Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Wellett Potter, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of New England

Would you create an interactive “digital twin” of yourself that can communicate with loved ones after your death?

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has made it possible to seemingly resurrect the dead. So-called griefbots or deathbots – an AI-generated voice, video avatar or text-based chatbot trained on the data of a deceased person – proliferate in the booming digital afterlife industry, also known as grief tech.

Deathbots are usually created by the bereaved, often as part of the grieving process. But there are also services that allow you to create a digital twin of yourself while you’re still alive. So why not create one for when you’re gone?

As with any application of new technology, the idea of such digital immortality raises many legal questions – and most of them don’t have a clear answer.

Your AI afterlife

To create an AI digital twin of yourself, you can sign up for a service that provides this feature, and answer a series of questions to provide data about who you are. You also record stories, memories and thoughts in your own voice. You might also upload your visual likeness in the form of images or video.

The AI software then creates a digital replica based on that training data. After you die and the company is notified of your death, your loved ones can interact with your digital twin.

But in doing this, you’re also delegating agency to a company to create a digital AI simulation of yourself after death.

From the get go, this is different to using AI to “resurrect” a dead person who can’t consent to this. Instead, a living person is essentially licensing data about themselves to an AI afterlife company before they’ve died. They’re engaging in a deliberate, contractual creation of AI-generated data for posthumous use.

However, there are many unanswered questions. What about copyright? What about your privacy?. What happens if the technology becomes outdated or the business closes? Does the data get sold on? Does the digital twin also “die”, and what effect does this have for a second time on the bereaved?

What does the law say?

Currently, Australian law doesn’t protect a person’s identity, voice, presence, values or personality as such. In contrast to the United States, Australians don’t have a general publicity or personality right. This means, for an Australian citizen, there’s currently no legal right for you to own or control your identity – the use of your voice, image or likeness.

In short, the law doesn’t recognise a proprietary right in most of the unique things that make you “you”.

Under copyright law, the concept of your presence or self is abstract, much like an idea is. Copyright doesn’t offer protection for “your presence” or “the self” as such. That’s because there has to be material form in specific categories of works for copyright to exist: these are tangible things, such as books or photos.

However, typed responses or the voice recordings submitted to the AI for training are material. This means the data used to train the AI to create your digital twin would likely be protectable. But fully autonomous AI generated output is unlikely to have any copyright attached to it. Under current Australian law, it would likely be considered authorless because it didn’t originate from the “independent intellectual effort” of a human, but from a machine.

Moral rights in copyright protect a creator’s reputation against false attribution and against derogatory treatment of their work. However, they wouldn’t apply to a digital twin. This is because moral rights attach to actual works created by a human author, not any AI-generated output.

So where does that leave your digital twin? Although it’s unlikely copyright applies to AI-generated output, in their terms and conditions companies may assert ownership of the AI-generated data, users may be granted rights in outputs, or the company may reserve extensive reuse rights. It’s something to look out for.

There are ethical risks, too

Using AI to make digital copies of people – living or dead – also raises ethical risks. For example, even though the training data for your digital twin might be locked upon your death, others will be accessing it in the future by interacting with it. What happens if the technology misrepresents the deceased person’s morals and ethics?

As AI is usually probabilistic and based on algorithms, there may be risk of creep or distortion, where the responses drift over time. The deathbot could lose its resemblance to the original person. It’s not clear what recourse the bereaved may have if this happens.

AI-enabled deathbots and digital twins can help people grieve, but the effects so far are largely anecdotal – more study is needed. At the same time, there’s potential for bereaved relatives to form a dependence on the AI version of their loved one, rather than processing their grief in a healthier way. If the outputs of AI-powered grief tech cause distress, how can this be managed, and who will be held responsible?

The current state of the law clearly shows more regulation is needed in this burgeoning grief tech industry. Even if you consent to the use of your data for an AI digital twin after you die, it’s difficult to anticipate new technologies changing how your data is used in the future.

For now, it’s important to always read the terms and conditions if you decide to create a digital afterlife for yourself. After all, you are bound by the contract you sign.

Wellett Potter is a member of the Copyright Society of Australia and the Asia-Pacific Copyright Association.

