About Cultural Bytes!
Cultural Bytes engages with research on information communication technology (ICT) users of low-income communities. This is run by Tricia Wang - me! My motivation is to better understand how low-income/under-served populations manage their social connections with a variety of practices. I bring attention to the ways that low-income users challenge, change, and innovate ICT usage patterns. I focus on mobile populations, such as migrants and youth in Mexico, China and US.
The term “mobile” is beginning to take on new meaning. Conventionally, a “mobile lifestyle” is associated with jet-setting corporate workers; however, a “mobile lifestyle” is also a way of life for migrants all around the world. Instead of taking airplanes, they walk. Instead of holding passports, they have no papers. Instead of staying in five star hotels, they stay anywhere they can. But for the first time, these new mobile workers, migrants, have access to the same digital networks and tools as elite mobile workers.
ICT tools enable people to create coherence between seemingly fragmented networks spread over greater distances. In a more mobile society, we are seeing a new kind of mass movement of people—telecommuters to seasonal workers—in non-wartime conditions. The reach of everyday life encompasses management of space.
These changes prompt new kinds of questions that allow us to grasp what mechanisms and ways of thinking make-up these new forms of mobility and connection. What social conditions may emerge? What practices become visible from the adaptation to older and how power and control is exerted. Conversely, what does immobility look like in a world that seems to be increasingly mobile? What are the various tiers of mobility and immobility? How do things stick, how do people capture moments, and how do places stay meaningful for communities?
These are the questions that I care about. Read about me here and about my research here. I would love to talk to you about your work so contact me!
I received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant!
I am so excited to find out that I have received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant! I will be going this summer to work with in China with the China Internet Network Information Center 中国互联网络信息中心 (CNNIC), the government agency that manages all of China’s internet affairs (equivalent to the FCC in the US). I met with CNNIC last summer in Beijing. We agreed upon a summer project in which I would analyze how youths and migrants are using ICTs to manage their inter-personal communication networks, with a special interest in online gaming networks.
It’s pretty exciting that these next 3 months at CNNIC will be the start of my dissertation fieldwork. I will be in Beijing for two months this summer! Here’s the title and description of my project below. If you or anyone you know is working on anything related to China and the internet - I would love to talk to you or them! And let’s talk if you are you going to be in Beijing this summer!
Title: China’s Internet Policy and Digital Network Architecture: Information Communication Technology (ICT) Practices among Youths and Migrant
Project Summary: This project asks how China’s internet policies and digital architectures influence the communication practices of two important and growing populations of new users—youths and migrants. I investigate how the inter-personal communication patterns of youths and migrants are affected by two factors: (1) recent internet usage policies set by the Chinese administration and (2) cellphone and internet digital architecture—an infrastructural comparison that is a central feature of this study.
The availability of popular ICTs to all citizens in countries such as China, renders problematic any theoretically dichotomous notions of the “Digital Divide” that are based on ICT “haves and have-nots”—where the “haves” have more technology and are consequently more empowered than the “have-nots.” A central contribution of this study is that it has the potential to transform current concepts of technology access and of ICT usage by accounting for important and specific technological differences in digital architectures and communication policies in the practices of new ICT users in China.
Thank you to Christena Turner, Richard Madsen, Eric Cech, Shannon Spanhake, Kenyatta Cheese, leah muse-orlinoff, stephanie little, Bill Blanpied and Bill Chang for all your help!
Is the cellphone a mundane non “technology” among the elite?: From Huffington Post to Rupaul’s Drag Race
When does something stop being a “technology”? The word technology is a loaded term that is full of futuristic newness— the information age, the network society, the post-industrial era—-all the hopes and fears of “modernity.” These thoughts swirled in my mind when my friend forwarded me Karen’s Leland’s column from The Huffington Post, Does Friendship Trump Technology?
In the article, she talks about how utility technicians accidentally cut the internet line to her house just as she was trying to get online to map directions to a meeting. She gets in her car and starts considering several options to get to an internet connection and then realizes that the quickest way to find directions was to actually use her cellphone to call her friend, who could then look up the direction online from her house. With her friend’s help, Leland gets to the meeting place early enough to even get a cup of coffee. Leland’s point is that friendship is more important than technology because in the end it was her friend who helped her, not the internet: “Technology is great, but a girl’s got to have friends.”
