标签：human nature

“People Are Ends, Not Means” — A Critical Review of China on the Cloud

AI & the Future of Technology2021.08.18
“People Are Ends, Not Means” — A Critical Review of China on the Cloud
This is also a commissioned book review, but because I took an explicitly critical stance, the piece apparently was not used (if it does get used, I will revise and repost it here). I am criticizing Alibaba, but not only Alibaba. In fact, many so-called internet companies that have achieved success do not necessarily really represent new thinking or new paradigms; they are nothing more than old capital and industrial logic dressed up in internet clothes. Some other so-called “successes” are nothing more than using the power of capital to carve up territory and seize the initiative, using rapid expansion driven by capital investment to squeeze out competitors prematurely and…
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2021年8月18日
Hindsight in the Face of Technology—A Review of The Dark Side of Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2020.07.09
Hindsight in the Face of Technology—A Review of The Dark Side of Technology
I owe quite a few book reviews; the books are all rather good, and I’ll be writing them out in succession in the near future. Of course, as long as a book is good overall, my reviews will still tend to praise it, while using the review as an occasion to talk about my own thoughts; in fact, that does not amount to a particularly strong recommendation of the book itself. This article was published in China Science Daily (July 9, 2020, page 7, Book Review) Everything has two sides, and even the best technology is a “double-edged sword”: it can strike down the enemy, but it can also wound…
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2020年7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,…
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2020年4月3日
The knives are really starting to fly and cut people: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Technological Intentionality

AI & Scholarship2016.08.07
The knives are really starting to fly and cut people: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Technological Intentionality
This is a supplement to the previous post. I had originally wanted to make “technical intentionality” the core concept of this essay, but in the end I retreated before the difficulty and gave it up; still, because it had been brewing for so long, I feel I ought to say a few things about it. Seven years ago in Nanning, I attended my first phenomenology and philosophy of technology conference. There was one session that left a deep impression on me, and I wrote about it in my notes from that year as well: Professor Wu spoke about “the intentional structure in technology,” but Professor Jin disagreed with using the…
technology media phenomenology human nature
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2016年8月7日
The knife really is about to fly up and cut people: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Technical Intentionality

AI & Scholarship2016.08.07
The knife really is about to fly up and cut people: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Technical Intentionality
This is a supplement to the previous article. I had originally wanted to make “technical intentionality” the core concept of this piece, but in the end I backed away from it, knowing the difficulty. Still, because the idea had been brewing for so long, I always wanted to say a few words about it. Seven years ago, in Nanning, I attended my first phenomenology and philosophy of technology conference. There was one session that left a deep impression on me, and I also wrote about it in my notes from that year: Professor Wu spoke about “the intentional structure in technology,” while Professor Jin disagreed with such a use of…
technology media phenomenology human nature
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2016年8月7日
What Is Wrong with “Eugenics” — A Review of Against Perfection

AI & the Future of Technology2013.08.23
What Is Wrong with “Eugenics” — A Review of Against Perfection
The China Science Daily (2013-08-23, p. 14, Books) Eugenics, which once enjoyed a brief and sweeping vogue in the first half of the twentieth century, was even implemented in many places in the form of law, only to be discredited in the end by the atrocities of the Nazis. The Nazis’ wrongdoing is obvious: they tried to improve the human race through violent means such as forced sterilization and even genocide. But what, exactly, was mistaken? Was it only the violent means, or was there something wrong with eugenics itself? This question seems never to have been adequately reflected upon. Half a century later, with the development of life sciences…
book reading technology book review human nature
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2013年8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
Equality or Freedom: On the Question of Attending School Outside One’s Hometown

Culture & Public Commentary2012.12.17
Equality or Freedom: On the Question of Attending School Outside One’s Hometown
Recently, the case of the non-Shanghai girl Zhan Haiter has drawn a lot of attention, especially because it happened in Shanghai, so I can’t help but offer a few comments as well. Of course, I support Zhan Haiter’s struggle, and I support every citizen’s open expression of his or her demands; but as for the content of those demands, I do not support it. This matter involves too many questions, all tangled together, making an already complicated issue even more complicated. So first we need to break down the questions involved. There are two big issues: one is education, the other is regionality. It should be noted that the problem…
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2012年12月17日
The Flush Toilet: City, Civilization, Modernity

AI & the Future of Technology2012.05.26
The Flush Toilet: City, Civilization, Modernity
Yesterday, Professor Jiang Jinsong came to Chengze Garden to give a talk titled “Observations and Reflections on the Flush Toilet,” and Professor Tian Song offered comments. Professor Jiang did not say very much, and Professor Tian’s comments were also rather hurried, but the discussion was still very lively. Indeed, the flush toilet can be counted as one of the greatest achievements of modern civilization. It is not only a device that makes “going to the bathroom” more convenient, but also a hub that helped assemble the whole modern urban way of life and the entire urban system. Professor Wu commented that Professor Jiang’s presentation should be divided into the issue…
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2012年5月26日
Satisfaction and Choice—Reading Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants

AI & the Future of Technology2012.04.24
Satisfaction and Choice—Reading Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants
I recently read this book: Kevin Kelly: 《What Technology Wants》, and what especially caught my attention throughout the book was the discussion of the Amish. The original title plainly says Technology, yet the Chinese translation from CITIC Press has actually turned most of the instances of Technology into “科技” (“science and technology”)—utterly baffling. As a product of this “brand” called CITIC Press, notes, indexes, and so on are of course uniformly absent; the fact that an “Acknowledgments” section was preserved is already extraordinarily rare. In itself, this book, though not especially profound academically, is still a very good popular introduction to philosophy of technology, somewhere between the academic and the…
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2012年4月24日