标签：democracy

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…
technology China freedom Bitcoin
阅读全文

2025年9月25日
Talking About Trump

Culture & Public Commentary2025.03.05
Talking About Trump
When Was America at Its Greatest? So-called “Make America Great Again” — but at exactly which period in history was America the greatest? This historical question actually determines how one judges present policy and the respective international situation. One standard answer is the post–Cold War period. At that time, the United States stood alone in glory, unrivaled, becoming the sole hegemon, the world’s policeman, imperious and overbearing. But in terms of industrial capacity and total GDP, America during this period was only about one quarter of the world. The highest share of GDP should have been at the end of World War II. By then, the whole world had been…
commentary value democracy civilization
阅读全文

2025年3月5日
NFT-ifying Behavioral Histories: The Return of Value to Meaning

Culture & Public Commentary2022.08.02
NFT-ifying Behavioral Histories: The Return of Value to Meaning
I had a sudden awakening around the end of last year and the beginning of this year, and embraced new concepts like the metaverse, NFT, and Web3. But there is still one new concept about which I have always been somewhat reserved: DAO. DAO stands for “decentralized autonomous organization.” In fact, it is also an old concept. I remember that when I first got into Bitcoin, Babite seemed to be planning to do DAO (or something similar), and I also witnessed the The DAO incident that later led to the Ethereum fork. My view has actually remained fairly consistent: I think DAO is a good concept, but the ways it…
China freedom history Web3
阅读全文

2022年8月2日
Heavenly Endowment

Life & Notes2022.04.01
Heavenly Endowment
At 11:39 a.m. on April 1, 2022, a new life came squalling into the world. Yes, I have a daughter now~ I chose her name a few days earlier: Hu Tianyu. Don’t worry, I’m not suddenly going to turn into a shameless kid-showoff. Writing in the public sphere will not become excessively intimate. On the one hand, this post is a special commemoration; on the other, it is also an excuse to talk about certain general topics through my daughter’s name. Back in the day my grandfather gave me a name: “Tian Ding,” meaning roughly that my fate was decreed by Heaven. In the end, though, it was never used….
everyday life freedom Heidegger democracy
阅读全文

2022年4月1日
Freedom of Speech and Social Media

Culture & Public Commentary2021.01.11
Freedom of Speech and Social Media
This article was written spontaneously, as a stream-of-consciousness piece prompted by my own feelings; it is shared only on Suixuan, and please do not reprint it. Trump’s social media accounts being banned set off a discussion about freedom of speech. Aside from the arguments that have never reached consensus, today’s discussions of freedom of speech do in fact involve some new conditions that have only emerged in the past decade or so. This is the rise of large social media websites. They have carved out an autonomous space in the network world, and in many cases have replaced what used to be understood as public space. Whether, and how, the…
culture freedom media commentary
阅读全文

2021年1月11日
Using Unequal Technology to Promote Equality

AI & the Future of Technology2020.03.03
Using Unequal Technology to Promote Equality
Under the shadow of the pandemic, online education has made a great leap forward, and overnight primary, secondary, and higher schools across the country all switched on cloud-based classes. In the Internet age, online education may well be the inevitable trend, but a sudden leap made in haste will naturally bring many problems with it, especially since the ability to adapt to online education varies greatly from one region and one family to another. For example, on February 29, a ninth-grade girl in Henan, because her family was impoverished and she had to fight with her siblings for the family’s phone in order to listen to online classes, may have…
philosophy technology history of technology sociology
阅读全文

2020年3月3日
The Responsibility of Intellectuals

Enlightenment & the Spirit of Freedom2019.08.22
The Responsibility of Intellectuals
Note: This article may not be reproduced; it is for Suixuan readers only. This article was written out of a sudden impulse. I had originally meant to dash off two paragraphs in one go, but the more I wrote, the more awkward it felt; in the end, I not only wrecked the thing, I couldn’t keep going either. But since, before I knew it, I had written more than seven thousand characters, I might as well post it. For archive purposes only. Emotions or attitudes, like thoughts and speech, are part of each person’s “freedom.” I have the right to worry myself sick, and I also have the right…
philosophy culture autobiography public sphere
阅读全文

2019年8月22日
On Political Correctness (I): Political Correctness and the God’s-Eye View

Culture & Public Commentary2017.02.10
On Political Correctness (I): Political Correctness and the God’s-Eye View
Trump, from the campaign to the inauguration, has been a hot topic in Chinese cultural circles, sparking countless polemics and splits. From the standpoint of enjoying a good spectacle, I actually quite welcome Trump taking office; after all, he has set off several fires just a few days into his term, and it’s been lively enough. Of course, I only want to watch the show; I do not want to take sides. If I had to say so, then from a personal standpoint I certainly look down on Trump as a person. The key issue is not so much his opposition to political correctness as his anti-intellectual tendency. But as…
culture freedom commentary politics
阅读全文

2017年2月10日
Lectures on the General History of Science 3: The Classical Greek Period [Classroom Changed Starting Next Week]

History of Science & Technology2015.03.18
Lectures on the General History of Science 3: The Classical Greek Period [Classroom Changed Starting Next Week]
下 week starting next week, the “History of Science” class will move to Jiao Ba 306 In the last class, we went from primitive humans to the four great ancient civilizations. We mentioned that human history is, in a sense, the history of technology; no human culture is cut off from technology. Where there is technology, there is also “knowledge,” and every culture passes on its own knowledge. By the time we get to the ancient civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt, people’s knowledge and skills had already reached a very high level. But I still regard ancient Greece as the origin of “science.” That is to say, the “science”…
culture scholarship freedom history
阅读全文

2015年3月18日
Why We Don’t Need BitCNY

Web3 & Cypherpunks2015.01.29
Why We Don’t Need BitCNY
1、This Is a Revolution, Not an Upgrade BTS is one of the projects in the so-called “second-generation coins” (the full name is second-generation knockoff coins) that has raised the most money (so far) and has the loudest reputation (mainly in China). Whenever I casually take a swipe at it on Weibo, many enthusiastic netizens inevitably come over to “instruct” me, earnestly teaching me that I need to keep up with the times, need to be open and inclusive, need to keep learning… So I usually can’t be bothered to say much. This time, since I’ve been invited to write for 8BTC, I might as well concentrate my complaints here again,…
freedom Web3 Bitcoin democracy
阅读全文

2015年1月29日