标签：technology

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
The Economic History of Media—From Marx to Innis

AI & the Future of Technology2013.06.03
The Economic History of Media—From Marx to Innis
Innis (Harold Adams Innis, 1894–1952), together with McLuhan, is recognized as one of the founders of the media ecology school. McLuhan highly praised Innis’s contributions, wrote prefaces to his two major works in communication studies, and even regarded his own breakthrough book *The Gutenberg Galaxy* as “a footnote to Innis’s viewpoint”[1]. But later, as McLuhan rose to fame, Innis instead became a footnote in McLuhan studies, a preliminary step in explaining the origins of McLuhan’s thought. In the academic context of media ecology, Innis is usually presented as McLuhan’s background or foil. Of course, some scholars have noticed Innis’s distinctive value, especially James Carey, who placed Innis above McLuhan. Entering…
technology Marx McLuhan economy
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2013年6月3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
On NetEase Mail, Cookies, and Privacy in the Internet Age

AI & the Future of Technology2013.03.20
On NetEase Mail, Cookies, and Privacy in the Internet Age
(It’s been a long time since I last wrote an essay; this is a bit messy, but I’ll gradually restore the blog update frequency in the near future~) The recent 315 gala seems to have taken a heavy toll on many IT companies that did not advertise properly on CCTV. Apple has always been arrogant; you can criticize it for arrogance all you want, but this time NetEase has probably really fallen into trouble. As for the news media’s habit of reporting some negative information in a kind of campaign-style, entertainmentized, highly selective and biased manner, that behavior is contemptible. But in general I do not object to this kind…
technology media internet McLuhan
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2013年3月20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
Updated the Blog Email Address

Site Matters2013.01.19
Updated the Blog Email Address
After switching to the Aliyun server, besides setting up the blog, I also took the opportunity to set up my own mail server. I used the iRedMail suite, which bundles and installs the whole package, including smtp, pop3, imap, SSL encryption, and webmail, making it quite convenient. Given Gmail’s increasingly difficult situation in China, but since I don’t want to switch to some domestic website’s email service, using a mail service I run myself may be a good choice. Of course Gmail has its irreplaceable advantage—search—so my own mailbox will not replace Gmail for the time being; it will only serve as an auxiliary tool to some extent. At present,…
technology blog website
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2013年1月19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
The Two Falls of the Concept of “Nature” and Nature as “Anti-Normative” in Its Original Sense

History of Science & Scholarship2012.12.21
The Two Falls of the Concept of “Nature” and Nature as “Anti-Normative” in Its Original Sense
Today Professor Wu gave a talk, “The Discovery of Nature,” at the Friday philosophy forum of the Institute of Foreign Philosophy. Although the topic was something Professor Wu has always thought about, and I am already fairly familiar with it, it is quite rare to hear him speak at the Institute of Foreign Philosophy; especially with Liu Zhe, Wu Zengding, and Wu Fei all taking part in the questions, it was extremely interesting to listen to. Professor Wu mentioned that “the discovery of nature” actually contains two “falls” of the concept of nature: first, nature as “nature, origin”; second, the emergence of “the natural world” as a special domain of…
philosophy technology science media
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2012年12月21日
Travel Notes from the Guangzhou Conference

History of Science & Scholarship2012.12.16
Travel Notes from the Guangzhou Conference
In Guangzhou I caught a cold, and after coming back I spent several days recuperating, so the task of writing up the trip was delayed by several days as well; I only began writing on December 8…… First, a bit of emotion: how time flies. In a daze, the annual conference on phenomenology and philosophy of technology has already been held six times, and this was the fourth conference I have attended. I took part in the Nanning conference as a master’s student, and in the blink of an eye I am almost done with my doctorate. As for these conference “takedowns” of “I love my teacher,” this is already…
philosophy China technology philosophy of science
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2012年12月16日
A Supplement to “Media History as Transcendental Philosophy”: The Relation Between Ontology and Epistemology; Nature Is Naturally the Boundary of Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2012.11.20
A Supplement to “Media History as Transcendental Philosophy”: The Relation Between Ontology and Epistemology; Nature Is Naturally the Boundary of Technology
Today’s discussion seminar covered that earlier article, and the result seemed pretty good. Of course, Wu’s comments and those of the students pointed out that while my article reads smoothly overall, a close look reveals many gaps in the logic, especially the final section, which seems overly hurried. This is certainly something that can be improved in part—particularly, the last section ought to have been written in more detail. At the time I probably felt that I was almost done, breathed a sigh of relief, and then slackened off, lacking patience in handling the most crucial part of this section. But in a certain sense logical gaps are impossible to…
philosophy technology media Aristotle
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2012年11月20日