這具有廣度而且讓人重新思考科技的演講是從 TEDx 阿姆斯特丹中選出, 凱文·凱利 引導大家檢視科技對我們生命的意義 -- 從個人層次的影響推論到宇宙中的定位.
---------------------------------------
I want to talk about my investigations into what technology means in our lives -- not just our immediate life, but in the cosmic sense, in the kind of long history of the world and our place in the world: What is this stuff? What is the significance? And so, I want to kind of go through my little story of what I found out.
And one of the first things that I started to investigate was the history of the name of technology. And in the United States there is a State of the Union address given by every president since 1790. And each one of those is really kind of summing up the most important things for the United States at that time. If you search for the word "technology,"it was not used until 1952. So, technology was sort of absent from everybody's thinking until 1952, which happened to be the year of my birth. And obviously, technology had existed before then, but we weren't aware of it, and so it was sort of an awakening of this force in our life.
I actually did research to find out the first use of the word "technology." It was in 1829, and it was invented by a guy who was starting a curriculum -- a course, bringing together all the kinds of arts and crafts, and industry -- and he called it "Technology." And that's the very first use of the word.
So, what is this stuff that we're all consumed by, and bothered by? Alan Kay calls it, "Technology is anything that was invented after you were born." (Laughter) Which is sort of the idea that we normally have about what technology is: It's all that new stuff. It's not roads, or penicillin, or factory tires; it's the new stuff. My friend Danny Hillis says kind of a similar one, he says, "Technology is anything that doesn't work yet." (Laughter) Which is, again, a sense that it's all new.
But we know that it's just not new. It actually goes way back, and what I want to suggest is it goes a long way back. So, another way to think about technology, what it means, is to imagine a world without technology. If we were to eliminate every single bit of technology in the world today -- and I mean everything, from blades to scrapers to cloth -- we as a species would not live very long. We would die by the billions, and very quickly: The wolves would get us, we would be defenseless, we would be unable to grow enough food, or find enough food.
Even the hunter-gatherers used some elementary tools. And so, they had minimal technology, but they had some technology. And if we study those hunter-gatherer tribesand the Neanderthal, which are very similar to early man, we find out a very curious thing about this world without technology, and this is a kind of a curve of their average age.
There are no Neanderthal fossils that are older than 40 years old that we've ever found,and the average age of most of these hunter-gatherer tribes is 20 to 30. There are very few young infants because they die -- high mortality rate -- and there's very few old people.And so the profile is sort of for your average San Francisco neighborhood: a lot of young people. And if you go there, you say, "Hey, everybody's really healthy." Well, that's because they're all young.
And the same thing with the hunter-gatherer tribes and early man is that you didn't live beyond the age of 30. So, it was a world without grandparents. And grandparents are very important, because they are the transmitter of cultural evolution and information. Imagine a world and basically everybody was 20 to 30 years old. How much learning can you do?You can't do very much learning in your own life, it's so short, and there's nobody to pass on what you do learn. So, that's one aspect.
It was a very short life. But at the same time anthropologists know that most hunter-gatherer tribes of the world, with that very little technology, actually did not spend a very long time gathering the food that they needed: three to six hours a day. Some anthropologists call that the original affluent society. Because they had banker hours basically. So, it was possible to get enough food. But when the scarcity came when the highs and lows and the droughts came, then people went into starvation. And that's why they didn't live very long.
So, what technology brought, through the very simple tools like these stone tools here --even something as small as this -- the early bands of humans were actually able to eliminate to extinction about 250 megafauna animals in North America when they first arrived 10,000 years ago. So, long before the industrial age we've been affecting the planet on a global scale, with just a small amount of technology.
The other thing that the early man invented was fire. And fire was used to clear out, and again, affected the ecology of grass and whole continents, and was used in cooking. It enabled us to actually eat all kinds of things. It was sort of, in a certain sense, in a McLuhan sense, an external stomach, in the sense that it was cooking food that we could not eat otherwise. And if we don't have fire, we actually could not live. Our bodies have adapted to these new diets. Our bodies have changed in the last 10,000 years.
