Year: 2011

Is High Speed a Good Thing?

Culture & Public Commentary2011.07.29
Is High Speed a Good Thing?
I’ve taken the EMU back to Shanghai, the same D31 as before. But the schedule has changed: instead of leaving a little after 11 a.m., it now leaves a little after 8 a.m.; the speed has also been raised somewhat; the dwell times at each station have become much longer; and the stations served have all changed too, basically shifted to the new high-speed-rail stations. If someone hadn’t remembered to check yesterday, I still wouldn’t have noticed these changes, and I would have nearly missed the train. As for the EMU rear-end collision, I don’t want to say much. Of course, if one says that because of this incident one…
China technology commentary Introduction to Philosophy of Technology
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2011年7月29日
Recommended Introductory Readings in Philosophy of Technology

History of Science & Scholarship2011.07.26
Recommended Introductory Readings in Philosophy of Technology
The department’s magazine, *Qingqiu Yuan*, invited me to write a few recommendations of good books in philosophy of science and technology, mainly to provide some guidance for students who have not yet settled on a direction. I am very honored. In addition, I hope that all students interested in philosophy of science and technology will get in touch with me. On my blog (yilinhut.com) you can find my various contact details. Undergraduate philosophy majors are required to choose a supervisor and a direction in their freshman or sophomore year. At this stage, apart from introductory courses in Chinese philosophy, Western philosophy, and Marxist philosophy, students have relatively little knowledge of…
book reading science notes history of science
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2011年7月26日
The Internet Needs Scholarship; Scholarship Needs the Internet

Site Matters2011.07.22
The Internet Needs Scholarship; Scholarship Needs the Internet
The previous article mentioned that scholarship should actively confront the web; on the other hand, the web also needs scholarship. Through scholars’ active intervention in network media, on the one hand the possibilities for the development of scholarship will be expanded; on the other hand, distinctive elements will also be brought into the development of network technology. In an even earlier essay on the web, I cited Newell Castells’s historical review—“Internet culture” contains four layers: a technical elite culture that pursues knowledge and esteems excellence; a hacker culture that yearns for “freedom” and play; “virtual communists” who advocate sharing and practicality; and entrepreneurs in search of business opportunities. Of course,…
China technology scholarship value
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2011年7月22日
Why Create Such a Forum?

Site Matters2011.07.18
Why Create Such a Forum?
This newly launched “Forum for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology” is part of the “Beijing Graduate Academic Forum on the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology,” which will be held this coming November. This graduate forum was founded last year; Tsinghua took charge of it last year, and this year it is our turn. So the heavy responsibility of overall coordination has landed on my shoulders. As a shut-in, I have never been good at organizing affairs, nor am I good at socializing. Of course, under Professor Wu, people who are particularly good at organizing social activities have always been rather scarce, so I could only…
scholarship media internet website
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2011年7月18日
Call for Papers for the 2nd Beijing Graduate Academic Forum on the History of Science and Philosophy

Life & Notes2011.07.17
Call for Papers for the 2nd Beijing Graduate Academic Forum on the History of Science and Philosophy
Call for Papers for the 2nd Beijing Graduate Academic Forum on the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology In order to promote scholarship, foster exchanges among young scholars in the field of dialectics of nature at universities across the Beijing area, and create more opportunities for understanding and communication between senior and junior scholars, the Institute for Science, Technology, and Society Studies at the School of Humanities, Tsinghua University, together with the Center for Studies of Science and Society at Peking University and other institutions, jointly initiated and organized last year the Graduate Academic Forum of Beijing’s philosophy of science and technology circles. The inaugural forum was successfully held…
everyday life history of science scholarship philosophy of science
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2011年7月17日
Call for Papers, Meeting Summary, and BBS Homepage for the 2nd Beijing Graduate Academic Forum on the History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science

Life & Notes2011.07.14
Call for Papers, Meeting Summary, and BBS Homepage for the 2nd Beijing Graduate Academic Forum on the History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science
The first organizing meeting had already been held at the very end of June, but we never put out any promotional material, because we ran into a bit of trouble with the website construction. We have now decided to first set up a BBS platform using my own personal space, and then, once it matures later on, we can always migrate it somewhere else. The BBS is here: http://bbs.yilinhut.com The minutes of the first meeting are here: http://bbs.yilinhut.com/read.php?tid=2 Call for papers: http://bbs.yilinhut.com/read.php?tid=1 In addition to the annual conference, what we hope even more is to build a lasting and lively academic social platform for students of history of science, philosophy…
everyday life blog internet conference review
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2011年7月14日
Why Not Revive Confucianism?

Culture & Public Commentary2011.06.30
Why Not Revive Confucianism?
For some reason I suddenly thought of this—could Confucianism be revived? Of course, rather than “revived,” it might be better to say “created.” Master Xianglong has the idea of establishing a “Confucian Cultural Preservation Zone”; he says: Would Confucian culture today not last long without protection? Of course not. Although Daoism and Buddhism are also being squeezed out by modernizing culture today, they still have their “ark” and “paradise” for escaping the flood, namely their ecclesiastical communities and temples. In other words, they have their own “preservation zones.” Within that tiny bit of land around the temples, it is the abbot and the Daoist master who call the shots….
culture China tradition religion
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2011年6月30日
On Heidegger’s Thought on Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2011.06.29
On Heidegger’s Thought on Technology
The previous article was another piece written by hastily asking for reinforcements. On the one hand, that was indeed because I have not been diligent enough lately; on the other hand, I was also busy planning the proposal for my doctoral dissertation, eager to design the overall line of thought, and as a result I could not settle down to concentrate first on some specific issue. The earlier “experience report” was like this too, and so is this set of reading notes on Heidegger’s later thought. Although they are all written rather superficially and in a somewhat scattered way, they really do have to do with a certain strategy for…
technology media Heidegger environment
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2011年6月29日
Heidegger’s Thought on Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2011.06.27
Heidegger’s Thought on Technology
As everyone knows, “technology” is a core concept in Heidegger’s later thought. Heidegger’s meditation on technology exerted a major influence on both the critique of modernity and the unfolding of postmodern currents, and it pointed the way for the “philosophy of technology” that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century; Heidegger has even been retrospectively canonized as a model “philosopher of technology.” Yet this emblematic image of Heidegger is often painted as that of a reactionary resister, pessimistic or romantic: it is said that he denied “the exaltation of human subjectivity”[1], ignored the “promoting role”[2] of modern technology, and was a “romantic” afflicted with “nostalgia”[3]. These judgments are…
philosophy technology media Aristotle
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2011年6月27日
[Announcement] Starting to Try Weibo

Site Matters2011.06.15
[Announcement] Starting to Try Weibo
Some of you may already have noticed that recently I added a new column, “Bloggers,” under my links, listing my haunts on the major microblogging and SNS sites. Among them, Renren (Xiaonei) was of course there from the beginning, while Follow5 and Digu were opened in December 2010. The latter is mainly used to display my “Digu” status in the blog sidebar, while the former is mainly used to synchronize status updates to Digu, Renren, and Twitter and Facebook. Although Follow5 and Digu are both considered among the earliest microblogging services in China, they have been used more for posting status updates, and cannot really count as having been properly…
everyday life blog website social media
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2011年6月15日