When I read this, i thought that it didn’t make any sense. Her friend fulfilled her role as a good “friend” through the use of technology. Her friend answered the phone call at an inconvienient hour, but nevertheless did so because Leland used her cellphone to wake up her good “friend.
Essentially Leland’s whole entire story could not have taken place without technology tools. To even get to her meeting, Leland is driving in a car that has an engine powered by an internal computer. To even reach her friend, Leland has to use the cellphone. For her friend to even process images, she has to find her glasses. For her friend to even give direction, she has to turn on her computer to get to mapquest (btw tell your girlfriend to use google maps - she can tell you traffic patterns and give you street view).
We can even look at it in another way - the stoplights that are programmed to direct the traffic that Leland is driving in, the coffee machine that makes her coffee, the cellphone towers that enables the calls through the electro-magnetic spectrum, the internet router her friend uses to get online - on and on. Anything and everything can be technological. The entire story is only possible with objects that create the space for the rich interaction that she has described.
Leland’s article points to one common way that technology is defined, as a new system or set of practices that are antithetical to human interaction, alienating people from friendship, love, and human touch. Technology (for Leland the unavailable internet) is seen as the anti-connector - but the ironic part is that Leland uses technology to connect to her friend who could then connects online to connect her to the directions she needed to connect to her meeting.
Technology and human interaction are not mutually exclusive - we use tools to get things done. What if the article was titled, Does Friendship Trump Tools? Or Does Friendship Trump Cars? Or Does Friendship Trump Pencils? It just sounds ludicrous because it points to the illogical boundaries on what we define as “technological.”
Leland’s point that technology does not trump friendship also reveals an underlying fear that technology would even be in a place to trump friendship. Her statement is an affirmation that her friend was there for her when her technology failed her. Is this a new way of defining friendship? Who do we turn to when our technologies fail us in critical moments?
What I think is interesting in this article, is that it actually points to a discursive cultural change in the way that elites or let’s middle- to upper-class people think about cellphones - that it has become so integrated into their lives that it’s taken for granted now as a mundane tool - just like a car or pencil or eyeglasses. NOW That’s interesting!
So at what point is an object not a “technology” and just a mundane object? Well one way is to see how it is incorporated it into discourse. In this article, the discourse of the cellphone is dis-associated from “technology” because it referred to as a non-technology.
Another way is to notice how images of technology are incorporated into our visual culture. Look at the way visual culture in music videos and movies reenact scenes of everyday life. Do you notice when your favorite TV shows incorporates a pencil into the story - no because it is just a mundane object (unless the specific topic is about the pencil). For example, movies and music videos often show characters using cellphones as part of the interaction. I know that from a more mainstream cultural studies point of view this is usually interpreted as the selling of “coolness” - the selling of the need to consume a cellphone as part of a modern consumer. ok - point taken and yes I agree.
However, another way to think about it is that many of the interactions cannot take place without the cellphone - and that speaks to the role of this technology as an everyday object that is assumed to be part of interaction - as if only with the cellphone such interaction could be accomplished. It’s hard to imagine how Leland could’ve reached her friend from her car without the cellphone unless she did it telepathically.
The first time I actually thought that the cellphone may be a mundane technology for Americans or Westerners or middle- to upper-class users was when I was watching Rupaul’s Drag Race (part 6 episode 6) where the drag queens had to compete for the best impersonation of a female executive.
When the queens took to the runway, each of them had a different outfit with various tools to support their look - such as a briefcase of files or glasses or purse. 3 out of the 4 contestants drag queens started their “Executive Realness” impersonation with a cellphone! They pretended to be on an important business call. The one who didn’t use the cellphone chose a briefcase as the stand in for “executiveness.” (oh and just in case you are curious, Phoebe, middle, was “excutive fabulousness.” A judge said that Rebecca Glasscock, far left, looked like “Donald’s Trump next ex-wife.”)
