount of time on an island while retaining my negative rights (like free speech), as those need malicious actors to infringe upon the rights of others. This is basic stuff, but shows how important axiomatic thinking is instead of the free-wheeling nonsense common in this book.
- The claim that Hobbesian philosophy has been disproven by "the research". The author then bizarrely links Hobbesian philosophy of a strong central authority being necessary to control the savage nature of man to the philosophy of crypto-anarchism. Crypto-anarchism is simply a tool to bypass authoritarian structures altogether. Instead of debating banking regulations or having lobbyists influence legislation to have banks do this or not do that, cryptocurrency provides a way to ignore that altogether with peer-to-peer anonymous (quasi on some coins I suppose) payment systems that leave government out of the picture entirely.
- The general lack of rigor the author has with defining terms. Sometimes China is the best, sometimes they are the worst (insert mandatory We Stand With the Uyghurs blurb at the beginning of the book, the easiest kind of lip-service that leftists love paying to social issues without actually doing anything about it (see: BLM)). Sometimes the author understands libertarian philosophy and the desire to be free from authoritarianism, sometimes the author wants the entire world to be based on communal feelings, whatever the hell that means.
There is one positive aspect of the book however, although it was unintended I am sure:
- While reading this book, China launched an anti-trust probe into the business restrictions Alibaba places on their 3rd party partners. I had the realization that there is no reason whatsoever to allow the ineffective agency, the government, to look into the practices of the most effective agency, Alibaba (or substitute Amazon in the USA). If anything, our governments are so ineffective that Alibaba or Amazon should look into their respective government's systems and try to fix them to meet even the most basic of free market baselines. Our governments are almost completely free from accountability, as is evidenced by all the hypocrisy exhibited by our legislators during the covid pandemic. Any of the archaic attempts to recall legislators available to us today are too slow for the modern world. Here is an idea that would hold legislators accountable: all bills passed must be digitized for the public to read which EACH provision in the bill being hyperlinked to the primary legislator who added that provision. Place a limit on the number of provisions per legislator and the number of legislators per provision.
The author then ends the book with a banal whimper for a better world, which reads more as an admission of the author's own short-comings in life (5 digits in debt, why are you buying MLM pearls?). They do mention an incurable disease, which as far as I know was not explained elsewhere in the book, so I do wish them the best with that.
Overall, a very disappointing experience. If the entire book was like the anecdote where the author buys the condiment from the rural farmer who asks her to pay in WeChat, the book would be at least a 3 and maybe a 4. Some of the prose is very well-crafted. But as it stands, it is merely a testament to the fact that socialism will never work because people who can't guide their own lives surely should not guide the lives of others.
January 5, 2023
2.5
Every chapter stems from the author’s travels in rural China and examines a technological aspect like surveillance via data or e-commerce in the countryside. The book is predicated on an interesting argument. It is supposed to be an exploration of how technology impacts and is impacted by the people of rural China, pushing back against the idea that “rural” equates to “backwards.” The author also seeks to challenge “metronormativity,” the claim that technology is good for rural people and will raise their quality of life via education. But what the book sets out to do, it does not accomplish.
The chapter on the titular “blockchain chicken farm” is the most interesting but is seriously flawed. In this chicken farm, blockchain is the solution to mistrust in the food supply chain, exacerbated by tragic events in China like infants dying from baby formulas. The company GoGoChicken attempts to rebuild trust by attaching ankle monitors on chickens, monitoring their every movement, and sending clients a QR code that links to the chicken’s own web page sent via an enterprise blockchain product. This solution, the author argues, runs counter to the libertarian utopia promised by blockchain and shouldn’t be necessary in the first place. The governance of blockchain, just like the central authority of a bank or government, falls to the hands of a select few developers who maintain its code, so is intrinsically bureaucratic. The author argues against the idea upon which blockchain is based — that there will always be several bad actors that ruin a structured system, aka the “tragedy of the commons.”
The issue with this argument is that Wang opposes the entirety of blockchain on the basis of a philosophical argument, yet doesn’t supply any meaningful alternatives that would better address the issue. Just “trusting each other” doesn’t cut it. While perhaps blockchain is founded upon an outdated philosophy, and by nature does not engender its promised equality, what is a better solution to the food trust issue (I’m sure Wang can think of some)? Is there a real negative to GoGoChicken’s blockchain chicken; does it sow distrust and spread inequality as the author might claim? Or is it just a slightly bonkers, yet creative application of technology to a very real problem?
And it’s not just a issue I noticed in the blockchain chapter — in most of the chapters, Wang introduces an interesting application of technology in rural China, then uses it to springboard into a Luddite-like philosophical rejection of the technology as a whole. Whereas the central argument posed in the Introduction is to challenge metronormativity, I found no meaningful evidence against it that would suggest that rural people’s lives are harmed by the introduction of technology. Rather, Wang often unintentionally supports the opposite.
In the e-commerce chapter, for instance, we learn about “Taobao villages,” where an entire village is a business unit that manufactures commodities for online sale. Here, rural people have found great economic opportunity, one even becoming a millionaire, by creating and selling products like Snow White costumes. But then the author’s anti-technology insert weasels in. Economic opportunity for the working class is no matter; Wang argues that in the modern age, shopping is an escapist, distracting hobby that we should wean off of and that it causes too much aspirational debt. Taobao is the epitome of shopping, therefore Taobao bad. Again, we see the pattern of an intriguing example being turned into fodder for unwarranted social commentary, pigeonholed into an anti-technology diatribe.
The author’s arguments are further convoluted by a forced narrative that frames each argument against a personal anecdote. While I appreciate the attempt to make the essays more accessible, it had the opposite effect. I found the “narrative nonfiction” parts distracting from the crux of her argument and often had to reread the essay to understand her train of thought. The narrative itself felt disingenuous at points because it was exaggerated and overdramatized. One line in particular gave me a strong literary ick — “As Farmer Jiang describes the chickens’ diet of local corn, my mouth starts watering at how delicious their eggs must be” (50). (I found it hard to believe that the author would start salivating at the idea of a chicken egg, much less the words “local corn.”) Sentences like these (and there were a lot of them) made me wonder — did you really experience that, or are you framing it that way to make your argument have more dramatic effect?
Aside from the roasting I just gave this book, there are some interesting tidbits in here — you just might have to wade through a pile of fluff to get to it. But I do appreciate that voice has been given to people of rural China, a voice which I don’t think I’ve ever read in a Western book. The book itself had a lot of potential, an unexpected argument that was almost, but not quite, serviced by real life examples.
Every chapter stems from the author’s travels in rural China and examines a technological aspect like surveillance via data or e-commerce in the countryside. The book is predicated on an interesting argument. It is supposed to be an exploration of how technology impacts and is impacted by the people of rural China, pushing back against the idea that “rural” equates to “backwards.” The author also seeks to challenge “metronormativity,” the claim that technology is good for rural people and will raise their quality of life via education. But what the book sets out to do, it does not accomplish.
The chapter on the titular “blockchain chicken farm” is the most interesting but is seriously flawed. In this chicken farm, blockchain is the solution to mistrust in the food supply chain, exacerbated by tragic events in China like infants dying from baby formulas. The company GoGoChicken attempts to rebuild trust by attaching ankle monitors on chickens, monitoring their every movement, and sending clients a QR code that links to the chicken’s own web page sent via an enterprise blockchain product. This solution, the author argues, runs counter to the libertarian utopia promised by blockchain and shouldn’t be necessary in the first place. The governance of blockchain, just like the central authority of a bank or government, falls to the hands of a select few developers who maintain its code, so is intrinsically bureaucratic. The author argues against the idea upon which blockchain is based — that there will always be several bad actors that ruin a structured system, aka the “tragedy of the commons.”