– ref. An ‘AI afterlife’ is now a real option – but what becomes of your legal status? – https://theconversation.com/an-ai-afterlife-is-now-a-real-option-but-what-becomes-of-your-legal-status-274021

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Meaghan O’Donnell, Professor and Head, Research, Phoenix Australia, Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health, The University of Melbourne

In their day-to-day work, first responders – including police, firefighters, paramedics and lifesavers – often witness terrible things happening to other people, and may be in danger themselves.

For some people, this can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which usually involves intrusive memories and flashbacks, negative thoughts and emotions, feeling constantly on guard, and avoiding things that remind them of the trauma.

But our research – which tested a mobile app focused on building resilience with firefighters – shows PTSD isn’t inevitable. We found depression, anxiety and PTSD symptoms were less likely when firefighters used a mental health program that was self-led, specifically addressed trauma and focused on teaching practical skills.

First responders’ mental health

First responders report high rates of psychiatric disorders and often have symptoms of depression (such as persistent feelings of sadness), anxiety (such as nervousness or restlessness) and post-traumatic stress (including distressing flashbacks).

Sometimes symptoms aren’t severe enough for a diagnosis.

But left untreated,these “sub-clinical” symptoms can escalate into PTSD, which can severely impact day-to-day life. So targeting symptoms early is important.

However, stigma – as well as concerns about confidentiality and career implications – can prevent first responders from seeking help.

What we already knew about building resilience

For the past decade, we have been testing a program designed to give people exposed to traumatic events the skills to manage their distress and foster their own recovery.

The “Skills for Life Adjustment and Resilience” (SOLAR) program is:

• skills-based – it teaches people specific strategies and tools to improve their mental health
• trauma-informed, meaning it has been designed for people who have been exposed to trauma, and avoids re-traumatisation
• and has a psychosocial focus, focusing on what people can do in their relationships, behaviour and thinking to improve their mental health.

Participants complete modules focused on:

• the connection between physical health and mental health
• staying socially connected
• managing strong emotions
• engaging and re-engaging in meaningful activities
• coming to terms with traumatic events
• managing worry and rumination.

The SOLAR program trains coaches to deliver these modules in their communities. Importantly, these coaches don’t necessarily have specific mental health training, such as Australian Red Cross volunteers, community nurses and case workers.

What our new research did

The evidence shows the SOLAR program is effective at improving wellbeing and reducing depression, post-traumatic stress and anxiety symptoms.

But working with firefighters in New South Wales, they told us they wanted a self-led program they could complete confidentially, independently of their employer, and in their own time – a mobile app. So we wanted to test if the program would still be effective delivered this way.

A total of 163 firefighters took part in our recent randomised control trial, either using the app we co-designed with them, or a mood monitoring app.

A mood monitoring app tracks daily emotions to help understand patterns in how someone is feeling. There is evidence to show it can be useful for some people in reducing symptoms.

But this kind of app doesn’t teach a person practical skills that can be applied to different situations. And it does not specifically address stressful or traumatic experiences. So we wanted to test if taking a skills approach made a significant difference.

What we found

Eight weeks after they started using one of the two apps, we followed up with the firefighters.

The study found those who used the SOLAR app had significantly lower symptoms of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress, compared to those in the mood monitoring group.

We followed up with participants again three months after their post-treatment assessment.

We found:

• depression was much lower in the group who learned practical skills about trauma, compared to those who used the mood monitoring app, and
• anxiety and post-traumatic stress symptoms had reduced significantly for both groups since starting their program (but there was no real difference between them).

What does this mean?

Both apps improved mental health.

But the results show using the SOLAR app, which focused on building skills and specifically addressing trauma, reduced mental symptoms more quickly. It was especially useful for tackling depression longer term.

Firefighters also told us they liked the app. This is important – an app is only effective when people use it.

Around half of the firefighters started using it completed all the modules. This is much higher than usual for mental health apps. Typically, only around 3% of those who start using a mental health app complete them.

The more modules a firefighter completed, the more their mental health improved.

The takeaway

It’s common for firefighters and other first responders to struggle with mental health symptoms. Our study demonstrates the importance of intervening early and teaching practical skills for resilience, so that those symptoms don’t develop into a disorder such as PTSD.

A program that is self-led, confidential and evidence-based can help protect the mental health of first responders while they do the work they love, protecting us.

