Campus International Events

Descrption: If selling predictions and modifications of our consumer behavior is the burgeoning future of capitalism, who’s buying? In this talk, Adrian Wong examines Chile’s implementation of a digital development policy for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises, a crucial yet under-analyzed stratum of global political economy. Presenting research findings from two-years of ethnographic and multimethod research, he will discuss the tensions, alliances, and maneuvers that shape this policy implementation, and the labor involved in making so-called inevitable digital futures a lived reality.

Bio: Adrian Wong is a PhD candidate in the Institute of Communications Research in the College of Media at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.  His work focuses on policy implementation and processes of digital transformation in the Global South, especially Chile.  He has been the recipient of the Tinker Field Research Grant (summer of  2022), Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship for field research in Chile (2023-2024), and FLAS Fellowships for the study of Chinese-Mandarin. He most frequently works with and is intellectually indebted to (in no set order) Cameron McCarthy, Krystal Smalls, Jacob Bowers, Anita Say Chan and the Community Data Clinic, Nikki Usher and the Platforms, Politics, and Local News in Illinois research team, and the Center for Information, Technology, & Public Life. Prior to UIUC, in Los Angeles he performed quartets with Midori Goto as a Presidential Scholar at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and recorded three albums with his brother, Julian Wong, as part of the music project empty cloud.