In the meantime, I will participate in a conference on Chinese, India and US technology and trade policy at the Bangalore Institute of Technology. I am really excited for this conference as it will bring together an impressive list of experts who work in pharmaceuticals, coal and information technology. I look forward to my role as the sociologist to question how national policies interface with everyday life! After that I will be doing fieldwork with my colleague, Shannon Spanhake, from CalIT2, on developing technology for monitoring drinkable water. So if you are in India, send me a an email about any interesting stories to blog! I will be there until the 24th of July.

From Bangalore i will go to Beijing for a few weeks to finish up a project that i've been working on: Beijing Youth Voices, which is a collaboration between Adobe Youth Voices and What Kids Can Do. So send me an email if you will also be in Beijing! Perhaps we can also meet up to talk about technology and policy and of course the Olympics:)!

See you in Bejing!
tricia

e-mail tw ^ the at sign ^ triciawang ^ the dot sign ^ com

Technorati Tags: beijing, china, conference, george mason university, india, olympics, technology

On the way to the city he took photographs of deep fissures in the ground, collapsed buildings and abandoned vehicles with his mobile phone.

His photographs were uploaded onto a local bulletin board in Sichuan province.

Another Sichuan forum reports on volunteers getting to the earthquake zone. People on this community comment on rumours circulating about the water quality in Sichuan and reassure one another that drinking water is in fact safe.

Sites previously used for light-hearted social networking such as this food, drink and friendship site for Sichuan now carry banners lamenting "Tragedy in Sichuan".....

Global voices has a posted selection of microbloggers by region, including a comprehensive list of posters from Sichuan. The phenomenon of sharing information and support via sites such as Twitter and Fanfou has been well-documented in the media recently, with the BBC writing a blog post about it and the Ogilvy China Digital Watch blog observing that: "Twitter's public nature was of some real value both for ordinary folk and for professional journalists." "
-photo from BBC

Technorati Tags: application, bbs, cellphone, china, earthquake, forum, photograph, bbc, sichuan, twitter, water

Over the past few months of preparing this project, I have had the honor to work with What Kids Can Do, Adobe Youth Voices and ChinaPax (a Beijing based Mandarin language program). I am particularly excited about seeing this project come to life after a few months of connecting the most dynamic team of youth bloggers. Despite the number of Chinese blogs (being sited anywhere from 700,000 to 2 million), many blog posts that are written in Chinese rarely make it beyond China. With all the recent news surrounding China's Olympics in Beijing, we thought that in addition to the mass media reports it would be great to just hear what Beijing life is like from the perspective of 6 high school aged youth, who will be telling their stories (in English) of what Beijing means for them and what daily life is like.

Although we cannot stretch their writings to be reflective of life all over China, we can at least gain an intimate inside into life for these particular group of youth from a specific place and background. It is our hopes that through this aggregated blog, you will follow their writings for the next few months, give them encouragement and feedback by leaving comments on their writings. I am constantly amazed by their strength to open up their lives.

Please help spread the word about their blog by forwarding, reposting, or using their posts in your lesson plans! Thanks! -tricia

*Special thanks to Gloria Xu of Chinapax for being such a great facilitator!

Technorati Tags: adobe youth initiative, blog, bloggers, china, china pax, chinese, everyday, life, olympics, online, puppy, stories, website, what kids can do, youth

Starting with this free telephone service, Guangdong Mobile plans to help solve some hot social issues and difficulties through its technology platforms and offer benefits to companies, students, farmers and migrant workers in the area. Xu Long, general manager of Guangdong Mobile, says that the company's "Appreciation to Guangdong" program is an extension of its "Thank Guangdong" program that ran last year.

Migrant workers who don't have a mobile phone can come to Guangdong Mobile's Communication 100 Service Halls to make their free calls, while those who have mobile phones can enjoy the free service with a Shenzhouxing card. Li Xinze, general manager of Guangdong Mobile's marketing department, says that Guangdong Mobile will also arrange traveling service vehicles next month from which the migrant workers can make their calls." Photo from AP Photo by ELIZABETH DALZIEL

In addition, Guangdong Mobile says that it will build 500 Communication 100 Service Halls to provide free internet service for migrant workers.