So what’s the connection between Leland’s Huffington Post article and Rupaul’s Drag Race? The cellphone is mundane! From Leland’s post to Rupual’s drag queens - it’s just a part of the everyday - and who better than drag queens to exaggerate the everyday - the queens of impersonations are best at pulling out the mundane ways we re-enact power in a gendered way.
Ok Tricia so why is it so important to understand that the cellphone could now be considered mundane? In terms of my research with new technology users, it just reminds me how careful I need to be in what kind of assumptions I bring to my research, such as my research questions, analysis and conclusions. I live in a country where a cellphone may mean one thing - which I am saying may have become a mundane everyday tool - but I do research in other countries where the cell means an entirely different thing - a non-mundane tool.
Even with technologies that are not mundane - the researcher still needs to be aware of what that the tool means to her/him - but my point is that one has to work even harder to be self-reflective about the taken for granted ideas that we bring to our fieldsites or to the design process with technology that have become ordinarialized (yes I made that word up).
I think one of the consequences of technologies becoming everyday, is that it’s hard to think about its usage in a context entirely different from our own experience. That then leads to certain assumptions and hope about the role of the technology. I find that this is most problematic in technology projects that are tried in “developing” areas of the world. You have all these “first world” or Western funded NGO’s going into these impoverished regions “bringing” or “introducing” technology with the hopes that it will jump-start economic development in the region. I find myself cringing at these projects because one, there is already lot of criticism over the failure of technology-based development projects, but also because these projects are run by people who come from the US or Europe - where technology is used in a very socially and culturally specific context. What happens then is that these people think, “well the internet is helpful for me, so it will be helpful for others who won’t have it. Life for these people will be better with internet access.” I don’t dispute that people have more choices with access to more information, but access to information is sooo socially contexual that how information is then used, processed, fulfilled, interpreted, recycled, managed and mashed - is specific to each region/community/country and I it is too often that this is not considered.
Instead, technology for development projects tend to take a linear approach where the goal is to bring the community “up” and out of poverty. There are assumptions that quality of life is a uni-directional march towards modernity and the tools that come with it.
One way to get out of this trap is that I think researchers of technology use need to spend more time understanding the mundane among new users. This takes time. This it one of the roles of ethnography. The mundane is the everyday - the take for granted. If we can better understand the everyday, then we can better understand the role and meaning of new technologies, which then leads to the greater possibility of more relevant designs for new users in new-to-us markets.
Interpretive Magic!: Ethnoconsumerism with Prof. Alladi Venkatesh
I must admit that although I say that technology usage is grounded in a cultural context, I struggle to operationalize “culture” for the fear of reducing it to some causal variable or some vague concept that dilutes what I am arguing. I haven’t found much solace in sociology’s linear models that isolate “culture’s” effects - as it repeats the whole divide of structure versus agency. Neither have I found much clarity in the interpretive tradition of culture, not because I don’t agree with it, but because am confused at how to methodologically move forward with an interpretive approach.
Well then came my meeting with Prof. Alladi Venkatesh, Assoc. Director of UC Irvine’s Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations (CRITO) (thanks for gloria mark for the introduction!).
Prof. Venkatesh has created methodology magic!
Ethno-consumerism is a methodology for doing cross-cultural research. It encourages the researcher to “study culture not merely as providing the context for the study of consumer behavior but study consumption itself as culturally constituted behavior. “In principle, the ethnoconsumerist perspective goes beyond the distinction of emic and etic research approaches.” The etic approach encourages the researcher to interpret from her/his point of view. On the other hand, the emic approach tells the researcher to look at the subject’s point of view. But ethnoconsumerism advocates for the next critical step, which is to then develop knowledge from subject’s point of view. “The research becomes more than an etic interpretation (researcher’s point of view) of the culture, but a view of the culture informed by the culture itself as demonstrated by the above” (Venkatesh and Meamber, 1997).
Venkatesh makes clear that this is methodology, not a method. It does not seek to promote any data collection methods.
