Today, I happened to browse through Brother Li Ruyi's blog and unexpectedly found that he is following dynamicland. It's truly amazing how fate works in this world.
Just recording some stories so that I don't forget them in the future.
I started following Brother Li Ruyi around 2019. I came across an article he wrote on Telegram, which talked about a slogan from Cathay Pacific Airways, "radiant and spirited." This phrase caught my attention as I have a preference for such classical expressions. However, the article was written in Cantonese from the perspective of an advertisement, which left a deep impression on me.
At that time, I had just started using Telegram, so I searched for and followed his channel. I always thought he was from Hong Kong.
A year passed by in a flash, and I didn't have any particular impression of him, except for the phrase "radiant and spirited." I occasionally glanced at the other content on his channel, treating it as a glimpse into the words of a Hong Kong person. I was quite interested in exploring the spiritual world of someone who grew up in Hong Kong, so I considered his blog as a daily ramble.
Then something magical happened. I didn't expect that the "Hong Kong person" whose spiritual world I had been peeping into would have more and more connections with me.
In 2020, because I had been coding for a few months at a cryptocurrency company, I got to know a group of people in this field, including some entrepreneurs and investors. Due to my interest in decentralized social media, I happened to meet MasterPa. Later, we had several in-depth conversations about decentralization, net neutrality, NFTs, and more.
During my conversations with MasterPa, he mentioned his podcast on IPN and brought up Li Ruyi, recommending the One Day World podcast to me. It was then that I realized that this Li Ruyi was the same person I occasionally read about, the "Hong Kong person."
At that time, Wang Xiong and I had a conversation about decentralization and cypherpunks, so we said that if there was a chance, I must get to know this legendary radiant and spirited Li Ruyi.
But who would have known that due to the pandemic, quarantine, and various other reasons, I couldn't even go to Beijing, let alone meet MasterPa in person. The current situation is worrying, and the Qin Dynasty's calamity is just a few years away, so I didn't stay in China for long and headed south to Oceania early on.
In 2022, I specifically collected Li Ruyi's blog posts and read deleted answers on Zhihu for a while.
Li Ruyi covers a wide range of topics, from cryptocurrency, the evolution of the internet, cultural appropriation, education, music, and more. But today, when I saw his article about dynamicland, I was still somewhat surprised.
I have a friend in Guangzhou called Nightwalker, who should have collaborated with Dynamicland on some content. They are a group of people who idolize Alan Kay. I have had a few in-depth conversations with Nightwalker about personal computing, object-oriented programming, Scratch, and more.
Because they also have a deep interest in the archaeology of the internet and its forms, I often think about decentralization from the perspective of personal computing, as well as the transformation of internet structures and the enhancement or enslavement of tools for humans.
I have never seen any domestic tech media or podcasts pay attention to the work of Dynamicland, or even mention it much. Few people on the RSS feeds or Telegram channels I subscribe to talk about it.
Seeing Brother Li Ruyi's blog post today, I couldn't help but think that those who truly pay attention to these issues are all in a small circle.
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Note: Yexingren, MasterPa, and Li Ruyi are all names they use on the internet; searching for these nicknames plus their names will lead to their blogs.