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Technorati Tags: cell phone, cellphone, china, guangdong mobile, migrant, urban

Drawing on two cohorts of our own fellows from all three counties, as well as a remarkable range of experts who have been researching issues of urbanization, globalization and growth in India and China, this Conference will determine a benchmark assessment of Chinese and Indian urbanization and wealth-formation, of the social and political risks associated with skyrocketing growth in two massive agrarian societies, of alternative designs for future development in each society and of the search, in both societies, for a “third way” of development that combines the virtues of socialism and capitalism without sacrificing the virtues of democracy and grassroots inclusion."

Technorati Tags: china, conference, equality, india, inequality, Prosperity and Inequality: Debates in India and China, the new school

Technorati Tags: 2008 , beijing, china, firewall, graham webster, information, monitor, olympic

Technorati Tags: 2008 , beijing, chinese , fuwa, internet, olympics, website

"GGL "will host a series of official amateur online qualifying tournaments around the globe, across multiple gaming genres and platforms. GGL will also hold invitational competitions for professional and celebrity gamers – who will also face off at the welcome events hosted by the China Government leading into the Digital Games Shanghai finals."

Gamers from all around the world will compete to represent their country, with the finalists competing in the Grand Finals event in Shanghai.

“The China Internet Gaming Organizing Committee is proud to be the first in digital sports history to recognize videogames as a competitive sport, and we are pleased to be working with GGL to elevate videogames – the 99th Official Sport of China – to the world stage,” said Fong Hong, Honorary General Secretary of the China Internet Gaming Organizing Committee. “Because of GGL’s global reach, content and community, brand recognition, technical capabilities, tournament expertise, strong ties with the gamer community and a rapidly growing Chinese presence, it was a natural fit when deciding who would be the perfect partner for this event.”

Technorati Tags: china, digital , gaming, olympics

Technorati Tags: 2nd biennial, art, art on the edge, arts, california, chinese, digital, ew, exhibit, festival, global, grant, liz slagus, media, micro-grant, san jose, technology, united states, youth, zer01

I usually don't blog about personal events on YouMeiTI, but I thought I this is an appropriate post because I can give you a first hand report about how seriously big the fires are in San Diego. The large news conglomerates in the USA are primarily focusing on the Los Angeles fires because of all their celebrities. But the fires in LA pale in comparison to the SD fires. In addition, when the SD news covers the fire, it mainly focuses on the luxury mansions in North County. In reality, it is also affecting the middle-lower class neighborhoods of South County - where there are more Mexicans - and it is 5-10 miles from the Mexican border.

Just to give you an idea of how big this fire is, here is a map with the city of Manhattan imposed on top of just ONE fire. There are at least 8 large fires burning right now. I am not burning, and neither is my house. The air is so horrific here that I have constant headaches, burning nasal passages and nausea. I am at least 15 miles (and many canyons) from the closest fire. I am updating about the fires on a regular basis at my personal blog where I have some video, pictures and media analysis. So give me a few more days to get myself resettled in San Diego. - tricia

Technorati Tags: california, fire, los angeles, manhattan, san diego, southern california, wildfire

Here's a summary of my main talking points below and you can click here for the extended notes:

• What we have here is not a new type of economy, but a new type of informal economy - the trading of online world currencies against offline world currencies.
• I believe that we are witnessing a new transition in capitalism, a transition to a virtual economy that transforms the medium in which capital is exchanged, labor is sold, production is organized, and value is created. But a new medium does not mean we are seeing new forms of economy, capital or labor relations. The new medium of virtual markets still reproduces the structures of labor and production of material capitalism.
• The economy of WoW is stratified, much like a complex capitalistic economy, where participants have different roles
• As long as value is a measure of wealth, complex virtual economies reproduce parallel conditions of labor power of material capitalist economies. Any utopian visions for virtual economies to transform social structure should take into account that a change in platforms does not always mean a change in structures.
• in China, we see a persistent loosening of technology skills acquisition but not a loosening of network resources.

