This is your conference, and I think you have a right to know a little bit right now, in this transition period, about this guy who's going to be looking after it for you for a bit. So, I'm just going to grab a chair here.
這個大會是你們的 在這個轉折時期,你們有權了解一下 這個將要掌門的傢伙。 所以,我先抓把椅子坐下
Two years ago at TED, I think -- I've come to this conclusion -- I think I may have been suffering from a strange delusion. I think that I may have believed unconsciously, then, that I was kind of a business hero. I had this company that I'd spent 15 years building. It's called Future; it was a magazine publishing company. It had recently gone public and the market said that it was apparently worth two billion dollars, a number I didn't really understand. A magazine I'd recently launched called Business 2.0 was fatter than a telephone directory, busy pumping hot air into the bubble. (Laughter) And I was the 40 percent owner of a dotcom that was about to go public and no doubt be worth billions more. And all this had come from nothing. Fifteen years earlier, I was a science journalist who people just laughed at when I said, "I really would like to start my own computer magazine." And 15 years later, there are 100 of them and 2,000 people on staff and it was just such heady times. The date was February 2000. I thought the little graph of my business life that kind of looked a bit like Moore's Law -- ever upward and to the right -- it was going to go on forever. I mean, it had to. Right? I was in for quite a surprise.
我想, 是在兩年以前的TED大會上吧-- 我得出一個結論---- 我想我可能得了奇怪的錯覺, 我認為,我可能已經不自覺地認為, 自己是一個生意場上的英雄 我原來有個叫“未來”的公司,是我花了15年時間打造的。 那是一個雜誌出版公司。 那時候它才上市 股市表明它價值20億美元, 那個數字我也看不懂。 最近我又發行了 <<商業 2.0>> 雜誌, 它比電話簿還要厚, 也幫忙膨脹了當時的商業泡沫 (笑聲) 我擁有這個即將上市網路公司40%的股份 那無疑又是好幾個億的市值。 而這一切如今都已經成了泡影。 15年前我還是一名科技記者的時候, 每當我跟人們說:“ 我打算創辦一份電腦雜誌”,人們只會朝我笑笑。 而15年後,這樣的雜誌就有100 多種。 員工多達2000多名,發展勢頭十分迅猛 那是在2000年的二月。 我當初也以為我的商業生涯 會跟摩爾定律描述的那樣, 不斷攀升,永無止境。我是說 它不就得那樣發展,不是嗎?可是事與願違。
The dotcom, ironically called Snowball, was the very last consumer web company to go public the next month before NASDAQ exploded, and I entered 18 months of business hell. I watched everything that I'd built crumbling, and it looked like all this stuff was going to die and 15 years work would have come for nothing. And it was gut wrenching. It took eight years of blood, sweat and tears to reach 350 employees, something which I was very proud of in the business. February 2001 -- in one day we laid off 350 people, and before the bloodshed was finished, 1,000 people had lost their jobs from my companies. I felt sick. I watched my own net worth falling by about a million dollars a day, every day, for 18 months. And worse than that, far worse than that, my sense of self-worth was kind of evaporating. I was going around with this big sign on my forehead: "LOSER." (Laughter) And I think what disgusts me more than anything, looking back, is how the hell did I let my personal happiness get so tied up with this business thing?
那個上市的網路公司, 有個很諷刺的名字叫“雪球” 是納斯達克崩盤前一個月,最後一個上市的消費用戶網路公司 然後我就在這個商業地獄裡過了18個月。 我看著-- 目睹我創建的一切倒塌下來。 看上去一切都要完蛋了。 15年的工作都付之東流。 那是令人斷腸的痛楚。 首先我們用了8年的血淚才成功地把員工人數 增加到350人,我對此是感到非常自豪的。 然而, 在2001年二月, 我們一天就裁了350名員工, 而到這一腥風血雨結束前, 我們公司總共 失去了1000名員工,我感到非常難受。 我看著我的淨資產以每天100萬美元的 速度在跌落,18個月,每天如此。 而比這一切更糟糕的是 我對自我的價值認同也隨之蒸發。 我走來走去都覺得腦袋上頂著“失敗者”幾個字。 (笑聲) 而那次經歷 現在回頭看看, 最讓我感到愧疚的是 我怎麼會把我個人的快樂與商場的成敗聯繫在一起?
