I Saw the Gentlest Side of Technology

In fact, on the day I published the call for submissions for the “Simulation of Everything” column, my understanding of simulation technology was probably only enough to fill a sticky note.

In my vague imagination, simulation was something distant—belonging to wind tunnels, to satellites, to a world that could only be explained using Greek letter formulas in academic papers. Between it and my daily life, there was a glass wall that I couldn’t quite articulate but could feel.

So when the first submission appeared in my email inbox, with the subject line “Teeth Straightening”, my hand paused over the mouse.

Figure 1 Visualization of simulation analysis and generation of correction plans

I read it all the way through. When I reached the part where the author wrote, “We can finally ‘see’ the power of time, and be certain that it is steadily moving toward the desired destination,” the hallway outside my door suddenly fell silent. I sat in front of the computer screen for a long while, unsure whether I was processing a popular science submission or reading someone’s inner monologue about a long wait.

It turned out that the distance between simulation and life could be this close—as close as a tooth being slowly corrected.

That article eventually became the opening piece of the column’s first issue.

01

I Work as a “Porter” in an International Organization

To be honest, my daily routine is not particularly glamorous. 

It involves either reading and editing manuscripts, or planning publicity and thinking about how to make simulation stories reach a wider audience. 

Which type of readers would stop to engage with this topic? What kind of opening would make people read an article to the very end? When a call for submissions goes out and there is no response for several days, how should I rephrase it to send out a second round of notices?

When friends asked about my experience interning at an international organization, they imagined me in a scene like this: surrounded by flags of many nations, dressed formally, sitting in a conference room full of multinational and cross-cultural people.

But I had to honestly confess: I am a “porter”.

I move the author’s words into the reader’s eyes.

However, after doing this for a long time, I gradually discovered that the act of moving itself is a discipline.

What is worth moving, how to move it, and where to move it to—behind these three questions lies the true weight of this job.

02

Some Manuscripts Have No Data, Yet Carry Great Weight 

I have never personally experienced how the United Nations system operates, but I can sense that it is a highly standardized structure—every document has its designated system, and every resolution has a traceable procedure behind it.

The authority of international organizations, to some extent, grows precisely from this strict adherence to norms. 

But the Asia Simulation Federation (ASIASIM) is different. It is more like a plant that is sprouting, like bamboo—you can almost hear it growing.

I once received a special submission. The author had done simulations for a steel plant, and in the article, he wrote about a real little boy.

A child who had lost his father asked him: “Can you use simulation to simulate Dad?” The father had died from a work-related injury.

The author did not provide a technical answer; he simply wrote: “But that’s a human being.”

Just four short words, yet they carried a weight that left people silent. 

Yes, human emotions are far too complex. 

Just like this article—it had no data, no charts, and could hardly be classified into any standard category of popular science. 

But when I finished reading it, I truly understood:

What simulation technology seeks to reach has never been merely precision and efficiency. 

What it truly touches is people’s understanding of reality, their helplessness in the face of loss, and that faint desire for the world to be foreseeable and controllable. 

At that moment, I was deeply moved. Simulation was no longer just the language of technology; it became a way to converse with reality and to reconcile with uncertainty. 

We had been waiting for such a manuscript for a long time—writing that stands not on the crutches of jargon, but on genuine emotion. The moment it arrived, we published it immediately.

03 

Simulation Is Becoming Within Reach 

In the call for submissions, there was a line that read: “Simulation is not out of reach, but within reach.”

This sentence was abstract. But one by one, the concrete submissions we received gradually pulled it back into real, everyday life.

A postdoctoral fellow wrote in his submission that while working on the R&D and design of complex products, he suddenly realized that the equipment prototype in the simulation environment was essentially the same thing as the toy airplane he had repeatedly taken apart as a child—before facing a real, complex system, you first complete a logical exercise within a controllable boundary.

Another student involved in building a virtual experiment platform described the details of recreating the tactile feel of using a vernier caliper:

When the virtual caliper touched the edge of a book, it would not pass through or stick flush, but would be “gently pushed aside, just like in reality.” Only by continuously applying the right amount of force would the caliper slowly clamp down.

And when the micrometer touched an object, it would even emit a familiar “clicking” sound.

Vernier caliper simulation experiment. Image source: Internet

04 

Working on an Unfinished Foundation 

Of course, life as an intern is not always about being moved or having moments of epiphany.

More often, it is about dealing with images that are too low in resolution, making a picture that is blurry as a mosaic become clear; or about discovering, after a post has already been sent out, that a punctuation mark has been quietly placed in the wrong position—so you frantically open the backend, checking every line, just to ensure the article reaches readers in its most complete form. 

Working in a growing international organization is a bit like building a house on a foundation that hasn’t been fully laid yet.

It gives you the opportunity to participate in real work, but it also forces you to confront all the roughness and uncertainty.

Compared to the sense of stability that comes from being backed by a mature institution like the United Nations system, here, more often than not, you are standing on an empty plot of land, actively judging the direction to take. 

But there is one thing, I think, that both have in common: whether it is a giant organization advancing global issues or a new alliance focused on Asia’s simulation ecosystem, what truly gives these institutions warmth has never been documents and procedures, but rather the individuals willing to speak up and the real stories they tell.

05 

We Have Always Been Searching for Stories Like These 

I have read the two most recent submissions many times. 

One was written by a doctoral student working on simulation verification. He described staring at the error curve on the screen, watching it “from an initial state of divergence, through repeated adjustments of logic and constraints, finally converging steadily within the expected error range”—he said that sense of solidity in that moment was the most enjoyable instant for any science and engineering student writing code. 

The other was written by a student involved in a virtual laboratory. At the end, he said that a popular experiment that once required fighting for a spot to access had now become “a daily learning scenario for all students to repeatedly explore.”

One is a converging curve.

One is an open door. 

I marked them both as “pending publication”, and thought quietly to myself: 

This—this is exactly the kind of story we have always been searching for.