标签：public sphere

From the China Zun Incident to AI Governance: Hu Yilin on New Technologies, Safety, and Social Mobility

AI & Scholarship2026.06.29
From the China Zun Incident to AI Governance: Hu Yilin on New Technologies, Safety, and Social Mobility
IntroductionAfter the Beijing CITIC Tower, “China Zun,” was struck by a small aircraft, low-altitude flight safety once again became a public issue. But in the view of technology philosophy researcher Hu Yilin, this accident should not be understood only as a low-altitude economy risk; it should be discussed within a much larger problem: whenever a new technology moves into mass use, society always tightens control in the name of safety, but whether that control is effective, who bears its costs, and who enjoys its benefits are often far more worth asking than the question of “whether we need safety” itself. After the China Zun accident, low-altitude safety was pushed into…
technology freedom Introduction to Philosophy of Technology public sphere
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2026年6月29日
The Future Did Not Attend the Project-Approval Meeting: From Unpaid Wastewater Plant Fees to Pre-Sold Apartment Buildings, Hu Yilin Discusses the Monetary Roots of “Afford to Build, but Not to Maintain”

AI & the Future of Technology2026.06.25
The Future Did Not Attend the Project-Approval Meeting: From Unpaid Wastewater Plant Fees to Pre-Sold Apartment Buildings, Hu Yilin Discusses the Monetary Roots of “Afford to Build, but Not to Maintain”
Introductory noteRecently, the operator of the wastewater treatment plant in Gongping Town, Haifeng County, Guangdong, took the Gongping Town government and the Haifeng County Finance Bureau to court, demanding payment of more than 70 million yuan in wastewater treatment fees and late charges accrued through the end of 2025. Caixin reported that this wastewater plant has been in continuous operation for nearly seven years and has treated a cumulative total of more than 38 million tons of wastewater, yet the operator has never received the service fees paid by the local government; because it had long been advancing the costs on its own, the company once applied to suspend operations,…
technology China value public sphere
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2026年6月25日
AI Regulation Must Not Become a New Despotism in the Technological Age

AI & Scholarship2026.06.24
AI Regulation Must Not Become a New Despotism in the Technological Age
Recently, the U.S. government, citing national security, asked Anthropic to suspend foreign nationals’ access to its frontier large models Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Anthropic then announced that, in order to ensure compliance, it would take both models offline for all users. This incident quickly sent shockwaves through the AI industry: if one country can, on security grounds, suddenly cut off global users’ access to frontier AI, then what exactly is AI—a commercial service, a piece of public infrastructure, or a new kind of strategic weapon? In the public discussion surrounding this incident, opinion quickly split into two camps. One side believes that frontier large models may be used for…
freedom history of technology public sphere AI
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2026年6月24日
How to Be a Punk Philosopher

History of Science & Scholarship2026.02.04
How to Be a Punk Philosopher
On January 30, 2026, I came to Chiang Mai to attend GCC’s first Chinese-language “Cypherpunk x Thinker Gathering,” where I gave a 20-minute talk, “How to Be a Punk Philosopher.” I had actively asked to join this event after seeing the announcement, because I was very fond of this theme. On the one hand, “cypherpunk” is a current of thought I very much hope to spread in the Chinese-speaking world; on the other hand, “cypherpunk thinker” is also how I position myself, and it is much cooler than “independent scholar.” My talk introduced what “punk” is and elaborated the claim that philosophers ought to be punk. But the time on…
philosophy scholarship freedom Aristotle
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2026年2月4日
Common Knowledge as Life

Chinese Civilization & the Way of Chinese2024.11.16
Common Knowledge as Life
A while back I went to Chiang Mai to attend ckcon, where I read Simondon to the ckb community and also gave the somewhat endorsement-like talk below. Of course I have a personal relationship with ckb and also a stake in it, but what I said was indeed sincere. ckb’s distinctive design really does fit quite closely with my own entrepreneurial direction: digital artistic creation that fuses life, culture (history), and information (blockchain). Both my ideas about “a new history of the blockchain” and “an AI life with individuality” can be done on ckb; moreover, the new “Common Sense” (from Common Sense to Common Knowledge) can serve as the foundation…
culture Bitcoin blockchain knowledge
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2024年11月16日
The Influence of Chinese Culture on Chinese DAO