So, with that little bit of technology, humans went from a small band of 10,000 or so -- the same number as Neanderthals everywhere -- and we suddenly exploded. With the invention of language around 50,000 years ago, the number of humans exploded, and very quickly became the dominant species on the planet. And they migrated into the rest of the world at two kilometers per year until, within several tens of thousands of years, we occupied every single watershed on the planet and became the most dominant species,with a very small amount of technology.
And even at that time, with the introduction of agriculture, 8,000, 10,000 years ago we started to see climate change. So, climate change is not a new thing. What's new is just the degree of it. Even during the agricultural age there was climate change. And so, already small amounts of technology were transforming the world. And what this means, and where I'm going, is that technology has become the most powerful force in the world.All the things that we see today that are changing our lives, we can always trace back to the introduction of some new technology.
So, it's a force that is the most powerful force that has been unleashed on this planet, and in such a degree that I think that it's become our -- who we are. In fact, our humanity, and everything that we think about ourselves is something that we've invented. So, we've invented ourselves. Of all the animals that we have domesticated, the most important animal that we've domesticated has been us. Okay? So, humanity is our greatest invention.
But of course we're not done yet. We're still inventing, and this is what technology is allowing us to do -- it's continually to reinvent ourselves. It's a very, very strong force. I call this entire thing -- us humans as our technology, everything that we've made, gadgets in our lives -- we call that the technium. That's this world. My working definition of technologyis "anything useful that a human mind makes." It's not just hammers and gadgets, like laptops. But it's also law. And of course cities are ways to make things more useful to us.While this is something that comes from our mind, it also has its roots deeply into the cosmos.
It goes back. The origins and roots of technology go back to the Big Bang, in this way, in that they are part of this self-organizing thread that starts at the Big Bang and goes through galaxies and stars, into life, into us. And the three major phases of the early universe was energy, when the dominant force was energy; then it became, the dominant force, as it cooled, became matter; and then, with the invention of life, four billion years ago, the dominant force in our neighborhood became information. That's what life is: It's an information process that was restructuring and making new order.
So, those energy, matter Einstein show were equivalent, and now new sciences of quantum computing show that entropy and information and matter and energy are all interrelated, so it's one long continuum. You put energy into the right kind of system and out comes wasted heat, entropy and extropy, which is order. It's the increased order.
Where does this order come from? Its roots go way back. We actually don't know. But we do know that the self-organization trend throughout the universe is long, and it began with things like galaxies; they maintained their order for billions of years. Stars are basically nuclear fusion machines that self-organize and self-sustain themselves for billions of years, this order against the entropy of the world. And flowers and plants are the same thing, extended, and technology is basically an extension of life.
One trend that we notice in all those things is that the amount of energy per gram per second that flows through this, is actually increasing. The amount of energy is increasing through this little sequence. And that the amount of energy per gram per second that flows through life is actually greater than a star -- because of the star's long lifespan, the energy density in life is actually higher than a star. And the energy density that we see in the greatest of anywhere in the universe is actually in a PC chip. There is more energy flowing through, per gram per second, than anything that we have any other experience with.
What I would suggest is that if you want to see where technology is going, we continue that trajectory, and we say "Well what's going to become more energy-dense, that's where it's going." And so what I've done is, I've taken the same kinds of things and looked at other aspects of evolutionary life and say, "What are the general trends in evolutionary life?" And there are things moving towards greater complexity, moving towards greater diversity, moving towards greater specialization, sentience, ubiquity and most important, evolvability: Those very same things are also present in technology. That's where technology is going.
In fact, technology is accelerating all the aspects of life, and we can see that happening; just as there's diversity in life, there's more diversity in things we make. Things in life start out being general cell, and they become specialized: You have tissue cells, you have muscle, brain cells. And same things happens with say, a hammer, which is general at first and becomes more specific. So, I would like to say that while there is six kingdoms of life, we can think of technology basically as a seventh kingdom of life. It's a branching off from the human form.
But technology has its own agenda, like anything, like life itself. For instance, right now, three-quarters of the energy that we use is actually used to feed the technium itself. In transportation, it's not to move us, it's to move the stuff that we make or buy. I use the word "want." Technology wants. This is a robot that wants to plug itself in to get more power.Your cat wants more food. A bacterium, which has no consciousness at all, wants to move towards light. It has an urge, and technology has an urge.
