I live and work from Tokyo, Japan. And I specialize in human behavioral research, and applying what we learn to think about the future in different ways, and to design for that future. And you know, to be honest, I've been doing this for seven years, and I haven't got a clue what the future is going to be like. But I've got a pretty good idea how people will behave when they get there.
我住在日本東京,也在那裡工作, 我專門研究人類的行為, 然後將研究結果應用在思考未來, 設計出適合未來的產品。 老實說,我做這一行已經七年了, 但我還是不知道未來會變成什麼樣子, 我只知道 未來人類的行為會如何改變。
This is my office. It's out there. It's not in the lab, and it's increasingly in places like India, China, Brazil, Africa. We live on a planet -- 6.3 billion people. About three billion people, by the end of this year, will have cellular connectivity. And it'll take about another two years to connect the next billion after that. And I mention this because, if we want to design for that future, we need to figure out what those people are about. And that's, kind of, where I see what my job is and what our team's job is.
這是我的辦公室,不是在室內, 也不是在實驗室, 而是在印度、中國、巴西及非洲的各個地方。 地球上有63億人口, 在今年底,大約會有三十億人 擁有手機, 大約再過二年,另外十億人也會擁有手機。 我提到這件事是因為 如果我們想要設計出適合未來的產品, 就得先瞭解這些人的生活型態, 這可以說是我的工作內容, 也是我的團隊的工作內容。
Our research often starts with a very simple question. So I'll give you an example. What do you carry? If you think of everything in your life that you own, when you walk out that door, what do you consider to take with you? When you're looking around, what do you consider? Of that stuff, what do you carry? And of that stuff, what do you actually use?
我們的研究通常會以一個問題做為開場白, 例如:你把什麼帶在身上? 看看你生活週遭你所擁有的東西, 當你要出門的時候, 你會考慮帶什麼在身上? 你看看四週,你會考慮帶什麼? 在你考慮的項目裡,你真正帶了什麼出去? 在你帶出門的東西裡,你真正用的又是什麼?
So this is interesting to us, because the conscious and subconscious decision process implies that the stuff that you do take with you and end up using has some kind of spiritual, emotional or functional value. And to put it really bluntly, you know, people are willing to pay for stuff that has value, right? So I've probably done about five years' research looking at what people carry. I go in people's bags. I look in people's pockets, purses. I go in their homes. And we do this worldwide, and we follow them around town with video cameras. It's kind of like stalking with permission. And we do all this -- and to go back to the original question, what do people carry?
對我們來說,這是很有趣的問題, 因為這種有意識和潛意識的決策過程, 會顯示出你帶出去、真正會用到的東西, 其實具有某種程度的精神象徵、情緒連結和功能價值。 說得白話一點, 人類願意花錢買有價值的東西,不是嗎? 所以,我大約花了五年的時間, 研究人們到底帶什麼在身上。 我鑽進別人的袋子裡,看看他們的皮夾、皮包, 或是去他們家裡,我們在世界各地進行研究, 我們還用攝影機記錄研究對象在城裡活動的情形, 就像事先取得對方同意所進行的跟蹤行動。 我們做的這一切,都是希望找到這個問題的答案: 人們帶什麼在身上?
And it turns out that people carry a lot of stuff. OK, that's fair enough. But if you ask people what the three most important things that they carry are -- across cultures and across gender and across contexts -- most people will say keys, money and, if they own one, a mobile phone. And I'm not saying this is a good thing, but this is a thing, right? I mean, I couldn't take your phones off you if I wanted to. You'd probably kick me out, or something. OK, it might seem like an obvious thing for someone who works for a mobile phone company to ask. But really, the question is, why? Right? So why are these things so important in our lives? And it turns out, from our research, that it boils down to survival -- survival for us and survival for our loved ones.
