When I was a student here in Oxford in the 1970s, the future of the world was bleak. The population explosion was unstoppable. Global famine was inevitable. A cancer epidemic caused by chemicals in the environment was going to shorten our lives. The acid rain was falling on the forests. The desert was advancing by a mile or two a year. The oil was running out, and a nuclear winter would finish us off. None of those things happened, (Laughter) and astonishingly, if you look at what actually happened in my lifetime, the average per-capita income of the average person on the planet, in real terms, adjusted for inflation, has tripled. Lifespan is up by 30 percent in my lifetime. Child mortality is down by two-thirds. Per-capita food production is up by a third. And all this at a time when the population has doubled.
1970年,當我還是個牛津大學的學生時, 全世界的未來是暗淡無光的。 人口爆炸的情形我們擋不住, 全球性的饑荒似乎無法避免。 環境中的化學殘留物造成癌症的蔓延, 使我們的壽命減短。 酸雨落在森林裡。 沙漠的範圍每年都擴張1到2英里。 石油就快被我們用完。 核子冬天會把我們殺死。(註:全球發動核戰後的情景) 不過剛說的其實都沒有發生。 (笑) 令人驚訝的是,若你好好觀察我有生之年發生了什麼事情, 目前地球上, 平均一個人的收入, 經過通膨的調整,實際上 比以前成長了3倍。 我的壽命比以前提升了30%。 兒童死亡率下降了三分之二 。 平均一個人的食品生產量 上升了三分之一。 我們在人口暴增2倍的情況下發生這些事情。
How did we achieve that, whether you think it's a good thing or not? How did we achieve that? How did we become the only species that becomes more prosperous as it becomes more populous? The size of the blob in this graph represents the size of the population, and the level of the graph represents GDP per capita. I think to answer that question you need to understand how human beings bring together their brains and enable their ideas to combine and recombine, to meet and, indeed, to mate. In other words, you need to understand how ideas have sex.
怎麼做到的?不論你覺得這樣是好是壞, 我們到底怎麼做到的? 我們是如何變成 生活密度越高 就越興旺的 物種。 圖中的顏色班點代表人口, 圖中的縱座標 表示人均國民生產毛額。 我想去回答 各位必須了解的疑問, 人類是如何匯集他們的大腦, 並讓腦中的概念結合再結合, 使其互相連結,進一步來說,是繁衍。 換句話說,各位必須要了解的是 這些概念是如何交配的?
I want you to imagine how we got from making objects like this to making objects like this. These are both real objects. One is an Acheulean hand axe from half a million years ago of the kind made by Homo erectus. The other is obviously a computer mouse. They're both exactly the same size and shape to an uncanny degree. I've tried to work out which is bigger, and it's almost impossible. And that's because they're both designed to fit the human hand. They're both technologies. In the end, their similarity is not that interesting. It just tells you they were both designed to fit the human hand. The differences are what interest me, because the one on the left was made to a pretty unvarying design for about a million years -- from one-and-a-half million years ago to half a million years ago. Homo erectus made the same tool for 30,000 generations. Of course there were a few changes, but tools changed slower than skeletons in those days. There was no progress, no innovation. It's an extraordinary phenomenon, but it's true. Whereas the object on the right is obsolete after five years. And there's another difference too, which is the object on the left is made from one substance. The object on the right is made from a confection of different substances, from silicon and metal and plastic and so on. And more than that, it's a confection of different ideas, the idea of plastic, the idea of a laser, the idea of transistors. They've all been combined together in this technology.