Meaghan O’Donnell (Phoenix Australia) receives funding from government funding bodies such as National Health and Medical Research Council, and Department of Veterans’ Affairs, and philanthropic bodies such as Wellcome Trust Fund (UK), Latrobe Health Foundation, and Ramsay Health Foundation. Funding for this study in this Conversation article was from icare, NSW.

Tracey Varker (Phoenix Australia) receives funding from government funding bodies such as Department of Veterans’ Affairs, and philanthropic foundations such as Latrobe Health Services Foundation. Funding for the study described in this Conversation article was from icare NSW.

– ref. Firefighters face repeat trauma. We learned how to reduce their risk of PTSD – https://theconversation.com/firefighters-face-repeat-trauma-we-learned-how-to-reduce-their-risk-of-ptsd-269283

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Professor of History, Australian Catholic University

A new evolutionary study has found human penises are large compared with other primates: for two reasons. The first is reproduction. The second is that size works as a signal, attracting potential mates and intimidating rivals. In evolutionary terms, the penis is big because it is meant to be noticed.

That finding lands awkwardly in a world that has spent centuries hiding, shrinking, censoring or symbolically neutralising the penis whenever it becomes too visible.

A single object captures this tension between biological display and cultural embarrassment: the fig leaf.

The fig leaf’s story begins, as so many Western stories do, in Genesis. Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge, realise they are naked, and stitch fig leaves together to cover themselves. Nakedness becomes linked with moral awareness, guilt and self-consciousness.

Nudity no longer neutral

Early Christian art absorbed this lesson. In late antique mosaics and medieval manuscripts, Adam and Eve clutch leaves over their groins with a mixture of alarm and regret. Nudity is no longer neutral. It signals sin, punishment, or humiliation. The only bodies shown naked are the damned.

Then comes a sharp reversal. Ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, rediscovered in Renaissance Italy, presents the naked male body as strong, balanced, and admirable. Heroes, gods, and athletes are unclothed because they have nothing to hide. Their genitals are visible, proportioned, and unremarkable. This is not erotic display so much as confidence made stone.

Michelangelo’s David sits squarely in this tradition. Carved between 1501 and 1504, he is naked, alert and physically present. His body is not idealised into abstraction. It is specific, human, and unmistakably male. Florentines reportedly threw stones when the statue was first installed. Before long, authorities added a garland of metal fig leaves to protect public sensibilities, which remained in place until around the 16th century.

This was not an isolated decision. Over the next century, the Reformation fractured Christian Europe, giving birth to Protestantism, and the Catholic Church doubled down on moral discipline. Naked bodies in art became political liabilities. The Council of Trent’s decrees on religious imagery reflected concerns that the prominent display of naked bodies in sacred art risked drawing attention to human physicality rather than directing devotion towards God. This led to what later historians have called the “Fig Leaf Campaign”.

Across Rome and beyond, sculpted genitals were chipped away, painted over, draped, or concealed with leaves. Michelangelo’s Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel was altered after his death by Daniele da Volterra, who was hired to cover up visible genitalia with drapery. He earned the nickname “the breeches maker” for his efforts.

Classical statues in the Vatican acquired permanent marble underwear. A literal drawer of removed stone penises is rumoured to have existed. Whether or not that is true, the impulse behind it certainly was.

Strikingly, the fig leaf does not erase the penis. It points to it. The cover announces the presence of something that must not be seen. As several writers note, concealment tends to sharpen attention rather than dull it. The fig leaf becomes a visual alarm bell.

Resisting biology

This brings us back to the present. The new evolutionary research argues human penis size evolved partly because it is visible.

For most of our species’ history, before clothes, the penis was on display during daily life. It became a cue others learned to read quickly and unconsciously. Larger size was associated with attractiveness and with competitive threat.

From that perspective, centuries of fig leaves look less like moral refinement and more like cultural resistance to biology. The body insists on signalling. Society keeps trying to mute the signal.

Victorian Britain provides a late and almost comic example. When Queen Victoria was presented with a plaster cast of David, in around 1857, a detachable fig leaf was hastily produced and kept on standby for royal visits.

The leaf survives today, displayed separately in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The statue stands naked again, but the object designed to hide him has become a museum piece in its own right.

