睡在网吧SXSW | Austin, Texas | March 12, 2011 | triciawang.com #300MM

The Next 300 Million Chinese Users@triciawang

First, since this is a future15 talk and I can’t answer questions I would love for you to post your feedback such as things you like or things that aren’t clear using the hash-tag #300MMWho here has been to an internet cafe in China?

#300MM @triciawang

?who has been to an internet cafe in China?

photo credit: chinasmack.com

#300MM @triciawang

These cafes are filled up with hundreds of internet users who cannot afford their own PC or internet connection. The majority of internet cafe users are poor, mostly migrants form the rural countryside. When you’re inside a cafe, it just looks like hundreds of people playing games, watching porn and sleeping overnight at the cafe!

Use the internet in a civilized way.Stay away from internet cafeStay away from Internet addiction, start from yourself.”

“

#300MM @triciawangphoto credit: xinhua

In this picture, a policeman is making a speech to kids about the dangers of internet use, underscored by the message in the red ribbon.The media portrays internet use at these cafes as a psychological addiction, as places where uneducated and classless migrants hang out causing youth to stop going to school, commit crimes, have more sex, and do bad stuff life playing games. So with all these poor migrants hanging out in cafes, a lot of middle-class and elite people are panicking.

we monitor• IM chats• text messages• forums• emails

The Sky Net Team

The government has stepped in by requiring all internet cafes to operate with a permit. Theyʼve also invested a lot of money and time into the SkyNet team -the largest paid and volunteer based cyber police that monitors online interaction such as IM chats, text messages, forums, and emails.

Citizens, like these elderly women, are encouraged to volunteer their time at internet cafes urging youth to go home.

Whatʼs all this panic over games and porn? #300MM

@triciawangphoto credit: imagine china

But whatʼs up with all this panic just over porn and games? Well thereʼs a lot more going on here than it seems.

#300MM @triciawang

(thereʼs a lot more going on here than it seems)

#300MM @triciawang

For outsiders, what you see here is what most middle-class and elite Chinese citizens also see - a bunch of poor migrants watching games and playing porn.

For outsiders, what you see here is what most middle-class and elite Chinese citizens also see - a bunch of poor migrants playing games and watching porn. Essentially, they are doing nothing worthwhile. However, Internet cafes are one of the cheapest ways for poor people such as migrants to get online. They can use it for 8 hours a day for less than $2.00. And anyone can use it - they donʼt turn people away.

#300MM @triciawang

use bathrooms

talk to friends

stay in touch with family

find jobs

cheap child-care

affordable shelter

relax

whatʼs really going on inside:

Migrants are accessing information about work and news, they use them to stay in touch with friends and family.

Without a stable home in the city, internet cafes are often the closest thing a migrant has to a “home.” And many of them have figured out that itʼs cheaper to just stay over night at a cafe than to pay for a room. Cafes are responding to users by constructing cubicles where you can lean against a wall for those who want to sleepover or have a little more privacy.

In addition to providing access to information and shelter, you can also buy also food and water, and use a bathroom. The bathroom at the internet cafe is often the only bathroom hooked up to the sewage system in a slum.

This is also a place of safety. For example, I see migrants using cafes as affordable child-sitting. Parents can leave their children here, go to work for 15 hours and come back to find their child in the same place. Parents would tell me that they were happy that their child as the cafe all day and not on the streets with a gang.

#300MM @triciawang

internet cafes are places of

safety stability comfort

So counter to what the government and the media argue - that internet cafes are places of moral corruption - my observations revealed that cafes are places of safety, stability, and comfort for migrants living in city that seemed at times hostile to them.

social interaction

#300MM @triciawang

internet cafes are important sites of

I make the case that internet cafes are serious sites of social interaction for rural-urban migrants in China.

Itʼs totally new - migrants accessing networked digital technologies, coordinating with each other online, and creating new communities. For the first time ever, non-elite users have access to the same technologies as elite users.

But while some of these processes may be new (as itʼs not typical to associate migrants and intensive technology use), this is actually an old story

#300MM @triciawang

new processes!!!!

migrants using

technology!

building new forms of

community!

urbanization through

digital tools!

