I'm going to talk about hackers. And the image that comes to your mind when I say that word is probably not of Benjamin Franklin, but I'm going to explain to you why it should be.
我要談一談駭客。 當我說這個字的時候, 你腦海裡出現的圖像可能不是 班傑明·富蘭克林 (Benjamin Franklin), (註:美國開國元勳之一) 但我要向你說明,為何應該要是。
The image that comes to your mind is probably more likely of a pasty kid sitting in a basement doing something mischievous, or of a shady criminal who is trying to steal your identity, or of an international rogue with a political agenda. And mainstream culture has kind of fed this idea that hackers are people that we should be afraid of.
你腦海裡出現的圖像 可能是一個面色蒼白的孩子 正坐在地下室裡搞惡作劇, 或是不可見人的罪犯想要竊取你的身份, 或是有政治企圖的 國際罪犯。 主流文化灌輸我們這個想法, 認為駭客是我們應當害怕的人。
But like most things in technology and the technology world, hacking has equal power for good as it has for evil. For every hacker that's trying to steal your identity there's one that's building a tool that will help you find your loved ones after a disaster or to monitor environmental quality after an oil spill. Hacking is really just any amateur innovation on an existing system, and it is a deeply democratic activity. It's about critical thinking. It's about questioning existing ways of doing things. It's the idea that if you see a problem, you work to fix it, and not just complain about it. And in many ways, hacking is what built America. Betsy Ross was a hacker. The Underground Railroad was a brilliant hack. And from the Wright brothers to Steve Jobs, hacking has always been at the foundation of American democracy.
但像是在技術上或科技界中的 其它大多數事情一樣, 駭客同時擁有為善或為惡的能力。 每次出現一位 想要竊取你身份的駭客, 就會有另一位駭客 設計出工具, 幫你在災難後尋找你的至愛。 或是在漏油事件後, 監測環境品質。 駭客不過是在現行系統中的 業餘創新。 它本質上是一個民主活動。 它是批判性思維。 它質疑現有的做事方式。 它是一個「當你遇到問題就去解決, 而不是抱怨」 的觀念。 而在許多方面,駭客建造了美國。 貝特西·羅斯 (Betsy Ross ) 是一個駭客。 (註:她縫製了美國第一面國旗 並將六芒星改成五芒星) 地下鐵路秘密社團曾經是輝煌的駭客。 (註:19世紀在美國把黑奴送至自由地區的社團) 從萊特兄弟的史蒂夫·賈伯斯, 駭客一直是美國 民主的碁石。
So if there's one thing I want to leave you here with today, it's that the next time you think about who a hacker is, you think not of this guy but of this guy, Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the greatest hackers of all time. He was one of America's most prolific inventors, though he famously never filed a patent, because he thought that all human knowledge should be freely available. He brought us bifocals and the lightning rod, and of course there was his collaboration on the invention of American democracy.
因此如果今天我要在這裡 告訴你一件事, 那就是在下一次你想到駭客時, 你不會想到這個人, (圖:朱利安·阿桑奇,維基解密創辦者) 而是這個人:班傑明·富蘭克林, 歷史上最偉大的駭客之一。 他是美國最多產的發明家之一, 雖然他從未提出過專利申請, 因為他認為,所有人類的知識 應免費地提供給所有人。 他帶給我們雙光眼鏡和避雷針, 當然還有他參與合作的發明 -- 美國民主。
And in Code For America, we really try to embody the spirit of Ben Franklin. He was a tinkerer and a statesman whose conception of citizenship was always predicated on action. He believed that government could be built by the people, and we call those people civic hackers.
在”美國程式碼” (Code For America) 中, (註:美國無黨無派的組織, 在政府中推廣網際網路) 我們試圖包含 班傑明·富蘭克林的精神。 他是一位政治家和發明家, 他對公民身份的概念 總是建立在行動上面。 他認為政府可以 由人民建立, 我們稱呼這些人為公民駭客。
So it's no wonder that the values that underly a healthy democracy, like collaboration and empowerment and participation and enterprise, are the same values that underly the Internet. And so it's no surprise that many hackers are turning their attention to the problem of government.
