This ethnography examines the cultural mechanics through which a place called "Malaysia" emerges in an immediate and tangible world at large given over to nation-states and their people. It explores the complex and shifting formations of nations, identities, and subjectivities in the interplay between mythic history and everyday life in the year 2000, starting with Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor, a high-technology research and development zone, and ending with intimations of a people communicating within the texture of daily life. It argues that the history of the nation is best understood as an active, open, and collaborative process of writing in the broadest sense.

The following pages are the product of a wandering life—forays into landscapes, economics, driving, computer viruses, urban planning, the census, running amok, arms heists, and political ground, interspersed with reflexive moments that remind the reader of the editorial moves at work in the production of knowledge.