Podcast: Clay Shirky on tech and the internet in China

Highly recommended. Unfortunately I can't embed the podcast here so you'll have to click through.

In this episode of Sinica, Clay Shirky, the author of Here Comes Everybody who has written about the internet and its effects on society since the 1990s, joins Kaiser and Jeremy to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of China’s tech industry and the extraordinary advances the nation has made in the online world.

The hour-long conversation delves into the details and big-picture phenomena driving the globe’s largest internet market, and includes an analysis of Xiaomi’s innovation, the struggles that successful Chinese companies face when taking their brands abroad and the nation’s robust ecommerce offerings.

Clay has written numerous books, including Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream in addition to the aforementioned Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. He is also a Shanghai-based associate professor with New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the school’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Related: NYTimes video explaining WeChat. (The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed.)