Lin Zhang

Thank you for the kind and encouraging words

Together, we ask: How can thinking and writing from/with Asia help us provincialize Silicon Valley and generate new concepts for understanding platform economies today?

🍷 Here's a full lineup of our 10 articles:

journals.sagepub.com/topic/collec...

From Japanese convenience stores to K-pop fandoms, from Chinese superapps to Indian short-video platforms, our contributors explore how Asia’s diverse experiences of platformization reshape global debates on labor, governance, and post-neoliberal futures.

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.

Tai Po in flames - Lausan How Hongkongers are reviving mass action and mutual aid in the wake of the deadly fires in Tai Po.

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!

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

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)

Heartfelt thanks to Yifan Cai, Gulinigaer Yishake, @sandeepmertia.bsky.social , @andretwp.bsky.social for their brilliant & generous engagements！

Book Forum articles on The Labor of Reinvention I’m thrilled to share my recently published book forum response in Dialogues in Urban Research to a set of wonderful book reviews of The Labor of Reinvention. Heartfelt thanks to Yifan Cai, Gulinigaer...

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

Whither China?: Chinese communication research at the new conjuncture Published in Chinese Journal of Communication (Vol. 18, No. 3, 2025)

Here's our introduction: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

In our intro, we revisit and reimagine Chinese communication studies through three analytical lenses: China in plural, Global China from above and below, and the digital platform as a contested infrastructural space. We hope this issue will inspire new conversations and directions in the field.

This collection features six excellent articles—ranging from rural fintech & e-commerce, the political economy of TikTok, the overseas Chinese fashion industry, to new theoretical approaches for studying platforms/infrastructures, and the platformization of China’s music industry.

Chinese Journal of Communication Whither China?: Chinese Communication Research at the New Conjuncture. Volume 18, Issue 3 of Chinese Journal of Communication

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...

The History of the Personal Computer by Sheila Heti Sheila Heti on the birth, rise, and decline of the personal computer.

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

Alternative Broadband Networks: Affordable Internet for the People, One Rooftop at a Time Volunteer-based organizations like NYC Mesh aim to close the digital divide and build real-life connections.

www.cnet.com/home/interne...

Countries are struggling to meet the rising energy demands of data centers Mexico's lagging energy grid is forcing companies, including Microsoft, to use generators.

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 Launches Global Governance Initiative In addition to China’s President Xi Jinping’s diplomatic blitz at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit and this week’s upcoming military parade, he also launched the Global Governance in...

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.

Front cover of Just Code: Power, Inequality and the Political Economy of IT. Black lettering in bold with trailing pastel colors.

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...

How the NIH dominates the world’s health research — in charts Abrupt cuts by the Trump administration to the US National Institutes of Health threaten progress in medical research globally.

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...

On Sinopessimism, or Junkies of Futility | Made in China Journal This essay is written precisely so that it could be dismissed. —Paul Mann (1991: 141)   Gary Gexi Zhang (2021) first coined the term ‘Sinopessimism’ as a speculative counterpart to Afropessimism, imag...

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.