Of course I think that qualitative methods (or a mixed-method approach of qual + quant) is the best way to arrive at what he is saying is the crux of ethnoconsumerism - developing a cultural framework of analysis from the consumer’s point of view.
Read his paper and other writings here.
I highly encourage you to read his 1995 paper below on Ethnoconsumerism (citation below). It’s a beautifully written paper that feels intellectually and spiritually moving at the same time. When I read it I felt as if the words has fallen out of the sky onto self-organizing fractals of joy. After 3 years of sociology coursework, I’ve become averse at times to theories by sociologists because the words just don’t stick in my brain or they just don’t inspire me anymore. There was something this 1995 piece that helped me deconstruct 3 years of wonderful and hellish sociological self-discovery to even learn about the cultural divide within the field of sociology (culture vs structure or culture as interpretive model). Dr. Venkatesh, coming from a business/economics background, beautifully reconstructs all the various authors of the interpretive tradition who I have come to love. He has inspired me to think of these authors - such as Geertz, in a new way for my own work on new technology users.
I will be thinking about this methodology for a while as I try to figure out if this framework makes sense for my dissertation. So I will be writing more about this model. In the meantime, two things come to my mind: how I can apply this for my research and how this intersects with Stuart Halls, et. al. 1997 book on Sony Walkmans.
How do I apply this this my research?
- study how new users use their technology as culturally constituted behavior.
- look at tech usage as set of practices
- Do not treat new tech users as objects.
- Do not treat their practices as economically motivated.
- People use techology to get things done. It is my job to understand as an outsider what is being “done” in their context.
- Don’t be culturally reductive by picking one feature of the culture and anchoring all analysis around the feature.
- If I want to compare two different regions with a cultural framework - this takes a realllllly long time because I have to understand the cultural categories and experiences of all the sites.
Circuit of Culture
In 1997, Stuart Hall, Paul Du Gray, and Linda James published Doing cultural studies: the story of the Sony Walkman. They created a model for the analysis of cultural objects called the circuit of culture. On page 3, they show this graph below. The book walks one through on how to deconstruct the Sony walkman as a cultural object.
In an upcoming post, I would like to discuss ways I could combine Ethnoconsumerism and the Circuit of Culture to work for my research. What’s interesting is that while both authors are talking about objects and the people who use the, these are two slightly different approaches. I want to think about to spatialize these approaches. I need to give this some more thought so until the next post on this!
Suggested Reading:
Gay PD, Hall S, Janes L. Doing cultural studies: the story of the Sony Walkman. SAGE; 1997.
Easterly W. The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. Penguin Press; 2006.
“Ethnoconsumerism: A New Paradigm to Study Cultural and Cross-cultural Consumer Behavior,” Alladi Venkatesh. Marketing in a Multicultural World, J.A. Costa and G. Bamossy (eds.), SAGE Publications, 1995, 26-67.
Doggy Cellphones, Culturally Relevant Technologies, and Doggies in China: Dog Bark Sensing Collars and Sensors
Bio-Sense has created a collar to respond to a universal alarm bark that dogs make when they are in a threatening situation. So the way it works is that when the dog makes an alarm bark the collar sends a SMS to the owner! Welcome to the world of doggy cellphones!
Ok this news may not seem relevant to Cultural Bytes but there are two very important reasons why I am writing this post:
REASON #1 - I want to conduct doggy human ethnography - please please will someone with a dog volunteer to pilot this technology! I want to know the doggy and the owner that tries this out - and then I would love to interview you - and then I would love to come and watch your doggy and you interact with the doggy collar! This is my dream ethnography project - watching technology interaction and emotional communication among doggies and humans! Bio-Sense if you read this - hire me as your US ethnographer - this is a dream job! I can help you better understand how doggies and humans use your technology to ensure a successful uptake of your product in the US market.