Chinese Civilization & the Way of Chinese2024.05.08
The Influence of Chinese Culture on Chinese DAO
This is a commissioned piece for SeeDAO’s 卧虎藏龙 project, https://chinese3.substack.com/p/chinese3-newsletter2dao-2f0?r=3lmuif&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true In fact, my understanding of the current state of Chinese-language DAO is not all that comprehensive. Among the several DAOs I hang around in, I’m mostly a lurker. But this year at the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, I happened to give a talk titled “The Possibility of the Revival of Traditional Chinese Culture in Web3,” and since the content was somewhat related, I took on this topic as an excerpt and expansion of that talk. The talk was too long, so in this article I’ll try to make things as concise as possible. This topic can be divided into three…
technology China freedom Web3
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2024年5月8日
The Possibility of the Revival of Chinese Traditional Culture in Web3

Chinese Civilization & the Way of Chinese2024.04.29
The Possibility of the Revival of Chinese Traditional Culture in Web3
It was also at the 2024 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival that, right after the previous talk, “Accelerationism Is Not Liberating Enough; Only by Combining It with Web3 Can AI’s Potential Be Released,” I immediately gave another hour-long talk at Open Stage. Of course, I also want to thank Wanxiang for providing the stage. This talk was also something I was even more eager to share with the broader Chinese Web3 community: “The Possibility of the Revival of Chinese Traditional Culture in Web3.” Are Chinese People Inferior to Westerners? Most of the people at the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival were Chinese, and more than half of the talks and events were…
China culture Web3 Bitcoin
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2024年4月29日
Immortality: The Intrinsic Connection Between Transhumanism and Web3

Culture & Public Commentary2023.06.08
Immortality: The Intrinsic Connection Between Transhumanism and Web3
This piece was submitted to the article by the new media outlet “歪脖三观,” founded and hosted by Jiang Gungun, and I was honored that it became the inaugural founding text of that media platform. When it was published, it was shortened and polished, and the title was changed to “The Ambition of Blockchain: Anti-Keynesianism, Public Life, and Transhumanism.” Everyone is welcome to repost and follow it. I am posting here the unedited original draft: EDCON2023 in Montenegro has come to a close. In addition to the usual topics of the crypto community, this year’s grand gathering also had a substantial block of topics related to transhumanism/longevity. The earlier “A Conversation…
technology Bitcoin blockchain public sphere
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2023年6月8日
On the “Pattern” of the Digital City-State

Culture & Public Commentary2023.05.12
On the “Pattern” of the Digital City-State
Today I chatted again for a while with baiyu from SeeDAO, and in the process I laid out my thoughts on building digital city-states. What I chiefly want to promote is Arendt's thought, and to rebuild the “public sphere” in the digital age. SeeDAO’s ideal is to become a “digital city-state for 1 million Web3 nomads.” My quip is: this number, one million, is too big to be big, yet too small to be small. Too big in the sense that if Web3 is truly the general trend, then in the future there cannot possibly be only 1 million “Web3 nomads”; just the Chinese-speaking population alone would have to be…
Web3 politics blockchain public sphere
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2023年5月12日
Play to Action—On Human Liberation in the Digital Age

Culture & Public Commentary2023.01.03
Play to Action—On Human Liberation in the Digital Age
This essay is a brief ideological manifesto written for a certain project. The idea was not initiated by me, but I was the main writer. It has something to do with ‘华文道’, but it is actually for another project proposal: https://prickly-ink-544.notion.site/da60bd1225aa49c2b6868d7011a617b3 In fact, the ideas of ‘华文道’ also broadly accord with this essay, so the two can be used as references for each other. As Marx said, “The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist” (Capital), every technological transformation is an opportunity to build a new social form and reshape human civilization. What we are seeing now is that a series of…
freedom Web3 blockchain public sphere
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2023年1月3日