Silvia Lindtner In this talk, Silvia Lindtner examines how Shenzhen
transformed into a laboratory where technological futures are
prototyped. She will show how Western elites, more specifically
American and European entrepreneurs, makers, artists, and designers
turned to Shenzhen as a region that appeared hopeful and promising
for their professional futures exactly because it concentrated
aspects of manufacturing and informal economic development that
constitute the past in the West. Shenzhen, in other words, is
a city that allows Western elites to see the future. Similar to
developments in other parts of the world, China has witnessed over
the last 7 years a proliferation of ideas around open source
hardware, hobbyist tinkering and DIY making. Since 2008,
China's open source hardware businesses like Seeed Studio and
hackerspaces like XinCheJian have become well-known in
international maker circles and are considered exemplars of China's
own take on the global maker movement. At the same, China evidences
another culture of making: industrial production, repair, and
professional craftsmanship in electronics are central pillars of
the Chinese economy, with Shenzhen, a city in the South of China,
constituting its hotbed. Shenzhen produces more than 90% of
end-consumer electronics in usage worldwide. Just a subway ride
north of Hong Kong, the city has over the last 3 years attracted a
flurry of maker-related technology enthusiasts, who see Shenzhen as
providing the social, economic, and cultural tools to prototype a
maker approach to industrial development. Prominent western news
media outlets have picked up this story of a renewed Shenzhen, as
visible in a 2016 Wired documentary that celebrates the city as
"Silicon Valley of hardware." Two maker cultures, one driven by
international tech elites and the other by a history of industrial
production, converge in Shenzhen. It is here where Shenzhen was
turned into a laboratory for makers and entrepreneurs to not only
prototype and tinker with new technologies, but also with their own
professional identity and the future of the tech and creative
industries.
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