The issue with this argument is that Wang opposes the entirety of blockchain on the basis of a philosophical argument, yet doesn’t supply any meaningful alternatives that would better address the issue. Just “trusting each other” doesn’t cut it. While perhaps blockchain is founded upon an outdated philosophy, and by nature does not engender its promised equality, what is a better solution to the food trust issue (I’m sure Wang can think of some)? Is there a real negative to GoGoChicken’s blockchain chicken; does it sow distrust and spread inequality as the author might claim? Or is it just a slightly bonkers, yet creative application of technology to a very real problem?
And it’s not just a issue I noticed in the blockchain chapter — in most of the chapters, Wang introduces an interesting application of technology in rural China, then uses it to springboard into a Luddite-like philosophical rejection of the technology as a whole. Whereas the central argument posed in the Introduction is to challenge metronormativity, I found no meaningful evidence against it that would suggest that rural people’s lives are harmed by the introduction of technology. Rather, Wang often unintentionally supports the opposite.
In the e-commerce chapter, for instance, we learn about “Taobao villages,” where an entire village is a business unit that manufactures commodities for online sale. Here, rural people have found great economic opportunity, one even becoming a millionaire, by creating and selling products like Snow White costumes. But then the author’s anti-technology insert weasels in. Economic opportunity for the working class is no matter; Wang argues that in the modern age, shopping is an escapist, distracting hobby that we should wean off of and that it causes too much aspirational debt. Taobao is the epitome of shopping, therefore Taobao bad. Again, we see the pattern of an intriguing example being turned into fodder for unwarranted social commentary, pigeonholed into an anti-technology diatribe.
The author’s arguments are further convoluted by a forced narrative that frames each argument against a personal anecdote. While I appreciate the attempt to make the essays more accessible, it had the opposite effect. I found the “narrative nonfiction” parts distracting from the crux of her argument and often had to reread the essay to understand her train of thought. The narrative itself felt disingenuous at points because it was exaggerated and overdramatized. One line in particular gave me a strong literary ick — “As Farmer Jiang describes the chickens’ diet of local corn, my mouth starts watering at how delicious their eggs must be” (50). (I found it hard to believe that the author would start salivating at the idea of a chicken egg, much less the words “local corn.”) Sentences like these (and there were a lot of them) made me wonder — did you really experience that, or are you framing it that way to make your argument have more dramatic effect?
Aside from the roasting I just gave this book, there are some interesting tidbits in here — you just might have to wade through a pile of fluff to get to it. But I do appreciate that voice has been given to people of rural China, a voice which I don’t think I’ve ever read in a Western book. The book itself had a lot of potential, an unexpected argument that was almost, but not quite, serviced by real life examples.
January 31, 2024
Xiaowei Wang shared stories from rural China that I do not hear being told from the perspective of rural Chinese people. I appreciated that, and thought they did a serviceable job of doing so. The section on the titular blockchain chickens (bo bo gi) was great, and I love this blockchain deployment. Had they stuck to doing so I suspect I would have been a bigger fan. They get extra points for actually explaining how the blockchain works and why it is a valuable tool outside of the crypto world in an accurate way that I think would be easily understood by most anyone. I recently complained about a terrible and misleading explanation of blockchain in Number Go Up (a book I liked other than this) and Wang proved that this could be done.
The first problem here is that Wang also includes a couple of dystopic fiction pieces, blessedly short, and they are not good. Very not good. Even if they were good, they do not belong in this book.
The second problem, one much bigger than the first, was Wang's decision to marble this book with faulty sociopolitical theory. Their observations were logically flawed, stunningly elitist in the unique parlance of tech industry faux socialists and, insult to injury, these sections are badly written. There is nothing quite so silly and banal as the deep thought that technology isn't bad, capitalist deployment of technology is bad. Even the Chinese government knew that without outsize earning power there would be no innovation. Tech business that improves the buying power of the peasantry is not separable from capitalists figuring out how to make money from technology. That seems obvious, but it turns out it is not obvious to many people, including many with sound educations which one imagines included logic classes. Relatedly the book includes several random solidarity shouts out to the Uyghurs and Tibetans that had nothing at all to do with the text. It is like someone had a Social Democrat checklist beside them and inserted things to hit all the talking points. I believe that had Wang excised the political theory and random irrelevant nods to oppressed minority groups (and the Tibetans and Uyghurs most definitely qualify, no argument, it's just not relevant here) this would have worked.
I lived in China many years ago, but my experience is dated and I spent most of my time in cities. Though I now do work connected to global tech policy, I know nothing about agriculture or ag-tech, and only know what journalists tell me about cottage manufacturing industries that have grown up around Alibaba. (Wang seems to think this is a bad eCommerce development, but I can say from personal experience that 30 years ago many people were stapling fabric on couches in the street outside their houses for cheap furniture retailers, and I don't see this as different other than it being more lucrative.) That is to say I came into reading this with enough information to be dangerous and this book offered information that I think made me ever-so-slightly less dangerous. But it also brought mounds of disinformation, misinformation, and opinion disguised as academically supported economic theory. If GR allowed this would be a 2.5. (I may have tipped it higher for the great title.)
The first problem here is that Wang also includes a couple of dystopic fiction pieces, blessedly short, and they are not good. Very not good. Even if they were good, they do not belong in this book.
The second problem, one much bigger than the first, was Wang's decision to marble this book with faulty sociopolitical theory. Their observations were logically flawed, stunningly elitist in the unique parlance of tech industry faux socialists and, insult to injury, these sections are badly written. There is nothing quite so silly and banal as the deep thought that technology isn't bad, capitalist deployment of technology is bad. Even the Chinese government knew that without outsize earning power there would be no innovation. Tech business that improves the buying power of the peasantry is not separable from capitalists figuring out how to make money from technology. That seems obvious, but it turns out it is not obvious to many people, including many with sound educations which one imagines included logic classes. Relatedly the book includes several random solidarity shouts out to the Uyghurs and Tibetans that had nothing at all to do with the text. It is like someone had a Social Democrat checklist beside them and inserted things to hit all the talking points. I believe that had Wang excised the political theory and random irrelevant nods to oppressed minority groups (and the Tibetans and Uyghurs most definitely qualify, no argument, it's just not relevant here) this would have worked.
I lived in China many years ago, but my experience is dated and I spent most of my time in cities. Though I now do work connected to global tech policy, I know nothing about agriculture or ag-tech, and only know what journalists tell me about cottage manufacturing industries that have grown up around Alibaba. (Wang seems to think this is a bad eCommerce development, but I can say from personal experience that 30 years ago many people were stapling fabric on couches in the street outside their houses for cheap furniture retailers, and I don't see this as different other than it being more lucrative.) That is to say I came into reading this with enough information to be dangerous and this book offered information that I think made me ever-so-slightly less dangerous. But it also brought mounds of disinformation, misinformation, and opinion disguised as academically supported economic theory. If GR allowed this would be a 2.5. (I may have tipped it higher for the great title.)
