标签：art

A Guide to Understanding Media: Means Are the Measure

AI & the Future of Technology2022.01.17
A Guide to Understanding Media: Means Are the Measure
This was a lecture program I recorded at Super Star half a year ago; a cut version can be found here https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1W34y1z7QD?from=search&seid=5300241720853418317&spm_id_from=333.337.0.0. The full version is probably on Super Star. The transcript of this lecture was handed to Li Shi for revision and enrichment, and was rewritten into a book review published in issue 10 of Chinese Media Technology in 2021, titled “Embracing McLuhan in Fragments—A New Perspective on Reading Understanding Media.” Here I’m posting the original spoken version of the script. McLuhan is an oddity in the history of scholarship: it is hard to categorize what sort of “-ist” he actually was. Naturally, when that happens, we generally just…
philosophy technology book reading media
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2022年1月17日
Why Are NFTs Valuable? Rethinking NFTs and Tulips

Culture & Public Commentary2022.01.07
Why Are NFTs Valuable? Rethinking NFTs and Tulips
In the article From BTC to NFT: Wealth to Power I already confessed that my understanding of NFTs has clearly changed. Although in the article NFT and Tulip Mania I agreed with the importance of NFT technology, I still felt that “a pixel image worth tens of millions is, however you look at it, not a price that could possibly last long.” But I have now withdrawn that judgment; now I think that at least some historically significant NFTs are entirely capable of maintaining high prices over the long term. Of course, this judgment of mine does not constitute investment advice. On the one hand, most of the accompanying NFTs…
culture history Web3 Bitcoin
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2022年1月7日
Galileo as an Artist

History of Science & Scholarship2017.09.01
Galileo as an Artist
本文发表于《Science and Technology Daily》，with only minor changes at the time of publication. Galileo as an Artist Galileo was born in 1564, the very year Michelangelo died. From Michelangelo to Galileo, one sees modern European history moving from the age of the Renaissance into the new era of the Scientific Revolution. The bond between Galileo and Michelangelo was not merely the coincidence of their years of birth and death; there was a deeper connection between them. Galileo was born into an impoverished noble family. Among his ancestors there had once been a highly respected physician, so Galileo’s father put great effort into having the young Galileo study medicine. Although Galileo…
science history of science media art
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2017年9月1日
Exploring the Dark Interstices — A Review of Speculation and Media

AI & the Future of Technology2014.07.25
Exploring the Dark Interstices — A Review of Speculation and Media
(This book review was written as an invited assignment; in fact, I did not manage to read this book through, and I basically never got through the second half, “Speculative Economics.” That may have something to do with its postmodern writing style and with the Chinese translation, of course I also never found my footing, so the review below is actually not quite to the point; if I tricked you into reading it, don’t blame me for leading you astray… Of course, if you do manage to read it with a feel for it, you’re welcome to enlighten me~) Speculation and Media Amazon price: ￥20.10 http://news.sciencenet.cn/sbhtmlnews/2014/7/289950.shtm Born in…
philosophy culture book reading media
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2014年7月25日
Art: The Margin of Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2013.10.19
Art: The Margin of Technology
**Art: The Margin of Technology** **Explanation:** This was a philosophy of technology talk I was invited to give to the young artists at the West Five Arts Center. The original title was “Toys and Art: The Margin of Technology,” but in the actual talk I still mainly talked about technology and art; toys were only mentioned in passing. So now I’ve changed the title a bit. What I call “margin” could also be called “defect.” To speak of art as technology’s defect sounds somewhat offensive, so “margin” sounds more positive. A defect always means something that can be supplemented; hitting a wall always means there is room to turn back….
philosophy technology Aristotle Heidegger
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2013年10月19日
From Technical Code to Virtue Ethics: Table or Div? — Starting from the Ministry of Railways Ticketing Website

AI & the Future of Technology2012.01.05
From Technical Code to Virtue Ethics: Table or Div? — Starting from the Ministry of Railways Ticketing Website
The Ministry of Railways has finally rolled out an online ticketing system, and that alone is worth encouraging. Of course, it is debatable whether moving the advance-sale period for online tickets up by two days is a good idea; for migrant workers and other vulnerable groups who lack access to the internet, this is not very fair. I have already booked train tickets on this website three times (the first two times were round trips to the Winter Solstice conference), and each time I ran into one problem or another. Even when the Winter Solstice conference was still very much in the off-season for train tickets, I still encountered network…
technology China media commentary
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2012年1月5日
Was Heidegger a Technological Pessimist?

History of Science & Scholarship2011.08.19
Was Heidegger a Technological Pessimist?
This article is a rewriting based on the earlier Heidegger’s Thinking on Technology. In fact, very little was changed, but after changing the title it suddenly became much more to the point and more complete. What I presented at this year’s Yangma Island conference was this very article, so before posting the conference record, let me post this article first. Is Heidegger a Technological Pessimist? Hu Yilin, Department of Philosophy, Peking University Abstract: Heidegger’s philosophy of technology is often described as a typical kind of pessimism. Starting from the question of whether Heidegger is in fact a technological pessimist, this article selectively expounds Heidegger’s analysis of modern…
philosophy technology Heidegger Introduction to Philosophy of Technology
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2011年8月19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
Utensils and Ritual Vessels

AI & the Future of Technology2011.05.25
Utensils and Ritual Vessels
A few days ago I attended a lecture by Li Meng. To be honest, the lecture was rather like scratching an itch through one’s boot, or rather, he merely pointed out where the itch was, and then it was entirely up to us to do the scratching ourselves. The lecture’s inspiration is wholly concentrated in its title; for those of us doing phenomenology of technology, there’s no need to attend the lecture at all—just recite this title a few times over. “Utensils and Ritual Vessels—A Chinese Appraisal of Metaphysics” First of all, we know that Western philosophers of technology, with Heidegger as their leader, carried out a kind of “appraisal”…
technology China media Aristotle
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2011年5月25日
Art, Media, and the Space of Meaning in the Interstices

AI & the Future of Technology2011.04.23
Art, Media, and the Space of Meaning in the Interstices
Today at the reading group we touched on the question of art and technology. I myself have also made some related remarks before, for example in the comments on Professor Wu Tong’s paper in A Travelogue of the Hailar Conference: In the Western tradition of oil painting, although one carefully works with a brush during the process of painting, in the finished picture the “brush” is invisible; what appears in the picture is the object depicted. Only in more recent abstract painting or Impressionism does the “mark” of the brush begin to be left on the canvas. Chinese ink painting, by contrast, makes extensive use of brushstrokes; “as Zhang Yanyuan…
technology media Heidegger ontology
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2011年4月23日