At the same time, it wants to give us things, and what it gives us is basically progress.You can take all kinds of curves, and they're all pointing up. There's really no dispute about progress, if we discount the cost of that. And that's the thing that bothers most people, is that progress is really real, but we wonder and question: What are the environmental costs of it?
I did a survey of a number of species of artifacts in my house, and there's 6,000. Other people have come up with 10,000. When King Henry of England died, he had 18,000 things in his house, but that was the entire wealth of England. And with that entire wealth of England, King Henry could not buy any antibiotics, he could not buy refrigeration, he could not buy a trip of a thousand miles. Whereas this rickshaw wale in India could save up and buy antibiotics and he could buy refrigeration. He could buy things that King Henry, in all his wealth, could never buy. That's what progress is about.
So, technology is selfish; technology is generous. That conflict, that tension, will be with us forever, that sometimes it wants to do what it wants to do, and sometimes it's going to do things for us. We have confusion about what we should think about a new technology.Right now the default position about when a new technology comes along, is we -- people talk about the precautionary principle, which is very common in Europe, which says, basically, "Don't do anything. When you meet a new technology, stop, until it can be proven that there's no harm." I think that really leads nowhere.
But a better way is to, what I call proactionary principle, which is: You engage with technology. You try it out. You obviously do what the precautionary principle suggests, you try to anticipate it, but after anticipating it, you constantly asses it, not just once, but eternally. And when it diverts from what you want, we prioritize risk, we evaluate not justthe new stuff, but the old stuff. We fix it, but most importantly, we relocate it. And what I mean by that is that we find a new job for it.
Nuclear energy, fission, is really bad idea for bombs. But it may be a pretty good idearelocated into sustainable nuclear energy for electricity, instead of burning coal. When we have a bad idea, the response to a bad idea is not no ideas, it's not to stop thinking. The response to a bad idea -- like, say, a tungsten light bulb -- is a better idea. OK? So, better ideas is really -- always the response to technology that we don't like is basically, better technology. And actually, in a certain sense, technology is a kind of a method for generating better ideas, if you can think about it that way.
So, maybe spraying DDT on crops is a really bad idea. But DDT sprayed on local homes,there's nothing better to eliminate malaria, besides insect DDT-impregnated mosquito nets. But that's a really good idea; that's a good job for technology.
So, our job as humans is to parent our mind children, to find them good friends, to find them a good job. And so, every technology is sort of a creative force looking for the right job. That's actually my son, right here. (Laughter) There are no bad technologies, just as there are no bad children. We don't say children are neutral, children are positive. We just have to find them the right place.
And so, what technology gives us, over the long term, over the sort of extended evolution -- from the beginning of time, through the invention of the plants and animals, and the evolution of life, the evolution of brains -- what that is constantly giving us is increasing differences: It's increasing diversity, it's increasing options, it's increasing choices, opportunities, possibilities and freedoms. That's what we get from technology all the time. That's why people leave villages and go into cities, is because they are always gravitating towards increased choices and possibilities. And we are aware of the price. We pay a price for that, but we are aware of it, and generally we will pay the price for increased freedoms, choices and opportunities.
Even technology wants clean water. Is technology diametrically opposed to nature?Because technology is an extension of life, it's in parallel and aligned with the same things that life wants. So that I think technology loves biology, if we allow it to. Great movement that is starting billions of years ago is moving through us and it continues to go, and our choice, so to speak, in technology, is really to align ourselves with this force much greater than ourselves.