July 6, 2021
This book is why grad school should be illegal. What could have been a fascinating book about rural China, which accounts for half of Chinese people but about 5% of journalism on China, is instead a giant word jumble of loosely connected intersectional academic theories that seems designed to impress the author's dissertation advisor. There is almost no discussion of Chinese history, but there are discussions of Bell Hooks' theories on being and belonging. There are extensive descriptions of the academic origins of the problematic views of white San Francisco tech bros. At one point there is even an Audre Lorde quote about the power of poetry. I'm sorry, I thought this was a book about technology in the Chinese countryside?
For all their woke posturing, the author actually ends up with a work that dehumanizes the rural Chinese poor. They makes sweeping remarks about how farmers are different than machines, but shows no humanity among these farmers. The author spends plenty of time talking about themself and how they feels in places like Guiyang (which has no purpose in the book, there are long descriptions of the city's nightlife and street food but the only connection to the book is a brief mention of server farms on the city's outskirts), but very little about how rural Chinese people are affected by technological changes. One chapter starts with the name of Chinese drone pilot, and I was excited that the author was actually going to talk about his life, but the chapter instead went off on the author's musings on the trade war and migration and what they "saw in his face," instead of just letting him speak for himself. At one point, the author talks about what they imagine the lives of the people who worked for their family were like instead of just, I don't know, interviewing some workers? The Chinese people in the book are just vessels for the author's abstract musings instead of individuals with their own lives, needs, and dreams. This may have changed in the last quarter of the book. I tried to get through it but I just couldn't.
In fairness, the book was probably meant for a tech-futurist nerd kind of audience, not a China nerd audience (like myself). If you're looking for a book about rural China, In Manchuria by Michael Meyer will tide you over. Hopefully, someone who isn't a white English teacher will write a good book about rural China in English, but this isn't it.
For all their woke posturing, the author actually ends up with a work that dehumanizes the rural Chinese poor. They makes sweeping remarks about how farmers are different than machines, but shows no humanity among these farmers. The author spends plenty of time talking about themself and how they feels in places like Guiyang (which has no purpose in the book, there are long descriptions of the city's nightlife and street food but the only connection to the book is a brief mention of server farms on the city's outskirts), but very little about how rural Chinese people are affected by technological changes. One chapter starts with the name of Chinese drone pilot, and I was excited that the author was actually going to talk about his life, but the chapter instead went off on the author's musings on the trade war and migration and what they "saw in his face," instead of just letting him speak for himself. At one point, the author talks about what they imagine the lives of the people who worked for their family were like instead of just, I don't know, interviewing some workers? The Chinese people in the book are just vessels for the author's abstract musings instead of individuals with their own lives, needs, and dreams. This may have changed in the last quarter of the book. I tried to get through it but I just couldn't.
In fairness, the book was probably meant for a tech-futurist nerd kind of audience, not a China nerd audience (like myself). If you're looking for a book about rural China, In Manchuria by Michael Meyer will tide you over. Hopefully, someone who isn't a white English teacher will write a good book about rural China in English, but this isn't it.
May 26, 2022
Looking at the title and reading the NYT review of Blockchain Chicken Farm, I thought this would be a straight up account of how tech is transforming China's rural regions - a little bit like Lee Kai Fu's AI Superpowers perhaps.
And Wang does deliver an eye opening account of how technology is being deployed in the rural regions - how Sanqiao village in Guizhou uses blockchain so that urban consumers hundreds of kilometers away can track the provenance and treatment of the poultry they are consuming (although Wang notes that it would be easy enough to fake web pages and video feeds); how internet gaming company NetEase moved into pig farming when its founder became concerned about the authenticity of the blood tofu in his hotpot, using technology to ensure that pigs raised by Weiyang, its agricultural products division, "live an optimised life", even setting up MOOCs to train skilled workers for the company; how Alibaba's ET Agricultural Brain aims to use AI to transform pig farming; how young people are choosing to remain in the rural areas to serve as farm service technicians - by operating drones to manage crops; the establishment of Taobao Villages where village households manufacture products at home for Taobao.
But Blockchain Chicken Farm isn't just about tech. It's a commentary on the values of contemporary society, where technology isn't necessarily to blame for the tensions and stresses we see arising; it merely accelerates their trajectory and makes them more visible.
In his opening chapter, Ghosts in the Machine, Wang gives a sweeping summary of China's cultural context - how pre-1949 China and socialist central planning under Mao continue to shape the present, creating tensions with urban, contemporary China. Wang cites sociologist Fei Xiaotong's observation of the difference between rural and urban culture, which I found thought provoking:
"In Fei's eyes, rural culture is marked by a different sense of time, a different cosmology. At the core of rural culture, he says, is a belief that the universe is already perfect as it is, and that our duty as humans is to maintain that harmony...every day depends on tending to the present moment. An act of care. In contrast, urban culture is centred on the belief that the universe must be constantly corrected on its course, and that life is defined by the pleasure of overcoming future challenges."
In Chapter 2, On a Blockchain Chicken Farm in the Middle of Nowhere, Wang recounts political scientist and food safety expert John Yasuda's assessment that maintaining contemporary food safety will always be a challenge before "ultimately food safety revolves around social trust and...'social trust can't scale.' When supply chains were shorter, being able to meet your farmer created this trust. With supply chains now long and complex, the chance that you might meet the Australian farmer who grew the kiwi you eat or the Mexican farmer who produced the avocado on your plate is low. Farmers themselves are also isolated from seeing the people they provide food for; they send their products off to larger corporations that then redistribute them." This observation raises the question for Wang on how we can extend and grow trust in an increasingly networked world.
Technologies like the blockchain also require the extension and development of trust - in the code underpinning the technology and in those who have developed the code. Wang notes:
"A system of record keeping used to be textual, readable, and understandable to everyone. The technical component behind it was as simple as paper and pencil. That system was prone to falsification, but it was widely legible. Under governance by blockchain, records are tamperproof, but the technical systems are legible only to a select few. Even exploring transactions on a blockchain requires some amount of technical knowledge and access. The technology of record keeping has become increasingly more complex. This complexity requires trust and faith in the code - and trust in those who write it. For those of us who don't understand the core, trusting a record written in natural language on a piece of paper seems at the very least a lot clearer." Moreover, Wang questions whether blockchain can really be deemed to be democratising and unbiased - it merely shifts control and power from the bureaucracy to technical experts (typically white and male).
Or how in Chapter 3 When AI Farms Pigs, Wang comments on AI's potential to serve society, and how realising this potential will depend on the choices we make - whether we use AI to help "doctors diagnose and identify disease versus AI replacing the human social service worker who determines whether someone should receive medical benefits", or whether an "AI model helps...small-scale fisheries across the globe examine weather patterns, getting rid of the need for expensive forms of expertise...in contrast to the current economics of AI, which would lean toward an expensive, corporate AI model that demands small fisheries become industrial fish farms to recuperate costs".
I could have done without the random chapters like How to Feed and AI, How to Eat Yourself, and How to Eat the World, where Wang creates recipes to serve as metaphors for the challenges and opportunities of technology. But overall, Blockchain Chicken Farm offers a peek into a different side of life in China.
