I, like many of you, am one of the two billion people on Earth who live in cities. And there are days -- I don't know about the rest of you -- but there are days when I palpably feel how much I rely on other people for pretty much everything in my life. And some days, that can even be a little scary. But what I'm here to talk to you about today is how that same interdependence is actually an extremely powerful social infrastructure that we can actually harness to help heal some of our deepest civic issues, if we apply open-source collaboration.
我和你们许多人一样 是地球20亿城市居民的 其中一个 有些时候-不知道你们是否也有这种感觉 我会觉得 我的生活里几乎每一样东西 都得依赖他人 有时候,真有点吓人 今天要介绍的 就是这种相互依存关系 实际上是一种极为给力的社会基础 借助于它 我们能够进行开源合作开放 从而解决一些很深刻的城市问题
A couple of years ago, I read an article by New York Times writer Michael Pollan, in which he argued that growing even some of our own food is one of the best things that we can do for the environment. Now at the time that I was reading this, it was the middle of the winter and I definitely did not have room for a lot of dirt in my New York City apartment. So I was basically just willing to settle for just reading the next Wired magazine and finding out how the experts were going to figure out how to solve all these problems for us in the future. But that was actually exactly the point that Michael Pollan was making in this article -- it's precisely when we hand over the responsibility for all these things to specialists that we cause the kind of messes that we see with the food system.
几年前 我从《纽约时报》读到迈克尔・坡伦的文章 他讲到亲手种植自身消费的食物 是我们能为环境做的 最好的事情之一 我读到这篇文章的时候 正是大冬天 我那纽约小小的公寓里 自然没有摆放大片土壤的空间 我基本上就打算不理这茬儿了 打算接着读读下一期的《连线》 看看专家们对这些未来的问题 都有什么解决方案 但这恰是迈克尔・坡伦 在那篇文章里要指出来的- 如果我们把这些问题的责任 都转交给专家来解决的话 就正好导致了诸如我们所见到的现在食品系统里
So, I happen to know a little bit from my own work
这样的混乱局面
about how NASA has been using hydroponics to explore growing food in space. And that you can actually get optimal nutritional yield by running a kind of high-quality liquid soil over plants' root systems. Now to a vegetable plant, my apartment has got to be about as foreign as outer space. But I can offer some natural light and year-round climate control.
我当时刚好因为工作的缘故 对美国宇航局在太空尝试用水培法 种植物的事有所了解 优质的液体土壤 流经植物的根系可以 保证最优的营养吸收 对蔬菜植物来说 我的公寓就跟外太空一样 不是它们的宜居地 但是我能提供一些自然光 和全年稳定的气温
Fast-forward two years later: we now have window farms, which are vertical, hydroponic platforms for food-growing indoors. And the way it works is that there's a pump at the bottom, which periodically sends this liquid nutrient solution up to the top, which then trickles down through plants' root systems that are suspended in clay pellets -- so there's no dirt involved. Now light and temperature vary with each window's microclimate, so a window farm requires a farmer, and she must decide what kind of crops she is going to put in her window farm, and whether she is going to feed her food organically.
2年后 我们有了窗户农场 这是垂直的水培平台 可以在室内种食物 系统通过底部的水泵运转 水泵定期将营养液运输到顶部 然后一点一滴流经植物根系 根长在黏土颗粒中- 这样系统不需要泥土 光照和气温令 每个窗户的微气候都不同 所以有一个窗户农场 就得有一个窗户农场主 来决定 在窗户农场里种什么粮食 以及怎么有机栽培
Back at the time, a window farm was no more than a technically complex idea that was going to require a lot of testing. And I really wanted it to be an open project, because hydroponics is one of the fastest growing areas of patenting in the United States right now, and could possibly become another area like Monsanto, where we have a lot of corporate intellectual property in the way of people's food. So I decided that, instead of creating a product, what I was going to do was open this up to a whole bunch of codevelopers.
那时候,窗户农场只是一个 技术上有点儿复杂的想法 需要很多测试 我很想把它做成一个开放计划 因为水培法现在 是美国专利申请里 最快速增长的领域之一 也许这会成为 下一个孟山都 他们持有大量的公司所有知识产权 反而阻碍了粮食的发展 于是我决定,与其做一个产品 不如将其 向所有共同开发者开放
The first few systems that we created, they kind of worked. We were actually able to grow about a salad a week in a typical New York City apartment window. And we were able to grow cherry tomatoes and cucumbers, all kinds of stuff. But the first few systems were these leaky, loud power-guzzlers that Martha Stewart would definitely never have approved.
我们开发的头几个系统 都还可以 能在一个纽约公寓的窗户上 一周种出一份沙拉来 我们能种出小蕃茄和 黄瓜 各种各样的蔬菜 但之前这几个系统 都漏水而且是噪声大耗能多 玛莎·斯图尔特(家政女皇)看到肯定要抓狂了
(Laughter)
(笑声)
So to bring on more codevelopers, what we did was we created a social media site on which we published the designs, we explained how they worked, and we even went so far as to point out everything that was wrong with these systems. And then we invited people all over the world to build them and experiment with us. So actually now on this website, we have 18,000 people. And we have window farms all over the world.