我們發現,其實大家會帶很多東西, 當然,這很合理, 但如果你問這些人,在這些東西裡,最重要的三個是什麼? 不管是什麼文化背景、性別或教育程度, 大部分的人會回答:鑰匙、錢, 和手機,如果他們有手機的話。 我不是說手機是個好東西,但它確實是一個東西,對吧? 我是說,我可不能隨便就把別人的手機扒下來, 你一定會踹我一腳,或打我什麼的。 我知道,這很明顯就是在手機公司 工作的人會問的問題嘛... 但是,我真的想問為什麼會這樣?對不對? 為什麼這三樣東西對我們這麼重要? 我們發現,這竟然和生存有關係-- 關係到我們的生存,和我們所愛的人的生存。
So, keys provide an access to shelter and warmth -- transport as well, in the U.S. increasingly. Money is useful for buying food, sustenance, among all its other uses. And a mobile phone, it turns out, is a great recovery tool. If you prefer this kind of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, those three objects are very good at supporting the lowest rungs in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Yes, they do a whole bunch of other stuff, but they're very good at this. And in particular, it's the mobile phone's ability to allow people to transcend space and time. And what I mean by that is, you know, you can transcend space by simply making a voice call, right? And you can transcend time by sending a message at your convenience, and someone else can pick it up at their convenience. And this is fairly universally appreciated, it turns out, which is why we have three billion plus people who have been connected. And they value that connectivity.
鑰匙可以讓我們回到溫暖的家, 或是讓我們開車,這在美國較為普遍。 錢可以讓我們買食物、營養品等, 還有其他很好用的用途。 我們發現,手機則是一個很棒的工具。 如果你偏愛馬斯洛的需求理論, 這三樣東西則是最能滿足 馬斯洛需求理論中的最下層需求。 沒錯,他們當然還有許多其他用途, 但是這三樣東西最能滿足這些需求, 尤其是手機,它可以讓人 穿越空間與時間。 我的意思是, 只要打通電話就可以穿越空間了,不是嗎? 而只要有空的時候發個簡訊,對方有空的時候再讀簡訊, 這不就穿越時間了嗎? 我們發現全世界的人都很愛這些功能, 所以才會有超過三十億人擁有手機, 他們重視這種情感的聯繫。
But actually, you can do this kind of stuff with PCs. And you can do them with phone kiosks. And the mobile phone, in addition, is both personal -- and so it also gives you a degree of privacy -- and it's convenient. You don't need to ask permission from anyone, you can just go ahead and do it, right? However, for these things to help us survive, it depends on them being carried. But -- and it's a pretty big but -- we forget. We're human, that's what we do. It's one of our features. I think, quite a nice feature. So we forget, but we're also adaptable, and we adapt to situations around us pretty well. And so we have these strategies to remember, and one of them was mentioned yesterday. And it's, quite simply, the point of reflection. And that's that moment when you're walking out of a space, and you turn around, and quite often you tap your pockets. Even women who keep stuff in their bags tap their pockets. And you turn around, and you look back into the space, and some people talk aloud. And pretty much everyone does it at some point.
但說真的,電腦也有這些功能, 公共電話也可以提供通話服務, 但是,手機卻與個人息息相關, 它能提供你某種程度的隱私,而且還很方便。 你不需要別人的同意, 你就可以打手機了,不是嗎? 而要讓我們得以存活下來, 我們就得把這些東西帶在身上。 但是,我得強調「但是」,我們經常會忘記帶。 我們是人,會忘記很正常,這本來就是天性, 而且我覺得還是個滿不錯的天性。 我們就是會忘記,但我們調適得很好, 我們可以很容易地適應各種情況, 所以我們發展出了各種加強記憶的方法, 昨天的演講還有提到其中一種記憶方法。 其實很簡單,每個人都有反射動作, 想想看,當你離開一個地方, 你會回過頭來,摸摸自己的口袋, 就算是女士們把東西放在袋子裡,也會摸摸自己的口袋, 然後你回過頭去,看看剛才自己待的地方, 就會發現有人在叫你, 大部分的人都有這種經驗。
OK, the next thing is -- most of you, if you have a stable home life, and what I mean is that you don't travel all the time, and always in hotels, but most people have what we call a center of gravity. And a center of gravity is where you keep these objects. And these things don't stay in the center of gravity, but over time, they gravitate there. It's where you expect to find stuff. And in fact, when you're turning around, and you're looking inside the house, and you're looking for this stuff, this is where you look first, right? OK, so when we did this research, we found the absolutely, 100 percent, guaranteed way to never forget anything ever, ever again. And that is, quite simply, to have nothing to remember. (Laughter)