REASON #2 - Bio-Sense’s Electroic Doggy Collar Cellphone is the perfect example of a culturally relevent technology. Bio-sense receives the Cultural Bytes Relevant Technology Award! Eyal Zehavi, Founder and CEO of Bio-Sense Technology in TelAviv Israel spoke to NPR’s on their audio segment, From Genes To Growls, Decoding The Modern Dog. Eyal explained that the cellphone application and product, Tele-Dog, to NPR and he specifically said that this product is developed for the “US dog owner market.” This is cultural technology genius because Eyal’s product understands that in the US familial structure, dogs play an important social role - they are seen as an integral part of the family. The well-being of the dog is important to the well-being of the family.
This is great example of understanding the culture of a group/region and then developing relevant technology for this group. For example, Doggy Cellphone would not work well in regions that do not have a familial role for the dog. If you go to Mexico - doggies are everywhere - but they aren’t seen as part of the family. In China - dogs are a new social phenomenon - but I can tell you now that people don’t buy dogs in China to add to their family like in the US. Dog ownership in China iactually is a research topic that interests me and something that i have been watching for the last 5 years everytime i’m in China.
Dogs are the new trend in China. I believe this is because they are adopted as a result of the family vacuume created by the government enforced one-child policy for urban areas. When the only child a family grows up and leaves, all of suddent there is a vacuume of attention that wasn’t there before. Parents have no one to coddle!
I think that there are two different categories of doggy owners in the China. One group consists of parents who have realized that they are lonely because their one child has grown up and left home. The other group consists of parents who have realized that their only child IS lonely. The former group buys a dog to replace the void of their child who has left home. The latter group buys a dog to replace the role of a sibling were it not for the one-child policy. Both groups use the dog as a filler, not as a supplement.
Therefore the dog is bought as a replacement, not as an addition to the family. The group that buys dogs to replace the child who has left home tends to overly pamper the dog becaue they have the time to do this.The group that buys the dog to fill in the extra-sibling role tends to ignore the dog. In this group, parents buy the dog simply to make their one child happy and they tell the child that it is their responsibility. As a result, many of times, doggies are left along most of the time and are really lonely because both of the parents are still working and the child is in school 12 hours a day (Chinese school day is long and hard!).
Doggies fill a social void in China - the void of loneliness for parents when their one child has left home or for children who have no brothers and sisters. Therefore the Doggy Cellphone as it is being marketed right now as a security device and as a way to for families to feel secure about the well being of their dog would not work in China. The well-being of the dog is not associated with the well-being of the family.
ok Bio-Sense - congrats for entering the US Market - and thanks for giving me a reason to write about doggies!
(Thanks Tanya Menendez for this post!)
I am now in Wuhan, China, setting up fieldwork site. I’ve been talking to Wuhan University and some local schools about my dissertation research on analyzing how migrants’ use of technology is reshaping the urban space and how internet policies affect migrants’ communication patterns. Before I head to Beijing on June 14th to work with the CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) to look at how their policies affect migrants use of internet cafes and mobile phones - I thought it would be a good idea to travel to other parts of China to talk to youth and families about their use of internet cafes.
I am so glad I did this for 2 reasons. 1) because I now understand the extent of internet addiction as a serious problem among youth in China.
2.) and I have a better sense of the social context of the addiction problem among migrant youth in urban China.
There are critiques coming from the West about China’s “heavy handed” internet policies, such as the stopping of internet cafe permits. But many of these critiques don’t understand the social context of this policy. Internet addiction among under-served urban youth is a serious problem in China. A policy such as a temporary halt in internet cafe permits is an example of an state attempt to deal with this social problem. In the West - we tend to see any attempts to regulate “information access” as a violation of rights - but we do it all the time with parental controls on televisions, internet browsers, search engines and etc - so why we not willing to understand it within a Chinese context?
From my brief talks with the principal of a local school for children of migrants - I found out that the principal is absolutely bewildered by how to deal with internet addiction among the teenage youth. The school serves 1st through 9th graders - and he says that starting at 5th grade they are going to internet cafes for hours and whole nights to just play games - they aren’t doing their homework.
