bio
Silvia Margot Lindtner (she/her) is a writer and ethnographer. She is Associate Professor at the University of Michigan in the School of Information and Director of the Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing (ESC). Lindtner's research focuses on the cultures and politics of technology innovation, including the labor necessary to incubate entrepreneurial life and data-driven futures. Drawing from over a decade of multi-sited ethnographic research, she writes about China's shifting position in the global political economy of computing, supply chains, industrial and agricultural production, and science and technology policy. She is the author of the award-winning book Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation (Princeton University Press, 2020), and co-author of the multigraph Technoprecarious (Goldsmiths/MIT Press 2020).
Lindtner has a courtesy appointment in the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design and is affiliated with several interdisciplinary centers and initiatives on campus including the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, the Science, Technology and Society Program, the Digital Studies Institute, the Michigan Interactive and Social Computing Research Group, and directs the Tech.Culture.Matters. research group. She is also Visiting Associate Professor at NYU Shanghai, a CUSP (China-US Scholars Program) Fellow, and a fellow in the National Committee on United States-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program.
Lindtner’s work contributes to the fields of China Studies, STS (science and technology studies), cultural and feminist anthropology, HCI (human computer interaction), global communication studies, science and technology policy, and design. Her research has been awarded support from the US National Science Foundation, IIE (the Institute of International Education), IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services), Intel Labs, Google Anita Borg, and the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation. Her work has appeared at ST&HV (Science, Technology, and Human Values), ESTS (Engaging Science, Technology and Society), SocialText, Women’s Studies Quarterly, China Information, ToCHI, ACM SIGCHI (Human-Computer Interaction), ACM CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing), among other venues.
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RECENT & Upcoming talks & PODCASTS:
Upcoming Talk, “Data Engines: Automating China’s Soil and Soul,” UC Irvine, Feb 23, 2024.
“Data Engines: Automating China’s Soil and Soul,” India China Institute, The New School, April 17, 2023.
Book Talk, Digital Asia Book Talk Series, Department of Communication, Institute for the Humanities, University of Illinois at Chicago, Feb 6, 2023.
Podcast, New Technoviews, with Joseph Bosco, Oct 26, 2022.
Podcast, Sinica, with Kaiser Kuo, July 22, 2022.
Interview, Association for Asian Studies, with Maura Cunningham, July 1, 2022.
Conversation with Melinda Liu: “China’s Zero Covid Policies: Impact and Implications,” hosted by the National Committee on US-China Relations, May 23, 2022.
RESIDUES OR WHAT REMAINS?
Our Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing (ESC) is running a series of programmatic activities under an exciting theme this academic year 2023-24:
NO_ESC: RESIDUES OR WHAT REMAINS.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to leave nothing behind. It is the sharpening of computational vision, the reach of quantification into the most inner corners of our lives. It is the mass accumulation of pristine data. Life is data, we are told, and AI represents the seamless divination of insight from our traces. Nothing, no-one! escapes. Yet, despite this seemingly inevitable machinery, there are residues - things that stick and smear, pasts that linger, lands wasted, bodies rendered disposable, labor discarded. What if we stick with what remains, with these residues - data not used, life that isn’t attractive to computation, tricky histories of other technological and political moments? What if we attend to residual labor, the work of cleaning up, of redirecting vision, of what is soon to be replaced by machines? What lifeforms with technology might become possible then?
We invite people to think with us on theory, geopolitics, governance, violence, ecologies, and claims to sovereignty in relation to the residues of contemporary data regimes. What new theoretical toolkits might we need in the age of NO_ESC? What does activism look like amidst the global quest to reach, enroll, and govern the left-overs, wasted, discarded, useless?
NO_ESC includes the launch of the NO_ESC art+research zine, a series of panel discussions, a collaboration and A partnership with the AI Center at NYU Shanghai, and an art residency program.
News:
three new Papers with topics ranging from China’s Data-driven governance during COVID to Tech Labor in India and the U.S.:
Anubha Singh, Patricia Garcia, Silvia Lindtner. 2023. Old Logics, New Technologies: Producing a Managed Workforce on On-Demand Service Platforms.
Yuchen Chen, Yuling Sun, Silvia Lindtner. 2023. Maintainers of Stability: The Labor of China’s Data-Driven Governance and Dynamic Zero-COVID.
Huber, L., Pierce, C., and Lindtner, S. 2022. An Approximation of Freedom: On-deman Therapy and the Feminization of Labor.
TWO 2023 PAPER AWARDS BY ACM:
Sun, Y., Ma, X., Lindtner, S., and He, L. 2023. Data Work of Frontline Care Workers:
Practices, Problems, and Opportunities in the Context of Data-Driven Long-term Care. Impact Recognition.
Sun, Y., Ma, X., Lindtner, S., and He, L. 2023. Care Workers’ Wellbeing in Data-driven Healthcare Workplace: Identity, Agency, and Social Justice. Recognition for Contribution to Diversity and Inclusion.
Prototype Nation (princeton University Press) won the 2022 Joseph levenson Prize for china scholarship post 1900 by the association for Asian studies.
excerpt from the award text: “Theoretically engaging and clearly written, Prototype Nation provides thick ethnographies of individuals and groups committed to alternative ways of producing technologies, while at the same time uncovering the colonial tropes and exploitative labor practices that undergird their work and that sustain the ongoing expansion of finance capitalism. The book thus puts China at the center of a global story of labor precarization, offering insights and provocations on the future tasks of critical scholarship beyond China.”
SOme recent reviews:
Taylor COplen, EASTS (East Asian Science, Technology and Society) Journal
“Prototype Nation is a valuable contribution to the literature on technology, innovation, and creativity in China. The book’s central arguments speak to fundamental questions of innovation and originality in the Chinese context that have long historical roots. …beyond the geographical focus on China, the central insights of the book are of fundamental importance for STS scholars with an interest in complex sociotechnical systems. Finally, beyond the world of academia, the book offers valuable insight for practitioners who seek to contribute toward more ethical systems of technology production. The book’s central argument shows that what seem like inevitable movements of technological promise actually require constant maintenance through the labor of numerous stakeholders. This demonstration of contingency shows readers that the sociotechnical worlds we inhabit are not inevitable, and more equitable, democratic worlds are possible.”
Jason Li, “Looking at China and Seeing Ourselves: Two Ethnographies of Tech in China”
“Ethnographies of tech in China are a rare beast (and a welcome change from the common framing of either business hype or tech dystopia), so we are extraordinarily lucky to have two such books published over the past year to show us what it's really like on the ground there. … And if you think these are just books about China, actually both books show the very real flow of goods, people and ideas from the US to China *and vice versa.* This explains the title of the review — tech in China might seem far but it's a lot closer and familiar than we think.” (Li, Twitter)
Lena Kaufman, China Quarterly:
“the author’s greatest achievement is—far beyond the Chinese case—to render visible and to powerfully question highly ambivalent narratives of progress and techno-solutionism, and the (often-unfulfilled) promises of intervention and happiness that these entail. Scholars such as Ching Kwan Lee and Pun Ngai have already raised awareness of the delirious conditions in Chinese factories, but Lindtner deepens our understanding by revealing the less obvious inequalities in China’s design, digital and entrepreneurial labor… Lindtner provides an original and fresh look at the understudied industries that have merged in the information age. This makes Prototype Nation highly innovative in itself, and a must-read for students and observers of contemporary China… and all those concerned with processes of innovation and technological modernization – not only academics, but also practitioners in precisely these processes.”