为了召集更多的合作开发者 我们建了一个社交网站 可以把设计公布在上面 说明工作原理 甚至连同 系统里的一切弊端都指了出来 我们邀请了世界各地的人们 来建造,并和我们一起试验 现在这个网站上 有一万八千人 世界各地 都有窗户农场
What we're doing is what NASA or a large corporation would call R&D, or research and development. But what we call it is R&D-I-Y, or "research and develop it yourself."
现在我们做的是 美国宇航局或者大公司里面 叫研发(R&D)的工作 而我们叫它R&D-I-Y,研发DIY 研究和自己开发
(Laughter)
比如
So, for example, Jackson came along and suggested that we use air pumps instead of water pumps. It took building a whole bunch of systems to get it right, but once we did, we were able to cut our carbon footprint nearly in half. Tony in Chicago has been taking on growing experiments, like lots of other window farmers, and he's been able to get his strawberries to fruit for nine months of the year in low-light conditions by simply changing out the organic nutrients. And window farmers in Finland have been customizing their window farms for the dark days of the Finnish winters by outfitting them with LED grow lights that they're now making open source and part of the project.
杰克逊来提了个建议 用气泵而不是水泵 我们试了几个系统后终于搞定了 这样一来 我们把碳足迹降低了接近一半 芝加哥的托尼在持续着种植试验 其他很多窗户农场主也是 他成功地在低光照度的条件下 在一年中的九个月里都能培育出草莓果实 他仅仅是调整了有机养料 芬兰的窗户农场主 为了让他们的窗户农场 能度过芬兰的冬天而定制了 带生长光照的LED灯的窗户农场 他们对这个开源计划贡献了自己的力量
So window farms have been evolving through a rapid versioning process similar to software. And with every open source project, the real benefit is the interplay between the specific concerns of people customizing their systems for their own particular concerns, and the universal concerns. So my core team and I are able to concentrate on the improvements that really benefit everyone. And we're able to look out for the needs of newcomers.
窗户农场像软件行业一样 经历了一个急速更新的 过程 每一个开源项目带来的 实际利益是一个互动的机会 让人们在为某些特定情况来定制系统的时候 可以同时为 他们自己特定的环境来考虑 也能顾及到一些更普遍的问题 因此我和我的核心团队 致力于真正让每个人受益的 改良 我们也考虑到新加入者的需要
So for do-it-yourselfers, we provide free, very well-tested instructions so that anyone, anywhere around the world, can build one of these systems for free. And there's a patent pending on these systems as well that's held by the community. And to fund the project, we partner to create products that we then sell to schools and to individuals who don't have time to build their own systems.
对于自己动手的人 我们提供免费和详细的指导 这样世界上的任何人 都能不花钱地建起这样的系统 这些设计系统的专利也是 由我们社区大家庭持有的 为了维持此项目 我们也做成品 出售给学校和个人 如果他们没有时间亲自建造的话(可以来买我们的成品)
Now within our community, a certain culture has appeared. In our culture, it is better to be a tester who supports someone else's idea than it is to be just the idea guy. What we get out of this project is support for our own work, as well as an experience of actually contributing to the environmental movement in a way other than just screwing in new light bulbs. But I think that Eleen expresses best what we really get out of this, which is the actual joy of collaboration. So she expresses here what it's like to see someone halfway across the world having taken your idea, built upon it and then acknowledging you for contributing. If we really want to see the kind of wide consumer behavior change that we're all talking about as environmentalists and food people, maybe we just need to ditch the term "consumer" and get behind the people who are doing stuff.
如今我们的团队里 已经产生了一种文化 在我们的文化里,大家都认为比起提供想法的人 我们更应该做 测试想法的人 我们项目的成就感来源于 在寻求对我们工作的支持同时 也是对环保运动的 实际贡献 而不仅仅是换几个新式灯泡 我想爱琳说出了 我们的想法 我们享受这样的合作 她说就像是 有个人隔着半个世界 借助你的想法建造了这个系统 并感谢你的贡献 如果我们想真正看到大范围内消费行为的改变 正如长期以来 环境保护主义者和食物人强调的(致力于开发食物产品战略的人) 也许我们不应该再叫自己“消费者” 而是变成劳动者
Open source projects tend to have a momentum of their own. And what we're seeing is that R&D-I-Y has moved beyond just window farms and LEDs into solar panels and aquaponic systems. And we're building upon innovations of generations who went before us. And we're looking ahead at generations who really need us to retool our lives now. So we ask that you join us in rediscovering the value of citizens united, and to declare that we are all still pioneers.
开源计划希望引领人们跟随我们的想法 我们的R&D-I-Y 已经从窗户农场和LED灯 涉及到太阳能板和养耕共生系统 我们在前人的基础上 发明创造 并为了后人 重新设计我们现在的生活 我邀请诸位加入我们 来重新认识联合公民 的价值 并宣布 我们都仍然是拓荒者
(Applause)
(掌声)