這個已經不足為奇,因為 構建一個健全的民主國家的基本價值, 像合作和賦予權力, 還有參與和企業, 這些和網際網路 需要的價值是相同的。 所以不令人意外地, 很多駭客把注意力轉向政府問題。
But before I give you a few examples of what civic hacking looks like, I want to make clear that you don't have to be a programmer to be a civic hacker. You just have to believe that you can bring a 21st-century tool set to bear on the problems that government faces. And we hear all the time from our community of civic hackers at Code for America that they didn't understand how much nontechnical work actually went into civic hacking projects. So keep that in mind. All of you are potential civic hackers.
但在我向你舉例說明 公民駭客是什麼樣的之前, 我想要先講清楚, 你不必成為一個程式師, 才能當一個公民駭客。 你只需要相信你可以用 一套 21 世紀的工具 來承擔政府面臨的問題。 我們一直從我們在「美國程式碼」裡 的公民駭客社區中聽說, 他們不清楚在公民駭客行動中 有多少非技術性的部分。 因此,請記住, 你們都是潛在的公民駭客。
So what does civic hacking look like? Our team last year in Honolulu, which in this case was three full-time fellows who were doing a year of public service, were asked by the city to rebuild the website. And it's a massive thing of tens of thousands of pages which just wasn't going to be possible in the few months that they had. So instead, they decided to build a parallel site that better conformed to how citizens actually want to interact with information on a city website. They're looking for answers to questions, and they want to take action when they're done, which is really hard to do from a site that looks like this. So our team built Honolulu Answers, which is a super-simple search interface where you enter a search term or a question and get back plain language answers that drive a user towards action. Now the site itself was easy enough to build, but the team was faced with the challenge of how they populate all of the content. It would have taken the three of them a very long time, especially given that none of them are actually from Honolulu. And so they did something that's really radical, when you think about how government is used to working. They asked citizens to write the content. So you've heard of a hack-a-thon. They held a write-a-thon, where on one Saturday afternoon -- ("What do I do about wild pigs being a nuisance?") (Laughter) — Wild pigs are a huge problem in Honolulu, apparently. In one Saturday afternoon, they were able to populate most of the content for most of the frequently asked questions, but more importantly than that, they created a new way for citizens to participate in their government.
那什麼是公民駭客? 我們的團隊去年在檀香山, 由三個全職人員 做了一年的公共服務, 被市府要求重建該網站。 這項大規模任務包含成千上萬頁面, 不可能在他們僅有的 幾個月內完成。 所以,他們決定建立另一個平行網站 可以更好地符合公民能在網站上 進行資訊交流的目的。 他們在找尋問題的答案, 他們想要在完成時採取行動, 這實在很難從這樣一個網站上做到。 這實在很難從這樣一個網站上做到。 所以我們的團隊就建了「檀香山解答」, 那是一個超級簡單的搜尋介面, 當您輸入關鍵字或一個問題, 會得到語言簡明的答案, 來驅動使用者採取行動。 網站本身是容易生成的, 但是,團隊面臨的挑戰是 他們如何生出所有的內容。 這將會讓他們三個人 花很長時間, 尤其是他們都不是檀香山當地人。 所以他們做了一件大膽的事, 當你想到政府是如何運作時, 這件事就很不尋常了。 他們要求公民來寫內容。 你可能聽過「駭客馬拉松」(Hackathon), 而他們舉辦了 「編寫馬拉松」 (Write-a-thon)。 在一個星期六的下午 -- (「對於令人討壓的野豬我該怎麼辦?」) (笑聲)-- 野豬在檀香山顯然是一個大問題。 在一個星期六的下午, 對於大多數的常見問題, 他們能夠寫出大部分內容。 但比這更重要的是, 他們創造了公民 參與政府事務的新途徑。
Now, I think this is a really cool story in and of itself, but it gets more awesome. On the National Day of Civic Hacking this past June in Oakland, where I live, the Code For America team in Oakland took the open source code base of Honolulu Answers and turned it into Oakland Answers, and again we held a write-a-thon where we took the most frequently asked questions and had citizens write the answers to them, and I got into the act. I authored this answer, and a few others. And I'm trying to this day to articulate the sense of empowerment and responsibility that I feel for the place that I live based simply on this small act of participation. And by stitching together my small act with the thousands of other small acts of participation that we're enabling through civic hacking, we think we can reenergize citizenship and restore trust in government.
