Most of the talks that you've heard in the last several fabulous days have been from people who have the characteristic that they have thought about something, they are experts, they know what's going on. All of you know about the topic that I'm supposed to talk about. That is, you know what simplicity is, you know what complexity is. The trouble is, I don't. And what I'm going to do is share with you my ignorance on this subject.
各位這幾天 所聽到的大多數精彩演說 都是具有專業特長 學有專精的專家 經過深思熟慮所發表的演說 大家都知道 我將發表的講題是什麼 各位都知道什麼是「簡單」 知道什麼是「複雜」 問題是:我並不知道 因此我將與各位 分享我對講題的無知
I want you to read this, because we're going to come back to it in a moment. The quote is from the fabled Potter Stewart opinion on pornography. And let me just read it, the important details here: "Shorthand description, ['hardcore pornography']; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly defining it. But I know it when I see it." I'm going to come back to that in a moment.
請大家讀這段引述 因為不久後我們還會回到這段話 這是鼎鼎大名的最高法院 大法官波特•司徒華談論 色情所發表的一段話 那麼我現在念 其中的重要細節 「簡略的描述,重鹹濕的色情 我恐怕無法給它清楚的定義 但一看就知道」 我還會回到這段話
So, what is simplicity? It's good to start with some examples. A coffee cup -- we don't think about coffee cups, but it's much more interesting than one might think -- a coffee cup is a device, which has a container and a handle. The handle enables you to hold it when the container is filled with hot liquid. Why is that important? Well, it enables you to drink coffee. But also, by the way, the coffee is hot, the liquid is sterile; you're not likely to get cholera that way. So the coffee cup, or the cup with a handle, is one of the tools used by society to maintain public health. Scissors are your clothes, glasses enable you to see things and keep you from being eaten by cheetahs or run down by automobiles, and books are, after all, your education.
那麼,什麼是「簡單」? 我們先舉個例子 咖啡杯,我們不會想太多 但它可能比你認為的還有趣得多 咖啡杯是一種器具,對 是一種容器,對;還有握柄,對 如果容器裡裝滿熱水的話 握柄讓你能握住杯子,是吧 那有什麼重要呢? 嗯,它讓你能喝咖啡 而且咖啡是熱的 液體是煮沸消毒過的 這樣你就不會感染霍亂 那麼咖啡杯或是有握柄的杯子 是社會上用來維護 公共衛生的工具之一 剪刀用來剪裁衣服 眼鏡讓你能看見東西 也讓你不被印度豹給吃了 或讓汽車給撞著了 還有書,這是用來教育你的
But there's another class of simple things, which are also very important. Simple in function, but not at all simple in how they're constructed. And the two here are just examples. One is the cellphone, which we use every day. And it rests on a complexity, which has some characteristics very different from those that my friend Benoit Mandelbrot discussed, but are very interesting. And the other, of course, is a birth control pill, which, in a very simple way, fundamentally changed the structure of society by changing the role of women in it by providing to them the opportunity to make reproductive choices.
不過還有其它 簡單的東西,同樣重要 功能簡單 構造卻不簡單 這裡有兩個例子 一是我們天天使用的行動電話 其構造極其複雜 所具有的特性和我的朋友 貝諾特•曼德爾博特談到的 有很大不同 但是也很有趣 另一例當然是避孕藥了 它既簡單又根本地 改變了社會結構 避孕藥為婦女所提供的 選擇懷孕與否的機會 改變了婦女的角色
So, there are two ways of thinking about this word, I think. And here I've corrupted the Potter Stewart quotation by saying that we can think about something -- which spans all the way from scissors to the cell phone, Internet and birth control pills -- by saying that they're simple, the functions are simple, and we recognize what that simplicity is when we see it.
我想有兩種方式來思考這個詞 那麼我稍微修改一下 波特•司徒華的那段話 從剪刀開始 一直到行動電話 網際網路和避孕藥 等等,都有一個 共通點:它們都很簡單 在功能上都是簡單的 大家都看見它們的「簡單」 一看就知道
Or there may be another way of doing it, which is to think about the problem in terms of what -- if you associate with moral philosophers -- is called the teapot problem. The teapot problem I'll pose this way. Suppose you see a teapot, and the teapot is filled with hot water. And you then ask the question: Why is the water hot? And that's a simple question. It's like, what is simplicity? One answer would be: because the kinetic energy of the water molecules is high and they bounce against things rapidly -- that's a kind of physical science argument. A second argument would be: because it was sitting on a stove with the flame on -- that's an historical argument. A third is that I wanted hot water for tea -- that's an intentional argument. And, since this is coming from a moral philosopher, the fourth would be that it's part of God's plan for the universe. All of these are possibilities.
