China and the Wireless Undertow: Media as Wave Philosophy

(Paperback)

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In the twenty-first century city, wireless waves constitute an imperceptible, immersive, all-encompassing environment. Nowhere is this more so than in China, where a hyperdense network of mobile media has restructured daily life. Anna Greenspan re-imagines the relationship between China and wirelessness by synthesizing contemporary media theory with modern Chinese thought. It focuses specifically on the work of three critical figures: Tan Sitong (18651898), Xiong Shili (18851968) and Mou Zongsan (19091995).

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Anna Greenspan adeptly interweaves the concept of Wave, linking premodern Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist thought with today's rapidly changing, wireless China. This elucidates the historical and metaphysical underpinnings of contemporary Chinese media culture in all its intricacy. It leaves us keen to see where the waves of technology will carry China amid current geopolitical turbulence.-- "Chen Quifan, author of Waste Tide and AI2041: Ten Visions for Our Future"

Author Bio

Anna Greenspan is Assistant Professor of Global Contemporary Media at NYU Shanghai. She is the author of Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade (Oxford University Press, 2014), India and the IT Revolution: Networks of Globalization (Palgrave, 2005). She also writes for a non-academic audience including these three books: Ccru: Writings 1997-2003 (Urbanomic, 2015), Future Mutations: Technology and the Evolution of the Species (Time Spiral Press, 2014) and Urbanatomy: Shanghai 2008 (China Intercontinental Press, 2008).