标签：history of technology

How Technology Has Shaped Our Daily Life: Getting Out of Bed

Teaching & Courses2017.08.10
How Technology Has Shaped Our Daily Life: Getting Out of Bed
The previous post on the first week’s class only wrote half of it. In fact, the first half of that class was the introduction, and the second half discussed the first case study, so I’ll continue that here. As for the second week’s class, the original plan was for four classmates to speak for half a class each, and for me to speak for half a class; but the classmates’ sense of participation was too strong, and the time wasn’t strictly controlled either (since it was the first time, I deliberately didn’t try to force control), so the three classmates’ reports, together with discussion, took up a full two hours….
everyday life China technology history
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2017年8月10日
Course Plan: How Technology Shapes Our Daily Lives

Teaching & Courses2017.07.05
Course Plan: How Technology Shapes Our Daily Lives
Again invited by 706 Youth Space, I am preparing to open a course during the summer vacation, starting in late July, once a week, for about 5 to 6 classes. They are experimenting with the “project-based learning” format. I don’t know it in depth; broadly speaking, it is nothing more than a course form centered on students, guided by questions, and distinguished by interactive discussion. I am also willing to explore a livelier teaching format. Know Thyself The course I plan to teach falls within the fields of the history of science and philosophy of technology. On the one hand, this field is extremely profound; on the other hand, its…
philosophy everyday life technology history
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2017年7月5日
The “Layers” of the World—A Few Words on Pokemon GO and AR

AI & the Future of Technology2016.07.12
The “Layers” of the World—A Few Words on Pokemon GO and AR
Recently, the mobile game Pokemon GO has taken the world by storm (China is generally not included in “the world”), and it is worth noting that this should be an emblematic game: a classic application of AR (augmented reality, mixed reality) technology. From this game we can glimpse a possible image of the future world. Although the game’s effects are still very crude at present, it is not hard to imagine what it will become as the relevant technologies develop in the future (those lacking imagination can simply look up the promotional video for Pokemon GO, for example here). Researchers in philosophy of technology are well worth paying attention to…
culture technology commentary history of technology
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2016年7月12日
What Does the Mobile Phone Have to Do with Cooking? — The One and the Many of Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2015.11.12
What Does the Mobile Phone Have to Do with Cooking? — The One and the Many of Technology
The previous post mentioned one of Wu’s core objections, namely, his view that science is singular, whereas technology is plural. At the time he gave an example: branches of science such as physics, chemistry, and biology ultimately promise that they can be reduced to a unified foundation, and therefore their historical development is also interconnected. But what about the relations among various technologies, such as between mobile phones and cooking technology? If various concrete technologies are mutually independent, then where does their unity in history come from? My brief reply at the time was this: the reason various technologies can be “unified” is that “life” is unified. And I also…
everyday life technology history of science media
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2015年11月12日
The Structure of the Technological Revolution (Draft)

AI & the Future of Technology2015.11.10
The Structure of the Technological Revolution (Draft)
This is the article I presented at last week’s Wumen seminar. The article itself is very incomplete—not only has it not been finished in form, but the key problem is the lack of basic literature: in academia, the issues related to “technological revolution” seem to lack discussions worth citing. Of course, this gives reason to suspect that there may be problems with the very legitimacy of my topic; Teacher Wu also questioned it quite strongly. But I myself still think this question is legitimate, and that the concept of “technological revolution” is indeed worth probing in depth. My article itself merely makes a superficial correspondence with Kuhn; this correspondence is…
technology history of science philosophy of science Scientific Revolution
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2015年11月10日
An Outline of the General History of Technology

History of Science & Scholarship2014.11.21
An Outline of the General History of Technology
Outline of a General History of Technology Hu Yilin I. A Survey of Western Studies in the History of Technology In the English-speaking world, the history of technology as an established academic discipline roughly began in the 1950s. Its landmark was the publication of the monumental Oxford History of Technology (volumes 1 through 5 were published from 1954 to 1958, the final two volumes in 1978, and the general index for volume 8 was completed in 1984). Another milestone was the founding of the American Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) in 1958 and the launch of its journal Technology and Culture in 1959. From roughly the late 1950s…
culture technology media phenomenology
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2014年11月21日
Photography and Science

History of Science & Scholarship2013.03.23
Photography and Science
This is a simple metaphor that I have used before, though I never wrote it up as a special topic. Today, when I was eating with Teacher Zhang and the others, I brought it up again, and I think this metaphor is still fairly illuminating, so I’ll talk about it here in some detail. The metaphor is mainly meant to express our attitude toward science and how to understand the relation between science and the “world”: science is like photography, offering an image of the world. We point at a photograph and identify it, saying, “This is Zhang San.” Is this Zhang San? Yes, this is indeed Zhang San, not…
technology science media phenomenology
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2013年3月23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
The History of Work

AI & the Future of Technology2013.01.16
The History of Work
Richard Donkin: The History of Work, translated by Xie Zhongwei, Electronic Industry Press, 2011. Generally speaking, a title like “The History of XX” is always interesting, especially when that “XX” looks all the more dull and ordinary; its history is often all the more interesting. For history tells us that anything we have long taken for granted and found unremarkable has its own origins and development; by tracing history we can let our imagination unfold: is it necessary? Is it inevitable? In what other forms might it still take place? Recently, I happened upon this The History of Work, and felt it was quite good. Along with Technical Elements, Electronic…
book reading technology notes faith
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2013年1月16日
A Talk on “Copyright” in the Internet Age

AI & the Future of Technology2011.02.08
A Talk on “Copyright” in the Internet Age
VeryCD has been transformed, and its music channel no longer provides download links. Why? Because of “copyright.” Obviously, “copyright” is the most typical concept of the print age. So what is the significance of copyright in the Internet age? I recently added a copyright notice to the new version of my blog, so let me take this opportunity to offer a bit more explanation here. The rise of the Internet and digital technology has made copyright issues increasingly prominent, and the “protection” of copyright increasingly difficult. The copying and dissemination of works has become far more convenient; once a work has been released, it is extremely hard to keep control…
technology media internet history of technology
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2011年2月8日