Even now, museums still debate whether to remove historic coverings. Social media platforms struggle to define what kinds of nudity are acceptable. Statues are boxed up for diplomatic visits. The anxiety persists, even if the fig leaf itself has become unfashionable.

Evolutionary biology suggests the human penis became prominent because it mattered socially – but our cultural history shows centuries of effort devoted to pretending it does not. The fig leaf sits at the centre of this contradiction: a small, awkward object carrying an enormous cultural load.

Darius von Guttner Sporzynski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The penis evolved to be noticed – but the artful fig leaf has hidden it for centuries – https://theconversation.com/the-penis-evolved-to-be-noticed-but-the-artful-fig-leaf-has-hidden-it-for-centuries-274286

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University

Since the murder of 11 Israeli hostages at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, security has been fundamental for games stakeholders.

The 2024 Paris games set new benchmarks for security at a mega-event, and now the presence of American security officials in Milan Cortina threatens to darken this year’s Winter Olympics before they even start.

Security at the games

The scale of security at the games has magnified considerably since the 1970s.

For the 2024 Olympics, the French government mobilised an unprecedented 45,000 police officers from around the nation.

For the opening ceremony, these forces cordoned off six kilometres of the Seine River.

Advocates point to Paris as an example of security done correctly.

Milipol Paris – one of the world’s largest annual conferences on policing and security – pointed to lower crime across the country during the games and a complete absence of any of the feared large security events. It stated:

The operation demonstrated the effectiveness of advanced planning, inter-agency cooperation and strong logistical coordination. Authorities and observers are now reflecting on which elements of the Paris 2024 model might be applied to future large-scale events.

However, critics complained the security measures infringed on civil liberties.

Controversy as ICE heads to Italy

Ahead of the Milan Cortina games, which run from February 4-23, Italian officials promised they were “ready to meet the challenge of security”.

A newly established cybersecurity headquarters will include officials from around the globe, who will sift through intelligence reports and react to issues in real time.

As well as this, security will feature:

• 6,000 officers to protect the two major locations – Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo
• a no-fly zone around key sites
• a constant restricted access cordon around some sites (as seen in Paris).

Some of the security officers working in the cybersecurity headquarters will come from the United States.

Traditionally the US diplomatic security service provides protection for US athletes and officials attending mega-events overseas. It has been involved in the games since 1976.

Late last month, however, news broke that some of the officers will be from “a unit of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)”.

US and Italian officials were quick to differentiate between Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which handles cross-border crime, and Enforcement and Removal Operations, the department responsible for the brutal crackdown on immigrant communities across the US.

The HSI has helped protect athletes at previous events and will be stationed at the US Consulate in Milan to provide support to the broader US security team at the games.

But the organisation’s reputation precedes them, and Italians are wary.

In Milan, demonstrators expressed outrage. Left-wing Mayor Giuseppe Sala called ICE a “a militia that kills” while protests broke out in the host cities.

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US-European relations are stretched

The presence of ICE has also illuminated fractures within Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s governing coalition.

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani defended the inclusion of the US officers, saying “it’s not like the SS are coming”, referring to the Nazis paramilitary force in Germany.

However, local officials, including those from Meloni’s centre-right coalition, expressed concerns.

The tension inside Meloni’s government reflects broader concerns on the continent about US-European relations.

US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will attend the opening ceremony in Milan, despite some Europeans viewing Vance as the mouthpiece for US President Donald Trump’s imperial agenda.

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Trump’s desire to take over Greenland has undermined American and European support for trans-Atlantic amity and the NATO alliance.

Just ahead of the Olympics, Danish veterans marched outside the US Embassy after Trump disparaged NATO’s contribution to US-led operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. These protests added to Danes’ fears about Trump’s Greenland ambition.

Tensions in Denmark remain high as the Americans and the Danes gear up to play ice hockey in the opening round robin of the men’s competition.

Elsewhere, politicians in the US on both sides have raised concerns that Trump’s bombastic rhetoric will make it harder for American athletes to compete and win.

A double standard?

Critics argue there is an American exception when it comes to global politics interfering in international sport.

Under Trump, the US has attacked Iran and Venezuela, called on Canada to become its 51st state, threatened to occupy Greenland and engaged in cross-border operations in Mexico.

Despite this, US competitors can still wear their nation’s colours at the Olympics.

