I love my food. And I love information. My children usually tell me that one of those passions is a little more apparent than the other. (Laughter)
我喜歡我的食物。 我也喜歡資訊。 我的小孩總跟我說 我對其中一項的喜好明顯地大於另外一項。 (笑聲)
But what I want to do in the next eight minutes or so is to take you through how those passions developed, the point in my life when the two passions merged, the journey of learning that took place from that point. And one idea I want to leave you with today is what would would happen differently in your life if you saw information the way you saw food?
但是,接下來八分鐘我想要 帶領大家體驗這些喜好是如何發展而成, 當這兩項喜好在我生命合而為一的時候, 以及之後的學習旅程。 今天我要留給大家思考的是 如果你將資訊看待成食物 你的人生會有什麼不同?
I was born in Calcutta -- a family where my father and his father before him were journalists, and they wrote magazines in the English language. That was the family business. And as a result of that, I grew up with books everywhere around the house. And I mean books everywhere around the house. And that's actually a shop in Calcutta, but it's a place where we like our books. In fact, I've got 38,000 of them now and no Kindle in sight.
我在印度加爾各達市出生 -- 生於一個父親與祖父 都是記者的家庭, 而且他們都在雜誌上發表英文文章。 這是家族事業。 因為如此, 我在家內充滿書的環境中長大。 我指的真的房子裡到處是書。 事實上這是加爾各達的一間商店, 但是個會讓人愛上書本的地方。 事實上我現在擁有三萬八千本書, 沒有一本是Kindle(亞馬遜電子書閱讀器)。
But growing up as a child with the books around everywhere, with people to talk to about those books, this wasn't a sort of slightly learned thing.
但是成長於四周充滿書, 人們談論書的環境中, 這不太是件需要學習的事。
By the time I was 18, I had a deep passion for books. It wasn't the only passion I had. I was a South Indian brought up in Bengal. And two of the things about Bengal: they like their savory dishes and they like their sweets. So by the time I grew up, again, I had a well-established passion for food. Now I was growing up in the late '60s and early '70s, and there were a number of other passions I was also interested in, but these two were the ones that differentiated me. (Laughter)
當我18歲的時候,我熱愛書本。 不過這並不是我唯一的喜好。 我來自印度南方, 在孟加拉長大。 孟加拉人的兩大特點就是: 喜愛當地香辣美食 還有甜點。 於是,長大後, 我也培養了對美食的熱愛。 我成長於1960末和1970初, 我也還有很多其它的熱愛的事物, 但這兩個喜好讓我與眾不同。 (笑聲)
And then life was fine, dandy. Everything was okay, until I got to about the age of 26, and I went to a movie called "Short Circuit." Oh, some of you have seen it. And apparently it's being remade right now and it's going to be coming out next year. It's the story of this experimental robot which got electrocuted and found a life. And as it ran, this thing was saying, "Give me input. Give me input."
當時生命是如此美好, 一切都很順利, 直到我26歲那年, 看了一部叫“霹靂五號"(SHORT CIRCUIT)的電影。 哦,你們有些人有看過。 那部片現在正在重拍, 預計明年會上映。 這是一部關於實驗性機器人 被雷擊後找到生命的故事。 當它奔跑時,不斷地說:「給我資料,給我資料。」
And I suddenly realized that for a robot both information as well as food were the same thing. Energy came to it in some form or shape, data came to it in some form or shape. And I began to think, I wonder what it would be like to start imagining myself as if energy and information were the two things I had as input -- as if food and information were similar in some form or shape.
我突然意識到對機器人來說 資訊跟食物 毫無分別。 能量以某種形態或形狀進入它體內 資料也以各種形態或形狀進入它體內。 我開始思考, 我好奇如果是我, 那會是什麼情況? 彷彿能量與資訊是我要吸收的兩樣東西 -- 如同食物和資訊有類似的型態或者形狀。
I started doing some research then, and this was the 25-year journey, and started finding out that actually human beings as primates have far smaller stomachs than should be the size for our body weight and far larger brains.
我從那時起開始從事相關的研究,到現在已經二十五年了 我最早的發現是 身為靈長類的人類, 對照我們的體重, 我們的胃其實非常的小, 腦卻很大。
And as I went to research that even further, I got to a point where I discovered something called the expensive tissue hypothesis. That actually for a given body mass of a primate the metabolic rate was static. What changed was the balance of the tissues available. And two of the most expensive tissues in our human body are nervous tissue and digestive tissue. And what transpired was that people had put forward a hypothesis that was apparently coming up with some fabulous results by about 1995. It's a lady named Leslie Aiello.
我對此做了深入的研究, 發現一種稱為 高耗能組織假說(expensive tissue hypothesis)。 事實上靈長類身體質量 的新成代謝是固定的。 會變的是可用組織間的平衡。 而人類身體內最高耗能的兩個組織 就是神經組織及消化組織。 接著人們作出了一個假設 而且在1995年時有了極佳結果。 有位Leslie Aiello 女士
And the paper then suggested that you traded one for the other. If you wanted your brain for a particular body mass to be large, you had to live with a smaller gut.
在報告中提出人們將用一個器官交換另一個。 如果你想要個相對於特定身體質量較大的大腦, 你就必須接受擁有較小的內臟。
That then set me off completely to say, Okay, these two are connected. So I looked at the cultivation of information as if it were food and said, So we were hunter-gathers of information. We moved from that to becoming farmers and cultivators of information.
