标签：history of technology

On “What Is Technology?”: An Interview with China Science Daily

Life & Notes2021.01.22
On “What Is Technology?”: An Interview with China Science Daily
Thanks to China Science Daily, which usually invites me to write book reviews; this time, since it was my own book, we simply did an interview. Zhang Wenjing did a very good job with both the interviewing and the editing—it’s just that the headline is a bit over the top (though there was nothing to be done about that). The finished piece can be found on ScienceNet; here I am posting my original written answers. First, could you talk about how the book What Is Technology came to be? In the opening sentence you say, “We are now in a ‘technological age.’” In a technological age, what is the background…
technology media history of technology knowledge
阅读全文

2021年1月22日
The Unification of Information Technology and Information Science in the History of Information — A Review of Wu Jun’s Information Transmission

History of Science & Scholarship2020.12.30
The Unification of Information Technology and Information Science in the History of Information — A Review of Wu Jun’s Information Transmission
Published in Science News of China (2020-12-10, p. 7, Book Review), with the title changed to “Seeing Information from the Perspective of an Entrepreneur” “We happen to live in an information society, and we need to understand information,” Wu Jun says at the beginning of Information Biography: “Although we all live in the information age, very few people can clearly say what information is, or how it determines and affects our lives. That is the reason I wrote Information Biography.” Wu Jun believes that information can be approached from the following three dimensions: 1. What information is; 2. The essence of information technology; 3. The history of information. The first…
book reading history of technology book review information
阅读全文

2020年12月30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
阅读全文

2020年10月11日
“A History of the Technology and Philosophical Study of Blockchain” Receives National Social Science Fund Grant

History of Science & Scholarship2020.10.05
“A History of the Technology and Philosophical Study of Blockchain” Receives National Social Science Fund Grant
Many crypto folks have often hoped I would write a bit more on related topics, and now that’s good: for the next couple of years I really am going to come back to writing about blockchain. The social science fund project I applied for was fortunate enough to be approved: “Research on the History of Technology and Philosophy of Technology of Blockchain.” This is a combination of my academic interests and the blockchain field. At first I had wanted to paste the main body of the application directly, but a colleague reminded me that when the social science fund project is finalized, they need to check for plagiarism, so one…
Web3 Bitcoin history of technology decentralization
阅读全文

2020年10月5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
阅读全文

2020年6月9日
Rethinking Human Nature in the Age of Technology — A Review of Technics and Time 1

Phenomenology & Heidegger2020.04.03
Rethinking Human Nature in the Age of Technology — A Review of Technics and Time 1
This article was published in the April 2020 issue of Book City Bernard Stiegler is one of the most influential living philosophers in the field of philosophy of technology, and in recent years he has also had a considerable impact in China. He himself often comes to China to give lectures and teach courses. The lecture notes from a course he taught in the Department of Philosophy at Nanjing University in 2016 have recently been published in collected form (Nanjing Lectures: Reading Marx and Engels in the Anthropocene—From The German Ideology to Dialectics of Nature). And the Chinese translation of the work that made his name in his early years,…
technology book reading Heidegger history of technology
阅读全文

2020年4月3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
Elevating the Enemy, or a Narrative Bigger Than the Grand

Culture & Public Commentary2020.02.17
Elevating the Enemy, or a Narrative Bigger Than the Grand
Forcibly rushing to exonerate Nurse Liu Fan has stirred anger. The so-called rumor enraged some people; they furiously denounced how terrifying rumors can be, and then produced the so-called refutation. Yet this “forceful, well-grounded” refutation seemed instead to confirm that she was indeed a nurse, that she was indeed fighting the epidemic, that she indeed died of the disease, and that her whole family indeed fell ill as well… So what exactly was wrong? The rumor-refuters emphasized that protective suits were not in short supply. The implication was that she had ample protective conditions, and was not infected because resources were tight; she could only have been infected because she…
philosophy history of science history Aristotle
阅读全文

2020年2月17日
From “Information Blocks” to “Blockchains”: Blockchain as a Completion of the Internet

Web3 & Bitcoin2019.10.27
From “Information Blocks” to “Blockchains”: Blockchain as a Completion of the Internet
A commissioned piece riding a hot topic for JieMian. I’m currently in Hefei attending the annual conference on Chinese history of science, and I wrote this last night on my bed after a full day of meetings, so it’s a bit rushed. Still, this counts as my first article that departs from Bitcoin and talks specifically about blockchain. In my view, the core application of blockchain is undoubtedly still currency; blockchain technology divorced from currency, or from currency in the broader sense (securities, etc.), is basically just a gimmick. But that does not stop us from indeed being able to seek a place for blockchain technology in the history of…
China Web3 Bitcoin history of technology
阅读全文

2019年10月27日
Was There Confucianism in the Ancient West?

Culture & Public Commentary2019.08.25
Was There Confucianism in the Ancient West?
The recent atmosphere has me a little like a startled bird, so I’m continuing to use encrypted mode. This article really isn’t worth encrypting; in a couple of days I may quietly decrypt it. A teacher has recently been disciplined over remarks about the Four Great Inventions, and that is truly shocking. I don’t want to reopen here the warning against a culture of informing on others; I only want to talk about the academic question. What makes this incident even more frightening than before is that the remarks that led to the punishment were not a political issue, but an academic one. Even the official media could not stomach…
technology China culture science
阅读全文

2019年8月25日