接下來,大部分的人都有穩定的家庭生活, 我是說你並不會長時間旅行,花很多時間待在旅館裡, 大部分的人在家裡都有一個「重力中心」, 也就是你放這些東西的地方。 這些東西本來不是放在這個地方的, 但是時間一久,他們就被吸引過來了, 你會在這個地方找東西。 事實上,當你回過頭來, 在屋子裡四處搜尋, 想要找到某樣東西時, 你一定先來這裡找,對不對? 所以,當我們在進行這項研究時, 我們發現了一個百分之百、 永遠不會再忘記任何事情的方法, 那就是:不要去記任何事情。 (笑聲)
OK, now, that sounds like something you get on a Chinese fortune cookie, right? But is, in fact, about the art of delegation. And from a design perspective, it's about understanding what you can delegate to technology and what you can delegate to other people. And it turns out, delegation -- if you want it to be -- can be the solution for pretty much everything, apart from things like bodily functions, going to the toilet. You can't ask someone to do that on your behalf. And apart from things like entertainment, you wouldn't pay for someone to go to the cinema for you and have fun on your behalf, or, at least, not yet. Maybe sometime in the future, we will.
這有點像是中國的籤詩上會寫的句子,對吧? 這其實是和授權有關係, 從設計者的角度來說, 我們要去瞭解你可以授權科技幫你做什麼事, 或是授權別人幫你做什麼事。 我們發現,授權--如果你願意的話-- 可以解決幾乎所有的問題, 除了個人生理需求的問題之外,像是上廁所, 你總不能叫別人幫你上廁所吧... 還有娛樂層面的事情也不能, 你總不會付錢給某人,叫他去幫你看場電影吧... 至少目前還沒有人這樣做, 但或許未來會有人想這麼做。
So, let me give you an example of delegation in practice, right. So this is -- probably the thing I'm most passionate about is the research that we've been doing on illiteracy and how people who are illiterate communicate. So, the U.N. estimated -- this is 2004 figures -- that there are almost 800 million people who can't read and write, worldwide. So, we've been conducting a lot of research. And one of the things we were looking at is -- if you can't read and write, if you want to communicate over distances, you need to be able to identify the person that you want to communicate with. It could be a phone number, it could be an e-mail address, it could be a postal address. Simple question: if you can't read and write, how do you manage your contact information?
讓我舉個實際上授權的例子好了。 以下或許是我最熱衷的事情, 我們對文盲進行研究, 試圖瞭解文盲怎麼和別人溝通。 聯合國估計--這是2004年的數據-- 全世界大約有八億人不能讀寫, 所以我們針對這些人進行了許多研究, 我們研究的項目之一, 就是如果你不會讀寫, 而你又想和別人遠距離溝通, 你就得先描述出那個特定的人, 才能進行溝通。 有可能是透過電話號碼,也有可能是透過電郵地址, 或是透過真實的住宅地址, 但如果你不能讀也不能寫, 要怎麼記住這些聯絡資訊?
And the fact is that millions of people do it. Just from a design perspective, we didn't really understand how they did it, and so that's just one small example of the kind of research that we were doing. And it turns out that illiterate people are masters of delegation. So they delegate that part of the task process to other people, the stuff that they can't do themselves. Let me give you another example of delegation. This one's a little bit more sophisticated, and this is from a study that we did in Uganda about how people who are sharing devices, use those devices. Sente is a word in Uganda that means money. It has a second meaning, which is to send money as airtime. OK?
但是事實上已經有好幾百萬的人辦到了, 如果只從設計的角度來看,我們完全不知道他們是怎麼做到的, 而這只是我們所進行的研究中, 其中一個很小的例子而已。 我們發現,文盲竟然是最會授權的人, 他們會把某些工作授權給別人去做, 尤其是那些他們自己做不來的事情。 我再舉另一個有關授權的例子, 這個例子有點複雜, 是我們在烏干達所做的研究, 我們在那裡研究人們如何與別人分享共用某些設備。 烏干達語裡,「申地」就表示錢的意思, 另一個意義則是用電匯寄送金錢,清楚嗎?