So, technology is more than just the stuff in your pocket. It's more than just gadgets; it's more than just things that people invent. It's actually part of a very long story, a great story, that began billions of years ago. And it's moving through us, this self-organization, and we're extending and accelerating it, and we can be part of it by aligning the technology that we make with it. I really appreciate your attention today. Thank you. (Applause)
----------------------------------------------------
一開始引起我研究興趣的 是 "科技" 這一名稱的來源 美國從1790年以後依照慣例 每位總統會對國會發表施政報告 每一次演說 都會總結當時對美國 最重要的事情 如果你去追溯 "科技" 這個詞 直到1952年才開始出現 照這麼看來1952年以前 還沒有人想到科技， 而我剛好是出生在那一年 但很明顯的， 科技 早在那以前就存在了， 只是我們沒有察覺而已。 那時就像是當頭棒喝 突然發覺我們生活中的這股力量。
我實際去研究了 是誰第一個使用了 "科技" 這個詞 那是在 1829 年的時候 一個傢伙在編教程的時候發明的 這個課程是要把不同種類的 藝術、手工藝與工業搞在一起。 他把這叫做科技 那就是這個名詞的起源
那這個 我們每天消費的 為它煩心的東西是什麼? 艾倫 凱 說 "凡是我們出生後 才發明的東西， 都是科技" (笑聲) 這就是我們對科技的刻板印象 就是那些“新玩意” 不是馬路或盤尼西林 或量產的輪胎 要“新”玩意才算。 我的朋友 丹尼 西里斯 提出一個類似的說法 他說 "科技就是還不能實用的." (笑聲) 對啊, 意思就是全新的
但是我們知道科技不全是是新的 我建議大家 從時間軸上往前推 推到很早很早以前。 另一個思考科技意義的辦法是 去想像沒有科技的世界。 假設我們把今日世界的科技一一去掉 真的完全去除乾淨 從刀片 掃把 到衣服 我們這個物種將無法存活太久。 幾十億的人口將會快速的死去 狼會吃掉亳無保護的我們 我們將無法栽種或找到足夠的食物
在尼安德塔人的骨骸中 沒有超過40歲的 這些獵人部落的年齡大部份 是在 20 到 30 之間 小嬰孩是很罕見的 因為嬰兒死亡率很高。老人也不多見 所以總體來說會像是舊金山附近的人口結構 一大堆年青人 如果你去那裡你會說 "哇, 每個人都很健康" 那是因為他們都很年青啊
同樣的在原始人類的獵人部落裡 人活不過 30 歲 所以那是沒有祖父母的世界。 祖父母是很重要的 因為他們是文化演進與資訊的轉化器 想像一下每個人都只有20到30歲的世界 他們能學習到怎樣的程度? 你在自己的生命中真的學不到很多 因為那太短暫了 而且你所學的又傳不下去。 這只是一個觀點
不只人生苦短 同時 人類學家們知道 在原始獵人聚集部落的世界 用的科技不多， 他們並沒有花 很長的時間蒐集維生的食物 一天大概 3 到 6 小時。 有些人類學家稱之為原初豐裕社會 因為他們那時候已經有了 "半天班" 而且在當時是有可能得到足夠食物的。 不過當食物短缺時 像是多雨或乾旱來臨時 人們還是會餓死。 這就是為什麼他們活不長。
所以科技帶來的小工具 像這裡這些石器工具 即使是這麼小的一個 就可以讓原始人類有能力可以 在進化上超越並消滅 一萬年前在北美洲的 大約250種的巨型動物群。 所以遠早於工業時代我們已經對這個星球有了全面性的影響 那只是用了一點小科技。
另一個原始人的發明是 火。 火最早是用來清除草地 而這影響到草原生態與整個大陸 火並且用來烹煮食物 有了火我們可以無所不吃 這就好像 麥克魯漢 所謂的 “體外的胃” 意思是沒煮過的我們也消化不了 如果沒有火的話我們很難活下去 我們的身體早已調適到這些新的飲食 過去一萬年以來我們的身體已經改變。