希望各位可以想像一下, 我們是如何將畫面上的這個東西 變成像右邊這個東西。 這二個都是真實存在的東西。 一個是50萬年前阿舍利手斧, 由直立式猿人所製作; 另一個很明顯是電腦滑鼠。 這二個東西的大小跟形狀,相似到不可思議的境界。 我試著計算出這二者哪個較大, 但幾乎是不可能的。 那是因為,它們都是根據我們的手去設計的。 它們都用了同樣的技術。最後,這二者的相似性就不是這麼令人感興趣了。 相似性只不過是告訴各位,它們都是根據人手去設計的。 這二者差異性才是吸引我的地方。 左邊的這個石器的設計樣貌維持了很長一段時間, 大概用了一百萬年--- 約150萬年前到50萬年前這段時間在使用。 直立人猿製作這個器具 至少3萬個世代。 當然中間可能會有一點點改變, 但在這段時間裡,這個工具改變的速度比猿人的骨骼還要慢。 沒有進步,沒有創新。 這是一個多驚人的現象,不過這是真的。 但右邊的這個東西,再過5年它就過時了。 另一個不同點是, 左邊的石器只用一種原料製成, 右邊的滑鼠是 用很多原料製作成的複雜產品, 像是矽、金屬、塑膠等等。 滑鼠最不一樣的地方是,它是一個不同概念的的混合體, 塑膠的概念,雷射光學的概念, 電晶體的概念。 這些概念被組合在一起成為這項科技。
And it's this combination, this cumulative technology, that intrigues me, because I think it's the secret to understanding what's happening in the world. My body's an accumulation of ideas too: the idea of skin cells, the idea of brain cells, the idea of liver cells. They've come together. How does evolution do cumulative, combinatorial things? Well, it uses sexual reproduction. In an asexual species, if you get two different mutations in different creatures, a green one and a red one, then one has to be better than the other. One goes extinct for the other to survive. But if you have a sexual species, then it's possible for an individual to inherit both mutations from different lineages. So what sex does is it enables the individual to draw upon the genetic innovations of the whole species. It's not confined to its own lineage.
這是一個結合體, 這累積的科技引起我的好奇心。 因為我認為這其中的奧妙, 可以用來解釋當今世界的發展。 我的身體也是一種概念的累積, 皮膚細胞的概念,大腦細胞的概念,肝臟細胞的概念。 這些概念聚集在一起。 人類的進化如何累積、組合? 答案是利用了有性生殖。 一個無性生殖的物種,產生2個不同個體,且各為2種基因變異的結果, 變異結果一種是綠色的,一種是紅色的, 若其中一種的較能適應環境, 則另一種會滅絕,一種會繼續生存。 但,若是個有性生殖的物種, 那一個個體是有可能 從二個不同的血統中 同時繼承到二邊的基因。 因此'有性',能使個體 吸收 整個物種的遺傳基因。 這樣就不會只侷限於單一的血統。
What's the process that's having the same effect in cultural evolution as sex is having in biological evolution? And I think the answer is exchange, the habit of exchanging one thing for another. It's a unique human feature. No other animal does it. You can teach them in the laboratory to do a little bit of exchange -- and indeed there's reciprocity in other animals -- But the exchange of one object for another never happens. As Adam Smith said, "No man ever saw a dog make a fair exchange of a bone with another dog." (Laughter) You can have culture without exchange. You can have, as it were, asexual culture. Chimpanzees, killer whales, these kinds of creatures, they have culture. They teach each other traditions which are handed down from parent to offspring. In this case, chimpanzees teaching each other how to crack nuts with rocks. But the difference is that these cultures never expand, never grow, never accumulate, never become combinatorial, and the reason is because there is no sex, as it were, there is no exchange of ideas. Chimpanzee troops have different cultures in different troops. There's no exchange of ideas between them.