And it works like this. So let's say, June, you're in a village, rural village. I'm in Kampala and I'm the wage earner. I'm sending money back, and it works like this. So, in your village, there's one person in the village with a phone, and that's the phone kiosk operator. And it's quite likely that they'd have a quite simple mobile phone as a phone kiosk. So what I do is, I buy a prepaid card like this. And instead of using that money to top up my own phone, I call up the local village operator. And I read out that number to them, and they use it to top up their phone. So, they're topping up the value from Kampala, and it's now being topped up in the village. You take a 10 or 20 percent commission, and then you -- the kiosk operator takes 10 or 20 percent commission, and passes the rest over to you in cash.
事情是這樣的, 舉個例子來說,瓊,你住在鄉村裡,偏僻的鄉村, 我住在坎帕拉,我在那裡打工賺錢, 如果我要把錢寄回家,我會這樣做: 在你住的村子裡,有個人有支手機, 那個人就等於是個接線生, 他拿著一支功能簡單的手機坐在店裡, 而我,我就買一張像這樣的預付卡, 我不會幫自己的手機加值, 我反而是打電話給村裡的接線生, 把預付卡上的號碼唸給他聽,讓他為他的手機加值, 這樣他們就可以將我在坎帕拉買的額度, 加在村子裡的手機上。 你會收取10%或20%的佣金,然後,不是你-- 接線生會收取10%或20%的佣金, 然後把剩餘的錢轉成現金交給你。
OK, there's two things I like about this. So the first is, it turns anyone who has access to a mobile phone -- anyone who has a mobile phone -- essentially into an ATM machine. It brings rudimentary banking services to places where there's no banking infrastructure. And even if they could have access to the banking infrastructure, they wouldn't necessarily be considered viable customers, because they're not wealthy enough to have bank accounts. There's a second thing I like about this. And that is that despite all the resources at my disposal, and despite all our kind of apparent sophistication, I know I could never have designed something as elegant and as totally in tune with the local conditions as this. OK?
這裡面有二點我想要說明一下, 第一,凡是可以撥打手機的人, 或是擁有手機的人, 就表示可以操作自動提款機, 他們為沒有銀行體系的鄉村, 建立了最基本的銀行功能。 即使當地有銀行在那裡, 這些人也無法成為銀行的客戶, 因為他們根本沒錢可以存在銀行裡。 我想說明的第二件事是, 即使用盡我擁有所有的資源, 即便我們設計出來的手機精良無比, 我知道我們無論如何都無法設計出一款手機, 能完全符合當地的生活狀況,對嗎?
And, yes, there are things like Grameen Bank and micro-lending. But the difference between this and that is, there's no central authority trying to control this. This is just street-up innovation. So, it turns out the street is a never-ending source of inspiration for us. And OK, if you break one of these things here, you return it to the carrier. They'll give you a new one. They'll probably give you three new ones, right? I mean, that's buy three, get one free. That kind of thing. If you go on the streets of India and China, you see this kind of stuff. And this is where they take the stuff that breaks, and they fix it, and they put it back into circulation.
那裡的確是有鄉村銀行和小額借貸這些機構, 但差別在於, 這種方式是沒有人管得到的, 這是街邊的創意。 我們發現,這種街邊的創意, 可以為我們提供源源不絕的靈感。 如果你弄壞了這支手機,你可以送回到電信公司, 他們可能會給你一支新的手機, 或許最多會給到三支,對吧? 我是說買三送一這類的事。 但如果你到印度或中國,你會在街上看到這個, 他們會把壞掉的手機送到這裡, 修理一下,再拿到市面上賣。
This is from a workbench in Jilin City, in China, and you can see people taking down a phone and putting it back together. They reverse-engineer manuals. This is a kind of hacker's manual, and it's written in Chinese and English. They also write them in Hindi. You can subscribe to these. There are training institutes where they're churning out people for fixing these things as well. But what I like about this is, it boils down to someone on the street with a small, flat surface, a screwdriver, a toothbrush for cleaning the contact heads -- because they often get dust on the contact heads -- and knowledge. And it's all about the social network of the knowledge, floating around. And I like this because it challenges the way that we design stuff, and build stuff, and potentially distribute stuff. It challenges the norms.
