Therefore, the things you originally relied on are actually very fragile｜Relay interview 082 Jack

The original article was published in Xiaoniao Literature

After chatting with Jack, I spent a long time digesting his confidence. There is no doubt that he is a person who is well aware of what society has become today, and he is also a person who knows exactly what kind of life he likes. His confidence lies in the fact that many people will find these two things inconceivable. Under the premise of reconciliation, he had a child and tried to remove all possible "shackles" from the child without making even the slightest compromise. As for his own life, it was the same. Rather than hiding these intentions, he seeks to connect more people to solidify this lifestyle.

"As for self-confidence, my own interpretation is that a certain general knowledge and familiarity with the working mechanisms of media and technology under the neath can disenchant experts, technology, consumption, performance, etc.; coupled with an interest in the world itself, I If you don't set the goal of achieving something in life, you will naturally not be in a more fulfilling state of so-called political depression."

When I asked why he didn't leave since his pursuit was so incompatible with the existing environment, he said: "Because you have a lot of things you can do, a lot."

These descriptions may be too general, so let's go back to the original question of who Jack is. Jack originally majored in mathematics in college, but then the school opened a major in software engineering, which was open to on-campus admissions for the first time, so he went to study. That was the year he got his own computer for the first time.

Jack was born in 1982 in Jiangxi. At this age, he can catch up with many good times sooner rather than later. In addition, he is studying in university in Shanghai, which has more convenient conditions: computers have been iterated to a more user-friendly stage, but still retain a little bit of hard-core nature; Internet basics The facilities have been laid, information comes and goes freely, and high walls of ethics and supervision have not been built, but people still have curiosity and sincerity among themselves. The public space of the Internet is called BBS, not a community yet; in the era of traffic, the arrival of Before, the Internet still retained a nerd temperament... In Jack's words, he was able to grow based on his interests. This brings two benefits. One is the opportunity to experience all aspects of the computer world, and the other is that you don’t have to follow a fixed track to do things. Although there was no such thing as an “independent developer” at the time, I knew that as long as my toolbox was big enough, I would be successful. You can start creating your own world. These two perceptions were crucial to his later life and provided the foundation for his self-confidence.

Jack's work history is not complicated. He first worked in technical security support for a larger game company. After working in Lujiazui for a year, he moved to Guangzhou as the company expanded, where he remains today. In the meantime, he started a business with his friends in a gaming community. It was not successful in terms of results, but he began to think about what a product was. At that time, he had a wish to put into his own product what he was first "inspired by" on the Internet. in the product.

"what is that?"

"It's just a mix of people, each with their own strengths, colliding with opinions and sparking discussions. It was never particularly standardized, with a lot of spitting, meaningless quarrels and impolite behavior, but compared to now, everyone has a certain Self-awareness means that everyone’s motives are relatively simple, and everyone will try to understand each other.”

In terms of product form, he has tried many things, all of which were ahead of the arrival of the real wave: game live streaming, big data management based on social platforms... "I have been very happy in the whole process, and I didn't realize much about the so-called time." Passage. Only after I am completely independent will I choose the so-called direction." Jack said: "But whether it is the action space, scale or business, I have not seen anything particularly interesting. It is just the process of the demise of the original things. Only then did I discover which things were more important and wanted to maintain those things. At this time, I had to give up and extract the most important parts, so I wouldn’t care too much about business or scale.”

There was a stage after leaving the company when Jack still wanted to develop a community that included both content and tools to allow users to create their own content. This idea stems from his dissatisfaction with large domestic social platforms and his vigilance about the general environment such as registration and technical qualifications. In the end, he stopped at the demo (beta version), not only because of the objective difficulties, but also because target users can easily circumvent the wall and use similar foreign software. The latter's design and environment are actually very close to his ideal product. Under such circumstances, he began to wonder, how would an offline community operate?

By this time, Jack was a father. His daughter was born in 2013. Before her daughter was born, he was thinking about education. "How did I grow up, what is learning like, where does motivation come from, etc..." He is the kind of liberal: academic qualifications and diplomas are not important, the system must be kept away, and under this premise, observe the existing He thinks the educational environment is useless.

"Don't talk about ideological issues, quality issues or children's unhappiness. Even if you don't mention these, you will still find that nothing about it is right." The so-called "right", in Jack's view, is It can educate a complete person: what kind of self a person should have, and what kind of person should be in public space - including virtual public space. Based on this standard, Jack not only rarely finds educational resource providers with whom there is consensus, but also finds some public resources, such as the media, to be untrustworthy.

