标签：technology

Don’t Universities for the Elderly Teach You How to Play Games?

AI & the Future of Technology2019.02.16
Don’t Universities for the Elderly Teach You How to Play Games?
This Spring Festival, my wife and I, as usual, went home to keep our parents company. This year was a bit special: on the one hand, we finally finished our wedding ceremony last year (we had already been legally married long ago, but the ritual was only just completed), which put our parents’ minds at ease; on the other hand, they were also, one after another, just entering retirement. My parents had been retired in name for a long time, but in practice they had been running their own storefront all along. Last year they finally rented the shop out and let go of it to enjoy life for themselves….
technology education value game
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2019年2月16日
From Melamine to Thesis Plagiarism Checks: A Completely Meaningless Detection-and-Evasion Battle

Culture & Public Commentary2019.02.15
From Melamine to Thesis Plagiarism Checks: A Completely Meaningless Detection-and-Evasion Battle
An impromptu submission to Jiemian; I finished writing it at noon and it went up in the afternoon~ The recent Zhai Tianlin incident made “CNKI” and its plagiarism-checking technology quite the sensation. Netizens spontaneously helped run plagiarism checks on Zhai Tianlin’s paper and found the rate of duplication to be as high as 40%, causing his image as a top student to collapse. I’m not particularly interested in Zhai Tianlin’s image crisis; I’m more inclined to hitch a ride on the hot topic and talk about my own views on plagiarism-checking technology for theses. Plagiarism checking has been popular for many years now. I have always taken a critical and…
China technology scholarship commentary
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2019年2月15日
How Can Ethics in the Technological Age Welcome the Future? [Fourth Commentary]

Culture & Public Commentary2018.12.09
How Can Ethics in the Technological Age Welcome the Future? [Fourth Commentary]
This one was also published on Jiemian (for reprints, please contact Jiemian), but it was not a commissioned piece. I wrote it casually and sent it to them. The feedback was that the quality was worse than the previous two, which may have had something to do with the rather rambling way I wrote this one, or perhaps with the fact that the issues this article faced were more tangled and its viewpoint correspondingly more moderate. Still, they did publish it, but with very extensive changes: the title was altered (Can Technological Progress Really Tailor Human Value Preferences?), and the He Jiankui theme was also removed (don’t ask why; just…
technology commentary tradition value
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2018年12月9日
Is Eugenics Justifiable? — A Delayed Judgment [Third Review]

Culture & Public Commentary2018.12.07
Is Eugenics Justifiable? — A Delayed Judgment [Third Review]
At the turn from the 19th to the 20th century, as Darwin’s theory of evolution gained popularity, “eugenics” arose one after another in several countries in Europe and America. Various countries adopted all kinds of compulsory or incentivizing birth-control policies, encouraging some people (the healthy, the highly intelligent) to have more children, while suppressing the reproduction of others (the sick or the “low-end population”). It was not until eugenics became linked with genocide in Nazi hands that it finally fell into disrepute. So after World War II, in addition to trying the Nazis for their crimes, the international community also abolished eugenic policies one after another. With the rise of…
philosophy technology commentary modernity
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2018年12月7日
The Disappearance of “Grace” — A Second Discussion of the He Jiankui Affair

Culture & Public Commentary2018.12.05
The Disappearance of “Grace” — A Second Discussion of the He Jiankui Affair
The commission came from Jiemian (for reprints, please contact Jiemian); when it was published, the title was changed to “Gene Technology and the Disappearance of Human Gratitude and Awe,” and the content was hardly altered. It is said that when my mother was pregnant with me, she heard some folk remedy from somewhere, saying that if she wanted my skin to be a bit fairer, she should eat watermelon every day. The result was that this remedy clearly had no effect; after eating dozens of watermelons, she still gave birth to me dark and sturdy… Wanting one’s child to be smart, beautiful, and healthy is every parent’s wish. In order…
technology commentary Heidegger modernity
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2018年12月5日
“Passing the Buck” Is the Greatest Danger Exposed by the He Jiankui Incident

Culture & Public Commentary2018.12.04
“Passing the Buck” Is the Greatest Danger Exposed by the He Jiankui Incident
The Chinese Science News commissioned this piece, which was published on December 4, 2018, on page 1, “Top News”. At the time of publication, the title was changed to “Who Should Bear Responsibility for the He Jiankui Incident,” and the content was also somewhat polished. I am posting the original draft here. Recently, the birth of two gene-edited babies has shocked the world and brought the issue of science-and-technology ethics into the public eye. In recent years, China’s scientific and technological development has been rapid, and in many fields it has already caught up with the international standard, even reaching world-class levels. But as the He Jiankui incident has exposed,…
China technology commentary tech ethics
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2018年12月4日
Can VR Save Us from Our Smartphone Addiction?

AI & the Future of Technology2018.11.12
Can VR Save Us from Our Smartphone Addiction?
This article was commissioned by Jiemian (for reprints, please contact Jiemian) and was adapted from an earlier article. Jiemian is a very good new media outlet that I have long followed, so being able to contribute was an honor; it feels much better than publishing in traditional newspapers or magazines. The original title at submission was “Could Being Addicted to VR Be a Kind of Salvation?” When it was published, it was changed to “Can VR Save Us from Our Smartphone Addiction?,” which is a bit more precise, so I will use that title here as well. The content was slightly altered in publication, so I am posting the original…
technology media McLuhan VR
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2018年11月12日
AR Glasses and the “Brain in a Vat”

AI & the Future of Technology2018.10.26
AR Glasses and the “Brain in a Vat”
My doctoral student Yao Yu recently gave a presentation in the reading seminar, discussing a phenomenological reconstruction of Putnam’s “brain in a vat” thought experiment. He chose the topic himself, and I thought it could be done, but I was very dissatisfied with what he actually produced. I won’t repeat my criticisms here; I’ll just briefly note here my own understanding of the “brain in a vat.” First of all, the reason Putnam proposed the thought experiment of the “brain in a vat” was absolutely not to reintroduce some new version of “external-world skepticism.” In the skeptical sense, there is nothing novel about a brain in a vat. I think…
technology phenomenology analytic philosophy VR
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2018年10月26日
On the Backboard — A Phenomenology of Beat Saber

Phenomenology & Heidegger2018.09.28
On the Backboard — A Phenomenology of Beat Saber
Recently I’ve basically been grinding Beat Saber in VR, so I should count as having reached the expert level, right? Among the official songs, aside from standard mode where everything is A rank and Full Combo, I’ve recently started tackling no-arrow mode and one-handed mode, and in both modes I’ve also got 3 FC clears each~ Just the other day, in the introductory philosophy of technology class, we had just finished discussing Stiegler’s tertiary retention, and one of the links in that discussion was a phenomenological analysis of music. Applying that whole phenomenological analysis here is actually kind of interesting. When people first get into the game Beat Saber, many…
philosophy technology phenomenology Introduction to Philosophy of Technology
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2018年9月28日
Selected Commentary on the Anji Conference

AI & the Future of Technology2018.09.03
Selected Commentary on the Anji Conference
Done with travelogues The “Phenomenology and Philosophy of Technology Conference” has, in the blink of an eye, already reached its 12th session. This year it was hosted by Zhejiang University and held at Baicaoyuan in Anji. I skipped last year’s conference in Xi’an and didn’t submit a paper this year either, but I still came, took on two commentaries, and so at least made some kind of contribution. In previous years, I would usually publish a very “sharp-tongued” long review of each conference, criticizing everyone’s presentation one by one. This tradition probably began with the Hailar conference in 2010. In fact, my first review was written at Wu’s request. I…
technology phenomenology self AI
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2018年9月3日