也許另有別的方式來看事情 也就是從道德哲學家的觀點 來思考這個問題 那就是所謂的茶壺問題 茶壺問題嘛,這麼說吧 假設你看到把茶壺 茶壺裡 盛滿了熱水 你提出問題啦: 為什麼水是熱的? 這個問題很簡單 就像問:「簡單」是什麼? 有個答案是: 因為水分子運動能量高 撞擊的速度很快 這是物理的論點 第二個論點是: 因為它剛剛在爐子上燒 這是歷史的論點 第三個是:我要用熱水 泡茶 這是交代意圖的論點 這是道德哲學家的回答 第四個是:這是上帝對宇宙的安排的一部分 這些答案都有可能
The point is that you get into trouble when you ask a single question with a single box for an answer, in which that single question actually is many questions with quite different meanings, but with the same words. Asking, "What is simplicity?" I think falls in that category. What is the state of science? And, interestingly, complexity is very highly evolved. We have a lot of interesting information about what complexity is. Simplicity, for reasons that are a little bit obscure, is almost not pursued, at least in the academic world.
重點是,你會有麻煩 如果你只問一個問題 只要一個答案 但那個問題其實包含許多問題 意義大不相同 卻使用相同的字彙 問「簡單」什麼是,我想就是這類的問題 科學的現況是什麼? 有趣的是其中 所牽涉到的極其複雜 關於複雜 我們有許多有趣的資訊 不太清楚到底 出於什麼原因 幾乎無人探討簡單 至少學界情況是如此
We academics -- I am an academic -- we love complexity. You can write papers about complexity, and the nice thing about complexity is it's fundamentally intractable in many ways, so you're not responsible for outcomes. (Laughter) Simplicity -- all of you really would like your Waring Blender in the morning to make whatever a Waring Blender does, but not explode or play Beethoven. You're not interested in the limits of these things. So what one is interested in has a lot to do with the rewards of the system. And there's a lot of rewards in thinking about complexity and emergence, not so much in thinking about simplicity. One of the things I want to do is to help you with a very important task -- which you may not know that you have very often -- which is to understand how to sit next to a physicist at a dinner party and have a conversation. (Laughter) And the words that I would like you to focus on are complexity and emergence, because these will enable you to start the conversation and then daydream about other things.
我們學界中人,我是學界的 我們喜歡複雜 論文談的盡是複雜 談論複雜,最棒的是 基本上在許多方面是屹立不搖的 因此你可以不必為結果負責 「簡單」呢,早上起來 大家都會用果汁機 打些什麼吃的喝的 你不會希望它爆炸或彈奏貝多芬 你對這類東西的侷限沒多大興趣 那麼大家有興趣的 其實跟回報很有關係 思考「複雜」和「顯現」 能帶來許多的獎賞 思考「簡單」獎賞就沒那麼多了 我想做的事情之一是 幫助你應付一個重要的場面 這種情況不難理解 你可能常常不知道 在餐宴上坐在一位物理學家旁邊 該跟他說些什麼 那我告訴你要注意的兩個詞是: 「複雜」和「顯現」 它們讓你能開始聊 還能繼續跟他一起作其它的白日夢
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
All right, what is complexity in this view of things, and what is emergence? We have, actually, a pretty good working definition of complexity. It is a system, like traffic, which has components. The components interact with one another. These are cars and drivers. They dissipate energy. It turns out that, whenever you have that system, weird stuff happens, and you in Los Angeles probably know this better than anyone. Here's another example, which I put up because it's an example of really important current science. You can't possibly read that. It's not intended that you read it, but that's a tiny part of the chemical reactions going on in each of your cells at any given moment. And it's like the traffic that you see. The amazing thing about the cell is that it actually does maintain a fairly stable working relationship with other cells, but we don't know why. Anyone who tells you that we understand life, walk away.
