Hello -- My name is Lyn Jeffery. I'm a cultural anthropologist working for a small nonprofit technology forecasting group in Palo Alto, California, called the Institute for the Future (www.iftf.org). I've spent most of the last 20 years living in, working on, and thinking about mainland China. My dissertation research was on the emergence of Chinese capitalism, and I've also published in the area of urban anthropology of China. I speak and read Chinese. This year at IFTF I am leading a project on Virtual China -- trying to broadly map out what's happening in virtual Chinese environments, how Internet practices are changing daily life in China, and how it matters. The research will be ethnographic in nature, across virtual and physical spaces, and in China and the Silicon Valley. It will be, as all our work at IFTF is, somewhere in between academia and business. I look forward to learning from the list, to immersing myself of the literature on Internet research methods and theory, and to perhaps meeting some of you along the way. If you're interested further, please see our blog at http://www.virtual-china.org/ Best, Lyn Jeffery ________________________ Lyn Jeffery, Ph.D. Research Director Institute for the Future www.iftf.org AIM: LynatIFTF Skype: LynJeffery phone: 650-233-9577 124 University Ave. 2/F, Palo Alto, CA 94301 main phone: 650-854-6322 fax: 650-854-7850 ________________________