Compare this to Belarussian and Russian athletes, who are only eligible to compete as Individual Neutral Athletes after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and only under the condition they have not been publicly supportive of the invasion. An International Olympic Committee (IOC) body assesses each competitor’s eligibility.

Israeli athletes have also been under the spotlight amid geopolitical tensions in the region.

Following the Israeli invasion of Gaza in October 2023, a panel of independent experts at the United Nations urged soccer’s governing body FIFA to ban Israeli athletes, stating:

sporting bodies must not turn a blind eye to grave human rights violations.

But FIFA, and the IOC, have recently defended Israeli athletes’ right to participate in international sport in the face of boycotts and protests.

Competitors from Israel can represent their country at the Winter Olympics.

The political developments which have caused ructions worldwide ironically come after the IOC’s 2021 decision to update the Olympic motto to supposedly recognise the “unifying power of sport and the importance of solidarity”.

The change was a simple one, adding the word “together” after the original three-word motto: “faster, higher, stronger”.

It remains to be seen whether the Milan Cortina games live up to every aspect of the “faster, higher, stronger – together” motto, not just the first three words.

Keith Rathbone does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Winter Olympic security tightens as US-European tensions grow – https://theconversation.com/winter-olympic-security-tightens-as-us-european-tensions-grow-274530

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By T.J. Thomson, Associate Professor of Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University

Instagram is one of Australia’s most popular social media platforms. Almost two in three Aussies have an account.

Ushering in 2026 and what he calls “synthetic everything” on our feeds, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri has signalled the platform will likely adjust its algorithms to surface more original content instead of AI slop.

Finding ways to tackle widespread AI content is the latest in a long series of shifts Instagram has undergone over the past decade. Some are obvious and others are more subtle. But all affect user experience and behaviour, and, more broadly, how we see and understand the online social world.

To identify some of these patterns, I examined ten years’ worth of Instagram posts from a single account (@australianassociatedpress) for an upcoming study.

This involved looking at nearly 2,000 posts and more than 5,000 media assets. I selected the AAP account as an example of a noteworthy Australian account with public service value.

I found six key shifts over this timeframe. Although user practices vary, this analysis provides a glimpse into some larger ways the AAP account – and social media more broadly – has been changing in the past decade.

Reflecting on some of these changes also provides hints at how social media might change in the future, and what that means for society.

1. Media orientations have shifted

When it launched in 2010, Instagram quickly became known as the platform that re-popularised the square image format. Square photography has been around for more than 100 years but its popularity waned in the 1980s when newer cameras made the non-square rectangular format dominant.

Instagram forced users to post square images for the platform’s first five years. However, the balance between square and horizontal images has given way to vertical media over time.

On the AAP account that shift happened over the last two years, with 84.4% of all its posts now in vertical orientation.

2. Media types have changed

As with orientations, the media types being posted have also changed. This is due, in part, to platform affordances: what the platform allows or enables a user to do.

As an example, Instagram didn’t allow users to post videos until 2013, three years after the platform started. It added the option to post “stories” (short-lived image/video posts of up to 15 seconds) and live broadcasts in 2016. Reels (longer-lasting videos of up to 90 seconds) came later in 2020.

Some accounts are more video-heavy than others, to try to compete with other video-heavy platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. But we can see a larger trend in the shift from single-image posts to multi-asset posts. Instagram calls these “carousels”, a feature introduced in 2017.

The AAP went from publishing just single-image posts in the first years of the account to gradually using more carousels. In the most recent year, they accounted for 85.9% of all posts.

3. Media are becoming more multimodal

A typical Instagram account grid from the mid-2000s had a mix of carefully curated photographs that were clean, colourful and simple in composition.

Fast-forward a decade, and posts have become much more multimodal. Text is being overlaid on images and videos and the compositions are mixing media types more frequently.

There are subtitles on videos, labels on photos, quote cards, and “headline” posts that try to tell a mini story on the post itself without the user having to read the accompanying post description.

On the AAP account, the proportion of text on posts never rose above 10% between 2015 and 2024. Then, in 2025, it skyrocketed to being on 84.4% of its posts.

4. User practices change

Over time, user practices have also changed in response to cultural trends and changes of the platform design itself.