Well, in the end, we were able to save Future and Snowball, but I was, at that point, ready to move on. And to cut a long story short, here's where I came to. And the reason I'm telling this story is that I believe, from many conversations, that a lot of people in this room have been through a similar kind of rollercoaster -- emotional rollercoaster -- in the last couple years. This has been a big, big transition time, and I believe that this conference can play a big part for all of us in taking us forward to the next stage to whatever's next. The theme next year is re-birth.
後來我們總算也把“未來”和“雪球” 挽救了, 但是那個時候我已經站在了決定另謀發展的轉折點 長話短說,這裡, 就是我到達的地方。 我之所以告訴大家我的故事,是因為我跟大家聊起時, 發現在座的很多人都有過類似的經歷, 過去幾年都經歷了情緒上的大起大伏。 這個階段是一個很大的轉折時期, 我相信這個會議會成為我們生活中重要的一部分 無論下一個舞台會是什麼,它都將把我們引領到那裡。 明年大會的主題是“重生”。
It was at the same TED two years ago when Richard and I reached an agreement on the future of TED. And at about the same time, and I think partly because of that, I started doing something that I'd forgotten about in my business focus: I started to read again. And I discovered that while I'd been busy playing business games, there'd been this incredible revolution in so many areas of interest: cosmology to psychology to evolutionary psychology to anthropology to ... all this stuff had changed. And the way in which you could think about us as a species and us as a planet had just changed so much, and it was incredibly exciting. And what was really most exciting -- and I think Richard Wurman discovered this at least 20 years before I did -- was that all this stuff is connected. It's connected; it all hooks into each other.
這也是兩年前TED的主題。 當時, 我和理查德就TED的未來形成了共識。 也在那一刻, 我認為正是那個契機, 促使我重拾之前因為埋頭於商業活動而遺忘的習慣 我重新開始閱讀。 我發現,就在我沉溺於商業遊戲的時候, 很多領域裡都出現了驚人的革新, 從天文學、到心理學、到進化心理學、到人類學, 到其他的很多領域, 你可以看到所有的事物都發生了變化。 如果你從我們是一個物種的角度去想一下, 我們身處的星球發生了那麼大的變化, 這些變化真是令人興奮的,而最令人興奮的是 我想Richard Wurman 在20年就發現了這個秘密, 那就是這一切都是互相關聯的。 它們連在一起, 環環相扣。
We talk about this a lot, and I thought about trying to give an example of this. So, just one example: Madame de Gaulle, the wife of the French president, was famously asked once, "What do you most desire?" And she answered, "A penis." And when you think about it, it's very true: what we all most desire is a penis -- or "happiness" as we say in English. (Laughter) And something ... good luck with that one in the Japanese translation room. (Laughter) (Applause)
對此我們談論了很多, 我想舉個例子,就一個例子, 法國總統戴高樂夫人曾經被問到: “你最希望得到的是什麼?” 她的回答是:"a penis." (發音接近英語的Happiness,意為陰莖。法語中H不發音,因此有這個笑話) 其實你想想,這是非常正確的 我們都最希望得到的就是 " a penis". 或者, 你知道,用英語來說就是: “happiness" (笑聲) 噢, 對了, 日語翻譯室的仁兄祝你好運啊。 笑聲。 ( * 這一典故很難用外語翻譯。) (掌聲)
But something as basic as happiness, which 20 years ago would have been just something for discussion in the church or mosque or synagogue, today it turns out that there's dozens of TED-like questions that you can ask about it, which are really interesting. You can ask about what causes it biochemically: neuroscience, serotonin, all that stuff. You can ask what are the psychological causes of it: nature? Nurture? Current circumstance? Turns out that the research done on that is absolutely mind-blowing. You can view it as a computing problem, an artificial intelligence problem: do you need to incorporate some sort of analog of happiness into a computer brain to make it work properly? You can view it in sort of geopolitical terms and say, why is it that a billion people on this planet are so desperately needy that they have no possibility of happiness, and whereas almost all the rest of them, regardless of how much money they have -- whether it's two dollars a day or whatever -- are almost equally happy on average? Or you can view it as an evolutionary psychology kind of thing: did our genes invent this as a kind of trick to get us to behave in certain ways? The ant's brain, parasitized, to make us behave in certain ways so that our genes would propagate? Are we the victims of a mass delusion? And so on, and so on.