And Wang does deliver an eye opening account of how technology is being deployed in the rural regions - how Sanqiao village in Guizhou uses blockchain so that urban consumers hundreds of kilometers away can track the provenance and treatment of the poultry they are consuming (although Wang notes that it would be easy enough to fake web pages and video feeds); how internet gaming company NetEase moved into pig farming when its founder became concerned about the authenticity of the blood tofu in his hotpot, using technology to ensure that pigs raised by Weiyang, its agricultural products division, "live an optimised life", even setting up MOOCs to train skilled workers for the company; how Alibaba's ET Agricultural Brain aims to use AI to transform pig farming; how young people are choosing to remain in the rural areas to serve as farm service technicians - by operating drones to manage crops; the establishment of Taobao Villages where village households manufacture products at home for Taobao.
But Blockchain Chicken Farm isn't just about tech. It's a commentary on the values of contemporary society, where technology isn't necessarily to blame for the tensions and stresses we see arising; it merely accelerates their trajectory and makes them more visible.
In his opening chapter, Ghosts in the Machine, Wang gives a sweeping summary of China's cultural context - how pre-1949 China and socialist central planning under Mao continue to shape the present, creating tensions with urban, contemporary China. Wang cites sociologist Fei Xiaotong's observation of the difference between rural and urban culture, which I found thought provoking:
"In Fei's eyes, rural culture is marked by a different sense of time, a different cosmology. At the core of rural culture, he says, is a belief that the universe is already perfect as it is, and that our duty as humans is to maintain that harmony...every day depends on tending to the present moment. An act of care. In contrast, urban culture is centred on the belief that the universe must be constantly corrected on its course, and that life is defined by the pleasure of overcoming future challenges."
In Chapter 2, On a Blockchain Chicken Farm in the Middle of Nowhere, Wang recounts political scientist and food safety expert John Yasuda's assessment that maintaining contemporary food safety will always be a challenge before "ultimately food safety revolves around social trust and...'social trust can't scale.' When supply chains were shorter, being able to meet your farmer created this trust. With supply chains now long and complex, the chance that you might meet the Australian farmer who grew the kiwi you eat or the Mexican farmer who produced the avocado on your plate is low. Farmers themselves are also isolated from seeing the people they provide food for; they send their products off to larger corporations that then redistribute them." This observation raises the question for Wang on how we can extend and grow trust in an increasingly networked world.
Technologies like the blockchain also require the extension and development of trust - in the code underpinning the technology and in those who have developed the code. Wang notes:
"A system of record keeping used to be textual, readable, and understandable to everyone. The technical component behind it was as simple as paper and pencil. That system was prone to falsification, but it was widely legible. Under governance by blockchain, records are tamperproof, but the technical systems are legible only to a select few. Even exploring transactions on a blockchain requires some amount of technical knowledge and access. The technology of record keeping has become increasingly more complex. This complexity requires trust and faith in the code - and trust in those who write it. For those of us who don't understand the core, trusting a record written in natural language on a piece of paper seems at the very least a lot clearer." Moreover, Wang questions whether blockchain can really be deemed to be democratising and unbiased - it merely shifts control and power from the bureaucracy to technical experts (typically white and male).
Or how in Chapter 3 When AI Farms Pigs, Wang comments on AI's potential to serve society, and how realising this potential will depend on the choices we make - whether we use AI to help "doctors diagnose and identify disease versus AI replacing the human social service worker who determines whether someone should receive medical benefits", or whether an "AI model helps...small-scale fisheries across the globe examine weather patterns, getting rid of the need for expensive forms of expertise...in contrast to the current economics of AI, which would lean toward an expensive, corporate AI model that demands small fisheries become industrial fish farms to recuperate costs".
I could have done without the random chapters like How to Feed and AI, How to Eat Yourself, and How to Eat the World, where Wang creates recipes to serve as metaphors for the challenges and opportunities of technology. But overall, Blockchain Chicken Farm offers a peek into a different side of life in China.
November 8, 2020
This is a fun and hugely informative book of essays on the state of technology in rural China. The author is very smart Chinese-American woman who seems to combine the skills of a software engineer with those of a journalist and an entrepreneur. There is fairly little that is available on the conduct of technology enterprises in China, much less outside of the major metropolitan areas.
While the chapters appear to be only loosely related to each other, they end of being well linked to any overall economic policy problem for the Chinese governments. The country is strongly organized around an internal passport system, with rights and benefits linked to areas of residence, such that it is not at all easy to pick up and move oneself or one’s family from a rural location to areas like Shanghai or Beijing where so many economic opportunities lie. As a result, each year hundreds of millions of Chinese migrate over 1500 kilometers to find remunerative work and who largely send their pay back home while living in temporary “urban villages” while away from home. To do away with internal passports would greatly exacerbate the population problems in the Chinese mega-cities. To further restrict the movement from rural areas would be politically dangerous as well and require the providing of new opportunities to the migrant workforce that ended up staying home.
Many of the chapters are concerned with efforts to consolidate and build large scale economies in rural food businesses, such as chicken raising and pork production. These businesses appear to require large size and capital intensity to generatge sufficient profit. Unfortunately, it does not appear feasible to force large numbers of smaller producers out of business, which requires initiatives such as in the title chapter that seek to innovate around quality assurance for smaller producers. Other chapters focus on the growth of large scale knockoff businesses that sell mostly to a rural customer base that could not patronize regular retail stores. One of the more interesting chapters covered efforts to build entire new retail areas linked to Alibaba and TaoBao, the latter a direct to consumer internet firm that is not dissimilar to eBay. A troubled financing venture that ran into troubles just prior to its IPO is related to this effort.
The writing is sharp, clear, and thoughtful. Ms. Wang is skillful at talking to a wide range of people to build her stories and the rich detail is helpful. I look forward to more books in this series and more work from Ms. Wang.
While the chapters appear to be only loosely related to each other, they end of being well linked to any overall economic policy problem for the Chinese governments. The country is strongly organized around an internal passport system, with rights and benefits linked to areas of residence, such that it is not at all easy to pick up and move oneself or one’s family from a rural location to areas like Shanghai or Beijing where so many economic opportunities lie. As a result, each year hundreds of millions of Chinese migrate over 1500 kilometers to find remunerative work and who largely send their pay back home while living in temporary “urban villages” while away from home. To do away with internal passports would greatly exacerbate the population problems in the Chinese mega-cities. To further restrict the movement from rural areas would be politically dangerous as well and require the providing of new opportunities to the migrant workforce that ended up staying home.
Many of the chapters are concerned with efforts to consolidate and build large scale economies in rural food businesses, such as chicken raising and pork production. These businesses appear to require large size and capital intensity to generatge sufficient profit. Unfortunately, it does not appear feasible to force large numbers of smaller producers out of business, which requires initiatives such as in the title chapter that seek to innovate around quality assurance for smaller producers. Other chapters focus on the growth of large scale knockoff businesses that sell mostly to a rural customer base that could not patronize regular retail stores. One of the more interesting chapters covered efforts to build entire new retail areas linked to Alibaba and TaoBao, the latter a direct to consumer internet firm that is not dissimilar to eBay. A troubled financing venture that ran into troubles just prior to its IPO is related to this effort.
The writing is sharp, clear, and thoughtful. Ms. Wang is skillful at talking to a wide range of people to build her stories and the rich detail is helpful. I look forward to more books in this series and more work from Ms. Wang.
December 26, 2020
This was the book I looked forward to the most this year.
It is a deeply empathetic work that pulls no punches. The book is both meandering and deliberate where every personal aside and theoretical diversion illuminates a new facet about how tech is changing the way we live our lives. The intermissions of recipes and speculative fiction were particularly refreshing.
