Author: Xiaowei Wang
Xiaowei Wang takes you on a journey to rural China where technology is being put to use in some rather creative ways to transform China's rural countryside. First up, there's the chicken farmer who uses a blockchain ledger to guarantee the authenticity that his chickens have been raised in a humane way. The chickens are outfitted with ankle bracelets that function as pedometers and serve as location tracking devices as well. Buyers are able to see the vital statistics of their purchase right down to the details of the number of steps taken by the chicken in its lifetime. All of this is information is protected by a blockchain tag to ensure that there's no tampering with the supply chain from the farm to the table.
From there you are transported to the use of Machine Learning algorithms to improve the Pig Farming. It turn's out that Pork is a serious national treasure and “China is the only country in the world to have a pork reserve, consisting of millions of live pigs and uncountable pounds of frozen pork”. Also, I was surprised to learn that “an industrial pig farm is more like an iPhone factory than a bucolic countryside haven.” Today it's humans who watch over the pigs looking for early signs of infection or other anomalies that can wreak havoc through the population. But these humans are too few relative to the millions of pigs in each of these farms. Alibaba is experimenting with Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence techniques to provide an early warning system that can be used to rapidly react and reduce the spread of contagion through the herd.
I was blown away by the very thoughtful way in which Xaiowei approaches each of these vignettes. They are careful to reserve judgement and list out the unanswered questions in each of these intersections of modern technology and rural life. Xaiowei also sprinkles in comparisons to the United States and the times we live in. “If previous decades in the United States were defined by feelings of progress, ours is defined by a feeling of conspiracy, the last refuge of personal agency.”
Xaiowei writes lucid prose and makes you feel like you are their companion on this journey through China's countryside. Grab the book and let them take you for a ride.