這是中國吉林的某個手機修理站, 你可以看到有人把零件拆下來, 再把手機組裝回去。 他們在做反向工程, 還寫了破解手冊, 有中文版、英文版, 還有印地語版。 你可以向他們訂購這個手冊, 也可以參加他們專為培育手機維修人才 所成立的訓練機構。 但我感興趣的是,這個過程的最終結果 是某個人來到街上,放上一個小桌子, 拿一把螺絲起子、一把用來清理接頭的牙刷-- 因為接頭常會沾到灰塵--就可以修理手機了。 這就是這些修理手機的人的社交網絡,他們會互相傳遞新知。 我對這個很感興趣,因為這改變了我們設計手機的方式, 改變我們製造手機、甚至販賣手機的方式, 改變了所有的常規。
OK, for me the street just raises so many different questions. Like, this is Viagra that I bought from a backstreet sex shop in China. And China is a country where you get a lot of fakes. And I know what you're asking -- did I test it? I'm not going to answer that, OK. But I look at something like this, and I consider the implications of trust and confidence in the purchase process. And we look at this and we think, well, how does that apply, for example, for the design of -- the lessons from this -- apply to the design of online services, future services in these markets?
對我來說,這些街邊生意總是引起我的好奇, 像是這罐我在中國某條後巷的情趣商店裡買到的威而剛, 而你知道中國有很多假貨, 我也知道你想問什麼,你想問我用過了嗎? 我才不會回答這個問題。 但我看到的是,我看到整個購買過程的背後, 所隱藏的信任與信心問題, 當我們看到這個,就會想到該怎麼運用我們看到的例子, 運用在我們的設計上, 在這些市場上該怎麼設計我們線上服務、未來該提供什麼服務?
This is a pair of underpants from -- (Laughter) -- from Tibet. And I look at something like this, and honestly, you know, why would someone design underpants with a pocket, right? And I look at something like this and it makes me question, if we were to take all the functionality in things like this, and redistribute them around the body in some kind of personal area network, how would we prioritize where to put stuff? And yes, this is quite trivial, but actually the lessons from this can apply to that kind of personal area networks. And what you see here is a couple of phone numbers written above the shack in rural Uganda. This doesn't have house numbers. This has phone numbers. So what does it mean when people's identity is mobile? When those extra three billion people's identity is mobile, it isn't fixed? Your notion of identity is out-of-date already, OK, for those extra three billion people. This is how it's shifting.
這件內褲是從-- (笑聲) 從西藏買來的, 老實說,當我看著這件內褲,我心想, 怎麼會有人在內褲裡設計口袋,對吧? 看到這類的產品讓我不禁想問, 如果我們擁有一支具有這麼多功能的手機, 你會不會重新想想,該把手機 放在身上的哪一個地方? 你會把這麼重要的東西放在哪裡? 當然,這和那個不一樣,但這件內褲卻可以 讓我們重新想想身上的各個放東西的地方。 這裡所看到的是烏干達的鄉村地區, 有人把電話號碼寫在門上面。 這裡的人不一定有門牌號碼,但一定有電話號碼, 當我們以手機號碼做為個人識別碼時,又代表什麼? 另外那三十億人的身份識別是會變的,不是固定的, 你對那三十億人的印象 已經落伍了, 世界正在朝這方向改變。
And then I go to this picture here, which is the one that I started with. And this is from Delhi. It's from a study we did into illiteracy, and it's a guy in a teashop. You can see the chai being poured in the background. And he's a, you know, incredibly poor teashop worker, on the lowest rungs in the society. And he, somehow, has the appreciation of the values of Livestrong. And it's not necessarily the same values, but some kind of values of Livestrong, to actually go out and purchase them, and actually display them.