While some of these processes may be new (as itʼs not typical to associate migrants and intensive technology use), this is actually an old story - poor people coming into cities and trying to make it their home, middle-class and elite people start panicking, and government officials stepping in.

#300MM @triciawang

but itʼs an old story

poor people come to cities elites panic government

steps in

While some of these processes may be new (as itʼs not typical to associate migrants and intensive technology use), this is actually an old story - poor people coming into cities and trying to make it their home, middle-class and elite people start panicking, and government officials stepping in.

21st century - Chinese rural to urban migrants

20th century - Irish & Italian immigrants

When poor immigrants from Italy and Ireland came to the US around the turn of the 20th century, they too, like todayʼs Chinese rural to urban migrants, were trying to make the city their home.

saloons - leisure hang out spaces for immigrantsRegardless of how much money you have, everyone needs a place to hang out. And back then poor immigrants were hanging out in saloons.

Middle-class and elite Americans panicked. Anti-saloonists were decrying saloons as as a site of moral corruption, sexual debauchery, sexual child abuse, and violence. This sounds familiar right?

anti-alcohol propoganda postersSo these are some posters from early 1900ʼs - in the same way that the Chinese Skynet cartoons encourages citizens to report suspicious online activity, these anti-saloon propoganda encouraged people to support Prohibition. Anti-Saloonists believed that the banning of alcohol would teach immigrants how to spend time inside their homes - which were really slums - and how to become “civilized Americans.”

Anti-Saloon Movement lead to Prohibition

The anti-saloon movement succeeded with the passing of Prohibition in 1919. But we all know how that story turned out.

#300MM @triciawang

sociologists sent into saloons to find out why

immigrants spent so much time in them

they found out that saloons were important places for

immigrants to relax, socialize, use the bathroom

However what came out of the Anti-Saloon movement were urban sociologists and social workers who wanted to find out what was really going on inside the saloons. They discovered that immigrants went to saloons to stay in touch with people from their own village. In the process they made new friends from other villages and/or ethnic groups. People shared tips about new jobs, housing, and survival in an entirely new country. This was also a place where people could relax.

Families would go to saloons because -- just like internet cafes in China -- it was often the only place with a bathroom connected to the sewage. When anti-saloonists saw images of children coming in and out of saloons, they assumed children were being sexually abused and, unlike the sociologists, didnʼt take the time to find out what was really going on there.

privately owned spaces of communication technology access are the new

(internet cafe)

third placesactively reprogramming urban space

#300MM @triciawang

One of these urban sociologists, Ray Oldenberg argued that places like saloons were absolutely vital for creating a healthy, diverse, and open city. He called these types of spaces, “third places,” places that are neither home or work, such as pubs, cafes, libraries, and public spaces. immigrant and poor communities, just as much as middle-class and elite communities, need third places because these are important sites of community formation.

In China, I make the case that privately owned spaces of information access - internet cafes - are the new third places for non-elite citizens.And so what often looks like an empty street is actually the home of intense socializing. It just isnʼt obvious to someone who isnʼt part of the activity. The same goes for a super busy cafe with everyone hooked up to the computer. These are the places were migrants are actively reprogramming urban space to work for them.

blurring private/public

re-mixingdigital/material

blurring kinship ties

building communitypublicly virtual

the new “street corner”

This is where people are being publicly virtual. Because many of them donʼt have a stable home, much less a private room, they are doing a lot of things that we would see as “private” in public places. So we have to understand the norms for how people are consuming content in public settings. But more importantly, these are spaces for community building. Migrants are able to create new forms of associations that stand outside of the family, blurring kinship ties. This means that we have to get to understand how peopleʼs social networks are changing and how this affects the types of leisure entertainment they consume. Essentially, these cafes are becoming the new digital street corner where digital and material interactions are being re-mixed.

my field work site

•living with migrants•going to schools•hanging out in internet cafes•working in factories

#300MM @triciawang

So what I do is hang out in a lot of third places. Iʼm a sociologist and ethnographer. For the last fours years, Iʼve been studying how migrantsʼ interaction with digital technologies in Mexico and China create new spaces for community. I work where they work. I sleep where they sleep. I live with them.

what the future of the internet will look like?

how will the next 3 billion users experience everyday digital life? #300MM

@triciawangFor my research in China, I want to answer two questions. 1.) What the future of the internet will look like.

what can we learn from 300 million rural-urban migrants?