然而就是基本的快樂問題, 那個20年前人們只會在 教堂或清真寺裡討論的話題, 今天你可以用TED的角度提出一打 十分有趣的問題。 你可以從生物學的角度來尋找幸福的根源 從神經系統科學, 血液複合胺等各個角度來研究。 你也可以從心理學的角度來分析, 是先天、後天,還是環境的作用更大? 這方面的研究結果是絕對令人吃驚的。 你還可以把它看作是一個計算機科學的問題,一個人工智慧的問題 比如,你們是不是應該為機器人輸入 快樂的元素使它可以像人類一樣感受快樂, 你還可以從地緣政治學的角度來分析, 為什麼地球上會有近10億極其貧窮的人們 永遠得不到快樂, 而另外其他的人, 無論他們有多少錢,兩美金一天也罷, 其他數字也罷,快樂的感受都差不多? 或者,你還可以用進化心理學來分析, 是不是我們的基因本身存在某種機制 促使我們形成某種既定的行為方式?也許螞蟻把人腦當成了宿主, 操控著我們某些行為,使我們的基因可以繁殖。 我們是不是大眾的受害者? 等等,等等
To understand even something as important to us as happiness, you kind of have to branch off in all these different directions, and there's nowhere that I've discovered -- other than TED -- where you can ask that many questions in that many different directions. And so, it's the profound thing that Richard talks about: to understand anything, you just need to understand the little bits; a little bit about everything that surrounds it. And so, gradually over these three days, you start off kind of trying to figure out, "Why am I listening to all this irrelevant stuff?" And at the end of the four days, your brain is humming and you feel energized, alive and excited, and it's because all these different bits have been put together. It's the total brain experience, we're going to ... it's the mental equivalent of the full body massage. (Laughter) Every mental organ addressed. It really is.
因此,要真正理解像「快樂」這樣對我們大家來說很重要的課題, 我們需要從多個不同的角度進行探討 據我所知,除了TED大會以外,沒有其他場合更適合這樣的探索。 這裡你可以從各種角度,提出各種問題 正如理查德所說: 要了解任何一樣東西,你都需要 知道一點點與之相關的許多事物。 因此, 在為期三天的TED會議裡, 你開始會試圖明白 為什麼我要聽這些彼此無關的演講? 而等到會議介紹的第四天, 你就會發現你的頭腦裡充滿了能量、動力和激情。 那是因為當我們把這一切放在一起, 我們將經歷的是一次大腦的整體體驗 就好像精神的全身按摩, (笑聲) 思想的每個器官都受到刺激。
Enough of the theory, Chris. Tell us what you're actually going to do, all right? So, I will. Here's the vision for TED.
你會說:” 別說大道理了,Chris, 告訴我們你到底要做什麼吧。“ 好吧, 下面我談談我的TED願景。
Number one: do nothing. This thing ain't broke, so I ain't gonna fix it. Jeff Bezos kindly remarked to me, "Chris, TED is a really great conference. You're going to have to fuck up really badly to make it bad." (Laughter) So, I gave myself the job title of TED Custodian for a reason, and I will promise you right here and now that the core values that make TED special are not going to be interfered with. Truth, curiosity, diversity, no selling, no corporate bullshit, no bandwagoning, no platforms. Just the pursuit of interest, wherever it lies, across all the disciplines that are represented here. That's not going to be changed at all.