接下的這張照片,是我一開始的研究對象, 這是在德里拍的, 那時我們在研究文盲的行為, 而這個人是在茶店工作, 你可以看到背景裡有一些茶倒在杯子裡。 他是一個在茶店打工的貧苦工人, 生活在社會的最底階層。 而他,似乎很欣賞 LiveStrong基金會的價值觀, 雖然不見得是相同的價值觀, 但應該是多少有點認同, 所以才會去買了這種手環, 戴在手上。
For me, this kind of personifies this connected world, where everything is intertwined, and the dots are -- it's all about the dots joining together. OK, the title of this presentation is "Connections and Consequences," and it's really a kind of summary of five years of trying to figure out what it's going to be like when everyone on the planet has the ability to transcend space and time in a personal and convenient manner, right? When everyone's connected.
對我來說,這種和世界接軌的個人化表彰, 讓所有的事情都連結在一起, 也讓所有的點連成一線。 我的演講主題是「連結與結果」, 其實就是把我這五年來的發現做個總結, 我要研究的是當世界上每個人 都可以用簡單的方法, 穿越時空和別人聯絡時,會發生什麼事,對吧? 當我們彼此都緊密相連時,
And there are four things. So, the first thing is the immediacy of ideas, the speed at which ideas go around. And I know TED is about big ideas, but actually, the benchmark for a big idea is changing. If you want a big idea, you need to embrace everyone on the planet, that's the first thing.
有四件事會發生, 第一件事是想法的快速傳播, 也就是每個人的想法傳播出去的速度。 我知道TED是在傳播偉大的想法, 但同時 “偉大的想法” 的定義也在改變。在當今 如果你想要有偉大的想法,這個想法就得擁抱(包括)世上的每一個人, 這是第一件事。
The second thing is the immediacy of objects. And what I mean by that is, as these become smaller, as the functionality that you can access through this becomes greater -- things like banking, identity -- these things quite simply move very quickly around the world. And so the speed of the adoption of things is just going to become that much more rapid, in a way that we just totally cannot conceive, when you get it to 6.3 billion and the growth in the world's population.
第二件事,則是我們可以直接快速地取得某些東西, 我的意思是當手機變得愈來愈小, 提供的功能卻愈來愈強大時, 像是銀行體系、個人識別等, 手機便會快速地在世界上流通。 因此,手機人口成長的速度, 也會變得愈來愈快, 全世界的手機人口 將會快速成長到63億, 速度之快,是我們無法想像的。
The next thing is that, however we design this stuff -- carefully design this stuff -- the street will take it, and will figure out ways to innovate, as long as it meets base needs -- the ability to transcend space and time, for example. And it will innovate in ways that we cannot anticipate. In ways that, despite our resources, they can do it better than us. That's my feeling. And if we're smart, we'll look at this stuff that's going on, and we'll figure out a way to enable it to inform and infuse both what we design and how we design.
第三件事,是不論我們怎麼設計手機, 不論多麼地小心設計, 這些街邊生意人都會想出更創新的方式來破解, 只要他們能迎合基層社會人士的需求, 像是穿越時空的需求這一類的。 他們創新破解的方式是我們無法預知的, 就算耗盡我們所有的資源,他們還是能做得比我們更好, 這是我個人的感覺。 如果我們夠聰明的話,我們應讓持續關注未來的走向, 我們就會想出辦法,改善我們設計的方法, 設計出更好的手機。
And the last thing is that -- actually, the direction of the conversation. With another three billion people connected, they want to be part of the conversation. And I think our relevance and TED's relevance is really about embracing that and learning how to listen, essentially. And we need to learn how to listen. So thank you very, very much. (Applause)
最後一件事,其實是談話內容的走向, 因為另外那三十億人終究會加入我們的手機世界, 他們也希望加入我們的談話。 而我認為,我們關注的重點,以及TED關注的重點, 應該是要去擁抱這些人,並學習傾聽他們的聲音, 我們真的得學會傾聽。 謝謝大家,非常感謝。 (掌聲)