好吧,「複雜」是什麼? 「顯現」又是什麼? 我們對於複雜其實有個很好的定義 它是一種系統,像是交通系統 有其組成的零件 零件之間有互動 汽車和開車的人,他們消耗能量 結果呢,只要有了這樣的系統 奇怪的事情就會發生 各位住在洛杉磯 可能比別人都清楚這一點 這裡還有另一個例子 我提出來是因為 這是當前科學上重要的例子 這不可能看得清楚,本來就不要大家讀的 但這是你們的 每一個微小細胞裡 隨時都在進行的化學反應 就像是大家看到的交通狀況 關於細胞,令人訝異的是 它確實與其它的細胞 維持著相當穩定的運作關係 我們不知道為何如此 那些聲稱懂得生命的人 沒有解釋就走了
And let me reduce this to the simplest level. We've heard from Bill Gates recently. All of us, to some extent, study this thing called a Bill Gates. Terrific. You learn everything you can about that. And then there's another kind of thing that you might study, and you study that hard. That's a Bono, this is a Bono. But then, if you know everything you can know about those two things, and you put them together, what can you say about this combination? The answer is, not a lot. And that's complexity. Now, imagine building that up to a city, or to a society, and you've got, obviously, an interesting problem.
那麼,我把這一切簡化到最簡單的層次 我們最近聽了比爾•蓋茲演說 我們大家多多少少都研究了 這個叫「比爾•蓋茲」的東西 你盡量學習了關於他的一切 你可能另外還研究別的東西 你很用功研究 這是波諾 你盡所能了解有關這兩者的一切後 把他們放在一起 你能得到的組合是什麼? 答案是:不多 那就是複雜 那麼,推而及之於一個城市或一個社會 顯然的這是個有趣的問題
All right, so let me give you an example of simplicity of a particular kind. And I want to introduce a word that I think is very useful, which is stacking. And I'm going to use stacking for a kind of simplicity that has the characteristic that it is so simple and so reliable that I can build things with it. Or I'm going to use simple to mean reliable, predictable, repeatable. And I'm going to use as an example the Internet, because it's a particularly good example of stacked simplicity. We call it a complex system, which it is, but it's also something else.
好吧,讓我舉一個 一種特殊的 「簡單」的例子 然後我要介紹一個 我認為很有用的詞 那就是「堆疊」 我將「堆疊」出一種「簡單」 這種「簡單」具有 可以說是既簡單 又可靠的特性 可以用來建構別的東西 當我說「簡單」,意思是 可靠、可預測、可重複 拿網際網路來說 這是個很好的 「堆疊簡單」的特例 我們稱網際網路為「複雜系統」,確實也是 但也有別的意思
The Internet starts with mathematics, it starts with binary. And if you look at the list of things on the bottom, we are familiar with the Arabic numbers one to 10 and so on. In binary, one is 0001, seven is 0111. The question is: Why is binary simpler than Arabic? And the answer is, simply, that if I hold up three fingers, you can count that easily, but if I hold up this, it's sort of hard to say that I just did seven. The virtue of binary is that it's the simplest possible way of representing numbers. Anything else is more complicated. You can catch errors with it, it's unambiguous in its reading, there are lots of good things about binary. So it is very, very simple once you learn how to read it. Now, if you like to represent this zero and one of binary, you need a device. And think of things in your life that are binary, one of them is light switches. They can be on and off. That's binary.
網際網路始於數學 始於二進位系統 各位如果看看底下的清單 大家都熟悉阿拉伯數字 一到十等等的 在二進位系統裡一是0001 七是0111 問題是:為什麼使用二進位 會比使用阿拉伯數字簡單? 答案很簡單: 如果我伸出三根指頭,你能輕易的數 但如果是這個 要說我剛才比了個七可不容易 二進位的好處是:它是表示數字 最簡單的辦法 其它都更複雜 二進位很容易找到錯誤 只有一種解讀法 二進位系統有許多好處 只要懂得解讀法 它就非常非常簡單 那麼,如果要表示 二進位系統的零和一 需要使用一種裝置 那麼,想一想生活中 有什麼二進位的東西 其中之一就是電燈開關 開關非開即關-這就是二進位
Now wall switches, we all know, fail. But our friends who are condensed matter physicists managed to come up, some 50 years ago, with a very nice device, shown under that bell jar, which is a transistor. A transistor is nothing more than a wall switch. It turns things on and off, but it does so without moving parts and it doesn't fail, basically, for a very long period of time. So the second layer of simplicity was the transistor in the Internet. So, since the transistor is so simple, you can put lots of them together. And you put lots of them together and you come with something called integrated circuits. And a current integrated circuit might have in each one of these chips something like a billion transistors, all of which have to work perfectly every time. So that's the next layer of simplicity, and, in fact, integrated circuits are really simple in the sense that they, in general, work really well.
