Ted英语演讲：Amber Case我们现在都是半机器人
关于这场演讲：Amber Case说，科技使人类不断进展，我们成为盯着屏幕、点击鼠标的新种智人。我们现在依赖「外部大脑」（手机和计算机）通讯，记住，甚至活出第二种人生。但这些机器最终将连结我们，或是征服我们？Case对我们像生化机器人般的自我提出令人惊讶的观点。
Amber Case: We are all cyborgs now 我们现在都是半机器人
I would like to tell you all that you are all actually cyborgs, but not the cyborgs that you think. You’re not RoboCop, and you’re not Terminator, but you’re cyborgs every time you look at a computer screen or use one of your cell phone devices. So what’s a good definition for cyborg? Well, traditional definition is an organism “to which exogenous components have been added for the purpose of adapting to new environments.” That came from a 1960 paper on space travel. Because, if you think about it, space is pretty awkward; people aren’t supposed to be there. But humans are curious, and they like to add things to their bodies so they can go to the Alps one day and then become a fish in the sea the next.
我想告诉大家，你们其实都是生化机器人，但不是你们认为的那种生化机器人。你们不是机器战警、不是魔鬼终结者，但每当你们看着计算机屏幕，或用手机装置时，就成了生化机器人。那么，如何妥善定义生化机器人？嗯，传统的定义是，一个有机体「被加上外部组成，以达成适应新环境之目的。」这出自1960年的太空旅行文献。因为，想想看，太空相当令人不自在，不是人类想待的地方。但人类很好奇，喜欢在自己身体上加东加西，这样就可以今天登阿尔卑斯山，隔天变成一条海中鱼。
So let’s look at the concept of traditional anthropology. Somebody goes to another country, says, “How fascinating these people are, how interesting their tools are, how curious their culture is.” And then they write a paper, and maybe a few other anthropologists read it, and we think it’s very exotic. Well, what’s happening is that we’ve suddenly found a new species. I, as a cyborg anthropologist, have suddenly said, “Oh, wow. Now suddenly we’re a new form of homo sapiens. And look at these fascinating cultures. And look at these curious rituals that everybody’s doing around this technology. They’re clicking on things and staring at screens.”
因此，我们来看看传统的人类学概念。某人到另一个国家去，说：「这些人多么迷人，他们的工具多么有趣，他们的文化多么奇特。」然后，他们写了一份文献，也许其他一些人类学家读了，我们认为这独具异国情调。嗯，正在发生的情况是，我们突然发现一个新物种，身为生化机器人类学家的我突然说，「喔，哇！我们突然成了新种智人，看看这些迷人的文化，看看这些奇特的仪式，大家都在使用这个科技，他们点击鼠标、盯着屏幕。」
Now there’s a reason why I study this, versus traditional anthropology. And the reason is that tool use, in the beginning, for thousands and thousands of years, everything has been a physical modification of self. It has helped us to extend our physical selves, go faster, hit things harder, and there’s been a limit on that. But now what we’re looking at is not an extension of the physical self, but an extension of the mental self. And because of that, we’re able to travel faster, communicate differently. And the other thing that happens is that we’re all carrying around little Mary Poppins technology. We can put anything we want into it, and it doesn’t get heavier, and then then we can take anything out. What does the inside of your computer actually look like? Well, if you print it out, it looks like a thousand pounds of material that you’re carrying around all the time. And if you actually lose that information, it means that you suddenly have this loss in your mind, that you suddenly feel like something’s missing, except you aren’t able to see it, so it feels like a very strange emotion.
我研究这个有个原因，与传统人类学对照，原因是工具的使用。最初，在千万年前，一切均是物体本质的改变，这有助于扩展人体本质，使我们走得更快、击打物体力道加重，但却有限制。现在我们审视的，不是人体本质的扩展，而是心智本质的扩展。因此我们能更快速传讯，用不同方式通讯。而发生的另一个情况是，我们都随身携带小仙女Mary Poppins的技能，可以把任何想要之物放入，它不会加重，我们可以任意取用。计算机内部实际模样为何？嗯，如果将它打印出来，会像是一千磅的物体，你总是随身携带。如果你真的失去这些信息，这意味着你脑海中突然失去这些，会突然觉得像是失去什么，只是你无法看见它，这感觉很奇怪。
The other thing that happens is you have a second self. Whether you like it or not, you’re starting to show up online, and people are interacting with your second self when you’re not there. And so you have to be careful about leaving your front line open, which is basically your Facebook wall, so that people don’t write on it in the middle of the night — because it’s very much the equivalent. And suddenly we have to start to maintain our second self. You have to present yourself in digital life in a similar way that you would in your analog life. So, in the same way that you wake up, take a shower and get dressed, you have to learn to do that for your digital self. And the problem is that a lot of people now, especially adolescents, have to go through two adolescencies. They have to go through their primary one, that’s already awkward, and then they go through their second self’s adolescence. And that’s even more awkward because there’s an actual history of what they’ve gone through online. And anybody coming in new to technology, is an adolescent online right now. And so it’s very awkward, and it’s very difficult for them to do those things.
