Publishers Weekly
09/14/2020
Wang, Logic magazine’s creative director, debuts with a thought-provoking if inconclusive inquiry into how technology is transforming rural China. Investigating “Rural Revitalization” initiatives aimed at alleviating poverty, improving food security, and solving the social problems associated with rural migrants who leave the countryside to find work in cities, Wang travels to remote parts of China to interview costume manufacturers and agricultural drone operators. They detail how blockchain technology, which uses cryptography to stop records from being falsified, bolsters consumer confidence in the accuracy of the “free-range” poultry label, yet argues that such fixes also create a new, technical elite and an overreliance on inaccessible systems. In one of the book’s strongest chapters, Wang offers an illustrative and clear-eyed assessment of Dinglou, a rural village made wealthier yet more chaotic and dystopian through infrastructure investment by the e-commerce giant Alibaba, comparing the venture to Amazon assisting an Appalachian coal-mining town by “helping its citizens start candy businesses.” But without a clear central argument, the narrative occasionally drags, and speculative interludes (including a recipe for making mooncakes with maize grown on the moon) are equal parts intriguing and confusing. Still, this is a unique and detailed survey of an underexplored aspect of Chinese innovation. (Oct.)Correction: An earlier version of this review used an incorrect pronoun in reference to the book's author.
From the Publisher
"Fascinating . . . Wang has a keen eye for the steampunk-like details of ancient rural areas now shot through with internet opportunity . . . a nuanced and thought-provoking account." --Clive Thompson, The New York Times Book Review
"You don't have to be interested in blockchain to be taken in by this endlessly thought-provoking book . . . Wang is constantly pushing to dissolve binaries in search of a more nuanced conversation about progress, innovation and technology." --Allison Arieff, San Francisco Chronicle "Wang helps readers trace the patterns emerging in the tapestry of our tech-infused world . . . [Wang] succeed[s] in their goal of reframing our understanding of technology as neither the cause of nor the solution to our problems but rather as a force reshaping the human experience in fundamental ways." --Arti Garg, Science "Engaging travels through a Chinese countryside in which high technology meets the old ways . . . smart and well argued . . . Technology writing with flair looking to a future that's fast upon us." --Kirkus (starred review) "A unique and detailed survey of an underexplored aspect of Chinese innovation." --Publishers Weekly "A brilliant and empathetic guide to the far corners of global capitalism, Xiaowei Wang dissolves so many boundaries in Blockchain Chicken Farm: between high tech and low tech, digital and physical, center and periphery, real and fake, mundane and magical, past and future. Wang is an expert at infiltrating systems that seem unfathomable and abstract, insistently grounding them in a spatial, personal reality. Yet this is not just a dystopian portrait of surveillance and profit. It is also a beautiful and hopeful argument -- for other possible futures, and for a human spirit that refuses to be quantified." --Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy "In this fascinating travelogue, Xiaowei Wang takes us deep into the most forward-thinking tech incubators in the world: the pig farms, rice paddies, and mountain strongholds of rural China. Blockchain Chicken Farm is a vital counterpoint to Silicon Valley's fantasies of frictionless global domination, told with profound care and attention to the human-scale issues at play. This book will forever upend your conception of what "innovation" means." --Claire L. Evans, author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet "Xiaowei Wang is that rare sort of author who can make personal the often overwhelmingly-complex forces of capitalism, technology and globalization with both compassion and criticality. Moving effortlessly between a busy oyster market in China and a crowded BART ride in the United States, Wang reveals the interconnectedness of the things we create, consume and carry, showing how Silicon Valley, the U.S. heartland and rural China aren't as far away as we think they are. Behind every Made in China label is the story of humanity. Blockchain Chicken Farm takes us there. It's vital reading." --An Xiao Mina, author of Memes to Movements: How the World's Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power "Between detailed descriptions of rural and urban landscapes, Xiaowei Wang does a tremendous job of weaving together intricate details of China's political and cultural history. Their deftness in writing about the inextricable link between industrial agriculture and digital technology offers a much-needed and well researched perspective. Blockchain Chicken Farm provides an incisive critique of the possible effects and future of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and automation that narrows, if not fully eliminates, the imaginary gap between farmlands and the concrete of the cityscape." --Dorothy R. Santos, writer, artist, educator
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2020-07-16
Engaging travels through a Chinese countryside in which high technology meets the old ways.
In this entry in the publisher’s new FSGO x Logic series, Wang, the creative director at Logic magazine, blends studies of agriculture, anthropology, tech, and digital art. The author opens with a modest protest that while it is easy to both romanticize and overlook the countryside, and especially Chinese farm villages, “many of them are sites of economies and agricultural practices that are foundational to our world.” China is now subject to the same market forces and consumer preferences as Western nations, so that everyone wants nice things such as high-quality organic food. That opens many doors to rural enterprises. As one entrepreneur observes, whereas big corporations such as Nabisco dominated the food world in the past, “hundreds of smaller, fragmented companies will dominate the future, catering to a continuum of different tastes and experiences.” One of the author’s recurrent themes is the use of technology to improve agricultural production, as with the farm of the title, which caters to “upper-class urbanites—people willing to pay a premium on food.” Along the way, Wang takes on science historian Joseph Needham’s famous observation that China ceased to innovate well before Western traders arrived. The author distinguishes innovation from adaptation to show that there is not only plenty of “disruptive innovation” occurring in China, but also an emerging “shanzhai economy instead of an innovation economy.” In this case, shanzhai suggests the process of retooling outside products—an iPhone, say—to make affordable things for a less affluent local market and, in the bargain, “decolonize technology.” Wang’s whirlwind discussion, smart and well argued, turns to many other topics as well, from racism in high tech to microlending, trade wars, risk tolerance, and a rapidly changing rural China, with delicious recipes as a lagniappe.
Technology writing with flair looking to a future that’s fast upon us, with China playing a leading role.
