looking east

This entry is something like a brainstorming about topics I have come up with previously. None of them have actually satisfied me so far though. As a matter of fact, there are only few restrictions: I need a “technical object” and the object should be a Western invention. So let’s list my previous ideas (chronologically):

• The great firewall of China: This would be a paper about Chinese censorship on the web and how it influences web content in China. The technical object would thus be China’s web filtering system, trying to find out how it actually works and which technologies might be used. I could probably extract data from crawling the result pages of different Chinese search engines by using different proxies to access them. I could also observe a number of websites which are likely to be blocked to find out how long it takes for them to be blocked. I would therefore base my research on some collected statistical material. The thesis would therefore show how Western technology is used and reinvented in a Chinese context.
• Internationalisation/Localisation: The technical object for this topic could be pretty much anything, any piece of software which has been localised would do. I would probably even want to have different technical objects as the thesis is about the process of internationalisation and localisation. I could start with explaining how software has to be built in order to allow for localisation, I introduce some of the principles of software architecture (like the MVC pattern for example) and show how one piece of software can be used in different localised context. A second part of the paper could analyse which decisions were made in order to localise the software for China or some other Asian country, thus comparing the “original” Western software to the localised Asian one. Every localised software would have a “Western core”, probably invented by Western programmers, but the usage context of the localised versions would be Asian.
• Linux in China: China has been promoting Linux for a while now and has even come up with its own Linux distrubution Redflag. Focusing on Redflag as a technical object, I could investigate the difference between Chinese and Western Linux operating systems and search for the “chinese essence” in the Redflag distribution. I could also include an analysis of China’s open source community and find out what is “chinese” about it, this might allow me to cover other topics such as politics and economy as well. However, being a Linux user but not a Linux programmer might make my paper rather superficial as I could only comment on Linux features. Of course, I could add a chapter about the architecture of Redflag Linux and find out how much of its core is actually a “Western invention” and which parts have been completely redefined by the Chinese programmers.
• Findability in China: This topic is related to the first one about the great firewall of China, but rather than focusing on the firewall itself, it would focus on what can actually be found on the Chinese web. The technical object for this topic would be one or several Chinese search engines (like baidu.com for instance). I could try to find information about different topics (not just those likely of being censored) with the search engines in question and analyse the “quality” of the results by trying to find out what can actually be found on the Chinese web. The thesis is based on the presumption that “what you find determins what you know”. A rather technical topic that could be interesting in this context is the way how information retrieval methods have to be adapted to the Chinese context. Although potentially interesting, the topic seems somehow too broad and not suffenciently specified. Additionally, such a research would require excellent knowledge of the Chinese language which is currently not the case, so I have already completely abandoned this topic.
• Web 2.0 in Asia (probably China): I just came up with this topic a couple of weeks ago when I discovered the China Web 2.0 Review. Web 2.0 has become a hype in the past years, its definitions differing widely, though most evolve around the term “read/write web”. The technical object for this analysis would be one or several “Web 2.0″ websites, comparing them those found in the Western world. How do they differ in featuers and content? Which concepts have proved successful or not? Who are the people participating and who are the ones who have implemented it? The topic allows me to cover the whole range from technical issues (are they using state-of-the-art technology? Etc.) to social and usability issues.

So, still looking for the perfect topic…

My search for a master topic has already begun over a year ago. But then a job came in my way and I decided to first get some work experience (it was such a great opportunity, I simply couldn’t say no). Now I am trying to get back on track, recapitulating what I have previously read.

I started out reading Bruno Latour’s Science in Action, trying to first learn something about social science methods and how to think about technical objects and scientific papers. In his book, Latour observes scientists in their laboratories and shows how inventions are actually made. He also analyses the process of writing scientific papers and shows why these are so hard to read, but why they are so important to scientists. Bruno Latour uses the concept of black boxes for scientific theories and shows how a theory cited and recited by other scientists finally become a fact.

I also read Howard S. Becker’s work about the Art Worlds in which he shows that art is not the result of a single person’s work but that art is the achievement of a number of people. Becker thus analyses a number of different kinds of artwork and shows how they depend on many other things than just the artist. Becker’s work is interesting for my thesis because he places a work of art in a specific context that has supported or even enabled its production. Therefore one could say that art depends on the “cultural” context. And it is this context that I want to investigate, or rather the transfer from one context to another and its influence on the final product.

I will be writing my thesis for the master of advanced studies in Asian studies soon. And I have no clue what my thesis should be about. It is going to be about Asia, that much is clear. But everything else is still kind of open.

Basile Zimmermann, my advisor, has written a very interesting PhD Thesis last year about electronic music in China. It covers all kinds of sociological topics from a “technical” point of view. In his work, Basile places the devices used by Chinese musicians in the center of his interest and his thesis evolves around the people who are actually producing electronic music. That is, he follows a number of Chinese musicians through their daily lifes and he discusses the presence or absence of ‘Chinese culture’ in their music.

Basile is mainly interested in the fact that the Chinese electronic music is produced on Western technical objects. The Chinese therefore need to be capable of using these objects which also implies that they have a minimal knowledge of English in order to understand the instructions to use the objecs. I really enjoyed reading Basile’s thesis and I believe there is some great stuff in there to be explored. I especially like the approach of observing how Western inventions are used in China (or anywhere else outside the Western world) and the idea that the fact of using a Western instrument might have an impact on the “chineseness” of the final product.

Remark: Texts in bold have been added later as a reaction to an email exchange with Basile.