另外会发生的是，你拥有第二个自我。不论喜欢与否，你开始现身网络世界。当你不在在线时，人们与你第二个自我产生互动。你对这件事得很小心，就是让你的社交前线公开，基本上是指你Facebook的涂鸦墙，这样人们就不会半夜在上面留言，因为这效用是相当的。突然间，我们得开始经营第二个自我，你必须在数字生活中，以类似模拟你人生的方式展现自我。因此，你以同样的方式起床、洗澡、着装，你得为你的数位自我学会做这些。问题是，现在有很多人，特别是青少年，得度过两个青春期。他们得度过原有的，这已令人很不自在；还得度过第二个自我的青春期，这令人更不自在。因为有个真实的过去，是他们在网络上经历过的。任何接触这项科技的新手，立即成了网络版的青少年，这令人非常不自在。对他们来说，做那些事情非常困难。
So when I was little, my dad would sit me down at night and say, “I’m going to teach you about time and space in the future.” And I said, “Great.” And he said one day, “What’s the shortest distance between two points?” And I said, “Well, that’s a straight line. You told me that yesterday. I thought I was very clever.” He said, “No, no, no. Here’s a better way.” He took a piece of paper, drew A and B on one side and the other and folded them together so where A and B touched. And he said, “That is the shortest distance between two points.” And I said, “Dad, dad, dad, how do you do that?” He said, “Well, you just bend time and space, it takes an awful lot of energy, and that’s just how you do it.” And I said, “I want to do that.” And he said, “Well, okay.” And so, when I went to sleep for the next 10 or 20 years, I was thinking at night, “I want to be the first person to create a wormhole, to make things accelerate faster. And I want to make a time machine.” I was always sending messages to my future self using tape recorders.
小时候，我爸会在晚上要我坐下，说，「我要教你未来的时间和空间。」我说，「太好了!」有一天他说，「两点间最短的距离是什么？」我说，「嗯，是直线，你昨天告诉过我，我想我很聪明。」他说，「不，不，有个更好的解答。」他拿起一张纸，在两侧各画上AB两点，将它折叠在一起，使AB两点接触。他说，「这是两点之间最短的距离。」我说，「爸爸，爸爸，你怎么办到的？」他说，「嗯，你刚刚扭曲了时间和空间，这需要非常多能量，就是这么办到的。」我说，「我想试试看。」他说，「嗯，好吧!」之后一、二十年间，当我入睡时，我在夜里思考，「我想成为第一个创造虫洞的人，让事物能加速得更快，我想制造一个时光机器。」我一直使用录音机发送讯息给未来的自己。
But then what I realized when I went to college is that technology doesn’t just get adopted because it works; it gets adopted because people use it and it’s made for humans. So I started studying anthropology. And when I was writing my thesis on cell phones, I realized that everyone was carrying around wormholes in their pocket. They weren’t physically transporting themselves, they were mentally transporting themselves. They would click on a button, and they would be connected as A to B immediately. And I thought, “Oh, wow. I found it. This is great.”
但我上了大学后，意识到，这项科技不只是因为可行才被采用，它能被采用是因为人类使用它，它是为了人类而创造，所以我开始研究人类学。当我写关于手机的论文时，我意识到，每个人口袋里都携带着虫洞。他们不是靠身体传递自我，而是靠心智传递。他们按下一个按钮，立即使AB两点连接。我想，「哦，哇，我发现了，真棒!」
So over time, time and space have compressed because of this. You can stand on one side of the world, whisper something and be heard on the other. One of the other ideas that comes around is that you have a different type of time on every single device that you use. Every single browser tab gives you a different type of time. And because of that, you start to dig around for your external memories — where did you leave them? So now we’re all these paleontologists that are digging for things that we’ve lost on our external brains that we’re carrying around in our pockets. And that incites a sort of panic architecture. Oh no, where’s this thing? We’re all “I Love Lucy” on a great assembly line of information, and we can’t keep up.
