Silvia M. Lindtner (Author)
Princeton University Press
Edition Details: Book Series: Princeton Studies in Culture and Technology
Physical Details: 302
Language: English
How did China’s mass manufacturing and “copycat” production become transformed, in the global tech imagination, from something holding the nation back to one of its key assets? Prototype Nation offers a rich transnational analysis of how the promise of democratized innovation and entrepreneurial life has shaped China’s governance and global image. With historical precision and ethnographic detail, Silvia Lindtner reveals how a growing distrust in Western models of progress and development, including Silicon Valley and the tech industry after the financial crisis of 2007–8, shaped the rise of the global maker movement and the vision of China as a “new frontier” of innovation.Lindtner’s investigations draw on more than a decade of research in experimental work spaces—makerspaces, coworking spaces, innovation hubs, hackathons, and startup weekends—in China, the United States, Africa, Europe, Taiwan, and Singapore, as well as in key sites of technology investment and industrial production—tech incubators, corporate offices, and factories. She examines how the ideals of the maker movement, to intervene in social and economic structures, served the technopolitical project of prototyping a “new” optimistic, assertive, and global China. In doing so, Lindtner demonstrates that entrepreneurial living influences governance, education, policy, investment, and urban redesign in ways that normalize the persistence of sexism, racism, colonialism, and labor exploitation.Prototype Nation shows that by attending to the bodies and sites that nurture entrepreneurial life, technology can be extricated from the seemingly endless cycle of promise and violence. Cover image: Courtesy of Cao Fei, Vitamin Creative Space and Sprüth Magers.
...MoreReview Jiarui Wu (2023) Review of "Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation". Technology and Culture (pp. 980-981).
Similar Citations
Article
Silvia Lindtner;
(September 2015)
Hacking with Chinese Characteristics: The Promises of the Maker Movement against China’s Manufacturing Culture
Book
Thomas S. Mullaney;
(2024)
The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age
Chapter
Oki, Sayaka;
(2019)
‘Innovation’ as an Adaptation of ‘Progress’: Revisiting the Epistemological and Historical Contexts of These Terms
Book
Louis Pelletier;
Rachael Stoeltje;
(2023)
Tales from the vaults: Film technology over the years and across continents
Book
Renee M. Rottner;
(2017)
Making the Invisible Visible: A History of the Spitzer Infrared Telescope Facility
Book
Robertson, David C.;
Breen, Bill;
(2013)
Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry
Book
Liyanage, Shantha;
Wink, Rüdiger;
Nordberg, M.;
(2007)
Managing Path-Breaking Innovations: CERN-ATLAS, Airbus, and Stem Cell Research
Article
Hans-Christian von Herrmann;
(2023)
Literature and Artificial Intelligence
Article
Shreeharsh Kelkar;
(2022)
Between AI and Learning Science: The Evolution and Commercialization of Intelligent Tutoring Systems
Article
Cian O’Donovan;
Johan Schot;
(May 2018)
Crafting Stories of Technology and Progress: Five Considerations
Article
Fred Turner;
(October 2018)
Millenarian Tinkering: The Puritan Roots of the Maker Movement
Book
Alexander Hall;
Will Mason-Wilkes;
(2024)
Most Adaptable to Change: Evolution and Religion in Global Popular Media
Book
Daniel Jordan Smith;
(2022)
Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria
Chapter
Lauren Flood;
(2021)
The Sounds of Zombie Media: Waste and the Sustainable Afterlives of Repurposed Technologies
Book
Matthew Wisnioski;
Eric S. Hintz;
Marie Stettler Kleine;
(2019)
Does America Need More Innovators?
Book
Peter Ester;
Maas, Arne;
(2016)
Silicon Valley: Planet Startup: Disruptive Innovation, Passionate Entrepreneurship & Hightech Startups
Book
Geoffrey Jones;
(2017)
Profits and Sustainability: A History of Green Entrepreneurship
Book
Moses E. Ochonu;
(2018)
Entrepreneurship in Africa: A Historical Approach
Book
Nicolas Friederici;
Michel Wahome;
Mark Graham;
(2020)
Digital Entrepreneurship in Africa: How a Continent Is Escaping Silicon Valley's Long Shadow
Article
Steven Gonzalez;
(May 2023)
The Astropreneurial Co-creation of the New Space Economy
Be the first to comment!