現在,我覺得這本身是一個很酷的故事, 但它其實更令人驚豔。 在公民駭客日, 今年 6 月在奧克蘭,也就是我住的地方, 奧克蘭的「美國程式碼」團隊 取用了「檀香山解答」的 開放源代碼, 把它轉變成了「奧克蘭解答」, 我們也舉辦了「編寫馬拉松」, 找出了最常被問到的問題, 請市民向他們自己寫答案, 而我把它納入了法案 。 我創作這個和其他幾個 「解答」, 我試圖讓這一天傳遞出 我生活的地方所賦予的 權力和責任, 這些都建構在 這種小型活動的參與度上。 把這些有成千上萬的參與者的 小型活動聚合在一起, 我們通過公民駭客的方式, 我們認為我們可以再次喚起公民的身份 和恢復對政府的信任。
At this point, you may be wondering what city officials think of all this. They actually love it. As most of you guys know, cities are being asked every day to do more with less, and they're always looking for innovative solutions to entrenched problems. So when you give citizens a way to participate beyond attending a town hall meeting, cities can actually capture the capacity in their communities to do the business of government.
此時,你可能會想 市府官員對這個是怎麼想的。 事實上他們很喜歡。 你們都知道,市府每天一直被要求 用更少的資源做更多的事, 他們一直在尋找創新的解決方案 來對付根深蒂固的問題。 所以,當你給公民一個 除了去市政會議之外的參與方式, 城市實際上可以 從社區中獲得他們的能力, 來做政府的事情。
Now I don't want to leave the impression that civic hacking is just an American phenomenon. It's happening across the globe, and one of my favorite examples is from Mexico City, where earlier this year, the Mexico House of Representatives entered into a contract with a software development firm to build an app that legislators would use to track bills. So this was just for the handful of legislators in the House. And the contract was a two-year contract for 9.3 million dollars. Now a lot of people were really angry about this, especially geeks who knew that 9.3 million dollars was an absolutely outrageous amount of money for what was a very simple app. But instead of taking to the streets, they issued a challenge. They asked programmers in Mexico to build something better and cheaper, and they offered a prize of 9,300 dollars -- 10,000 times cheaper than the government contract, and they gave the entrants 10 days. And in those 10 days, they submitted 173 apps, five of which were presented to Congress and are still in the app store today. And because of this action, that contract was vacated, and now this has sparked a movement in Mexico City which is home to one of our partners, Code for Mexico City.