An example of this is social media accounts starting to insert hashtags in a post comment rather than directly in the post description. This is supposed to help the post’s algorithmic ranking.

Another key change over this timeframe was Instagram’s decision in 2019 to hide “likes” on posts. The thinking behind this decision was to try to reduce the pressure on account owners to make content that was driven by the number of “like” interactions a post received. It was also hypothesised to help with users’ mental health.

In 2021, Instagram left it up to users to decide whether to show or hide “likes” on their account’s posts.

5. The platform became more commercialised

Instagram introduced a Shop tab in 2020 – users could now buy things without leaving the app.

The number of ads, sponsored posts, and suggested accounts has increased over time. Looking through your own feed, you might find that one-third to one-half of the content you now encounter was paid for.

6. The user experience shifts with algorithms and AI

Instagram introduced its “ranked feed” back in 2016. This meant that rather than seeing content in reverse chronological order, users would see content that an algorithm thought users would be interested in. These algorithms consider aspects such as account owner behaviour (view time, “likes”, comments) and what other users find engaging.

An option to opt back in to a reverse chronological feed was then introduced in 2022.

To compete with apps such as Snapchat, Instagram introduced augmented reality effects on the platform in 2017.

It also introduced AI-powered search in 2023, and has experimented with AI-powered profiles and other features. One of these is turning the content of a direct message into an AI image.

Looking ahead

Overall, we see more convergence and homogenisation.

Social media platforms are looking more similar as they seek to replicate the features of competitors. Media formats are looking more similar as the design of smartphones and software favour vertical media. Compositions are looking more multimodal as type, audio, still imagery, and video are increasingly mixed.

And, with the corresponding rise of AI-generated content, users’ hunger for authenticity might grow even more.

T.J. Thomson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is an affiliate with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society.

– ref. I studied 10 years of Instagram posts. Here’s how social media has changed – https://theconversation.com/i-studied-10-years-of-instagram-posts-heres-how-social-media-has-changed-272898

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Technology Sydney

Delivering parcels is just one of the 19 different jobs Hu Anyan cycles through over 20 years, as tracked in his Chinese bestseller I Deliver Parcels in Beijing. He also tries his luck working as a convenience-store clerk, a cleaner and in a bike shop, a warehouse, a vegetable market and even an anime design company – always at the very bottom of the ladder.

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Review: I Deliver Parcels in Beijing – Hu Anyan (Allen Lane)

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Some jobs last weeks, some days, some barely survive the training shift. Bosses disappear, wages evaporate, contracts turn out to be imaginary and rules are invented on the spot. With a blend of hope and resignation, Hu repeatedly comes to realise the true qualifications for survival in the city are a strong back, a flexible sense of dignity and a high tolerance for absurdity.

Hu, now aged 47, grew up in Guangzhou, a major city in south China. He has worked in cities big and small, including a brief stint across the border in Vietnam.

They are “places with apparent unlimited potential for development, yet I seemed to have gotten nowhere,” he writes. They promise opportunity, then charge rent on his naivety and optimism. He seems to move through the world with a certain innocence about how it truly works, yet possesses an uncommon capacity for deep, searching reflection.

He writes with dry humour and an eye for the absurd – security guards guarding nothing, managers creating chaos and delivery algorithms ruling lives with godlike indifference. But he also writes like a field researcher issued a hard hat instead of a research grant. His prose has a forensic, documentary precision – wages counted to the cents, shifts timed, fines itemised, and injustices recorded without melodrama.

When he completed his trial as a parcel deliverer, he writes:

an assistant foreman […] told me that although the probationary period wasn’t paid, he would make it up by giving me three extra days of vacation. […] But it wasn’t even a month before the same guy had a dispute with the other foreman and quit. No one mentioned those paid days off ever again.

China’s ‘development didn’t suit me’

This reporting of everyday injustice at work is peppered with occasional philosophical reflections on human nature and the meaning of work. He calmly observes of mean and unhelpful co-workers: “Selflessness may be a noble virtue, but I suppose it isn’t fundamental to being human.”

The real charm is his tone. Even when dealing with exploitation, Hu delivers it with light-footed sarcasm, letting absurdity do the heavy lifting. Writing about heavy workload in the delivery company he works for, he simply comments “capitalists aren’t known for sympathising with workers”.