#300MM @triciawang

2.) What we learn from 300 million rural-urban migrants.

Where are potential areas for social change?

#300MM @triciawang

So if places like internet cafes and other sites of information access point to this emerging third places for migrants, what does this tell us about potential areas for social change?What are the consequences when an entire stratum of society realizes improved connections through ICTs to many others stratums that were once impossible to reach? Well there are some important shifts that are happening that have radical implications for how games, entertainment, and products will be consumed. I’m just going to highlight of few spaces processes today.

1 change from the bottom up will take form in

this happens when people on the margins experience the limits of consumer citizenship

disruptive citizenship

#300MM @triciawang

Migrants are becoming urbanized through a culture of consumption that is mediated and intensified through digital tools. They may be able to buy whatever they can afford, but without city residency cards, rural-urban migrants are still technically illegal citizens in their new urban homes. A migrant with limited residency does not have access to full social benefits such as health and education.Much like how MExican immigrants are treated in the US, the economy depends on their labor but the state will deny their full personhood. This situation cannot hold as they will make demands that will match their increasingly consumeristic lifestyle preferences.Migrants will be using ICTs to engage in disruptive forms of citizenship when (and if) they realize limits of consumer citizenship.To be clear, this does not mean political changes. Disruptive social changes are often beneficial changes for society at large.

2 Leisure activities become even more intense sites of social interaction because they are

politically benign

#300MM @triciawang

With a strong authoritarian government that does not sanction political organizing, leisure sites such as games, movies, music, and consumption, become more intense sites of social interaction precisely because they are politically benign. But everything, even games, becomes politicized.

3 Leisure activities becomes important areas of

cultural control

#300MM @triciawang

"Even if dominant institutions are not directly overthrown by new technologies, fundamental aspects of culture are transformed by them." Mark Poster

The government is aware of this, so they are increasingly treating benign leisure activities as a site of cultural control. But this cultural activities and symbols can never be fully controlled because there is no one center of control - culture survives precisely because its form is distributed. Observing cultural tensions around digital technologies reveals so much about existing power structures because cultural changes can happen before major social changes happen, as information theorist Mark Poster argues."Even if dominant institutions are not directly overthrown by new technologies, fundamental aspects of culture are transformed by them." (Information Please, Mark Poster 2006:192)There's a lot of great research that's being done on how cultural control is exerted from top-down, but I'm much more interested in how people are reacting to, pushing back, accepting or questioning culture.

4 Restrictions are often seen as unique challenges

restrictions

free for all

dreamers

+

+= unique set of conditions

for innovation!

#300MM @triciawang

One of the major cultural changes is that there is a unique set of conditions for innovations unfolding.

China has 3 important factor that make it an innovative environment: a unique set of restrictions, areas that are highly unregulated (such as IP), and millions of highly motivated individuals who have high hopes for their futures. What appears as restrictions to us are often seen as a a unique set of challenges to overcome. But the point is that millions of migrants want to pick up programming skills and are quickly being trained in these skills. There is so much human capital to be unleashed in China. And that energy is being funneled through online spaces. That bottom up push back is actually a vital component of a innovative environment.

This poster here is an advertisement for a hacking college geared towards people who don’t have a chance at getting a formal education to pick programming skills. THe iconography of Keanu Reeves as Neo from The Matrix is not lost upon the migrants. The abundance of these kind of colleges reflect how migrants are trying to reinvent their lives through opportunities found on the informal market. WIth all these migrants learning programming languages, they are unleashing a lot of human capital.

China is a humongous living experiment

#300MM @triciawang

This is all to say that China is a humongous living experiment. Cities are being torn up and rebuilt to accommodate low-resource populations and high-tech infrastructures.

Text

#300MM @triciawang

disposable urban household income in China has to keep growing to maintain economic growth

In order for China to sustain its urban growth and its entire population, it has to bring these millions of migrants flowing into cities into the middle class and ensure that the urban household income keeps growing.

