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.
我要告訴你們 大家都是賽博格(機器化生人) 但不是你們想的那種賽博格。 你不是機器戰警,也不是魔鬼終結者 但是每一次你看電腦螢幕 或使用手機時你就變成一個機器生化人。 所以“賽博格(機器生化人)”該怎麽定義? 傳統的定義是說 “被加上外來元件 以便能適應新環境的生物組織。” 這是1960年一篇有關太空旅行的文章所定義的。 因爲,認真想想,太空是很可怕的, 人們不太會去那裏; 但人們好奇心又強,喜歡在身體上加掛東西 這樣一來可以爬上阿爾卑斯山 又可以下海游。
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."
讓我們看看傳統人類學的概念 有個人到了其他的國家,他說 “這些人真有趣,用的工具也很有意思, 他們的文化真特別!” 所以他們把這些見聞寫下來,可能其他人類學家會讀 我們讀了也會覺得很新奇。 這是爲什麽? 因爲我們突然發現了一個新品種。 而我,身為會說機器生化物學家會說 “哇,突然間我們變成了新品種人類 你看看這些超炫的文化 看,這些奇特的儀式 每個人都在使用這樣科技 他們都在觸碰和注視著螢幕。”
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 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.
爲什麽我要來研究這種新的人類學 是有原因的。 這是因爲,從一開始 在過去的幾千年來,工具的使用 一向是人類自身肢體的改造 工具幫我們超越自身肢體的極限 讓我們跑得更快、更有力 而工具最終也是有其極限的。 現在我們研究的不是自身肢體的延伸 而是心理的延伸 而正因如此,我們能更快地移動 用不同的方式溝通。 還有一件跟以前不一樣的是 那就是我們都攜帶著魔法的科技 我們可以把想帶的東西加進來卻不會增加重量 我們還可以把所有的東西都拿出來。 你的電腦裏面長什麽樣子? 你如果把所有的東西列印出來的話 你帶著到處跑的東西總共大概有幾千磅重。 這些資訊,你要是遺失了的話 這表示你的心理上遭到這些損失, 你突然覺得有些東西不見了 但是你卻看不見,這是很奇怪的感覺。
The other thing that happens is that 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 lawn 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 adolescences. 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.
還有一個新的現象:你有了第二個你 不管你喜不喜歡,你開始在綫上出現 其他人會和綫上的第二個你互動 即使你不在場。 所以你必須很小心 防衛你的第一道防綫 基本上也就是臉書的塗鴉墻 要提防別人不會在半夜 你不知道的時候來留言。 突然間我們也要維護這個第二個自己。 你在數位世界裏也要跟別人介紹這個“你” 跟真實世界裏一樣。 就像一早你起床、洗澡、更衣 你也要學著為數位的你做這些事 問題在於,現在有很多人 特別是青少年 要經歷兩次青春期。 現實生活的這一次已經夠糟了 他們還要經歷第二個自己的青春期 這更是可怕 因爲他們經歷過的一切 都被記錄在網路上。 此外,剛接觸新科技的人 在網路上都算青春期少年 所以這是很可怕的 對他們而言這些都是很難的。
So when I was little, my dad would sit me down at night and he would 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.
當我小的時候,一晚我爸跑來我旁邊坐跟我說 “我要教教你未來的時間和空間的概念。” 我說,“好啊” 他說,“空間裏兩點最近的距離是什麽?” 我說,“你昨天說是一直綫。” 我還以爲我很聰明 他說,”不不,這有個更好的答案“ 他拿起一張紙 在上面畫了A、B兩點 把紙對折使AB兩點相觸 他告訴我,”這纔是兩點間最短的距離。“ 我說,”爸,你是怎麽辦到的?“ 他說,”你必須扭轉時間和空間 這需要花很多能量的 只有這樣才能辦到。” 我說,“我也想那樣做。” 他說,“好哇。” 就這樣,接下來的10年20年間 晚上在床上我常在想 “我要成爲第一個發明時光隧道的人 我要加速事件的發生 我還要做一台時光機。” 我一直用錄音機 給未來的我送訊息。
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 pockets. 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."
但是後來上了大學後我才了解 科技不會只是因爲有用 就會被人採用; 一項科技之所以會被人們採用 是因爲有人用,是因爲那是順應人性的設計。 所以我開始讀人類學。 當我在寫有關手機的論文時 我領悟到了,每個人口袋裏的手機就是時空隧道 穿越時空的不是我們的身體 而是我們的心理 你按個按鍵 就能聯繫AB兩點 我想,“我找到了,太棒了。”
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.
所以,漸漸地,因爲有了手機 時間和空間都越來越緊密 你可以在世界的一端耳語 在另一端的人也都還聼得見。 另一個延伸的概念就是 事實上每個我們使用的每個裝置都是一種時間 每個瀏覽螢幕可以代表不同的時間軸 也因爲如此,我們開始要在這些外接記憶體裏搜尋 到底我要找的東西是存放在哪裏了呢? 所以我們每個人都變成了古生物學家 我們都在我們放在口袋裏的外接大腦(硬碟、記憶裝置)裏 試圖去挖掘出我們遺忘的事。 這是基本上是會引人恐慌的 吼,東西是存到哪裏去了?! 我們都變成了面對資訊洪流的小主婦 無法跟上其腳步。
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.
當這一部分反映到社群交際面 導致的結果就是 我們會不斷地查閲我們的手機。 所以有了一種叫“身歷其境的親密” 我們並沒有跟所有的親朋好友實體地泡在一起 但是要的話我們隨時可以和他們通話。 要是你能把你手機裏聯絡人的清單列印出來 那你的房間會擠斃了 這些人,這些親朋好友 基本上都是你立即可以接觸聯絡的人。
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.
這種精神上的距離很近也帶來了一些心理影響 第一個,也是讓我擔心的 那就是,大家不再花時間停下來去思考 大家慢不下來也停不下來 因爲一直跟這麽多的人同處一室 大家變得要在平行的多個時間界面, 在考古人類學和有恐慌傾向的架構下 要相互競爭吸引最多的注意力。 他們不是只坐在那裏而已。 當你沒有外界的輸入的空閒時候 你可以用來創造自己 用來作長期規劃 也是試著了解你自己的時候。 你必須要有時間去思考,你才知道 要如何正確地在網路上介紹這個“第二個你” 而不是被動地被外來的需求拖著走 噢,我該做這,我該做那,還有這個那個、、、 所以,這是很重要的。 我很擔心,特別是現在的青少年 他們現在沒有所謂的休息時間 他們又有這種手不離機的文化 一有任何動靜或訊息 他們就變得很興奮,又很容易對此上癮。
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.
如果你想到這點,這世界並未就此停止。 現在多了好幾個外接的裝置 這些外接的裝置幫助我們 跟其他人聯絡和互動。 你要是實際去show出 我們現在所有的連係 這事實上是網際網路的一個映像 這看起來不太像冷冰冰的科技 倒比較像有機的組織。 我們透過這樣的方式來聯係 這在人類的歷史上還是第一次。 並不是機器接管了我們之間的聯係 而是機器幫助我們更加人性化 幫助我們互相聯係。
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.
最成功的科技是優秀又顯著易見的 可以幫我們活得更便利。 真的 科技最終變得更人性化 因爲我們和科技互相創造對方 這也就是我想研究的重點: 事物都是美好的,終究還是人性的連接; 只是連接的方法不同罷了。 我們只是在人性化上更進一步 與彼此的聯係更爲緊密,而無視地理上的區隔。 這就是爲什麽我要研究機器生化物人類學。
Thank you.
謝謝大家
(Applause)
(掌聲)