However, there is one gap that I wish was explored more (Put more generously, this book offers an opportunity for a new research project.) In Wang's writing, the Chinese countryside is more pastoral than rebellious. While they do reference the bandit-filled "mountain strongholds", the rural parts of China have a more pronounced legacy of being sites of resistance. From the 14th century story "Outlaws of the March" to the escapades of communist cadres in the early 20th century, the Chinese countryside is turbulent, rowdy and violent. While this most certainly has changed in the 21st century Chinese state, I can't help but imagine how/whether the rural legacies of rebellion (both real and imagined) impact the people's use of tech there.
Nevertheless, this book lived up to expectations. It collapsed long distances in our global economy and encouraged a deeper meditation of how tech is shaping the way we eat, communicate, trust, and live.
It is a deeply empathetic work that pulls no punches. The book is both meandering and deliberate where every personal aside and theoretical diversion illuminates a new facet about how tech is changing the way we live our lives. The intermissions of recipes and speculative fiction were particularly refreshing.
However, there is one gap that I wish was explored more (Put more generously, this book offers an opportunity for a new research project.) In Wang's writing, the Chinese countryside is more pastoral than rebellious. While they do reference the bandit-filled "mountain strongholds", the rural parts of China have a more pronounced legacy of being sites of resistance. From the 14th century story "Outlaws of the March" to the escapades of communist cadres in the early 20th century, the Chinese countryside is turbulent, rowdy and violent. While this most certainly has changed in the 21st century Chinese state, I can't help but imagine how/whether the rural legacies of rebellion (both real and imagined) impact the people's use of tech there.
Nevertheless, this book lived up to expectations. It collapsed long distances in our global economy and encouraged a deeper meditation of how tech is shaping the way we eat, communicate, trust, and live.
October 9, 2021
I'm calling on President Joe Biden to put a stop to all creative non-fiction programs immediately.
A talented writer and a fascinating subject. Too bad they only know how to make their themes legible through bizarre and often inscrutable meditative self-reflection.
A book billed as an exploration of how technology is refashioning life in the Chinese country side for some reason ends with a call to change our culture (whose?) in order to change our politics (to what?) as the latter, she says, flows from the former (both flow from material conditions. Sorry lol). A missed opportunity
A talented writer and a fascinating subject. Too bad they only know how to make their themes legible through bizarre and often inscrutable meditative self-reflection.
A book billed as an exploration of how technology is refashioning life in the Chinese country side for some reason ends with a call to change our culture (whose?) in order to change our politics (to what?) as the latter, she says, flows from the former (both flow from material conditions. Sorry lol). A missed opportunity
December 26, 2024
every tech worker should read this !!!!!!!
profound. one of my favorite books i’ve read in a while (also, unrelatedly, one of the only books i’ve read in a while …).
what struck me particularly as both a sort-of tech worker and consumer is the geopolitical consequences of our seemingly isolated and singular actions. western fashion companies love to trash on chinese goods and fast fashion companies, characterizing them as a faceless evil devoted to polluting the world. they promote slow fashion, intentional fashion, etc. while i try not to be a consumer of “fast fashion” and agree with the values of prioritizing sustainable wear, it’s interesting that fast fashion and the production of many items (including those sold on popular sites like amazon) also have roots in rural china, where producing cheap clothing/items are both the lifeblood and the parasite of many villages who produce for a living. many tech systems such as alibaba and amazon have absolute power over village workers, where items can be returned on a whim and money can be arbitrarily given and taken away.
wang explores many facets of tech in a single book — blockchain, the software sprawl, the utilization of tech in uplifting rural villages, and the adjacent evil that comes with it. i’m honestly so in awe of this book — i think the author is a perfect catalyst to explore these motifs, as someone who’s both a native speaker of chinese and someone who has experienced the american tech industry. im so impressed and i know so much more now!
profound. one of my favorite books i’ve read in a while (also, unrelatedly, one of the only books i’ve read in a while …).
what struck me particularly as both a sort-of tech worker and consumer is the geopolitical consequences of our seemingly isolated and singular actions. western fashion companies love to trash on chinese goods and fast fashion companies, characterizing them as a faceless evil devoted to polluting the world. they promote slow fashion, intentional fashion, etc. while i try not to be a consumer of “fast fashion” and agree with the values of prioritizing sustainable wear, it’s interesting that fast fashion and the production of many items (including those sold on popular sites like amazon) also have roots in rural china, where producing cheap clothing/items are both the lifeblood and the parasite of many villages who produce for a living. many tech systems such as alibaba and amazon have absolute power over village workers, where items can be returned on a whim and money can be arbitrarily given and taken away.
wang explores many facets of tech in a single book — blockchain, the software sprawl, the utilization of tech in uplifting rural villages, and the adjacent evil that comes with it. i’m honestly so in awe of this book — i think the author is a perfect catalyst to explore these motifs, as someone who’s both a native speaker of chinese and someone who has experienced the american tech industry. im so impressed and i know so much more now!
July 20, 2022
I bought the book because it had two keywords that interested me - blockchain and China. But as the 'stories' went from swine to finally pearls, I realised that the title probably doesn't do justice to the multiple themes that surface in the book and makes it, a rich and nuanced read.
The introduction points us to 'metronormativity' - the idea that rural people and culture are 'backward, conservative and intolerant, and that the only way to live with freedom is to leave the countryside for highly connected urban oases.' Further, that internet, technology and media will educate and save them by allowing more experiences and chances of a better livelihood. The book is a challenge to all parts of this construct. It also pushes back on binary classifications we employ - digital/physical, natural/man-made and so on.
'Ghosts in the Machine' sets the context as we read about how under Deng Xiaoping in the 1980's, the country began imagining a uniquely Chinese future, and set the ball rolling for the rise of companies like Huawei and Alibaba. In parallel, there's the rise of TVEs (Town and Village Enterprises) over the prevalent SOEs (State Owned Enterprises), and a potential 'agrarian transition' that would result in industrialised agriculture, which would need lesser manpower. This would have social, environmental and political ramifications.
'Blockchain farm in the middle of nowhere' touches upon the surveillance state, non-explicit censorship, and 'the shadowy unease that looms over public conversations.'. It begins with the foodsheds in Shanghai and moves to the contrast (or not) between the dangers of cost-cutting in the food industry, and the gloss of 'blockchain chicken' (Bubuji/GoGoChicken). The latter uses 'a chicken Fitbit of sorts' on the ankle of chicken which allows a buyer to know the provenance of a chicken, and even see streaming live footage that can be accesses via a QR code! But despite this, the future is uncertain because the tech is on hire, and overhead costs are high. Can blockchain make food safety records tamper-proof by creating a distributed system? Perhaps, but there are many challenges including legibility and thus, access.
In 'When AI farms pigs', we are introduced to Alibaba's ET Agricultural Brain that aims to transform agriculture to 'help create China's pork miracle'. It brings out how, despite AI's potential to radically help humans, the current economics of AI makes it a corporate AI model that is all about scale and efficiency.
'Buffet Life' explores the alternate careers that Chinese youth are taking up. Case in point - drone operators. This is backed by a (state backed) system that is now bridging the gap between urban and rural education, creating the infrastructure for it and thereby also providing new means of livelihood.