第一:什麼也不做。 TED沒什麼毛病,所以不需要我來治理。 Jeff Bezos 曾經很客氣地跟我說, “TED大會是一個非常了不起的大會 你要把它搞砸了都不是很容易的事。 ” (笑聲) 所以我給自己的職務取名為:”TED監護人“。 在此,我向大家保證, 代表TED特色核心價值是不會被改變的, 真實、好奇、多元,不搞推銷,不吹牛, 不跟風,隨波逐流, 不搞特權平台。 只有對興趣的追求,不管它存在何處, 所有我重申過的原則, 都不會改變。
Number two: I am going to put together an incredible line up of speakers for next year. The time scale on which TED operates is just fantastic after coming out of a magazine business with monthly deadlines. There's a year to do this, and already -- I hope to show you a bit later -- there's 25 or so terrific speakers signed up for next year. And I'm getting fantastic help from the community; this is just such a great community. And combined, our contacts reach pretty much everyone who's interesting in the country, if not the planet. It's true.
第二,明年我將會為大家 帶來一批最優秀的演講人 TED運作的時間跨度也正合適, 我從每個月都有嚴格截稿期的雜誌業出來, 現在則有一年的時間去做這件事, 事實上, 等一會兒我就想告訴你們, 已經有25位傑出的演講者登記參加明年的TED演講。 此外,TED社群也給予了我們極大的幫助 那是一個非常優秀的社群,如果把所有的人脈都匯合起來, 即便不能覆蓋全球,也可以挖掘到國內最有意思的人才 這是真的。
Number three: I do want to, if I can, find a way of extending the TED experience throughout the year a little bit. And one key way that we're going to do this is to introduce this book club. Books kind of saved me in the last couple years, and that's a gift that I would like to pass on. So, when you sign up for TED2003, every six weeks you'll get a care package with a book or two and a reason why they're linked to TED. They may well be by a TED speaker, and so we can get the conversation going during the year and come back next year having had the same intellectual, emotional journey. I think it will be great.
第三,如果我可以做到的話, 我想找到一條途徑, 把TED的體驗延伸到整個年度中, 我們正在做的一件事就是建立這個讀書會, 書本在過去的幾年裡成了我的救星, 我想把那個禮物傳遞給他人。 所以,要是你登記參加2003年的TED,每隔6週你會收到一個郵包 裡面會是一兩本書,以及說明為何那些書是和TED大會相關的。 它們很可能是TED演講人的著作 這樣,我們就能把我們的對話一直延伸下去, 等到來年我們在此相會的時候,大家都擁有一些共同的 思想和感情經歷, 我認為這個主意很不錯。
And then, fourthly: I want to mention the Sapling Foundation, which is the new owner of TED. What Sapling's ownership means is that all of the proceeds of TED will go towards the causes that Sapling stands for. And more important, I think, the ideas that are exhibited and realized here are ideas that the foundation can use, because there's fantastic synergy. Already, just in the last few days, we've had so many people talking about stuff that they care about, that they're passionate about, that can make a difference in the world, and the idea of getting this group of people together -- some of the causes that we believe in, the money that this conference can raise and the ideas -- I really believe that that combination will, over time, make a difference. I'm incredibly excited about that. In fact, I don't think, overall, that I've been as excited by anything ever in my life. I'm in this for the long run, and I would be greatly honored and excited if you'll come on this journey with me.
最後,我要提到Sapling基金會 它是TED大會的新主人。 Sapling擁有TED的所有權, 就是意味著TED大會 帶給我們的一切都是為Sapling基金會的宗旨服務的。 而更重要的是,在這個會上展示的和了解的想法 可以為這個基金會使用,因為大家展現了非凡的協同作用 就在過去的幾天裡, 我們已經聽到了人們在此談論他們關心的, 熱衷的事物,以及怎樣利用它們改變世界。 把這樣一群人集合到一塊的願望, 是因為這個群體有某些共同的理想, 大會能籌措到一些經費和好的解決問題的辦法。 我相信這一切加在一起, 經過一段時間後肯定可以 幫助改變世界。對此我感到非常的興奮。 坦白而言,我一生還從來沒有這麼興奮過, 我是來TED打持久戰的, 如果你們願意加入這個旅程, 我會感到無上的光榮和興奮