*It has to maintain economic growth (annual growth rate 7% for 12th Five-Year Plan 2011-2015).

#300MM @triciawang

In order for China to sustain its urban growth and its entire population, it has to bring these millions of migrants flowing into cities into the middle class

digitally networking the consumption desires of millions of people

#300MM @triciawang

Essentially, to accomplish this, China is digitally networking the consumption desire of millions of migrants who are aspiring to live the lifestyle of the middle-class.

People are using cellphones and internet cafes to create the middle-class/elite identity they desire. They do this through the content that they consume, the games that they play, the clothes that they buy, and down to the choices they make in their online identities.

Digital Urbanismon the margins

#300MM @triciawang

millions of rural-urban migrants are becoming urbanized through low-cost digital tools

This is a process that I call digital urbanism on the margins where million of rural-urban migrants are becoming urbanized through low-cost digital tools. These migrants are a major force of contemporary urbanization. Together, digitization + migration + urbanization, are changing our world because these processes alone facilitate dreams, the creation of desires, and emergence of new practices.

people

(subjectivity,

identity)

product

(hardware,

content)

tech &

economic

policy (legislation)

protocol

(code/networks/

standards)

practice

(communication,

spatial)

workings of digital urbanism

state managed growth

software: social media/

gaming

Hardware: low-cost tech tools

widespread infrastructure

open web standards and programming

languages

rural-urban migration

digitization of information

organization workflow

non co-present communication

desires

dreams

internet filtering regime

changingkinship ties

work

belonging

blurring private/public

re-mix digital/material

#300MM @triciawang

community

In my research, I account for several processes that contribute to Digital Urbanism from tech policy to protocols. But whatʼs really at the core of my work and also what I really want to emphasize today are the hopes and dreams of the people living on the margins. Because it is these hopes and dreams that are driving the Chinese economy, US economy, and global economy. It is these dreams that are informing the kind of leisure activities people decide to engage in from games to music and shopping.

less evenly developed

more evenly developed

world population: add 3 billion in 30 years it took 10,000 years to reach 3 billion

2011: 6.7 billion

Getting some insight into these 300 million users is only the beginning. There are millions of new non-elite users getting online outside of the US. Weʼre going to be adding another 3 billion people to our planet in the next 30 years and the overwhelming majority of these people will be located outside the US. Just for some context, it took 10,000 years for the human population to reach 3 billion.

can the planet support the millions of migrants who have dreams to join the Chinese middle-class?

#300MM @triciawang

photo credit: edward burtynskyBut the question really is, can the planet support the millions of migrants who have dreams to join the Chinese middle class?

#300MM @triciawang

Will cheap digital tools be the game changer?

And are cheap digital tools going to be the game changer? I believe that answering these questions requires us to look at third places - physical places where poor people are using networked digital communication tools to mediate and create their dreams - these are the spaces to watch because these are the places where people are actively reprogramming urban space to work for them.

Itʼs important to grasp these changes from the bottom up and from these peopleʼs perspective (as opposed to from our own position) because if we want to work with, market to, collaborate with, and build with China, much less any part of the world- we have to genuinely want to understand of how the largest group of tech users are making sense of the world. We absolutely have to.

Iʼll have some observations to report

in 2012! (if the world doesnʼt end)

#300MM @triciawang

Thank you for allowing me to engage you in the ethnographic imagination. It is my belief that a deeper understanding of the present can give us a very grounded vision for the future. Iʼm moving to China for my fieldwork, this is my last stop in the US so I'll have some more observations of Chinese people sleeping in internet cafes to report in 2012!

triciawang.com @triciawang

.com

In the meantime I'll be blogging daily observations on BytesofChina.com and analysis on culture and technology on CulturaByt.es

thank you to friends who listened and gave me advice: kristen taylor, kevin slavin, kenyatta cheese, morgan ames. And thank you SXSW community for all the feedback after my talk!

thank you to friends who listened and gave me advice: kristen taylor, kevin slavin, kenyatta cheese, morgan ames. And thank you SXSW community for all the feedback after my talk!