牆上的開關有時會壞掉 但是五十年前 我們那些積體物理學家朋友們發明了 鐘形罐裡的那個很棒的裝置 也就是電晶體 電晶體其實和牆上的開關 沒有兩樣,非開即關 但不必移動零件 而且很長時間不會壞掉 那麼,「簡單」的第二個層次 是進入電晶體和網際網路時代 由於電晶體構造非常簡單 可以把很多個 放在一起做成 積體電路 現在的積體電路 每一個晶片上可能 有大約十億個電晶體 每個晶體都必須完美運作 這就是「簡單」的另一個層次 事實上,積體電路 真的非常簡單,因為 運作一般都很暢順
With integrated circuits, you can build cellphones. You all are accustomed to having your cellphones work the large majority of the time. In Boston ... Boston is a little bit like Namibia in its cell phone coverage, (Laughter) so that we're not accustomed to that all the time, but some of the time. But, in fact, if you have cell phones, you can now go to this nice lady who's somewhere like Namibia, and who is extremely happy with the fact that although she does not have an master's degree in electrical engineering from MIT, she's nonetheless able to hack her cell phone to get power in some funny way. And from that comes the Internet. And this is a map of bitflows across the continent. The two blobs that are light in the middle there are the United States and Europe.
用積體電路可以做行動電話 大家都習慣行動電話可以打得通 大部分的時候是打得通的 波士頓行動電話的涵蓋率 和納米比亞差不多 所以通常沒有那麼幸運 只是有時打得通 但只要有行動電話 現在就可以 去拜訪像這位 在納米比亞的女士 她會很高興自己 不必擁有MIT的 電機工程碩士學位 照樣能玩行動電話 玩得很開心 網際網路也是從這裡開始 這兒有一張跨洲位元流動圖 中間有兩個發亮的區塊 是美國和歐洲
And then back to simplicity again. So here we have what I think is one of the great ideas, which is Google. Which, in this simple portal makes the claim that it makes accessible all of the world's information. But the point is that that extraordinary simple idea rests on layers of simplicity each compounded into a complexity that is itself simple, in the sense that it is completely reliable.
現在回到「簡單」這個話題 我認為最偉大的想法之一 就是Google 這個簡單的入口網站 聲稱透過這個網站 能夠獲取 全世界的資訊 不過值得注意的是 異常簡單的想法 是建立在許多層次的「簡單」之上 複合而成的「複雜」 卻仍然是簡單的 因為它的功能完全可靠
All right, let me then finish off with four general statements, an example and two aphorisms. The characteristics, which I think are useful to think about for simple things: First, they are predictable. Their behavior is predictable. Now, one of the nice characteristics of simple things is you know what it's going to do, in general. So simplicity and predictability are characteristics of simple things. The second is, and this is a real world statement, they're cheap. If you have things that are cheap enough, people will find uses for them, even if they seem very primitive. So, for example, stones. You can build cathedrals out of stones, you just have to know what it does. You carve them in blocks and then you pile them on top of one another, and they support weight.
好吧,讓我用 四個表述、一個例子 兩句箴言來 總結我認為簡單的東西 所具有的特性: 首先,它們都是可預測的 其行為是可預測的 簡單的東西 具有的特性之一 是你通常知道它會做什麼 那麼,簡單的東西具有 「簡單」和「可預測」的特性 其次,這是現實面的表述 它們很便宜 東西如果夠便宜 即使看起來非常原始 人們就會為它們找到用途 以石頭為例 石頭可用來建造大教堂 只要知道它的性質 把石頭切成石塊 再一塊一塊堆起來 它們就能承受重量
So there has to be function, the function has to be predictable and the cost has to be low. What that means is that you have to have a high performance or value for cost. And then I would propose as this last component that they serve, or have the potential to serve, as building blocks. That is, you can stack them. And stack can mean this way, or it can mean this way, or it can mean in some arbitrary n-dimensional space. But if you have something that has a function, and it's really cheap, people will find new ways of putting it together to make new things. Cheap, functional, reliable things unleash the creativity of people who then build stuff that you could not imagine. There's no way of predicting the Internet based on the first transistor. It just is not possible. So these are the components.