In 'Made in China', there is a very insightful take on what 'innovation' means and how it is predominantly evaluated through a Western lens. China is forging its own path in 'innovation', trying to break away from cheap products at industrialised scale. 'Shanzai' is changing its earlier connotation to an ecosystem that's open source, and operating at hyper speed, steamrolling through the IP version favoured by the West, and forcing conversations on access and civility. The agricultural version of this approach is Rice Harmony, and its method of collective, organic rice farming. There is also the fascinating tale of Naomi Wu, a self-proclaimed cyborg, and an internet star.
'No one can predict the future' is as much about policing as it is about community and identity, and the difference between 'safety' and 'security'. It is interesting how many people working in the domain view surveillance as a technical problem to be solved without thinking of the related consequences. There is also a mention of 'criminal villages', the Chinese version of India's Jamtara.
'Gone shopping in the mountain stronghold' relates how 'Rural Revitalisation' relies on technology and the internet to build rural entrepreneurship ecosystems. The rural playbook of Taobao is a phenomenon, one that is transforming the rural landscape, literally and metaphorically. Others like JD.com and Pinduoduo are replicating this too. And thanks to this, there is a reverse migration to the village. But many of these platforms are unregulated, resulting in safety issues - everything from getting sick from food purchases to a cab driver raping and killing a passenger.
'Welcome to my pearl party' is the one I found most poignant. While the story is about pearl farming in China leading to an MLM sales machinery in the US, the underlying socio-cultural dimension of it - the human need for belonging and care - is what makes it an affecting read. This also features a 'subversive' version of Peppa Pig, or rather it becoming a mascot for those who are rebelling against the part of society which has everything and sets the rules - shehui ren culture.
While these are all set in different parts of China, there are themes that I could see were universal - '...the plague of being old and lonely. As younger generations leave villages, hometowns and even the country to chase after careers and jobs, and the tightening noose of inequality squeezes leisure time, the elderly are left to their own devices."
Blockchain, and fantastic perspectives of China were indeed part of the mix, but Xiaowei Wang delivered far more. Travelogue, technology, culture and community, future and sometimes even a bit of contemplative philosophy, I really wouldn't want to slot this book in any particular genre, and that's probably what makes it a compelling and fulfilling read.
P.S. In the penultimate page, the author, sitting in a HongKong bar, amidst the protests, writes about reports of a zootonic disease from mainland China causing flu-like symptoms in humans causing unease because the memory of SARS still being recent!
The introduction points us to 'metronormativity' - the idea that rural people and culture are 'backward, conservative and intolerant, and that the only way to live with freedom is to leave the countryside for highly connected urban oases.' Further, that internet, technology and media will educate and save them by allowing more experiences and chances of a better livelihood. The book is a challenge to all parts of this construct. It also pushes back on binary classifications we employ - digital/physical, natural/man-made and so on.
'Ghosts in the Machine' sets the context as we read about how under Deng Xiaoping in the 1980's, the country began imagining a uniquely Chinese future, and set the ball rolling for the rise of companies like Huawei and Alibaba. In parallel, there's the rise of TVEs (Town and Village Enterprises) over the prevalent SOEs (State Owned Enterprises), and a potential 'agrarian transition' that would result in industrialised agriculture, which would need lesser manpower. This would have social, environmental and political ramifications.
'Blockchain farm in the middle of nowhere' touches upon the surveillance state, non-explicit censorship, and 'the shadowy unease that looms over public conversations.'. It begins with the foodsheds in Shanghai and moves to the contrast (or not) between the dangers of cost-cutting in the food industry, and the gloss of 'blockchain chicken' (Bubuji/GoGoChicken). The latter uses 'a chicken Fitbit of sorts' on the ankle of chicken which allows a buyer to know the provenance of a chicken, and even see streaming live footage that can be accesses via a QR code! But despite this, the future is uncertain because the tech is on hire, and overhead costs are high. Can blockchain make food safety records tamper-proof by creating a distributed system? Perhaps, but there are many challenges including legibility and thus, access.
In 'When AI farms pigs', we are introduced to Alibaba's ET Agricultural Brain that aims to transform agriculture to 'help create China's pork miracle'. It brings out how, despite AI's potential to radically help humans, the current economics of AI makes it a corporate AI model that is all about scale and efficiency.
'Buffet Life' explores the alternate careers that Chinese youth are taking up. Case in point - drone operators. This is backed by a (state backed) system that is now bridging the gap between urban and rural education, creating the infrastructure for it and thereby also providing new means of livelihood.
In 'Made in China', there is a very insightful take on what 'innovation' means and how it is predominantly evaluated through a Western lens. China is forging its own path in 'innovation', trying to break away from cheap products at industrialised scale. 'Shanzai' is changing its earlier connotation to an ecosystem that's open source, and operating at hyper speed, steamrolling through the IP version favoured by the West, and forcing conversations on access and civility. The agricultural version of this approach is Rice Harmony, and its method of collective, organic rice farming. There is also the fascinating tale of Naomi Wu, a self-proclaimed cyborg, and an internet star.
'No one can predict the future' is as much about policing as it is about community and identity, and the difference between 'safety' and 'security'. It is interesting how many people working in the domain view surveillance as a technical problem to be solved without thinking of the related consequences. There is also a mention of 'criminal villages', the Chinese version of India's Jamtara.
'Gone shopping in the mountain stronghold' relates how 'Rural Revitalisation' relies on technology and the internet to build rural entrepreneurship ecosystems. The rural playbook of Taobao is a phenomenon, one that is transforming the rural landscape, literally and metaphorically. Others like JD.com and Pinduoduo are replicating this too. And thanks to this, there is a reverse migration to the village. But many of these platforms are unregulated, resulting in safety issues - everything from getting sick from food purchases to a cab driver raping and killing a passenger.
'Welcome to my pearl party' is the one I found most poignant. While the story is about pearl farming in China leading to an MLM sales machinery in the US, the underlying socio-cultural dimension of it - the human need for belonging and care - is what makes it an affecting read. This also features a 'subversive' version of Peppa Pig, or rather it becoming a mascot for those who are rebelling against the part of society which has everything and sets the rules - shehui ren culture.
While these are all set in different parts of China, there are themes that I could see were universal - '...the plague of being old and lonely. As younger generations leave villages, hometowns and even the country to chase after careers and jobs, and the tightening noose of inequality squeezes leisure time, the elderly are left to their own devices."
Blockchain, and fantastic perspectives of China were indeed part of the mix, but Xiaowei Wang delivered far more. Travelogue, technology, culture and community, future and sometimes even a bit of contemplative philosophy, I really wouldn't want to slot this book in any particular genre, and that's probably what makes it a compelling and fulfilling read.
P.S. In the penultimate page, the author, sitting in a HongKong bar, amidst the protests, writes about reports of a zootonic disease from mainland China causing flu-like symptoms in humans causing unease because the memory of SARS still being recent!
October 14, 2021
48th book for 2021.
This is an interesting, if somewhat discursive, take on the effects of modern techno-capitalism is having on people living in rural areas of China.
It is an act of reportage, not straight documentary reporting, on the tech scene in rural China. As such Wang puts themselves—as a Chinese-American, non-binary, progressive, tech-worker—within the story she tells. This won't be the to the taste of people wanting a more "straight" account, but I found the approach for the most part interesting and engaging (though I could have done without the occasional metaphorical recipes).
Overall, a short, and interesting read on the cultural effects of the tech scene on China.
4-stars.
