标签：General History of Technology

Summary of the Course “A General History of Technology” (Fall 2022 Semester)

Teaching & Courses2023.04.17
Summary of the Course “A General History of Technology” (Fall 2022 Semester)
The allergy season hasn’t even passed before the dust season arrives, my whole state has been low, and the course summary isn’t especially urgent anyway, so I kept dragging my feet and finally finished writing the second course from last semester. (If you want to jump straight to the exam analysis, go to the second half.) General History of Technology is the course I have taught the most; last semester was already the sixth round, and I also wrote summaries for the first five rounds. Of course, every year there are more or less some new additions. This time, taking last semester’s experience into account, I compressed the first few…
technology China course blockchain
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2023年4月17日
Can General Education Outmaneuver the Majors? — A Loose Talk from Course Assessment Methods to ChatGPT

AI & Scholarship2023.03.19
Can General Education Outmaneuver the Majors? — A Loose Talk from Course Assessment Methods to ChatGPT
Note: I originally just wanted to vent a bit about the feelings stirred up by a wave of severely plagiarized assignments, but as it turned out the discussion naturally drifted into AI, and things got a bit loose. Let’s leave it at that for now. The two courses I taught last semester—A General History of Technology and Introduction to Philosophy of Technology—have only just now finally been brought to a close. Normally, my courses use in-class exams during the last week of the term, but because of the outbreak of the pandemic at the end of last semester, the university suggested changing the final-exam process and arranging two exam sessions,…
technology scholarship freedom education
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2023年3月19日
Course Summary for A General History of Technology, Fall 2021 (Questionnaire Summary)

Teaching & Courses2022.01.22
Course Summary for A General History of Technology, Fall 2021 (Questionnaire Summary)
Last time I already wrote the final-exam commentary and presentation of excellent papers. In fact, there was another component: the reading notes. This time the reading notes were reduced from more than 6,000 characters in previous years to around 3,000 characters, but there was nothing particularly new in the basic requirements or in my grading impressions, so I won’t say much more about that. The rough grading standards were: 1. plagiarism, 0 points; 2. anything clearly not meeting the course requirements is a fail (for example, not a reading note at all, too few characters, obviously borrowed from an assignment for another course, and so on); 3. anything very perfunctory,…
history of science course General History of Technology
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2022年1月22日
The Cost of Innovation: Another Kind of Lesson from the History of Technology — A Review of The Technology Trap

AI & the Future of Technology2022.01.21
The Cost of Innovation: Another Kind of Lesson from the History of Technology — A Review of The Technology Trap
This article was published in China Science Daily (2022-01-21, page 3, Reading); the title was changed to “A Different Kind of Inspiration: Seeing the Suffering of Ordinary People in the History of Technology.” It was also posted on their WeChat public account, under the title “Let’s Talk This Time About the Suffering Brought to Humanity by Technological Progress!” I’m reposting it here. I teach a general history of technology course at Tsinghua, and over the past few years I have also given quite a few public lectures on special topics in the history of technology. One question such courses or lectures often face is this: what guiding significance does the…
technology book reading history of technology book review
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2022年1月21日
Commentary on the Autumn 2021 Final Exam for A General History of Technology and Showcase of Outstanding Answer Papers

Teaching & Courses2022.01.18
Commentary on the Autumn 2021 Final Exam for A General History of Technology and Showcase of Outstanding Answer Papers
As usual, every course needs a closing summary. This time, the summary of A General History of Technology will be in two parts: for now I’m posting the commentary on the final exam, and in the next post I’ll summarize the student questionnaire and think through possible plans for improving the course in the future. Note: This was an online open-book exam, two hours long, with books and computers allowed, and with internet access for searching materials. The exam consisted of 7 open-ended essay questions. Each examinee chose any 3 to answer, with 100 points for each question, and the final exam score was the average of the three questions….
philosophy technology course Aristotle
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2022年1月18日
Course Summary for A General History of Technology (Fall 2020)

Teaching & Courses2021.02.19
Course Summary for A General History of Technology (Fall 2020)
This is the fourth round of the course. This round was a little different from the previous three: the total number of class hours was about the same, but the original 16-week format of 2 class hours per week was changed to an 11-week format of 3 class hours per week. This scheduling was due to a small mistake I made when I first registered the course, but afterward I also decided to go with the flow and see what benefits this arrangement might have. There were indeed some benefits. First, the course ended off-peak, concluding a month earlier than most courses, which relatively speaking may have eased some of…
course history of technology General History of Technology machinery
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2021年2月19日
A Conversation with Teacher Wu at the Yejiaxuan Reading Salon

AI & the Future of Technology2020.10.11
A Conversation with Teacher Wu at the Yejiaxuan Reading Salon
Thanks to Teacher Wang Wei and Teacher Wu, I put together this conversation with Teacher Wu, and it felt a bit like Teacher Wu was checking my homework. I thought the conversation went rather well. Some of the issues it touched on, especially concerning historiographical concepts, I may have a chance to write about in more detail later. The following is the transcript, compiled by the salon’s official staff 整理的文字稿, and I made some revisions to it, though I cannot guarantee its accuracy. If you would like to reprint it, please contact 文素THU. Host Wang Wei: Good evening, distinguished guests, teachers, and students! I am Wang Wei, Executive Deputy Director…
philosophy technology history of science philosophy of science
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2020年10月11日
Course Summary for General History of Technology (Spring 2020)

Teaching & Courses2020.08.06
Course Summary for General History of Technology (Spring 2020)
The History of Technology survey course has now run through its third round. The course summaries for the first year and second year were both quite detailed, so students who want an overview of the course can refer to those earlier installments. This year’s summary will be written a bit more briefly. This year, because of the pandemic, the spring semester was taught entirely online. Since it was my first time doing an online format, I didn’t add any new material; instead I just reheated yesterday’s leftovers, selecting relatively mature parts from the previous two years and teaching them again. With the teaching plan adjusted for next semester, I will…
history of science course Introduction to Philosophy of Technology Scientific Revolution
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2020年8月6日
Can This Really Count as a General History? — The Publication of Extension of Man: A General History of Technology

Life & Notes2020.06.09
Can This Really Count as a General History? — The Publication of Extension of Man: A General History of Technology
This year I have at least two new books coming out, and the first to appear is Shanghai Education Press’s 人的延伸——技术通史, or The Extension of Man: A General History of Technology. This book was part of a writing plan I signed at the same time back when Outdated Wisdom was published, but I dragged my feet for three years before it finally saw the light of day this year. This book is still transitional in nature. I am writing a more substantial monograph on the history of technology, and if all goes well I should finish it early next year. The reason I brought out this miniature version of the…
history of technology Introduction to Philosophy of Technology General History of Technology Liu Huajie
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2020年6月9日
Visiting for an Exchange at Jiangsu Province Qinghe Middle School (What Kind of “General Technology” Do Middle School Students Need?)

AI & the Future of Technology2019.08.23
Visiting for an Exchange at Jiangsu Province Qinghe Middle School (What Kind of “General Technology” Do Middle School Students Need?)
Giving a Lecture to Middle School Teachers and Students On August 17 and 18, I was invited to Jiangsu Province Qinghe High School to take part in an exchange. They had an experimental project in educational reform, aiming to add elements of the history of technology to the teaching of the high school course “General Technology.” Jiangsu Province Qinghe High School is in Huai’an; it is not some famous school, but I was still very interested in this topic. Of course, it was also quite rare for the teachers there to think of inviting me, so I was more than happy to go. At the time, the incoming freshmen were…
technology history of science education history of technology
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2019年8月23日