分类：AI & the Future of Technology

Course Summary for “A General History of Technology” (Student Comments and Summaries of Each Lecture)

AI & the Future of Technology2018.07.09
Course Summary for “A General History of Technology” (Student Comments and Summaries of Each Lecture)
The grades for the course have come out, and the first round of this course is now more or less a complete success. As for grading, I gave about half the students an A- or above, far exceeding the university’s recommended standard of 20%; I added an extra note and hope the university will approve it. At the same time, the number of students who failed because of plagiarism reached five, also beyond the recommended limit. But all of this was according to my own standards: giving high grades was not to curry favor with students, and failing students was not to make things difficult for them. My course also…
philosophy technology history of science scholarship
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2018年7月9日
On VR (I): The Meaning of “Immersion”

AI & the Future of Technology2018.05.03
On VR (I): The Meaning of “Immersion”
Our reading group hasn’t read any books for several weeks now. Apart from the pause, for the past two weeks it has turned into a gaming activity; if this goes on any longer, the reading group is going to become a gaming group…… Last week I finally got the VR set up. Only three little friends came to the reading group, so it just happened to turn into a VR experience session. Of course, when we play games it is not only for amusement and pastime, but also a necessary practice for the history of science and philosophy of technology; this is by no means perfunctory or a joke. I…
technology media history of technology McLuhan
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2018年5月3日
On VR (I): The Meaning of “Immersion”

AI & the Future of Technology2018.05.03
On VR (I): The Meaning of “Immersion”
Our reading group hasn’t read for several weeks now; apart from being put on hold, for the past two weeks it has turned into a gaming activity. If this goes on, the reading group is going to turn into a game group… Last week I finally set up the VR, and since only three little comrades came to the reading group, it just happened to turn into a VR体验活动. Of course, when we play games it’s not just for amusement or pastime; it is also a necessary practice for the history of science and the philosophy of technology. This is by no means a pretext or a joke. I can,…
technology media history of technology McLuhan
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2018年5月3日
At what “time” do we need to “check the time”?

AI & the Future of Technology2018.04.30
At what “time” do we need to “check the time”?
This short essay is made up of some fragments from the fifth lecture of my course “A General History of Technology.” The full handout has not yet been整理出来, but today there happens to be a filming session that will deal with the relevant topic, so I’m extracting these parts first and jotting down a few lines at will. What is a clock? It is a kind of, or rather a class of, technical artifact. As a technical object, it of course has a specific function; so what is a clock for? The answer seems very simple: a clock is for “looking at time.” But on closer thought, this act of…
technology Industrial Revolution General History of Technology time
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2018年4月30日
An Interview on Science and Technology in the Magazine China Youth

AI & the Future of Technology2018.01.24
An Interview on Science and Technology in the Magazine China Youth
This is a written interview that was published in the first issue of China Youth magazine in 2018. When it was published, it seems several questions were deleted, but the answers that were used were scarcely edited at all (especially the last answer), though a few sentences were added for me in a couple of places. Here I am posting the original version. 1、By the end of June 2017, among the world’s top ten internet companies by market capitalization, five were Chinese, and among the world’s 221 emerging “unicorn” companies, Chinese firms accounted for nearly 30 percent. In contemporary China, technological力量 represented by the “new four great inventions” (high-speed rail,…
China technology history of science philosophy of science
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2018年1月24日
On the Industrial Revolution (I): Watt’s Kettle: Myth and Reality

AI & the Future of Technology2017.08.22
On the Industrial Revolution (I): Watt’s Kettle: Myth and Reality
Gradually turning my attention to research in the history of technology, the Industrial Revolution is of course a matter of the first importance. But just like the Scientific Revolution, this kind of historically crucial period has received very little attention in Chinese scholarship. The concept of the “Industrial Revolution” is, to be sure, quite a hot topic—mainly in the promotion of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, present or future. Roughly speaking, the third refers to the information revolution, and the fourth to big data or artificial intelligence. But the real Industrial Revolution, or rather the two Industrial Revolutions, has been studied only very superficially. There are not many translations of…
technology history of science history of technology Industrial Revolution
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2017年8月22日
On the Industrial Revolution (I): Watt’s Kettle: Myth and Reality

AI & the Future of Technology2017.08.22
On the Industrial Revolution (I): Watt’s Kettle: Myth and Reality
Gradually turning my attention to research in the history of technology, the Industrial Revolution is of course a matter of first importance. But just like the Scientific Revolution, this kind of historically crucial period has received very little attention in Chinese scholarship. The concept of the “Industrial Revolution” is, to be sure, quite a hot topic—mainly in discussions of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, whether present or future. Broadly speaking, the third refers to the information revolution, and the fourth to big data or artificial intelligence. But the real Industrial Revolution, or rather the two Industrial Revolutions, has been studied only very superficially. There are not many translations of Western…
technology history of science history of technology Industrial Revolution
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2017年8月22日
The Origins of Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2016.12.16
The Origins of Technology
This article began as an attempt to sketch out a thread for the soon-to-be-written *A General History of Technology*, while trying to apply the strategy of “intentional history.” After discussing it in a seminar, I found that there were still many gaps in the logic after the four causes. I had originally wanted to fill them in before posting, but now I feel it would be very hard to add anything, and I’m afraid the whole thing would need to be reorganized from scratch. So I’ll just post the unfinished essay for now. 0. Intentionality The origin of technology is a historical and archaeological question, but first of all…
technology phenomenology Kant intentionality
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2016年12月16日
Technology and Exploiting Loopholes—On Alibaba’s “Mooncake Snatching Incident”

AI & the Future of Technology2016.09.17
Technology and Exploiting Loopholes—On Alibaba’s “Mooncake Snatching Incident”
Alibaba’s decision to fire five employees over the “snatching mooncakes” incident has sparked a great deal of discussion, so I’ll offer a few remarks of my own. First, I think Alibaba’s handling of this affair is utterly baffling. What the programmers did was write a script to replace manual clicking; they accidentally clicked too many times, and then, before any order was actually completed—meaning no actual loss had been caused—they proactively reported the matter, only to be swiftly fired within a few hours. Of course, many people also stood on Alibaba’s side and thought the firing was well deserved. But they were often mistaken about the basic facts. The most…
technology commentary innovation trust
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2016年9月17日
The knives are really starting to fly and cut people: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Technological Intentionality

AI & Scholarship2016.08.07
The knives are really starting to fly and cut people: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Technological Intentionality
This is a supplement to the previous post. I had originally wanted to make “technical intentionality” the core concept of this essay, but in the end I retreated before the difficulty and gave it up; still, because it had been brewing for so long, I feel I ought to say a few things about it. Seven years ago in Nanning, I attended my first phenomenology and philosophy of technology conference. There was one session that left a deep impression on me, and I wrote about it in my notes from that year as well: Professor Wu spoke about “the intentional structure in technology,” but Professor Jin disagreed with using the…
technology media phenomenology human nature
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2016年8月7日