With this new information - i am considering changing the focus of my dissertation to be about technology usage within the context of an urban migrant family unit. I would still look at how migrants’ use of technology is reshaping urban space - but i specifically would look at migrant families - so that i can understand how the youth, mother and/or father is using ICTs. So a new focus would be how technology is used across generations within one family. For example - is the mother primarily relying on her mobile to find work while the teenage youth is using the internet cafe as a form of entertainment and hanging out with friends? What are they using to contact their family in the villages? to what extent are parents aware of their child’s use of ICTs? How do parents use ICTs to secure social resources for themselves or their child? I have all these new questions after my visit to the school and new framework in which to place internet addiction as a social problem.
i told the principal that I wanted to suggest some sites for the youth to check out to improve their english and math - he absolutely forbade me to encourage them to spend time online - even if it was for educational purposes. he then explained China doesn’t have any free educational sites.
when I spoke to the parent’s of children who spend hours upon hours at internet cafes - all of them told me tht they were fully aware of their child’s pastime - however they said that at least we know they are in ONE place and the internet cafe is safer and cleaner than where we live. Migrants live on the edges of urban areas, many of which may not be as safe as these internet cafes.
I suspect that internet cafes are a form of an after-school program for the kids - the parents feel comfortable knowing that they are in one place. I also suspect that the youth do not know how to use the internet for educational purposes - or more so are their educational resources in China for students? Must find that out.
I also think that parents aren’t able to provide as much material resources for their children compared to middle-class parents - but at the same time they still feel guilty or as if they aren’t doing enough. Therefore, giving them 5 RMB a hour for internet access is the least they feel they can do. It’s kind of like the candy problem in the village where I do fieldwork at in Oaxaca - poorer mothers want to give their child a full meal but are unable to - so they give them a few pesos to buy candy to fill their tummy up - to give them a fake sense of fullness. They don’t know that they are contributing to a future in diabetes by doing this - and even if they did - what can they do? their child is hungry - but they don’t have enough money for food - candy holds off hunger - and the kids love eating it.
ok back to the internet and China- I wonder if in a way parents are showing their care through giving their children $ for internet cafes and mobile credit to send text messages.
another thought comes to my mind is to find out how the ICTs reshape urban familial relationships.
ok will write more later - I’m writing from an internet cafe with lots of smoke so gotta go!
pic below -me with Jin Ge, founder of the school and the principal 
I visited the school while the students were sleeping - i will be returning today to chat with some of the youth during non-nap hours. you can read more about the school and see more photos on my personal blog post about the school visit.
Village Technologies: Remote Fertilizer Monitoring
i’ve started doing preliminary interviews with youth who are from villages and are now residing in Beijing. I’m trying to get a better understanding of the different ways that youth use ICTs in their village before coming to the city.
Ultimately my research in Wuhan will focus on ICT usage in the city, but I think it’s important that I am able to situate urban ICT usage in a larger context and one that includes rural ICT usage since the migrants I speak to will all be from the countryside.
I’ve been speaking to Beimeng (named changed), an 18 year female who is now studying in Beijing. We were hanging out on the subway talking about her home, a village with a population of 3,000 in Dongei. Her family is financially stable and considered to be me more well off than others. Her mother is a school teacher and her father is a truck driver.
Their family just installed broadband at the beginning of this year. I asked her what it was like to have internet at home. She told me that it was “nice” but no one is really home that often. She is now living in the city, her mom is always at work, and her dad is usually gone for weeks at a time driving his truck.
Since people aren’t home very often, I asked if they were still going to keep paying for the service. Beimeng said that they definitely plan on keeping it because they plan on surveillancing their fertilizer through the internet. I thought that I had misheard or mis-translated some word - but indeed Beimeng was talking about fertilizer.
Like many other villages, the introduction of fertilizers has changed life in Xiheyuancun Village (pseudonym). The village is now considered prosperous with great crop yields. Beimeng’s family is able to purchase high-end fertilizer. Their family is known for having some of the best fertilizer in the village so people often steal their fertilizer. A few years ago, they installed a camera surveillance system where they could monitor the fertilizer from inside their home.
