Last year, i couldn't stop thinking about @tsmullaney's “The Chinese Computer” book. I found myself recalling the days of my childhood when I “learned” to type, and how my name, “Zhao (曌),” with its uncommon character, was lost for years in the liminal spaces of early Chinese input systems. It was a small, personal reminder of the hubris we carry toward technology, and the unyielding constraints.

Today’s web is not monolithic. As AI dissolves into the mundane rhythms of our lives, what truths about human-machine symbiosis emerge from their omnipresence? Is our textual web—a latticework of fragmented thoughts—just a passing stage? @jasminewsun wrote an incisive piece about this threshold:

@BinaryHB @VitalikButerin 是的

@Kitty__Jenny @tsmullaney Thank you! It means a lot Kitty🫡

RT @Kitty__Jenny: @afrazhaowang @tsmullaney I loved this (especially the description of people like your aunt's ingenuity grappling with di…

RT @iandenisjohnson: OTD 2020: death of Li Wenliang.

@openblocklabs 🎊🎊🎊

RT @jasminewsun: people talk about algorithmic flattening of culture, but this erasure extends to language itself @afrazhaowang writes abo…

RT @tianyuf: Read this essay by @afrazhaowang on the precarious exercise of typing Chinese. Very glad we got to publish it!

RT @spaniel_bashir: both The Chinese Typewriter and The Chinese Computer are incredible histories + great piece

also shout out to @MichaelDean_0, offering rich feedback so meticulously it felt almost surgical during @1WriteofPassage

RT @saffronhuang: UHHH — if you work in tech and/or if the concept of “China” has ever crossed your mind, drop everything now and read this…

RT @tianyuf: I talked to Jasmine about China watching, techno-nationalism, and (as everyone is now required to) DeepSeek!

RT @pmarca: 😆

Best people!

RT @jasminewsun: new podcast — THE CHINA MODEL, featuring my favorite China guy @tianyuf we talk Falun Gong, DeepSeek censorship, and Ame…

“你眼中的你不是你，别人眼中的你也不是你，你眼中的别人才是真实的你” is the best quote i’ve read in 2025