“You see how the whole online space flourishes, and then you see it die out, and that’s when you realize: How can we give kids something that’s developmental but not so constrained by the medium? "

To put it simply, Jack hopes to create a cleaner world for his and more children - this is my way of saying it, and his way of saying it is, "doing it better than a negative thing, this is actually It's very simple." I can imagine what kind of feedback his statement will cause. Some people will think it is whimsical, and some people will think it is arrogant. Looking at it from another perspective, no matter what, what he wants to do is not that simple.

The key lies in the "toolbox". The technical ability allows Jack to avoid the pressure that many people have to endure, while the information vision allows him to understand what he should do. Jack and his wife tried many things, such as child care organizations in church organizations and different home schools. They quickly excluded all kinds of home schools because "most of them are still pursuing a so-called shortcut and are not educating a complete person." Obviously, Jack and his wife don't just want their children to skip the college entrance examination.

Later, they discovered that they could only gradually build a trustworthy network by themselves through peer-to-peer connections. For a while, Jack's wife would drive all over Guangzhou to look for "suitable" families. The clues came from different community forums or other online communities. If she found one, she would make an appointment to hang out. If they found a match, they would establish a long-term relationship. Gradually, A kind of self-organized group has accumulated. Jack's daughter plays with a regular group of friends, not classmates, not relatives, not neighbors, not even necessarily the same age, but "right". Out of a desire to try everything, my daughter also went to a public school for one semester, but then she stopped going.

After contacting more children and parents, Jack discovered that "consensus" was scarce. Take games for example. What surprised him was that many people’s understanding of games was still at the “savage” stage when he was a child. It was Jingyuan who recommended Jack to do the relay . They met through a nature education organization called Dodo. Jingyuan trusted Jack's understanding of education, and they established some cooperation with each other, including technical support in product development and activities such as workshops (watching Edward Yang's "Yi Yi" with many people and then writing). Because of this, Jack began to have in-depth chats with people on WeChat. Before that, he was a person who didn’t use WeChat very much.

Jack does not think of himself as a person who devotes himself to education. Education is just a way for him to do things, which can bring together many of his current understandings. For example, he currently plans to develop an independent game that parents and children can play together. There are also plans to develop digital tools that will make intergenerational interactions more convenient. He no longer pursues building an online community, "because you find that everyone is so insensitive to technology and media, the foundation (of the community) will be very weak." Even when making products, he no longer thinks about scale, but only thinks about Achieve specific effects for specific people.

"Look more at people, see what their real side is, and what their deeper needs are. How do you want to let him develop and how to let him realize his ideal, or for many people, this step has not been achieved, and It’s this person who doesn’t know whether he can have ideals and how to distinguish wishes from ideals. When these are not available, you know that you shouldn’t pursue so-called needs to build products, you will pursue something deeper.”

I have compiled more of Jack’s thoughts in oral form during the chat with him as follows. These thoughts are closely related to why he formed such an educational concept:

My discussion on education is actually based on personal practical needs. I call it "completely personal publicity." I don't think I'm a very public person.

I am born in the 1980s. I came from that era and entered the Internet industry purely based on interest. At that time, the Internet was not popular at all, it was very trendy. My early colleagues came from all walks of life, and many of them were self-taught based on their interests. This is completely different from the current training and induction, which makes the entire industry particularly interesting.

We take it for granted that all education actually points to what kind of self you have in the end, and what kind of person you should be in the virtual public community, that is, the Internet.

I have seen the booming development of the entire cyberspace, and then seen it gradually disappear. Only then did I realize how we can give our children something that "can develop without being too restricted by the media." When communicating with other parents, I rarely meet people who can talk openly about these things and the path of growth as a person. They may talk to you about some troubles and educational methods, but there is no one to talk to about educational goals or processes.

I have always had a lot of autonomy in my work or so-called entrepreneurial process, but compared with reality, this autonomy cannot be transformed into much initiative. Because all discussions are still limited to a very huge framework.

(A product) has to be pursued in terms of business and scale, right? In the past, when I was in the process of prosperity and upward progress, I didn't think much about what the society needed, because although we were still in a relatively open Internet at that time, we could still experience the various benefits of an upward space every day. , but I didn’t realize what plans and plans I had to make for this thing. Yes, so although I had a high degree of freedom at that time and could decide a lot of things, I didn't realize what I could do with these things. I was just pursuing the goals of the company and being part of a prosperous community.