看, 這小小的一點科技 讓人類從約一萬人左右的一小群 約略是各地的原始人總數 然後隨著語言的發明 大約五萬年以前 人口突然暴增 很快的人類成為稱霸地球的生物 其擴展版圖的速度是每年兩公里 直到最近幾萬年 人已經漫佈到全球各地 成為獨霸的生物種類 這都是拜小小的科技所賜
甚至在八千到一萬年前 農業才剛發明的時候 氣候變遷開始出現了。 氣候變遷並不是新東西不一樣的只是程度上的差別。 在農業時期就有氣候變遷了。 同樣極少量的科技 也轉化了整個世界。 我想要表達的重點是 科技己經變成世界上最強大的力量。 我們今天看到的所有東西只要能改變我們生活方式的 都可以回溯到某些科技的發明。
這就是力量 一種從這個地球上 曾爆發的最強大力量。 我認為在某種程度上 這是因為我們的本質 "人性" 包括我們認為有關自己的一切 實際上是我們發明的。 我們創造了我們自己! 所有我們餋養 的動物裡最重要的 就是我們 對吧? 因此人性是我們最偉大的發明
當然這件事還沒完呢 科技讓我們還持續的發明著 這是不斷的重新創造我們自己 是一股巨大無比的力量。 我把這一整個事情 包括人與科技 所有我們創造的 生活中的小東西 統稱為科技育成 (Technium)，也就是這世界。 我對科技的新定義是 任何人類所製造出的有用東西 不只是鐵鎚、筆電或酷炫的３Ｃ產品 還包括法律。 當然 "城市" 也讓 很多東西變得有用。 這些從我們的心念而來的 其根源卻同樣來自 宇宙。
回到科技的最初起源 再回到大爆炸 從這一路看 這些心念 是自我形成的次序 然後從大爆炸開始 經過不同的星系與無數的星星 來到我們的生命中。 在宇宙形成早期的三個主要階段 一開始是能量 主導力量是 "能量"。 然後冷卻以後 主導力量變成 "物質" 再來 生命起源 在40億年前我們週遭的主導力量變成 "資訊"。 這就是生命。 它是資訊重組與 建立新秩序的過程。
所以在愛因斯坦發現 質M 與 能E 是相同的 而現在新的 量子計算機裡的不可控制能量(熵) 跟資訊 跟物質 跟能量 所以這一長串的 都是互相關聯的。 你把能量放入一個系統 會產出無法控制隨機的熱(熵 entrory) 跟可以控制有用的部份(extropy)。 可掌控部份是有增加的。
這部份是從何而來呢? 追根究底 其實上我們不知道。 但是我們很早就從宇宙得知 這自我組織的趨勢由來已久 從像星系這樣的東西開始 它們維持自己的秩序有數十億年之久 星球基本上就是原子能融合機器 它可以自我組織支撐到數十億年。 這種秩序可以對抗無用的浪費。 而花草樹木也是同一件事的擴展 科技基本上也是生命的延伸。
所以從這些東西上面我們發現一個趨勢： 每一公克 每秒鐘能流過 這裡的能量實際上是遞增的。 通過這個小小通道的能量是一直增加的。 而流過我們生命的能量以每克每秒算來 是比一顆星星還多的 因為星星的壽命很長使得 我們生命的能量密度高於星星。 而我們所能見到能量密度最高的 實際上是在個人電腦裡的晶片。 它有非常高的能量流過 超越一切我們所能見識到的。
所以我建議你如果你想看到 科技的未來何去何從 往更高的能量密度走這是很篤定的 這是未來的趨勢。 我所做的是 我把這些同類的東西 用不同的觀點去看 進化性生命的大致走向。 進化性生命的 大致趨勢是往 更複雜 更多元化 更專業化 具洞察力 無所不及 與最重要的 適者生存律。 這些生物上的特性也可以在科技中發現。 這也是科技的走向。
事實上科技是在加速 生命中的各個面向。 這些例子比比皆是。 正如生命的多樣性 我們製造出來的東西越來越多樣化了。 生命是由通用細胞開始 再形成特殊化的組織細胞 然後有了肌肉跟腦細胞。 同樣的事也發生在科技。 鐵鎚一開始也是通用的 然後變得更精緻。 所以我想說在生物分類學的六界裡 我們可以加入科技 變成生命的第七界。 是從人類分出來的一支
但是科技有它自己的要面對的問題 就像其他的東西一樣。 比如說現在我們有四分之三的能源是用在 支撐科技本身。 在運輸裡， 運送的不是我們 而是我們製造跟買的東西。 我用"想要"這一詞。 科技也會想要! 這是一個機器人想自己插電。 你的貓也會想要更多的食物。 連沒有意識的細菌細胞 也"想要"移向有亮光的地方 他們有一股主見。 科技也是。
在另一方面它也想給我們物質上的滿足 基本上我們也得到進步。 讓我們來看看各種的曲線 如果我們扣除成本 關於進步是毫無疑問的。 困擾我們大多數人的是 到底這些進步是不是真的我們懷疑所付出的環境代價為何?