At times, he reveals his battles with social anxiety, depression and occasional bouts of illness. In one memorable scene, he describes going back and forth between hospitals, community clinics and small medical offices, carefully comparing prices before settling on where to get an IV drip to bring his fever down.

That kind of careful penny-pinching, being unable to justify spending even on one’s own health, feels painfully familiar to anyone trying to survive on very little.

Hu’s story is a personal one about structural inequality and everyday injustice. But he doesn’t sound resentful that China’s economic growth hasn’t benefited him. He just states, matter-of-factly, that China’s “development didn’t suit me”.

His personal account also functions as a practical lesson in the political economy of labour. In that sense, the lesson is not uniquely Chinese. Rather than relying on theories of profit and value, he uses his experience as a courier to show how the gig economy of late capitalism operates globally.

He meticulously calculates how the supposed average monthly pay of 7,000 yuan a month (around A$1,435) he could expect to earn translates in reality. It means working 26 days a month, 11 hours a day – to earn 30 yuan (A$6.16) an hour and 0.5 yuan (ten cents) a minute.

I had to complete a delivery every four minutes in order not to run at a loss. If that becomes unworkable, I would have to consider a change of job.

‘Oddly soothing’

For urban educated readers, both in China and elsewhere, who are crushed by emails, mortgages, childcare and performance anxiety, it can be oddly soothing to read about a life lived under more precarious conditions.

Hu’s calm endurance could work like a psychological release valve – things are hard, yes, but not this hard. The result lets middle-class readers feel ethically awake without feeling accused. This makes the book as reassuring as it is unsettling.

I Deliver Parcels in Beijing is also popular with Hu’s social peers – the urban underclasses and rural migrant workers: it shows that their struggles and small victories are worthy of being recorded and remembered.

A key, albeit implicit, theme circulating the book is unequal access to social mobility. Each of the 19 jobs Hu cycled through may look different on the surface, but rather than climbing a social ladder, he merely shuffles horizontally, stagnating on the same rung: “twelve years have passed, and with the same workload as before, my pay was somehow still lower”.

There is much musing about the meaning of freedom in the book. But freedom, for Hu, is not about the right to vote, but to choose who one wants to be, rather than what society expects one to become.

There’s no cataloguing of human rights abuses – the familiar trope of English-language coverage of China. Nor is the book a sociological exercise by an intellectual, for whom Hu’s world might be an object of study. And it certainly isn’t some diasporic Chinese writer’s rendition of China, often calibrated to the expectations of festival-going, liberal middle-class readers abroad.

Instead, the book speaks from inside the experience it describes, with no apparent desire to translate itself – at least initially – into the moral or political idioms readers might expect. That’s precisely where its quiet power lies.

It doesn’t tell you what to think about China – it shows you a life you would otherwise almost never get to see. The translation, superbly done, helps enhance this objective.

The luxury of being noticed

Like worker-poet Zheng Xiaoqiong and worker-photographer Zhan Youbing, Hu the worker-writer becomes a self-appointed “surrogate ethnographer”, patiently recording rules, rhythms, hierarchies, and survival strategies from the inside. He produces not theory, but something more valuable: reality, rendered with authenticity and credibility.

“I often sat in Jingtong Roosevelt Plaza after finishing my deliveries and watched the passers-by and the salespeople in stores, and the different delivery drivers back and forth,” he writes. “Mostly I supposed they were numb, thinking nothing at all, mechanically going about their days like I once did.”

Social researchers outside China dream of accessing the trove of evidence-based, granular, situated knowledge this book contains – but they rarely do.

Hu is one of the millions of internal labour migrants in China who struggle to survive at the bottom of the social ladder – and a rare case of a worker who became a recognised writer. He has published two books since this one.

His rise was not the result of structural change, but exceptional literary talent and sharp intellectual acuity. Meanwhile, the great majority of China’s urban underclasses and rural migrant workers remain locked in the kind of precarious, exhausting existence Hu describes – without the chance to turn their experiences into art, and without the luxury of being noticed at all.

Wanning Sun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. China’s new literary star had 19 jobs before ‘writer’ – including bike courier and bakery apprentice – https://theconversation.com/chinas-new-literary-star-had-19-jobs-before-writer-including-bike-courier-and-bakery-apprentice-272447