現在我不想留下 公民駭客只發生在美國的印象。 這些正在全球發生。 我最喜歡的一個例子 是在今年早些時候,在墨西哥城, 墨西哥的眾議院 與一個軟體公司簽訂合約, 來建立一個讓議員追蹤草案 的應用程式。 這只是給在議院裡面 少數幾個議員使用的。 這合約為期兩年, 總共要 930 萬美金。 現在很多人都對這一點感到很生氣, 特別是那些電腦玩家們, 他們知道 930 萬美金 對於一個非常簡單的應用程式而言, 是絕對令人憤慨的金額。 但他們沒有走上街頭抗議, 而是發出了挑戰狀。 他們要求在墨西哥的程式設計師 設計出更好和更便宜的應用程式, 他們提供 9,300 美元的獎金。 這比政府的合約 (「除了憤怒地發推特, 我們可以一起在週六晚上, 喝著龍舌蘭酒建立這個世界。」) 便宜一萬倍, (「除了憤怒地發推特, 我們可以一起在週六晚上, 喝著龍舌蘭酒建立這個世界。」) 他們給予參賽者 10 天。 (「除了憤怒地發推特,我們可以一起在週六晚上, 喝著龍舌蘭酒建立這個世界。」) 在這十天裡, (「除了憤怒地發推特, 我們可以一起在週六晚上, 喝著龍舌蘭酒建立這個世界。」) 他們提交了 173 份的應用程式, 其中五個被提交到國會, 而且現在仍在 app store 找得到。 因為這一行動, 該合約被替換掉了, 現在這在墨西哥城引發了一場運動, 成為了我們夥伴之一: 「墨西哥城程式碼」。
And so what you see in all three of these places, in Honolulu and in Oakland and in Mexico City, are the elements that are at the core of civic hacking. It's citizens who saw things that could be working better and they decided to fix them, and through that work, they're creating a 21st-century ecosystem of participation. They're creating a whole new set of ways for citizens to be involved, besides voting or signing a petition or protesting. They can actually build government.
所以你在這三個地方所看到的, 在檀香山、奧克蘭和墨西哥城, 都是公民駭客的核心要素。 公民看到一些事情本可以做的更好, 他們就決定要起身行動, 並通過這項工作,他們正在創建 21 世紀公民參與的生態系統。 他們要創建一套全新的方法, 除了投票、簽署請願書或抗議以外, 讓公民能參與其中。 實際上,他們可以建立一個政府。
So back to our friend Ben Franklin, who, one of his lesser-known accomplishments was that in 1736 he founded the first volunteer firefighting company in Philadelphia, called a brigade. And it's because he and his friends noticed that the city was having trouble keeping up with all the fires that were happening in the city, so in true civic hacker fashion, they built a solution.
所以說回我們的朋友班傑明·富蘭克林, 他鮮為人知的一個成就 是在 1736 年創立了 在費城的第一間志願消防公司。 被稱作一個 「旅團」。 這是因為他和他的朋友們注意到 在處理城市裡不斷發生的火災時, 市府遇到了麻煩。 所以在真正跟上潮流的公民駭客中, 他們立了一個解決方案。
And we have our own brigades at Code for America working on the projects that I've just described, and we want to ask you to follow in Ben Franklin's footsteps and come join us. We have 31 brigades in the U.S. We are pleased to announce today that we're opening up the brigade to international cities for the first time, starting with cities in Poland and Japan and Ireland. You can find out if there's a brigade where you live at brigade.codeforamerica.org, and if there's not a brigade where you live, we will help you. We've created a tool kit which also lives at brigade.codeforamerica.org, and we will support you along the way. Our goal is to create a global network of civic hackers who are innovating on the existing system in order to build tools that will solve entrenched problems, that will support local government, and that will empower citizens.
我們在「美國程式碼」中有自己的旅團, 來處理我剛才所描述的工作, 我們想要邀請你們 一起跟隨班傑明·富蘭克林的腳步, 並加入我們。 我們在美國有 31 個旅團。 我們今天很高興地宣佈, 我們頭一次要向國際的城市 開放旅團, 從波蘭、日本和愛爾蘭的城市開始。 你可以透過 brigade.codeforamerica.org 找到你居住的城市是否有旅團, 如果你住的城市沒有旅團, 我們會幫你成立一個。 我們已經在 brigade.codeforamerica.org 建造了一個工具組, 我們會一路上支援你。 我們的目標是創建 一個全球公民駭客的聯絡網。 大家在現有的系統上創新, 做出能解決 根深蒂固問題的工具, 這能夠支援地方政府, 同時提高公民的力量。
So please come hack with us.
所以請來和我們一起駭客吧。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)