The Things of the Internet
untitled 2017-03-15
Summary:
Subtitle
with Berkman Klein Fellow, An Xiao� Mina
Teaser
What sorts of objects do new forms of hardware culture enable, and what role does the internet now play in all steps along the way, from ideation to sales to manufacturing to shipping? How might we now incorporate physical objects into our notions of internet memes? And what does this suggest about the future of object culture more generally?
Parent Event
Berkman Klein Luncheon Series
Event Date
Tuesday, March 21, 2017 at 12:00 pm Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University Harvard Law School campus, Wasserstein Hall Milstein East C (Room 2036, second floor) RSVP required to attend in person Event will be live webcast at 12:00 pm
As the internet connects makers, manufacturers and shippers across supply chains, a new form of producing and distributing global objects is arising, one that relies more on bottom up networks than top down oversight. When you look carefully, you see the signs of them: in the US, they might be t-shirts with hashtags on them, pussyhats at marches, and creative protest signs, and in Shenzhen, China, we see a plethora of hardware objects, such as selfie sticks, hoverboards and e-cigarettes, that rapidly reach global markets. What sorts of objects do new forms of hardware culture enable, and what role does the internet now play in all steps along the way, from ideation to sales to manufacturing to shipping? How might we now incorporate physical objects into our notions of internet memes? And what does this suggest about the future of object culture more generally?
About An
An Xiao� Mina is a technologist and writer who looks at issues of the global internet and networked creativity. As a Berkman Klein Fellow, she will study the impact of language barriers in our technology stack as the internet extends into diverse communities around the world, and she will continue her ongoing research on global internet meme culture.
Mina leads the product team at Meedan, where they are building digital tools for journalists and translators, and she is co-founder of The Civic Beat, a research collective focused on the creative side of civic technology. She serves as a contributing editor to Civicist, an advisory editor to Hyperallergic, and a governing board member at China Residencies.
She has spoken at venues like the Personal Democracy Forum, ACM SIGCHI, Creative Mornings, the Aspen Institute, RightsCon and the Institute for the Future, and she has contributed writing to publications like the Los Angeles Review of Books, Fusion, the New Inquiry, Nieman Journalism Lab, Places Journal and others.
Recently a 2016 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow, where she studied online language barriers and their impact on journalism, Mina is currently working on a book about internet memes and global social movements (working title: "Memes to Movements"), to be published by Beacon Press.
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