标签：ecology

On the Amazon Fire and the Amazon Outage

Culture & Public Commentary2019.08.24
On the Amazon Fire and the Amazon Outage
Published in Jiemian Review, retitled “From the Amazon Fire to Amazon Cloud Service Failure: Human Fragility and Vanity” The fires in the Amazon rainforest have been burning for three weeks. The Brazilian government says they are beyond control. As for the cause of the fires, that is still unclear, and when they will finally go out will probably depend on the whim of Heaven; human beings say they are powerless. In the past two days, this fire has drawn widespread attention on Chinese social media, along with a great deal of alarmist talk. But many people have also learned for the first time how important the Amazon rainforest is—the so-called…
technology commentary environment nature
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2019年8月24日
Am I “One” or “Many”? — A Review of I Encompass All Things

AI & the Future of Technology2019.08.16
Am I “One” or “Many”? — A Review of I Encompass All Things
Published in *China Science Daily* (2019-08-16, Section 7, Book Review) “Who am I?” — this may be the oldest and most enduring great question in the history of human thought. Philosophers have poured their energies into it, and modern science has also advanced human self-understanding from different angles. Some say human beings are rational animals; some say they are political animals; some say they are tool-making animals… But in any case, few people would doubt this point: “I am one person.” The question “Who am I?” is immediately transformed into “What is a human being?”, thereby bypassing any inquiry into the “one.” No matter what I am, I am first…
philosophy book reading technology book review
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2019年8月16日
Humans and Technology in Evolution—Technology Also Needs “Protected Areas for Diversity”

AI & the Future of Technology2019.05.02
Humans and Technology in Evolution—Technology Also Needs “Protected Areas for Diversity”
Last week I went to give a lecture at 新华·知本读书会. Both Book City Magazine and Pengpai’s book-reading crowd published records of it, and both were arranged quite well. Here I’m reposting the transcript from The Paper (authorized). Pengpai’s arrangement reconstructed my line of thought better, and the clickbait title also captured the essence. My originally planned lecture title was “Humans and Technology in Evolution: Parasitism or Symbiosis,” and I actually wanted to focus mainly on the cyborg direction. But during preparation I found that cyborgs are really not so easy to talk about, so I toned down the subtitle. Thus the title revised by Pengpai—“Technology Also Needs a ‘Diversity Preserve,’…
technology history of technology Introduction to Philosophy of Technology environment
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2019年5月2日
History of Science as a Nature Reserve—A Darwinian View of Science

History of Science & Scholarship2018.04.05
History of Science as a Nature Reserve—A Darwinian View of Science
Last Friday (March 30), I was invited to Shanghai Natural History Museum to take part in a “reading session,” where I introduced my own Outdated Wisdom. Although it was an internal event, there were quite a few listeners—more than 50 friends from museums and publishing houses took part. The title I set for my talk was “Outdated Wisdom and Its Contemporary Significance.” I heard that Liu Su was going as well, so I especially strengthened the Darwinian evolutionary logic in it, and won myself a remark: “Thought-provoking; I hadn’t expected it could be used that way.” I was pretty satisfied with that~ This talk was rather unusual for me, because…
science history of science philosophy of science Scientific Revolution
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2018年4月5日
Travel Notes from the Shenyang–Benxi Meeting (Benxi篇)

History of Science & Scholarship2015.10.24
Travel Notes from the Shenyang–Benxi Meeting (Benxi篇)
Continuing on from the previous post, there have recently been many things lined up and demanding to be finished, so I didn’t really have the mind to write the travel notes to completion. But in the end I discovered that if I didn’t finish the travel notes, I would always have this one thing hanging over my heart, and I wouldn’t be able to do anything else well either, so I still went ahead and filled them in…… After the first day’s sessions in Shenyang’s Xiaoshicheng, we arrived in Benxi, where the conference’s final two days were held. The morning of the 26th saw the start of Session 4, themed…
philosophy China technology phenomenology
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2015年10月24日
Stock Market Musings: Freedom and Stability

Culture & Public Commentary2015.07.26
Stock Market Musings: Freedom and Stability
Recently China’s stock market has been wildly up and down. After an unprecedented “stock-market crash,” the central authorities have again stepped in with unprecedented force to maintain stability. The reason I thought of writing this article is not to play the prophet and predict market movements. On the one hand, I want to gather together some of my previous statements and thoughts; on the other hand, the stock market also has relations to political philosophy and natural philosophy. Besides, I believe this stock-market crash will have very far-reaching historical significance; in any case, it will become a landmark event. Although I have all along been promoting Bitcoin, and have always…
culture China freedom commentary
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2015年7月26日
On Genetically Modified Organisms

History of Science & Scholarship2015.02.08
On Genetically Modified Organisms
Thanks to Xiao Cui’s efforts, the issue of genetically modified organisms has increasingly become a public topic, and the related controversies have increasingly been brought into the open—for example, the recent discussion forum held by Phoenix University Questions, which looked pretty good. Genetically modified organisms and traditional Chinese medicine have basically become a kind of litmus test for aligning with one camp or another; it seems that those strongly in favor of GMOs and against traditional Chinese medicine are the “scientific camp,” while those against GMOs or in favor of traditional Chinese medicine are the “mystical camp.” I have also been asked similar questions to “state my position,” but my…
technology science philosophy of science environment
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2015年2月8日
Media as Environment — A Rough Philosophical Reading of Media Ecology

History of Science & Scholarship2014.09.25
Media as Environment — A Rough Philosophical Reading of Media Ecology
This is the draft of the talk I’m preparing to give tomorrow at Tsinghua; by then I’ll basically plan to read straight from the script, of course after finishing I’ll probably also expand on certain parts extemporaneously depending on how things go… This talk aims to offer a brief and accessible overview of the basic claims of my dissertation. My dissertation involves many problems, and the relationships among its chapters are originally rather loose, so it is not very easy to distill. Here I can only focus on a few core concepts. Since I have avoided the most abstruse parts (ontology and transcendental philosophy) and the most concrete parts…
philosophy technology history of science media
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2014年9月25日
Is Bitcoin Environmentally Friendly?

Web3 & Bitcoin2013.10.20
Is Bitcoin Environmentally Friendly?
This article is an original entry in the 2013 essay contest organized by Bitren and was first published on the Bitren forum, so it did not debut on my blog. At first I thought I stood no chance of winning any prize, so last night I casually posted it on the blog; unexpectedly, it still won the second-place grand prize. Because I reposted it half a day early (to Babbitt), I have voluntarily deducted 10% of the prize money as punishment, and here I would like to apologize to and thank the Bitren website. 1. Does Bitcoin waste resources? Bitcoin’s proof-of-work mechanism, that is, the so-called “mining,” is often criticized:…
technology Web3 value Bitcoin
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2013年10月20日
A Civilizational History of Technology—Using Mumford as an Example

History of Science & Scholarship2013.03.10
A Civilizational History of Technology—Using Mumford as an Example
Discussion section note: Good spring to Professor Wu and to all the students: I’m terribly sorry to have fallen back into my habitual procrastination again…… Mumford is the first figure I plan to deal with in the body of my doctoral dissertation, after the introduction. Because there is an overall writing plan in the background, some basic introduction to media ecology should already have been laid out in the introduction, while other parts will have to wait until later, when I discuss McLuhan and others in more detail. As a result, this section ended up being quite short after I trimmed away the beginning and the ending; of course, that…
technology media history of technology human nature
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2013年3月10日