Future implications for China, virtual worlds, and labor:

• Play is increasingly commodified in a complex global economy
• • In a post-industrial economy, we see the phenomenon of skill saturated intensive labor in technology sectors. Aneesh's theory of the phenomenon of skill saturation highlights the decisive role of repetitive skills in a post-industrial information technology world. This type of labor means that every action of labor can be monitored and surveillanced.
• • Governments will have a bigger role in virtual economies, for example China Central Bank's inquiry into QQ coins. And in China, how will the great internet-wall effect online global economies?
• • The offline will be increasingly tied to the online and future analysis of online worlds should always be tied to offline worlds.
• • The poor, but not necessarily less skilled, wiil have a larger impact on the formal economy - we will see this in other areas, like the increased ownership of cellphones among migrant laborers in China and India
• China's post-socialist dual economy is already considered to look more like a hybrid of a redistributive and market economy. We may be looking at an emerging tripartite post-socialist economy in China: redistributive, market and virtual. The question is to how they will be integrated and what type of combinations will be prod

Thank you WUN and Leeds University for the research fellowship! Special thank you to Dr. Xiyi Huang and Dr. Flemming Christiansen. It was an honor to meet scholars who's work i've read in journals. If you are in graduate school and you study something related to China, then apply for the WUN 2008 fellowship, which will be located in Brisols, UK. Here are my pictures from Leeds, where I found some great hidden graffiti next to the University. Thanks JimmyDan for this great photo of WoW coke cans in China and of course Jin Ge for your your research on Chinese Goldfarmers - without your generosity of sharing your footage and data, I wouldn't have been able to contribute my part to the discourse on WoW Goldfarmers.

Here are some of my new favorite research articles on China that I learned about during my research at Leeds, which I think will be excellent to read for anyone doing research on contemporary China:

• Martin King Whyte's Rethinking the Rural-Urban Cleavage in Contemporary China
• Wendy Bottero's Stratification: Social Division and Inequality (this one isn't about China, but I think it's useful for those studying inequality in China, and plus Dr. Bottero is really approachable so that always makes it more fun to read their work!)
• Xueguang Zhou's Economic Transformation and Income Inequality in Urban China: Evidence from Panel Data
• Carabine Jean's Unmarried Motherhood 1830-1990: A Genealogical Analysis, in Discourse as Data (this isn't about China either, but she shows step-by-step how to apply Foucauldian Discourse Analysis on illegitimacy in 19th century Britain, that can be easily abstracted to Chinese specific issue)

Technorati Tags: capitalism, carabine Jean, china, chinese, currency, digital, ean carabineJ, economy, game, goldfarmer, internet, labor, leeds, market, Martin King Whyte, material, MMORPG, network, online, platform, migrant, virtual , wendy bottero, world of warcraft, WoW, xueguang zhou, yu guoming

Chinese netizens have quickly flipped their opinion of Zola Zhou, who has been hailed as China's first citizen media reporter for covering the Chongqing Nailhouse, but is now hailed as another pesky fame seeker. This is all because of his latest video where he documents his visit to Google over click fraud on his Adsense program and demands that Google compensate him for his losses.

Shanghaiist writes that "In the meanwhile, Zola's blog, appears to have been GFW-ed, and so is his Picasa album (which, the last time we checked, consisted mostly of pictures of himself at "troubled spots"). He says on his new blog, Alouz.com:

这是周曙光的国内镜像网站，老子的官方网站被GFW追杀，换一个IP还是被屏蔽了，火大了！有种就明的来打来杀，给老子一个行政处罚通知给我一个痛快，我建立一个国内镜像，我的电话是13467668333，要删除哪篇文章尽管来电话，有什么与事实不符的内容尽管给我一个诽谤罪，别像GOOGLE一样惩罚老子却列一个罪名表让我对号入座！　我操！没人比我更恨那些拥有不透明权力的机构和组织！操！操！操！ This is Zola Zhou's mirror website in China. My official blog has been GFW-ed, and it still doesn't work even after I've pointed it at another IP! I'm fuming mad! If you've got the guts, come beat me, kill me, or take me to court. I'm establishing a mirror website in China and my number is 13467668333. If there's anything you'd like to see taken off just call me. If there's anything untrue in my posts, just sue me for libel. Don't punish me like Google did. F*ck! Nobody hates those who hide behind unseen powers and organisations more than me! F*ck! F*ck! F*ck! "

"Chinese netizens say he's 'crazy about fame' and 'worse than Furong Jiejie.'" Well you know that you are really being ridiculed when Chinese netizens start comparing you to Furong JieJie. -tricia

Technorati Tags: adsense, china, chongqing, citizen , click fraud, google, media, phone, reporter, zola zhou

Technorati Tags: china, hack, iphone