這完全開了我的話匣子, 我可以說,好的,這兩者是相連的。 所以我將資訊培養視為食物, 試想我們以前都是資訊的採獵者。 接著我們變成農夫和資訊培養者。
Does that really explain what we're seeing with the intellectual property battles nowadays? Because those people who were hunter-gatherers in origin wanted to be free and roam and pick up information as they wanted, and those that were in the business of farming information wanted to build fences around it, create ownership and wealth and structure and settlement. So there was always going to be a tension within that. And everything I saw in the cultivation said there were huge fights amongst the foodies between the cultivators and the hunter-gatherers. And this is happening here.
這是否真的可以解釋 今日常見的智慧財產權爭奪戰? 因為這些原本的採獵者 想要隨心所欲地自由採集資訊, 而原本從事生產資訊的人們 想要在資訊周圍築藩籬, 以宣稱所有權,製造財富,組織和法定財產。 於是緊張情勢總是存在其中。 而我看到所有培養物中, 存在美食家的爭鬥, 發自於培養者和採集者間。 相同的情況也在這裡發生。
When I moved to preparation, this same thing was true, expect that there were two schools. One group of people said you can distill your information, you can extract value, separate it and serve it up, while another group turned around and said no, no you can ferment it. You bring it all together and mash it up and the value emerges that way. The same is again true with information.
當我開始要準備的時候,面臨到一樣的狀況, 只是這次是兩間學校。 其中一部分的人說你可以提煉你的資訊中的精華, 你可以萃取有價值的部分,將它分開好再上桌。 而另一部分的人回過頭來 說不可以,但你可以使它發酵。 你將全部聚集在一塊然後搗碎, 於是能顯示它的價值。 這樣的準則套用到資訊也行得通。
But consumption was where it started getting really enjoyable. Because what I began to see then was there were so many different ways people would consume this. They'd buy it from the shop as raw ingredients. Do you cook it? Do you have it served to you? Do you go to a restaurant? The same is true every time as I started thinking about information.
但消費是真正有趣的開始, 因為可以開始看到 人們可以用很多不同的方式消費。 可以從店裡購買生的食材。 你烹飪嗎?還是都是吃別人煮的? 你去餐廳嗎? 每當我開始想到資訊時,也是一樣的狀況。
The analogies were getting crazy -- that information had sell-by dates, that people had misused information that wasn't dated properly and could really make an effect on the stock market, on corporate values, etc. And by this time I was hooked. And this is about 23 years into this process.
對比可是無止境的 -- 資訊也有保存期限, 人們誤用沒有妥善標示日期的資訊 可能會影響股票市場, 或者公司價值等。 研究到這個時候,我非常著迷。 而這已經是第23年了。
And I began to start thinking of myself as we start having mash-ups of fact and fiction, docu-dramas, mockumentaries, whatever you call it. Are we going to reach the stage where information has a percentage for fact associated with it? We start labeling information for the fact percentage? Are we going to start looking at what happens when your information source is turned off, as a famine?
於是我開始想到我自己, 當我們開始混合現實和虛構, 劇情式紀錄片、偽紀錄片,不管你怎麼稱呼它。 我們是否能達到 有一部分事實和資訊相連的境界? 我們是否會開始在資訊上標示其中事實所佔的百分比? 當資訊來源消失,就像遇到饑荒一樣, 我們是否會開始觀察原因?
Which brings me to the final element of this. Clay Shirky once stated that there is no such animal as information overload, there is only filter failure. I put it to you that information, if viewed from the point of food, is never a production issue; you never speak of food overload. Fundamentally it's a consumption issue. And we have to start thinking about how we create diets within ourselves, exercise within ourselves, to have the faculties to be able to deal with information, to have the labeling to be able to do it responsibly. In fact, when I saw "Supersize Me," I starting thinking of saying, What would happen if an individual had 31 days nonstop Fox News? (Laughter) Would there be time to be able to work with it?
這引導我們到最後的元素。 Clay Shirky曾說過沒有動物會承載過多的資訊, 有的只是篩檢失敗而已。 我要展現的是, 從食物的觀點來看資訊, 這從來不是生產的問題;你不會說食物超載。 基本上這是消費的問題。 於是我們必須開始思考 我們要如何安排個人的節食,運動計畫, 確保我們的身體機能能夠處理資訊, 能發揮職責有效地分類標籤。 事實上,當我看電影「麥胖報告」時, 我想到 如果一個人連續31天不間斷地觀看福斯新聞會怎麼樣? (笑聲) 是否有時間能夠跟上腳步?
So you start really understanding that you can have diseases, toxins, a need to balance your diet, and once you start looking, and from that point on, everything I have done in terms of the consumption of information, the production of information, the preparation of information, I've looked at from the viewpoint of food. It has probably not helped my waistline any because I like practicing on both sides.
於是你開始能真正了解 你感染疾病,毒素,平衡你的飲食的必需品, 一旦你開始正視這個問題,從那時候開始, 我剛剛講到的資訊消費, 資訊生產和資訊準備這些觀點, 已經從食物的觀點檢視過。 這或許對縮小我的腰圍沒有任何助益, 因為我喜歡食物和資訊。
But I'd like to leave you with just that question: If you began to think of all the information that you consume the way you think of food, what would you do differently?
但我想要讓你們思考這個問題: 如果你開始用你看待食物的方式 來思考你消化的資訊, 你的行為會有什麼不同?
Thank you very much for your time.
謝謝你們費時凝聽。
(Applause)
(掌聲)