I am very pleased to share our new Social Media + Society special issue, co-edited with Jingyan Elaine Yuan. This collection brings together leading and emerging scholars to rethink both “platform” and “Asia” as dynamic, contested imaginaries—rather than fixed objects of analysis.

Great to see @lausanhk.bsky.social's account of the Wang Fuk tragedy 🕯️✊

Drugs (tobacco and sugar), were the very engine of the colonial American economy.

This has gotten surprisingly little attention — it's not even on the front page of @science.org right now — but it's really hard to describe what the SAFE Research Act would do to US science and scientists without sounding insane www.science.org/content/arti...

Such a pleasure working with you all to bring this piece into the world. Hope our conversations continue!

Super excited to announce a new piece out in the world: States and platform capitalisms: A conversation. This is a collaboration with some amazing thinkers and friends- led by @sayshatim.bsky.social Joe Khalil @linzhang.bsky.social & @rahmuk.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Black, magenta and an edge data center on the cover of my book about Nairobi, smartphones, platforms, standards, venture capital and digital China. Out in the boreal fall this year 🪩 with U California Press (and OA)

I’m thrilled to share my recently published book forum response in Dialogues in Urban Research, in response to a set of wonderful book reviews of The Labor of Reinvention. Details and links to articles here: www.linkedin.com/pulse/book-f...

Together with the great @data.ft.com piece yesterday on AI capacity, this is going straight on the syllabus for September - ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent...

This is fascinating although I must admit is not a beach read. It makes me think that one of the big trends we’re seeing in government/public policy is the spread of third wave systems theory (into theories of statecraft, PSR, leadership training, etc). 1/2

New Special Issue Alert: Our special issue “Whither China? Chinese Communication Research at the New Conjuncture” has finally been published in the Chinese Journal of Communication! www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcjc20/1...

I like this analogy: the computer interface as the 'theatre of the screen', with an understanding of theatre (like all art) as 'a lie that tells the truth'. www.clunyjournal.com/p/history-of...

Coming March 2026

In the midst of the AI boom, countries are scrambling to meet rising energy demands from data centers. In Mexico, Microsoft has had to rely on gas generators in at least one of its data centers

The Harvard S&T in Asia online seminar series is back! This fall features talks from affect and control in Chinese AI to American forestry in Cold War Taiwan. We meet on Zoom on the Tuesdays listed, 10:30–11:45 am ET. Registration: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia #histstm #envhist #sts 🧪

Exciting news from my colleagues @sciencehistory.org! This archive documents the early history of #MolecularBiology & efforts to determine the structure of #DNA. @matthewcobb.bsky.social provides an overview of its contents & significance in the thread below. #histSTM #histsci #histbio #Molbio 🗃️📜🧬

Other Tech Worlds Are Possible. Comic book is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese! Partnership with the Tech Sector of the Homeless Workers’ Movement in Brazil (MTST), @germana-fazgibi.bsky.social English: digilabour.com.br/comic-book-o... Portuguese: www.nucleodetecnologia.com.br/hq

Signatures needed! Uber and Lyft drivers are on the precipice of a wage theft settlement and need to push CA AG Bonta to represent what Uber/Lyft really stole, not just a token amount. Please sign and share this petition. www.drivers-united.org/wage-theft-s...

Xi Jinping launched the Global Governance Initiative, adding to China’s suite of global proposals. Centered on sovereignty, multilateralism, and UN reform, the GGI positions Beijing as a champion of the Global South in global affairs.

Just Code, just published!!! Open Access of full book is now freely available, see link below, made possible by @sloanfoundation.bsky.social grant to CBI! Am so honored to partner w Con & work alongside 19 stellar, fellow interdisciplinary authors on this book! #histtech cse.umn.edu/cbi/just-cod...

Some are embracing the fantasy that the cuts to #NIH funding will only have an impact here in the USA. As Nature reports, the NIH is the largest global funder by far and dwarfs the rest of the world’s funders of biomedical research. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

What is Sinopessimism? From lying flat to runology, Dino Ge Zhang explores a grassroots lexicon of disillusionment in China. Not just youth disengagement but a low theory of coping, refusing, and imagining alternatives amid economic and social pressures.

A short essay on the state of global digital capitalism(s) and futures in/from India and China, based on @linzhang.bsky.social 'The Labor of Reinvention' (2023)

"As the trade union Solidarity established itself as the nerve center of Polish resistance, Minden’s longstanding book-running efforts morphed into an operation code-named QRHELPFUL... [It] sneaked in radios + printing equipment... Illicit text might be concealed in Tampax boxes or diapers..." 😈

Building on the great papers from our Global Mediations workshop this past April, we're launching a CFP for additional contributions to an anthology on the global contestation of computational imaging. Details below; proposals due 9/13

I read this, and then I despaired even more deeply. They're universities, not collections of 'under-managed cluster risks'! And yet this is where we're going, because MBA Brain. (1/2) www.universityworldnews.com/post-mobile....

