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- Convenor:
-
Matthew Adams
(Brunel University)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 7 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The ‘legitimate operator’ in Chinese cyberspace is one nudged towards a coherent form centred on one’s legal identity. The opportunities for self-construal are thus continuous with one’s offline identity in ways they may not be elsewhere, and anthropology is uniquely positioned to study this.
Long Abstract:
In many ways, Mainland China already has a metaverse. On the Chinese internet, the other side of the Great Firewall, a persistent identity unifies gaming and social media profiles, accounts at online retailers, one’s bank account, and citizenship. These are much less loosely bound together in the internet outside of China, and conscious efforts are now being made by companies like ‘Meta’ to create integrated, but competing, platforms to give structure to what may otherwise become a free-for-all. Major players in China, such as Tencent and Alibaba, already function along the Cartesian lines laid by the state and its systems, implicit as well as explicit, of social credit.
‘AI’ likewise exists in a different form on the Mainland. Consider the short-video and livestreaming platform Douyin and its sister app abroad, TikTok. Their suggestion algorithms are famously clever, quickly learning a user’s preferences and feeding tailored content. Outside China, these algorithms are unshackled, rapidly pushing users into niches and incentivising content with visceral appeal: eliciting strong emotions, or sensational, sexual, and otherwise lustful. Users and contributors are thus pushed towards extremes. Meanwhile in China there is the paradox of largely ‘human-controlled’ algorithms, where top-down policies carried out by legions of state employees, and indeed autonomous citizens, promote ‘#PositiveEnergy’, and so nudge the metaverse and the netizens created thereby towards socially cohesive, nominally socialist morals and behaviours.
This panel will discuss what anthropology can bring to the study of a metaverse with Chinese characteristics, and what we may learn from it.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 7 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
By early 2022, all the major Chinese tech companies have jumped on the metaverse ('yuanyuzhou' in Chinese) bandwagon. This presentation draws on the author's ongoing research on the Chinese AI industry to discuss how different metaverse imaginaries are articulated by tech companies and the public.
Paper long abstract:
By early 2022, all the major Chinese tech companies have jumped on the metaverse bandwagon. The term has been granted a quite literal Chinese translation ('yuanyuzhou'), and is quickly replacing other terms like rengong zhineng (artificial intelligence) or dashuju (big data) in product descriptions and value propositions. For tech giants like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, the metaverse is a convenient placeholder for an imagined technological assemblage that will require the convergence of their commercial offerings, including cloud computing, machine learning platforms, AR & VR ecosystems, holographic rendering, and even the blockchain. The metaverse also functions as an attractor for other imaginaries, including those of internet celebrities and their fans, cryptocurrency investors, and ACG (animation, comics and games) communities: the promise of a seamless augmented world integration with everyday life drives the proliferation of art exhibitions sponsored by e-commerce platforms, NFT collectibles for app avatars, and virtual brand ambassadors. As both tech companies and users experiment with product prototypes and engage in speculative exercises about the "next generation internet", questions including what the yuanyuzhou is, who will build it, and how it will be governed, remain open. This presentation draws on the author's ongoing research on the Chinese AI industry and its impact on everyday life to discuss how different metaverse imaginaries are articulated by tech companies and other commercial actors. Combining the analysis of industry material and digital ethnographic approaches, this contribution offers a snapshot of the current overlap of various sociotechnical imaginaries.
Paper short abstract:
The ‘legitimate operator’ in Chinese cyberspace is one nudged towards a coherent form centred on one’s legal identity. The opportunities for self-construal are thus continuous with one’s offline identity in ways they may not be elsewhere, and anthropology is uniquely positioned to study this.
Paper long abstract:
In many ways, Mainland China already has a metaverse. On the Chinese internet, the other side of the Great Firewall, a persistent identity unifies gaming and social media profiles, accounts at online retailers, one’s bank account, and citizenship. These are much less loosely bound together in the internet outside of China, and conscious efforts are now being made by companies like ‘Meta’ to create integrated, but competing, platforms to give structure to what may otherwise become a free-for-all. Major players in China, such as Tencent and Alibaba, already function along the Cartesian lines laid by the state and its systems, implicit as well as explicit, of social credit.
‘AI’ likewise exists in a different form on the Mainland. Consider the short-video and livestreaming platform Douyin and its sister app abroad, TikTok. Their suggestion algorithms are famously clever, quickly learning a user’s preferences and feeding tailored content. Outside China, these algorithms are unshackled, rapidly pushing users into niches and incentivising content with visceral appeal: eliciting strong emotions, or sensational, sexual, and otherwise lustful. Users and contributors are thus pushed towards extremes. Meanwhile in China there is the paradox of largely ‘human-controlled’ algorithms, where top-down policies carried out by legions of state employees, and indeed autonomous citizens, promote ‘#PositiveEnergy’, and so nudge the metaverse and the netizens created thereby towards socially cohesive, nominally socialist morals and behaviours.
This paper presents what anthropology brings to the study of the Chinese metaverse, and the lessons for one possible future of the internet globally.