那麼,只要可預測功能 而且成本低廉 換句話說 要有高效益 即價值和成本必須成比例 我提出的 最後一個部份是 要提供服務或具有服務潛能 像建築石塊一般 也就是可以堆疊起來 可以是直的,也可以是橫的 也可以在 N 次元空間堆疊 但某種東西具有功能 而且真的便宜 自然會有人找到組合的方式 創造出新的 既便宜、有功能又可靠的東西 解放人們的創造力 就可以創造出意想不到的東西 發明電晶體時,並沒有料到 會有網際網路 當時想都想不到 以上是「簡單」的組成要素
Now, the example is something that I want to give you from the work that we ourselves do. We are very interested in delivering health care in the developing world, and one of the things that we wish to do in this particular business is to find a way of doing medical diagnosis at as close to zero cost as we can manage. So, how does one do that? This is a world in which there's no electricity, there's no money, there's no medical competence. And I don't want to spend your time in going through the details, but in the lower right-hand corner, you see an example of the kind of thing that we have. It's a little paper chip. It has a few things printed on it using the same technology that you use for making comic books, which was the inspiration for this particular idea. And you put a drop, in this case, of urine at the bottom. It wicks its way up into these little branches. You know, no power required. It turns colors. In this particular case, you're reading kidney function. And, since the health care worker of much of this part of the world is an 18 year-old with an AK-47, who happens to be out of work and is willing to go around and do this sort of thing, he can take a picture of it with his cellphone, send the picture back to where there is a doctor, and the doctor can look at it.
現在舉個例子 我想告訴各位一點 我們的研究成果 我們非常感興趣 在發展中國家提供醫療保健 我們想做的事之一 就是找到醫學診斷的方法 盡量讓 成本近乎於零 如何做到呢? 那些國家沒有電力 沒有經費,醫藥也不發達 我不想浪費時間詳述細節 在右下角 可以看一個例子 那是一張小小的紙晶片 上面印著一些東西 製作的科技 和印製漫畫書相同 這個想法的靈感其實也來自漫畫書 滴一滴尿液在晶片下方 尿液往上滲入那些小分枝 大家可看見無須耗用能量 紙晶片就會變色-這個晶片 可以判讀腎臟功能 大多數這些發展中國家的 醫療保健工作人員 是拿著AK-47的18歲青年 找不到其它差事 才來做這份工作 他可用行動電話拍下照片 將照片傳送到醫生那裡 醫生就可以檢查照片
So what you've done is to take a technology, which is available everywhere, make a device, which is extremely cheap, and make it in such a fashion that it is very, very reliable. If we can pull this off, if we can build more function, it will be stackable. That is to say, if we can make the basic technology of one or two things work, it will be applicable to a very, very large variety of human conditions, and hence, extendable in both vertical and horizontal directions. Part of my interest in this, I have to say, is that I would like to -- how do I put this politely? -- change the way, or maybe eviscerate, the capital structure of the U.S. health care system, which I think is fundamentally broken.
這是一種 到處都能運用的科技 製造一種極為便宜的裝置 而且把它做成 非常可靠的東西 要是能夠成功拓展 要是能有更多功能 就是可「堆疊」的科技 換句話說,如果能使基本科技的 一兩項功能順利運作 那麼該科技將可應用到 許許多多不同的人類需求 因此能朝著 垂直和水平的方向不斷擴展 我必須說我對此的興趣之一 是-請恕我冒昧直言-我想改變 或也許是切除 美國醫療保健系統的主要結構 我認為那個系統根本已經失靈了
So, let me close -- (Applause)
我的結論是 (鼓掌)
Let me close with my two aphorisms. One of them is from Mr. Einstein, and he says, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." And I think that's a very good way of thinking about the problem. If you take too much out of something that's simple, you lose function. You have to have low cost, but you also have to have a function. So you can't make it too simple. And the second is a design issue, and it's not directly relevant, but it's a nice statement.