This is an interesting, if somewhat discursive, take on the effects of modern techno-capitalism is having on people living in rural areas of China.
It is an act of reportage, not straight documentary reporting, on the tech scene in rural China. As such Wang puts themselves—as a Chinese-American, non-binary, progressive, tech-worker—within the story she tells. This won't be the to the taste of people wanting a more "straight" account, but I found the approach for the most part interesting and engaging (though I could have done without the occasional metaphorical recipes).
Overall, a short, and interesting read on the cultural effects of the tech scene on China.
4-stars.
February 25, 2022
well, this is just wonderful, and adds another dimension to both techno futurism and lying flat.
At the end Wang mentions Lee Edelman's No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive and wow, I did not anticipate the decentralizing of The Child would be so immediately relevant to broader global culture already.
At the end Wang mentions Lee Edelman's No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive and wow, I did not anticipate the decentralizing of The Child would be so immediately relevant to broader global culture already.
December 4, 2024
WOWWW what a book. provocative commentary on the way that tech optimism has a way of slithering into the way people treat machines, material goods, human habits, and human connection, illuminated via stories that feel otherwise so obscure to reach. some certified bars, eg: “both nationalism and technological optimism mark the ways yearning and desire are exploited”
January 3, 2021
The first 100 pages were sufficient to convince me to follow the author to the end of the book. Xiaowei Wang can certainly be described as technically adept or nerdy. Wangs enthusiasm for the use of digital technology is palpable. Nevertheless, Wang is critical of the consequences of this hasty transformation of China's economic and societal landscape. This research & contemplation, also echoed by the voices of contemporary or almost contemporary philosophers and writers she Wang is referring to, is definitely worth reading - at least as far as I got. It is a slow read for me, as I use to follow the references quoted.
…
Now that I have read Wang's book from the 1st page to the last, I feel I have come a tiny step closer to understanding contemporary Chinese life, the perceptions of it, and the expectations on its evolvement.
Understanding China will be one of the major tasks for all of us, and it will require significant effort. China is vast, diverse, and changing rapidly in parts and remaining true to itself in others. The current fierce competition between the declining superpower U.S. and a rising China is not really helpful in accomplishing this task.
But Wang's book helps - at least a little. It is, in parts, a personal journey. It begins with personal feelings in a small village in southern China, on the Jianxi-Guangdong border. It ends with a description of shehui ren, literally but ironically "society people", a kind of "no future" movement among less fortunate of the Chinese youth, reflecting the own feelings on their motivation. It is this absence of any pretence of conveying a general truth that makes this little book credible and true.
…
Now that I have read Wang's book from the 1st page to the last, I feel I have come a tiny step closer to understanding contemporary Chinese life, the perceptions of it, and the expectations on its evolvement.
Understanding China will be one of the major tasks for all of us, and it will require significant effort. China is vast, diverse, and changing rapidly in parts and remaining true to itself in others. The current fierce competition between the declining superpower U.S. and a rising China is not really helpful in accomplishing this task.
But Wang's book helps - at least a little. It is, in parts, a personal journey. It begins with personal feelings in a small village in southern China, on the Jianxi-Guangdong border. It ends with a description of shehui ren, literally but ironically "society people", a kind of "no future" movement among less fortunate of the Chinese youth, reflecting the own feelings on their motivation. It is this absence of any pretence of conveying a general truth that makes this little book credible and true.
April 17, 2021
A very insightful, beautifully written book about technological advances in rural China. For some time I have become convinced that this country is like Japan in the 80s - they are at least a couple of years ahead of the rest of the world in terms of new technologies, and watching what happens there is like a glimpse into the future. This book confirms my belief. It is like reading some SF novel, you have to repeatedly remind yourself that it is nonfiction. Moreover, it is not a dry account, rather a kind of personal travelog with many digressions and inspiring reflections.
The book is a part of a very interesting series, FSG Original x Logic, which dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives.
Thanks to the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
The book is a part of a very interesting series, FSG Original x Logic, which dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives.
Thanks to the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
November 13, 2020
life really is mr. worldwide
2 quotes i loved:
- A once complex relationship to nature has flattened and been diminished to cash cropping, the earth becoming factory, once rich soil becoming dirt.
- My last ten purchases on my credit card do not speak to the poetry of my mornings, the slant of Californian sun at 4:00 pm, the moment between dream and waking. In a life with specificity and intention, the power of surveillance and data becomes deflated, the industrial quality of rendering people into categories vanishes.
2 quotes i loved:
- A once complex relationship to nature has flattened and been diminished to cash cropping, the earth becoming factory, once rich soil becoming dirt.
- My last ten purchases on my credit card do not speak to the poetry of my mornings, the slant of Californian sun at 4:00 pm, the moment between dream and waking. In a life with specificity and intention, the power of surveillance and data becomes deflated, the industrial quality of rendering people into categories vanishes.
March 7, 2025
4.5/5
[T]he post-2016-election pleas for all of us to log off and just talk to each other in real life are naive. We haven't been talking to one another in real life for a long time. Unless, apparently, we're trying to sell each other something.It's been a while since I ran into a book where the top reviews are absolutely littered with self-absorbed prats. Maybe it's the nonbinary author, maybe it's the perceived/non-perceived/projected politics, maybe it's the "I've done business in China for years/I have a PhD in Chinese Literature from some white wunderkind university/I read Marx one time and now everything I engage with has to be materialist or die in a fire," but man, some of y'all need to be banned from East Asia and everything associated until you learn some basic respect. Me, I got out of the minority majority Silicon Valley tech scene ages ago and have been gingerly making my way back in search of some kind of evidence that the place is starting to grow up, so my priorities were neither blockchain nor articles out of the Economist.
If the military science lab was seen as the birthplace of twentieth-century nuclear annihilation, the twenty-first century's death by ecological destruction and unfettered capitalism is symbolized by a glass-cube conference room with a whiteboard.
One speaker at the conference, Karissa McKelvey of Digital Democracy, puts it, "Blockchain governance is not unbiased or neutral. It's just shifting bureaucratic roles to more technical roles. At some point, you have to trust someone." Given the demographics of those in the technical roles, McKelvey bluntly says, "You might even say it's colonialism.What I was honestly looking for was the sort of writing that tends to be only deemed acceptable when the subject is the United States (and even then your mileage will vary depending on the region/zip code): curious, observational, meandering, distracted, hardly set out to prove a thesis, but drawing together a disparate range of experiences and ideologies about a flux of topics that don't often come together in a single written piece. For me, the technical finesse of the arguments or the consistency with which certain theories are fully adhered to mean less while I'm living out the impacts of the neoliberal disaster capitalism Wang was travelogue dissecting an ocean away five years before in the form of force fed AI, devastating climate change, and burgeoning fascism. I also enjoyed a perspective of China that finally clarified some much needed blank spaces in my context (industrial revolution? when? with this population?) as well as delved into some fascinating statecraft that comes about when rural foodscapes must be maintained alongside drone tech conferences, lest the proletariat rise again.
