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标签：cybernetics

The Network State and Its Technological Foundations

Web3 & Bitcoin2025.09.25
The Network State and Its Technological Foundations
This article is the draft I wrote for a video recording (the very last small section had no draft; it was improvised and then the recording was turned into text), and the video has already been released on Bilibili and YouTube. The video was actually recorded back in April (at the time, Trump had raised tariffs on China to 104%), but my studio took nearly half a year to piece together these five segments one after another before finally finishing everything (though they mostly had other things to do, this level of efficiency really is hard to defend, so I’m now thinking of recruiting some new people to help me…
China technology freedom internet
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2025年9月25日
Memory Replacing Computation—A Review of Stiegler’s Technics and Time

Phenomenology & Heidegger2024.02.02
Memory Replacing Computation—A Review of Stiegler’s Technics and Time
This article was published in Science and Technology Daily (2024-02-02, p. 3, Book Reviews), and retitled “Memory Is More Important Than Function; Richness Is More Important Than Efficiency” Bernard Stiegler was one of the most important philosophers of technology from the late twentieth century to the early twenty-first; in my view, one could even dispense with both “technology” and “one of.” His magnum opus is the three-volume Technics and Time, which has long been translated into Chinese, and Yilin Press has recently published a collected edition. The collected edition improves upon the old translation, especially by resolving inconsistent renderings of individual terms and by providing a unified index, making it…
philosophy book reading technology book review
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2024年2月2日
Treating People as People: An Introduction to Wiener’s The Human Use of Human Beings

AI & Scholarship2023.05.05
Treating People as People: An Introduction to Wiener’s The Human Use of Human Beings
This is the introductory reading I prepared for the Mediasphere Alliance. The transcript was roughly organized by Feng Guangneng and then polished by me, though I tried to preserve the conversational style as much as possible. It has already been posted on the Mediasphere Alliance WeChat public account; here I am reposting the original draft. 1.1 Opening Wu Jingwei: Hello to all our friends online, and to all the book lovers who have long followed the Mediasphere Alliance reading group! Today we are very honored to have Teacher Hu Yilin from our Department of History of Science join us to lead us through Wiener’s very important classic, The Human Use…
book reading history of science book review history of technology
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2023年5月5日
Introduction to “Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile”

AI & Scholarship2023.04.29
Introduction to “Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile”
This article was published in issue 87 of Xinrui Weekly (it came out last year, but I forgot to repost it), under the title A “Failed” Social Experiment in Cybernetics—A Review of The Cybernetic Revolutionaries. It was slightly abridged at the time of publication (mainly the parts about involution were cut); here is the original text. Allende was elected president of Chile by a large margin in 1970. After taking office, he immediately launched a series of socialist reforms, including banning foreign enterprises, striking at landlords, and establishing a state-owned economy, among other measures. During this period, in order to effectively manage the nationalized economic system, Allende invited the British…
book reading China politics book review
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2023年4月29日
Unemployment or Liberation? Artificial Intelligence’s Dual Revolution

AI & Scholarship2023.02.07
Unemployment or Liberation? Artificial Intelligence’s Dual Revolution
This article was published in China Business Journal (2023-02-07). The final section of social critique in this article is written extremely tersely, but it can be read together with the previous article, “Play to Action—On Human Liberation in the Digital Age.” In 1948, Norbert Wiener published Cybernetics, one of the foundational texts of information science. In the preface to Cybernetics, Wiener wrote: “The first industrial revolution, in depreciating human hand because of its competition with the machine…the present industrial revolution is likewise to depreciate the human brain, at least in its simpler and more routine decisions.” (Hao Jiren translation) This was not an optimistic prophecy. In fact, Wiener noted that…
technology Web3 value Marx
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2023年2月7日
A Few Recent Audio-Video Posts

History of Science & Scholarship2021.03.03
A Few Recent Audio-Video Posts
In general, for lectures, interviews, and the like, I’d prefer to wait until a written transcript comes out before reposting them to Suixuan. But recently some videos and audio recordings apparently won’t have written versions整理出来 by anyone, so I’m reposting them together here. 1. Reading Seminar of the General History of Science Curriculum Alliance, Mumford: A Guided Reading of Technics and Civilization (February 14, 2021) https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV12k4y1276t?p=40 This video talk is the one I most recommend. Mumford’s Technics and Civilization is extremely important, and my reading of it was also very carefully prepared. I tried to distill from Mumford’s thought a historiography of the history of technology as thought, opening up…
China technology book review history of technology
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2021年3月3日