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Hi, this is where I (Tricia Wang) track my field notes and thoughts on the socio-cultural contexts of technology usage in low-income communities. More about Cultural Bytes. Cultural Bytes blogroll.

I am currently conducting ethnographic work with urban migrants in China and a rural migrant sending village in Mexico. Read more about my research. Let's Talk!

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Other Sites:
::YouMeiTI - I blog about Chinese Youth, Media and Information Technology
::Digital Urbanisms - blog about people + mapping + cities + technology
::Hi Tricia - my personal blog
::Tricia is Reading This! - interesting links from my online reading list
::Dichos y Vida - quotes make me happy

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Follow triciawang on Twitter

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My profile on Mendeley ___________________________

Most Popular Posts: Interrogating the "Developing" vs "Developed" Country dichotomy: Assumptions, technologies, and Americanism - VOTE FOR OPTION B!
In Wuhan, China, setting up fieldwork site
Cloud Computing for Researchers - Mendeley Your Life!
Doggy Cellphones, Culturally Relevant Technologies, and Doggies in China: Dog Bark Sensing Collars and Sensors
Interpretive Magic!: Ethnoconsumerism with Prof. Alladi Venkatesh
Is the cellphone a mundane non "technology" among the elite?: From Huffington Post to Rupaul's Drag Race
Cultural Fractals: The Recursiveness of Practice
Livescribe Pulse SmartPen: An Ethnographer's dream tool?
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Most Recent Posts:
Internet cafes in China: The Closest Thing to a Playground for Migrant Children
New Product: Microsoft Mischief, an interactive student/teacher teaching tool for the classroom
Leaving for 3rd ethnographic fieldwork trip to Mexico in a migrant-sending Oaxacan village.
Corporate Responsibility in the Age of Algorithms: HP overlooks "Dark Skin" users for its new HP Cam
great quote about ethnography
Map-hole: Technologies of the Mundan and Inscriptions of Power
I'm starting to think about how to visualize my data
flash ethnography: observations of a doctor's use of mobile tech with a patient
Erving Goffman, Cellphones, Social Cohesion
Livescribe Pulse SmartPen: An Ethnographer's dream tool?
Village Technologies: Remote Fertilizer Monitoring

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!


Just returned from NSF meeting in DC with Bill-squared

In preparation for my summer research project, “China’s Internet Policy and Digital Network Architecture: Information Communication Technology (ICT) Practices among Youths and Migrant” at China Internet Network Information Center 中国互联网络信息中心 (CNNIC), I went to DC for an NSF-sponsored meeting for the EAPSI program through the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE).

I was finally able to meet up with two Bill’s who made this oppotunity possible, Bill Blanpied on the left and Bill Chang on the right. I am grateful for their introductions to Dr. Mao Wei, who I will be working with this summer at CNNIC along with his amazing office of reseachers, including Wan En Hai! This is so exciting to work with Dr .Mao Wei - the person who started CNNIC and established many of the early efforts in China that has allowed it to grow so quickly and efficiently.

I met Bill Blanpied in India during the summer of 2008 for the China-India-US Workshop on Science, Technology and Innovation Policy in Bangalore, India. After the informative conference I was heading off to China for fieldwork from India, so Bill suggested that I meet up with Bill Chang, the Director of NSF’s Beijing office at that time.

I am so grateful for the guidance from Bill-Squared - thank you for all your encouragement on my project!