But none of their family members are home that often. As a result, they will stream the surveillance of their fertilizer over the Internet so that they can keep an eye on it from anywhere they can get online. I asked her where and with with her and her family would most likely use to check the video stream. She said that she would most likely take a look from the internet cafes or her cellphone. Her father would only check in on the fertilizer through his cellphone because he is usually on the road. As for her mom, she would most likely be the person who will consistently keep an eye on the camera feed from her work computer at school.
i find this story fascinating for many reasons.
1.) it’s an example of how rural-urban migrant populations keep ties to their village. For Beimeng, she still felt very involved in the family process of monitoring the fertilizer.
2. ) use of technology in a context specific this village. Streaming video as a form of surveillancing is an old idea. Security guard firms to doggy day care centers do it. Yet here we have an individual farming family using the internet to monitor their fertilizer, which is a very contextually specific idea.
3.) this story is indicative of the level of trust and intimacy in the village. Beimeng was telling me that as a child, the village was more poor but her mom said that robbery was not a problem.
4.) I find it interesting that they installed the internet, realized that no one really used it, yet still found a way to make it useful for their mobile lives.5.) Beimeng said that her father (truck driver) would check in through his cellphone (using the mobile internet) and her mother would check in through her work computer. This point illustrates the increasing differences that we will see in how people use the internet versus mobile internet. Beimeng’s father is a truck driver, so relies on his mobile. But her mother has a stationary job with constant access to her work computer.
6.) we tend to think of the only entity that uses the internet to monitor activities is the government (esp. in China), but in this case we have an individual household who has decided to use it as a monitoring device
7..) This is a story very specific to China’s countryside as land reforms in the late 70’s the give every individual household a plot of land. With parceled plots, this means that families can make choices about what and how to plant the land. Families who can afford high-grade fertilizer, like Beimeng’s, can keep making more money. Within one village, there can be a lot of class distinctions—with fertilizer being one of the markers of class in this story.
I plan on visiting Beimeng’s village next year after they’ve installed the streaming fertilizer surveillance monitoring systems. It will be exciting to talk to her parents about how they check in online.
Now off on a totally different track - Fertilizer is a critical part of modern China’s history. China’s and US’s modern history starts with fertilizer - one of the agreements that came out of the famous 1972 Nixon visit is that China placed an order for 13 fertilzer factories from Cargill.
Corporate Responsibility in the Age of Algorithms: HP overlooks “Dark Skin” users for its new HP Cam
Type in HP + Cam + Racism in Google Search and you will see 1,000 posts on this topic in the past 24 hours and 13,000 in the past week.
What I am most amazed by is the language that HP used in their online acknowledgment of the Youtube video:
“Everything we do is focused on ensuring that we provide a high-quality experience for all our customers, who are ethnically diverse and live and work around the world…
…. The technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose. We believe that the camera might have difficulty “seeing” contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting.”
Notice that HP never actually claims responsibility in overlooking users with darker skin color. They blame the HP Cam’s inability to track black people on the camera’s algorithm. Essentially, they blame the algorithm and the camera. HP never says that their programmers didn’t program the algorithm to process conditions with less contrast. They didn’t blame themselves for not doing careful ethnography on its diversity of users. They didn’t blame managers for not even considering non-light skin users during the entire design process!
Does this signal a new era of corporate responsibility? In the Industrial age, if a worker’s arm was cut off, the blame was placed on the machines. In the Digital Age, is the blame placed on 1’s and 0’s—those ignorant algorithms?
In both eras, the blame is placed on the inorganic objects - the technology. The managers, the programmers, the designers and the company are put in the clear.
In HP’s case, I suspect that their focus groups (if they held any), did not reflect the diversity of their customer base. I suspect that the programmers are light-skinned and do not have many friends with darker skin colors. This is a great example of how a technology’s design fails to be relevant for populations that have been historically ignored by tech companies. While in this youtube video Desi claims that “Hp Computers are Racist” with irony, underlying his statement is a history of companies ignoring black users, even them they prove to be a profitable customer base.
I hope this teach’s HP a valuable lesson, that non-light skin users, are not just end-clients. During the entire design process, the diversity of its user base should inform the way its technology is designed, programmed, tested, and launched.