Later technologies, even if we exclude the relatively hot AI, the earlier Bitcoin, and Web 3.0, even if we exclude these, there are always new things emerging technically. So it’s not that there’s a problem with technology, it’s that you definitely can’t just be a technology optimist. After 2012, business itself is weak, or has to collude with many things. You will find that it is not a very strong force, and it will not necessarily cause anything to happen. No matter whether it is capital or technology, they will not cause anything to happen. .

Therefore, the things you originally relied on are actually very fragile.

Chunjiang Plumbing Duck Prophet, our (in this industry) feeling is actually very obvious. For example, forbidden words first appeared in game forums and chat rooms, where the earliest text censorship appeared.

I read a lot of content, and I read it very early. It’s not that there is one public event that particularly moves me, but I remember all of these public events. Then I will assume that everyone around me knows that all public events, big and small, are not something I suddenly wake up to one day. Of course, I know that not everyone knows it from the data, but on the other hand, I feel that at least people in all industries know it, at least people who are online like me should know it.

This is not actually the case. Especially regarding technology and capital, until now, I have met many people who are new to the industry, or who have entered the industry a little later, and they still have many, many illusions. As I interacted with more people and compared myself with younger people, I realized how obvious this loss was.

Some people have entered a state of sequelae: Although their position is the same as yours, their starting point is different. He knew the loss, but he didn't know what happened before the loss. It's weird, especially for very young people. I feel like everyone has lost common sense. None of them remember those things, and none of them knew they were discussing things we had discussed more than a decade ago.

I live in a world that is real to me, and it is real, right? For example, I have close friends who I can discuss things with. At that time, you could discuss things casually on the Internet, right? You won't feel like you are unique. Although I don’t talk about these things every day, everyone will discuss social issues, especially the atmosphere in Guangzhou. I quite liked it at first. This place is close to Hong Kong, and I have experienced a more eye-opening atmosphere in Hong Kong.

So I'll always feel like I'm not special. It didn’t seem to be long after that, it seemed that people from the 90’s or 95’s generation, my cousin’s generation, I found that I could no longer speak to them on these topics. It was then that I realized that we are perceptive people.

At first, I didn’t think I needed to stand up and do anything. I thought I just had to do my part. Of course, it wasn’t about setting a box for myself on what I should do. It wasn’t like that. It was about how you treat yourself. If you make too many demands, you will feel that as long as there are enough people like you, the society will be OK. So there is no sense of “standing up and doing something”.

Now that I meet more people, younger people and people from different industries, I will find that many parts of this society are completely stuck in the era before the window period. Everyone's understanding of "media", their understanding of "diversity", etc... People of your age, or actually people who are 5 to 10 years younger than you, are actually stuck before the window period. You You will feel that everything has degraded obviously.

In the (computer) industry, I have also seen its complexity and richness, so I am actually training myself consciously or unconsciously not to rely on any one company or anything that is stagnant. For a long time, we would say, "You must be on the front line of technology, no matter how you do management." In fact, it is to put yourself in a state of "knowing a little bit of everything and being able to do anything". In the end (what you do) just depends on you knowing what you want to do, and there is no saying whether you can do it or not - of course, this is theoretical Yes - there's still a lot you can't do.

So I have been preparing to do something. If I find something I can do, I can just do it. Essentially, nothing can restrict me. Ultimately, I thought about what I can do in this environment. Of course, the space for movement will be smaller, but I still feel that there are many things that can be done. I have not felt the "loss of mobility", or it is not so intuitive.

Later, I came into contact with people from different industries, including innovative education, charity or art in a broad sense. Only then did I feel that my preparations were good, but consensus with everyone is also very important. This is actually completely different from the consensus I had in startup companies before. So to answer your question, "Why don't you leave?" Because I have a lot of things I can do. Yes, there are a lot of things I can do.

Q: Have you encountered any interesting things or people recently?

A: I have been interested in game engines very early on, but it wasn’t until I was playing games with my children that I started to look at more detailed things, such as how to model. Then I discovered that very complete tools have been developed around the world, and I was very excited, such as things like visual modeling, and now AI has been added. You'll find there's so much room for action.

Q: What problem do you want to solve recently?

A: Let’s reorganize our home and organize it according to the concept of a public space. I mentioned the concept of a study room before. When there are no external conditions, home is actually a natural alternative place. Is this a problem to be solved?

Q: Who would you recommend to take over?

A: Liao Xixiong. A mutual friend of ours said of her: "If you do this for the rest of your life until you die, then you will be a saint." I don’t think I agree with her things or methods, nor do I think education is something a saint should do, but she is the more “real” part of my understanding of the entire false environment.

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