Books › Blockchain Chicken Farm
Blockchain Chicken Farm
256 pages
A surreal, empathetic journey into the physical places where the digital economy actually lives and breathes.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like taking a road trip through the uncanny valley of modern globalization. It moves at a steady, observant pace, blending the sharp, analytical eye of tech criticism with the warm, sensory texture of a personal travelogue. The mood is both cyberpunk-adjacent and deeply grounded in the dirt, sweat, and reality of rural life, creating a surreal contrast between high-tech AI and traditional farming. You are constantly invited to look past the shiny veneer of the internet to see the human labor and physical infrastructure that sustains it. It will absolutely delight readers who enjoy the intellectual expansiveness of Jenny Odell or Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, offering a wry, empathetic, and profoundly humanizing look at the weird edges of our hyper-connected world.
- Mood
- surreal
- grounded
- intellectually expansive
- cyberpunk-adjacent
- Tone
- inquisitive
- empathetic
- analytical
- wry
- reflective
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- the physical footprint of the digital world · rural innovation · the human cost of convenience · globalization's weird edges · technological entanglement
- The writing
- Accessible and deeply observant, blending sharp tech criticism with the warm, sensory details of a travelogue.
- The arc
- Moves from curious observation of bizarre tech phenomena to a profound, empathetic understanding of the people living inside the machine.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love unpacking the hidden supply chains of modern life and crave tech criticism that centers human beings over algorithms.
Content notes
- animal agriculture
- discussions of slaughter
About the book
In Blockchain Chicken Farm, the technologist and writer Xiaowei Wang explores the political and social entanglements of technology in rural China. Their discoveries force them to challenge the standard idea that rural culture and people are backward, conservative, and intolerant. Instead, they find that rural China has not only adapted to rapid globalization but has actually innovated the technology we all use today.
From pork farmers using AI to produce the perfect pig, to disruptive luxury counterfeits and the political intersections of e-commerce villages, Wang unravels the ties between globalization, technology, agriculture, and commerce in unprecedented fashion. Accompanied by humorous “Sinofuturist” recipes that frame meals as they transform under new technology, Blockchain Chicken Farm is an original and probing look into innovation, connectivity, and collaboration in the digitized rural world.
Description from Open Library.
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