用兩句箴言來總結 一句是愛因斯坦說的 他說「一切都要做到 最簡單,簡單到不能再簡單」 我認為這個思考模式棒極了 在簡單的東西上減一分 便會失一分功能 一方面要降低成本 另一方面顧及功能 因此不能太過簡單 再來是有關設計的問題 雖然沒有直接的關係,但這句箴言不錯
This is by de Saint-Exupery. And he says, "You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away." And that certainly is going in the right direction. So, what I think one can begin to do with this kind of cut at the word simplicity, which doesn't cover Brancusi, it doesn't answer the question of why Mondrian is better or worse or simpler or less simpler than Van Gogh, and certainly doesn't address the question of whether Mozart is simpler than Bach.
聖埃克絮佩里 他說:「設計達到完美時 並非你不能再加點什麼 而是無法再做任何刪減。」 這個思考方向肯定是正確的 我想可以根據這種 「簡單」的原則 開始做的 雖不能包括朗古奇的機械 也無法回答為什麼 蒙德里安的畫作比梵谷的好或壞 或是簡單或不簡單些 當然也不能解答 莫札特是否比巴哈簡單
But it does make a point -- which is one which, in a sense, differentiates the real world of people who make things, and the world of people who think about things, which is, there is an intellectual merit to asking: How do we make things as simple as we can, as cheap as we can, as functional as we can and as freely interconnectable as we can? If we make that kind of simplicity in our technology and then give it to you guys, you can go off and do all kinds of fabulous things with it.
但這是重點 這個重點可以 在現實世界中辨別出誰真的在創造 誰真的用心思考問題 這個問題具有學術價值— 我們如何能 盡可能既簡單又便宜 還兼顧功能,創造設備 並能自由地互相結合? 如果在科技上能達成那樣的「簡單」 提供給大眾使用 各位就能做各種美妙的事
Thank you very much.
感謝您的聆聽
(Applause)
(鼓掌)
Chris Anderson: Quick question. So can you picture that a science of simplicity might get to the point where you could look out at various systems -- say a financial system or a legal system, health system -- and say, "That has got to the point of danger or dysfunctionality for the following reasons, and this is how we might simplify it"?
克里斯•安德森:問個小問題 您是說您可以預見 一種「簡單」的科學 可能發展到這種程度: 只須檢驗不同的系統 比方金融、法律或醫療系統, 就可說診斷該系統 已經達到危險或功能失衡的地步 診斷也可以簡化到能這的方式?
George Whitesides: Yes, I think you could. Because if you look at the components from which the system is made and examine their fragility, or their stability, you can probably build a kind of risk assessment based on that basis.
喬治•懷德賽芝:是的,應該做得到 只要看看系統構成的零件 並檢驗其脆弱度或穩定度 就可以進行風險評估
CA: Have you started to do that? I mean, with the health system, you got a sort of radical solution on the cost side, but in terms of the system itself?
克•安: 您已經開始這樣做了嗎? 在醫療系統中,您在成本上 提出非常先進的解決方案 但在系統本身怎麼辦呢?
GW: Well, no. How do I put that simply? No.
喬•: 嗯,不是那樣 我怎麼簡單的回答你呢,真的不是
CA: That was a simple, powerful answer. GW: Yes.
克•安:好個簡單有力的回答 喬•懷:沒錯
CA: So, in terms of that diagnostic technology that you've got, where is that, and when do you see that maybe getting rolled out to scale.
克•安:那麼,關於 您發明的診斷科技 已問世了嗎?何時能 看到它量產上市呢?
GW: That's coming out soon. I mean, the systems work, and we have to find out how to manufacture them and do things of this kind, but the basic technology works.
喬•懷:很快就會上市了,我是說,這是可行的 我們研發出製造流程,敲定這些事情 這一項科技是可以實際運用的
CA: You've got a company set up to ... GW: A foundation, a foundation. Not-for-profit.
克•安:你成立了公司嗎? 喬•懷:基金會,是個基金會,非營利的
CA: All right. Well, thank you so much for your talk. Thank you. (Applause)
克•安:那好,非常感謝您的演說,謝謝