How did China’s mass manufacturing and “copycat” production become transformed, in the global tech imagination, from something holding the nation back to one of its key assets? Prototype Nation offers a transnational analysis of how the promise of democratized innovation and entrepreneurial life has shaped China’s governance and global image. Lindtner reveals how a growing distrust in Western models of progress and development, including Silicon Valley and the tech industry after the financial crisis of 2007–8, shaped the rise of the global maker movement and the vision of China as a “new frontier” of innovation. Lindtner’s investigations draw on more […]

This webinar examines the current and potential impact of artificial intelligence on the economy and society. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already a widespread technology, affecting every aspect of our daily life. Even though it is, as yet, no more than a machine or program performing a narrow range of tasks efficiently, it already does so as well as or even better than humans. Some experts are hailing this spectacular improvement in AI capacity, but others are concerned. AI is a double-edged sword: it can either protect or damage people depending on how it is used. Technologies, including AI, are intrinsically […]

Compared with their urban and suburban peers, rural students in the United States are less likely to complete higher education. Thus, they forego one of the main paths to the development of human capital and its associated benefits. Some have pointed to divides in Internet access, due to concentrated socioeconomic inequalities and gaps in the infrastructure for fixed home broadband, as a contributor to rural students’ reduced ability to acquire human capital. Overcoming the “homework gap” between students who can and cannot use the Internet from home, possibly through wireless Internet access, has been suggested as one solution to bridging […]