我查了一下我家裡所有家當的種類 總共有六千種 有些人有到一萬種 英國的享利國王去世的時候 他家裡有一萬八千多件東西 但那是當時整個英國的財富。 不過即使擁有了全英國的財富享利國王買不到抗生素 也買不到電冰箱 他也沒法參加能遊千里的團。 而這位印度的手拉車伕他卻可以買到抗生素 家裡也有冰箱。 他可以買到用享利國王財富買不到的東西。 這就是進步。
科技是自私的 科技也是慷慨的 這個衝突會永遠跟著我們 有時它會為所欲為 有時它會為我們服務。 對新科技應有的看法我們還不很明白。 當一個新科技來臨時 目前我們的預設立場與原則 是要特別的小心謹慎。 在歐洲這很常見。 基本上遇上新科技時 "什麼也別做" 停下來 直到可以證明它是無害的。 我想這真的會阻礙進步。
或許有一個更好的辦法 叫“積極行動原則”， 就是你主動參與發展 你去試用看看。 在參與的過程中用小心謹慎的原則 和保守態度去預測可能的結果 不時的去評估 再三的檢視 當你對它出現異狀的時候 我們再加重風險的比重 並把舊的東西也加入一起評估。 我們去修正它 而最重要的是 "再定位"的概念。我的意思是說 去找到一個新的用途。
例如核能 用來做原子彈真是個壞主意 不過"重新定位"可能就變好了 轉去做自轉式核能動力 可以取代燒煤 成為新電力。 當壞點子出現的時候 我們的反應 最好不要 不知所措 或是 停止思考。 反擊壞點子最好是 像對這個鎢絲燈泡 是找到更好的點子, 對吧? 對我們不喜歡的科技 想辦法去把它變好 變成更好的科技。 實際上從某個角度看 科技 是一種產生更好點子的方法 如果你能這麼想的話
因此身為人類的天職 就是去孕育新的概念 是為這些主意找到好朋友 以及好的用途。 這麽一來 每種科技都是一股創新的力量 都在找適合的用途。 這張相片裡頭 是我的兒子 是真的! (笑聲) 沒有所謂的壞科技 就像沒有所謂的壞小孩一樣。 小孩無所謂好或壞 最重要的是幫他們找到適合的地方。
所以科技為我們帶來的 從盤古開天起 經歷巨大的演進 到動物植物的創造 到生命的進化 腦的進化 科技持續地為我們帶來的 是越來越多的不同和變化。 越來越多樣化 越來越多的選項 越來越多的選擇 機會 可能性與自由。 這是科技一直帶給我們的。 這也是人們為何離開小村落進入城市的理由。 因為人們總是 往有選擇、 有不同可能性的地方走。 這背後必須付出代價我們也清楚地知道我們付出了什麼代價 我們願意為自由而付 為選擇 為機會而付出。
即使科技也想要乾淨的水。 問題是科技是否完全地違反 自然呢? 因為科技是生命的延伸 它與生命想要的 是並行不悖的。 所以我認為科技愛生物學 如果我們允許它的話。 數十億年前就開始的偉大變動 正在通過我們 而且繼續向前。 我們對科技的選擇 真的讓我們能搭上 這股遠比我們更偉大的力量
所以科技不只是你口袋裡的小玩具 不只是酷炫的新玩意 也不只是人類的發明而已 它實際上是源遠流長故事裡的一個部份 一個始於數十億年前的偉大故事 這故事正通過我們 我們正在擴張跟加速這有秩序的自我組織。 我們可以透過調整科技來成為其中的一部份 我們創造並參與於其中。 非常感謝大家今天的用心, 謝謝大家 (掌聲)