随着时间推移，时间和空间已因此而压缩。你可以站在世界的一头低声说几句话，在世界另一头就可以听见。另一个涌现的想法是，在你所使用的每个设备上，都形成不同类型的时间。每个浏览器分页提供不同类型的时间，正因为如此，你开始挖掘你的外在记忆，你将它们遗留在何处？所以，现在我们都是古生物学家，正挖掘我们遗留在口袋里、随身携带的外在大脑中的东西。这激起了一种恐慌状态，哦，不，这东西在哪？我们都是一个神奇信息装配在线的《我爱露西》，但我们跟不上它。
And so what happens is, when we bring all that into the social space, we end up checking our phones all the time. So we have this thing called ambient intimacy. It’s not that we’re always connected to everybody, but at anytime we can connect to anyone we want. And if you were able to print out everybody in your cell phone, the room would be very crowded. These are the people that you have access to right now, in general — all of these people, all of your friends and family that you can connect to.
发生的情况是，当我们把这所有都带入社交空间，最后结果是我们老是检查手机，所以有个叫做环境亲密度的东西。这不是说我们总是联系每个人，但我们随时都可以联系想联络的人。如果能打印出手机中的每日讯息，这房间将会很拥挤。这些是你可以立即联系的人，一般来说是所有这些人，所有你可以联络的朋友和家人。
And so there are some psychological effects that happen with this. One I’m really worried about is that people aren’t taking time for mental reflection anymore, and that they aren’t slowing down and stopping, being around all those people in the room all the time that are trying to compete for their attention on the simultaneous time interfaces, paleontology and panic architecture. They’re not just sitting there. And really, when you have no external input, that is a time when there is a creation of self, when you can do long-term planning, when you can try and figure out who you really are. And then, once you do that, you can figure out how to present your second self in a legitimate way, instead of just dealing with everything as it comes in — and oh, I have to do this, and I have to do this, and I have to do this. And so this is very important. I’m really worried that, especially kids today, they’re not going to be dealing with this down time, that they have an instantaneous button-clicking culture, and that everything comes to them, and that they become very excited about it and very addicted to it.
也有一些心理效应随之发生。我确实很担心的一点是，当总是被所有人包围在这空间中时，人们不再花时间自省，他们无法放慢及停下脚步，这一切都试图争夺他们的注意力，在古生物学和恐慌状态同时发生的交界点上，他们不只是坐在那里。确实，当没有外在信息输入，正是拥有自我创造的时刻，此时你可以做长期规划，可以设法弄清楚自己到底是谁。一旦你这么做，就可以了解如何以合理的方式呈现第二个自我。不只是处理所有迎面而来的事，哦，我必须做这个、这个、或这个，这是非常重要的。我真的很担心，特别是当今的孩子，他们还无法处理这个尴尬期。他们有个快速点击鼠标的文化，一切向他们迎面而来的事都使他们非常兴奋、极度上瘾。
So if you think about it, the world hasn’t stopped either. It has its own external prosthetic devices, and these devices are helping us all to communicate and interact with each other. But when you actually visualize it, all the connections that we’re doing right now — this is an image of the mapping of the Internet — it doesn’t look technological; it actually looks very organic. This is the first time in the entire history of humanity that we’ve connected in this way. And it’s not that machines are taking over; it’s that they’re helping us to be more human, helping us to connect with each other.
如果想想这一点，世界并没有停住脚步。它拥有自己的外部人造装置，这些装置正帮助我们所有人沟通及彼此交流，但当你实际将其可视化，所有我们目前进行的连接，是一个因特网所映射的形象。它看起来不像科技，事实上相当像有机体。这在人类历史中是第一次，我们以这种方式连接。并不是说机器正接管一切，而是它们正帮助我们更加人性化，帮助我们彼此联系。
The most successful technology gets out of the way and helps us live our lives. And really, it ends up being more human than technology, because we’re co-creating each other all the time. And so this is the important point that I like to study: that things are beautiful, that it’s still a human connection; it’s just done in a different way. We’re just increasing our humanness and our ability to connect with each other, regardless of geography. So that’s why I study cyborg anthropology.
最成功的科技开了一条路，帮助我们过生活。事实上，它最终将变得更具人性而非技术性，因为我们一直彼此共同创造，所以这是我想研究很重要的一点。这些事物是美丽的，仍是一种人类连结，只是用不同方式进行。我们只是增加了我们的人性、彼此联系的能力，不受地理限制，这就是为什么我研究生化机器人类学。
Thank you.谢谢。
(Applause) （掌声）