My typically easy going aunt is rankled by the murmurings of a Donald Trump-led trade war. [...] "Good riddance!" she says. " [...] We used to export all the good things to the United States and kept all the defective stuff to sell here! And look how we've damaged our environment, just for you Americans! Crafty people, manufacturing is a dirty job, didn't want to ruin your own country!"All in all, this didn't have the academic chops (however poorly applied) of 1368, but it did enough for my body and my soul for me to be sorely disappointed that the FSGO x Logic imprint hasn't come out with more than a handful of these types of pieces that tackle some of the biggest issues of our day without making the mistake of confusing nation states with fellow humanity. It's not a perfect book, but it's some of the strongest bedrock for our tumultuously technical times that I've read in a long while. If you find the author's arguments lacking in certain respects, at least you won't set out with the idea that governments come before people, or that it has to be our blessed genocidal settler state versus their barbaric socialistic republic forevermore. Considering how often I have to end a nonfiction piece while gearing myself up for unlearning significant chunks of it, this was a much needed balm, with queer authorship as a welcome bonus.
Barometers of success and innovation are invented by those with money, turning engagement into the surface-level interactions of informed users, rather than the deeper actions that tackle structural, social change by invested citizens willing to hold long village meetings.P.S. For those who think I have an anti-AI ax to grind, I have cancer. I am well aware of the leaps and bounds AI is making when it comes to logging increasingly early and accurate diagnoses with regards to such. I am also aware of how the data on my life expectancy will never match the reality, no matter how many countries' energy expenditures are siphoned off or population's privacy rights are eroded. In order for me to look forward to living, I have to have a world and its people to live within, and that is something that will never be "optimized."
It is easy to automate work using AI once you've made work devoid of meaning.
To shed the belief that data is predictive and powerful is to push away surveillance as necessity.
May 7, 2025
here is my full review! gahhh idek where to begin…well, first of all, i am not a tech/stem person. at ALL at all. so i was quite wary of reading at first this bc i feared i wouldn’t understand anything or be interested in it. but it was the opposite—every single PAGE i learned something new that was easy to understand…AND it was fun!!! wang’s writing was very accessible for me & never left me feeling overwhelmed or confused. i also love how they combined their personal experiences with their research. most of the time, this can feel amateur or imbalanced (usually the personal anecdotes get too long-winded), but i found theirs to be a perfect balance of length & relevancy. i loved their stories about their great-uncle & him encountering so much change throughout his lifetime. i loved reading about their experience working in silicon valley.
in general i learned so much about tech in rural china & the relationships and effects those relationships & communities have on everyone around the world, especially americans. i learned so much about the tech/agriculture/food community & many special individuals in those communities. like learning about drone pilots in rural china scanning fields & crops for collecting data?? or the farmers who blockchain their chickens so consumers can be at ease knowing every detail about where their chicken came from (& the farmers themselves not knowing what blockchain is)? so neat!! it might sound incredibly dumb of me (i mean…it is) but i truly didn’t realize how globalized these industries are, let alone what that looked like & how it works! the scale is INSANE and exhilarating to learn about.
the final thing that took this book on a whole new level was the way wang incorporates radical Black social justice frameworks into their understandings & critiques of tech (in general & in rural china). when i saw them quoting bell hooks and franz fanon and audre lorde—my heart understood something is very special about this. i love how wang cooould easily fall into cynicism regarding the state of tech today, or instead proudly defend it. instead, they embrace all its shortcomings & all of its potentials. they do not advocate for a binary perspective (they themself is non-binary hehe): tech is neither good nor evil, it can neither solve nor destroy completely. rather it is the people, humanity, that ultimately determines how tech will impact the world. they call for more compassion in the tech industry, & compassion in society in general & have a lot of hope which is honestly comforting to hear as someone sometimes fearful of things i do not understand.
it was just such a fun, informative, interesting book that made me think deeply about the sociological & political context surrounding technology, the development of rural communities & its implications/effects, and also about more personal things such as being asian and queer in america. i loved this book; i was so excited while reading it, & being able to talk about this. which truly makes this a special book for me!!! truly truly recommend!
——
original review 4/22/25: full review coming soon but this is THE book of the year for me!! i haven’t felt this excited in awhile…i learned so, so much and i am so happy :-)
in general i learned so much about tech in rural china & the relationships and effects those relationships & communities have on everyone around the world, especially americans. i learned so much about the tech/agriculture/food community & many special individuals in those communities. like learning about drone pilots in rural china scanning fields & crops for collecting data?? or the farmers who blockchain their chickens so consumers can be at ease knowing every detail about where their chicken came from (& the farmers themselves not knowing what blockchain is)? so neat!! it might sound incredibly dumb of me (i mean…it is) but i truly didn’t realize how globalized these industries are, let alone what that looked like & how it works! the scale is INSANE and exhilarating to learn about.
the final thing that took this book on a whole new level was the way wang incorporates radical Black social justice frameworks into their understandings & critiques of tech (in general & in rural china). when i saw them quoting bell hooks and franz fanon and audre lorde—my heart understood something is very special about this. i love how wang cooould easily fall into cynicism regarding the state of tech today, or instead proudly defend it. instead, they embrace all its shortcomings & all of its potentials. they do not advocate for a binary perspective (they themself is non-binary hehe): tech is neither good nor evil, it can neither solve nor destroy completely. rather it is the people, humanity, that ultimately determines how tech will impact the world. they call for more compassion in the tech industry, & compassion in society in general & have a lot of hope which is honestly comforting to hear as someone sometimes fearful of things i do not understand.
it was just such a fun, informative, interesting book that made me think deeply about the sociological & political context surrounding technology, the development of rural communities & its implications/effects, and also about more personal things such as being asian and queer in america. i loved this book; i was so excited while reading it, & being able to talk about this. which truly makes this a special book for me!!! truly truly recommend!
——
original review 4/22/25: full review coming soon but this is THE book of the year for me!! i haven’t felt this excited in awhile…i learned so, so much and i am so happy :-)
March 8, 2024
A really enjoyable read!! I think I was the right audience as a Chinese American with little knowledge of but a lot of curiosity ab the contemporary Chinese relationship with technology, culture, and economics. I really enjoyed the emphasis on how Chinese beliefs and culture are shaping their systems differently from the west and what that might mean for not only China’s future but also the rest of the world.
Really accessible tech explanations across a variety of topics mixed with investigative interviews and the author’s own (quite ideological) critiques. Not the most in-depth but enough to leave you with enough questions to research more on your own
Into the sinofuturist recipes - a fun arty touch
Really accessible tech explanations across a variety of topics mixed with investigative interviews and the author’s own (quite ideological) critiques. Not the most in-depth but enough to leave you with enough questions to research more on your own
Into the sinofuturist recipes - a fun arty touch
November 28, 2023
4.25/5
a review in the style of jo chan:
this book was so, so interesting. at first, the topic seemed niche—novel technologies in rural china—but blockchain chicken farm was about basically everything, which makes sense, considering rural china's role in the global economy. but the book was also deeply moving. wang centered their narrative around people. in every town wang visited, they interviewed locals and explored real human struggles, aspirations, opinions. this journalistic choice adhered to the central goal of the text: to "transform our compassion, our imagination" rather than "focus[ing] on reforming our technologies alone."
a review in the style of jo chan:
this book was so, so interesting. at first, the topic seemed niche—novel technologies in rural china—but blockchain chicken farm was about basically everything, which makes sense, considering rural china's role in the global economy. but the book was also deeply moving. wang centered their narrative around people. in every town wang visited, they interviewed locals and explored real human struggles, aspirations, opinions. this journalistic choice adhered to the central goal of the text: to "transform our compassion, our imagination" rather than "focus[ing] on reforming our technologies alone."
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