既然'性'能讓生物特性進化, 那要經過怎樣的流程, 才能讓文化的演進中有相同效果? 我想答案就是透過'交易', 透過將物品交易到另一個地方的手法。 這是人類特性獨特的地方。 沒有其他動物會這樣做。 是可以在實驗室裡教動物一點簡單的交易手法。 其他動物的確都會做出互惠的行為。 但是將一個物品跟其他個體交換是從未發生的。 亞當斯密曾說: ''沒人看過狗與狗公平交換骨頭。'' (笑) 沒有交易也會產生文化。 像是所謂的無性文化(asexual culture)。 黑猩猩、殺人鯨等等,像這些哺乳類都有自己的文化。 牠們會互相教導傳統慣例, 像是透過父母傳承給子女的這種方式。 舉個例,黑猩猩會互相教導 如何用石頭敲碎核桃殼。 但不一樣的點在於, 這些文化從未擴大,從未成長, 從未累積,也從來沒有組合過。 其中的原因就是因為 這些文化沒有'性', 這些文化裡沒有交易的概念在。 一群黑猩猩跟另一群黑猩猩的文化會略有不同。 牠們之間沒有交易的概念在。
And why does exchange raise living standards? Well, the answer came from David Ricardo in 1817. And here is a Stone Age version of his story, although he told it in terms of trade between countries. Adam takes four hours to make a spear and three hours to make an axe. Oz takes one hour to make a spear and two hours to make an axe. So Oz is better at both spears and axes than Adam. He doesn't need Adam. He can make his own spears and axes. Well no, because if you think about it, if Oz makes two spears and Adam make two axes, and then they trade, then they will each have saved an hour of work. And the more they do this, the more true it's going to be, because the more they do this, the better Adam is going to get at making axes and the better Oz is going to get at making spears. So the gains from trade are only going to grow. And this is one of the beauties of exchange, is it actually creates the momentum for more specialization, which creates the momentum for more exchange and so on. Adam and Oz both saved an hour of time. That is prosperity, the saving of time in satisfying your needs.
那,為什麼交易能夠提昇生活水準? 這個問題的答案,大衛-李嘉圖在1817年時就說明了。 他當時是用二個國家之間的交易情形來說明, 現在我用石器時代版本的案例。 亞當做一支矛要4小時,一支斧要3小時。 奧茲做一支矛要1小時,一支斧要2小時。 奧茲在矛與斧的製作速度上都優於亞當。 他根本不需要亞當。 他大可自己製作矛跟斧。 但事情不是這樣的,想想看, 如果奧茲做2支矛,亞當做2支斧, 他們就可以交易了, 而且交易能使他們都少工作1個小時。 他們做越多次,工作時數就少越多。 因為若他們做越多次,對亞當最有利的就是只做斧頭, 而對奧茲最有利的就是只做矛。 這樣一來透過交易的好處就變多了。 這就是交易美妙的地方, 交易居然成了 專業化的原動力, 而專業化又再驅使人做更多的交易。 亞當跟奧茲都省下一個小時。 用更少的時間去滿足需求, 這就是繁榮的象徵。
Ask yourself how long you would have to work to provide for yourself an hour of reading light this evening to read a book by. If you had to start from scratch, let's say you go out into the countryside. You find a sheep. You kill it. You get the fat out of it. You render it down. You make a candle, etc. etc. How long is it going to take you? Quite a long time. How long do you actually have to work to earn an hour of reading light if you're on the average wage in Britain today? And the answer is about half a second. Back in 1950, you would have had to work for eight seconds on the average wage to acquire that much light. And that's seven and a half seconds of prosperity that you've gained since 1950, as it were, because that's seven and a half seconds in which you can do something else, or you can acquire another good or service. And back in 1880, it would have been 15 minutes to earn that amount of light on the average wage. Back in 1800, you'd have had to work six hours to earn a candle that could burn for an hour. In other words, the average person on the average wage could not afford a candle in 1800.
各位可捫心自問, 你需要工作多久 才能換得在晚上點亮1小時的閱讀燈來看書?。 假設你一無所有要從頭打拼,回到了鄉下。 你找到了一支羊,宰了牠,然後得到牠身上的脂肪。 然後你把脂肪萃取成油,做成蠟燭之類的東西。 這件事情你要花多久時間完成?要超級久。 以當今在英國工作一天所得的薪水, 要工作多久 才能賺到點亮閱讀燈1小時的錢? 答案是0.5秒。 退到1950年, 在那時候的薪資水準下,你必須工作8秒 才能點亮1小時的燈。 所以現在你比以前多賺了7.5秒。 從1950年來算的確是如此。 因為多出來的這7.5秒,你可以做其他的事情。 或者你可以去換取別的商品或服務。 退到1880年, 當時的薪資水準下 想賺到一樣的光量就得工作15秒。 退到1800年, 你必須去工作6個小時 才能賺到一支能點1小時的蠟燭。 換句話說,1800年時平均一個人的薪水 根本就買不起一根蠟燭。
Go back to this image of the axe and the mouse, and ask yourself: "Who made them and for who?" The stone axe was made by someone for himself. It was self-sufficiency. We call that poverty these days. But the object on the right was made for me by other people. How many other people? Tens? Hundreds? Thousands? You know, I think it's probably millions. Because you've got to include the man who grew the coffee, which was brewed for the man who was on the oil rig, who was drilling for oil, which was going to be made into the plastic, etc. They were all working for me, to make a mouse for me. And that's the way society works. That's what we've achieved as a species.