More summer reading! ASA member Alex Hanna ‪@dairinstitute.bsky.social‬ explores AI's pitfalls & the importance of recognizing how AI hype covers for a small set of power-hungry actors in her book The AI Con ‪@harpercollins.bsky.social‬ written w/ Emily M. Bender, U Wash.

Watch: Last week D&S Exec Director @janethaven.bsky.social took part in the @cfr.org‬ national conference, discussing power, politics & the tech industry on a panel w @chinmayiarun.bsky.social, @noupside.bsky.social, & Adam Segal, moderated by Michelle Caruso-Cabrera. www.cfr.org/event/2025-n...

What does China’s emerging governance regime for big tech look like & how does it differ from that of the US? My new article explores these questions by tracing Alibaba’s evolving ties with central and local governments, and theorizes this dynamic as a MARKET IN A FRAGMENTED STATE.

I spotted a few books! @linzhang.bsky.social @columbiaup.bsky.social #ica25

"Every chapter is a gem"! Lovely review by @guobin-yang.bsky.social of How Maoism was Made. "Weiner’s chapter... reveals the [early Maoist] state’s ethnopolitical anxieties and efforts to create ethnic minority categories." @aaronwmoore.bsky.social lareviewofbooks.org/article/two-...

When Amazon meets world systems theory in the platform era. Please give this very creative and rich article a read! Part of our Social Media+ Society special issue on Asian Platforms

The US-China S&T Agreement was just renewed and is worth protecting. A new piece by @kennedychina.bsky.social and I for @chinaecon.csis.org nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Please check out @adiray.bsky.social's very timely piece proposing a post colonial critical political economy approach to studying platforms and digital technologies, contesting the Asian developmental model of leapfrogging. Another wonderful article from our social media+society special issue.

Clickbait Capitalism in paperback! The volume first came out in 2023 and explores some of the cultures of desire then forming around digital technology and finance. Essential reading as the entire global economy now morphs into a gigantic digital mechanism of psychological capture and release.

We’ve Lost the Plot: Sinophobia and the Collateral Damage of American Primacy by Kaiser Kuo www.sinicapodcast.com/p/weve-lost-...

#GCEG2025 will be presenting on two new research projects on Chinese biotech companies in Southeast Asia and AI platform and datafication in agriculture @ the Global Conference on Economic Geography in Worcester in the next few days. See u all there!

More than 100 years after its initial review that blamed Black men, the Dept. of #Justice just released its report on the 1921 #Tulsa race massacre The report says the attack “was so systematic & coordinated that it transcended mere mob... #democracy #usa #gop #fascists #fascism 👉 Vote 'em Out!

"These companies are at an inflection point.... If Senate Republicans now vote to prohibit states from regulating A.I. for 10 years, Silicon Valley’s impunity will be enshrined in law, cementing these companies’ empire status." - @karenhao.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/o...

The threatened eviction of Chinese international students of certain backgrounds from the US is shocking, but also unsurprising, as we explained in our 2024 geoforum article "Desirable and disposable: Tracing the racialization of Chinese students in American Higher Education".

Brilliant people at the Platforms without borders workshop in London #Space4 #platforms thank you @jamesmuldoon.bsky.social for the wonderful hosting and @grohmannrafael.bsky.social @linzhang.bsky.social Denise Kasparian @marcsteinberg.bsky.social

New poll: *27% of Americans think Chinese Americans are a threat to U.S. society. *40% of Americans think Asian Americans are more loyal to their countries of ancestral origin than to the United States. www.axios.com/2025/05/01/a...

Cancer research in the US is world class because of its broad base of funding − with the government pulling out, its future is uncertain @us.theconversation.com Jeffrey MacKeigan theconversation.com/cancer-resea...

I wrote about cross-border e-commerce, tariffs, and Trump memes and memorabilia @nytimes.com

🚀 New article out! "New and Old Cold Wars: The Tech War and the Role of Technology in Great Power Politics" is now published @gsqjournal.bsky.social ! I explore how U.S. elites frame tech rivalry with CN through Cold War lenses. 🔗https://academic.oup.com/isagsq/article/5/2/ksaf038/8115944 🧵 (1/4)

Hear, hear!!

🚨 NEW: Crowdsourced database of #NSF grant terminations. 🚨 We've been able to collect info on >110 cancelled grants that were cancelled on Friday. Thanks to all the researchers who reported over the holiday weekend. 🧪 airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...

Isn’t it illegal to create false public records?