回到剛剛的斧頭和滑鼠, 你會問自己:是誰做出這些東西?又是為了誰而作? 這石斧是某人為了自己而自製。 這叫自給自足。 對這樣的生活我們稱為貧窮。 但右邊這個滑鼠 是其他人為了我而作的。 這些人的數量有多少? 10位?上百?上千? 我想人數大約是數百萬。 因為你必須把很多人算進去-- 像是所種的咖啡會被鑽油平台上的工人拿去泡的咖啡農; 還有那利用工人鑽出來的油去做出塑膠的人,諸如此類。 這些人都為我工作, 為了我做出一個滑鼠。 這是人類社會工作的方式。 身為人類這個物種,這是我們已經做到的。
In the old days, if you were rich, you literally had people working for you. That's how you got to be rich; you employed them. Louis XIV had a lot of people working for him. They made his silly outfits, like this, (Laughter) and they did his silly hairstyles, or whatever. He had 498 people to prepare his dinner every night. But a modern tourist going around the palace of Versailles and looking at Louis XIV's pictures, he has 498 people doing his dinner tonight too. They're in bistros and cafes and restaurants and shops all over Paris, and they're all ready to serve you at an hour's notice with an excellent meal that's probably got higher quality than Louis XIV even had. And that's what we've done, because we're all working for each other. We're able to draw upon specialization and exchange to raise each other's living standards.
在很久以前的年代,如果你很有錢, 會有人幫你工作。 這就是你如何變有錢的;你僱用這些人。 路易十六有一堆人幫他工作。 這些人為他做了這件超蠢的外套。 (笑) 這些人也幫他做了這超蠢的髮型,還有很多東西等等 當時有498個人 負責幫他做晚餐。 但一位現代觀光客到凡爾賽遊覽, 觀賞路易十六的這幅畫, 這觀光客同樣也有498個人幫他準備晚餐。 這些人是在全巴黎的 小酒吧、咖啡店、餐廳、商店工作。 這些人隨時都能在一個小時內 提供出非常精緻的餐點, 這些餐點可能還比路易十六吃的還棒。 我們能做到這件事,就是因為我們互相工作。 我們能夠利用專業化與交易, 來互相提昇生活水準。
Now, you do get other animals working for each other too. Ants are a classic example; workers work for queens and queens work for workers. But there's a big difference, which is that it only happens within the colony. There's no working for each other across the colonies. And the reason for that is because there's a reproductive division of labor. That is to say, they specialize with respect to reproduction. The queen does it all. In our species, we don't like doing that. It's the one thing we insist on doing for ourselves, is reproduction. (Laughter) Even in England, we don't leave reproduction to the Queen.
你會發覺,有其他生物也會互相工作。 螞蟻就是典型的例子。工蟻為蟻后工作,蟻后為工蟻工作。 但是這跟人類的差太多了, 因為螞蟻的互相工作只限於同一個聚落裡。 牠們不會跨聚落的互相工作。 另一個理由,因為螞蟻是「生殖性的分工體系」。 意思是說,牠們的分工是取決於生殖能力。 繁殖就由蟻后完全負責。 我們人類這個物種不會這樣做。 因為我們最想要讓自己來的事情,就是繁殖。 (笑) 即使在英國,我們也不會把繁殖的工作交給女王。
(Applause)
(掌聲)
So when did this habit start? And how long has it been going on? And what does it mean? Well, I think, probably, the oldest version of this is probably the sexual division of labor. But I've got no evidence for that. It just looks like the first thing we did was work male for female and female for male. In all hunter-gatherer societies today, there's a foraging division of labor between, on the whole, hunting males and gathering females. It isn't always quite that simple, but there's a distinction between specialized roles for males and females. And the beauty of this system is that it benefits both sides. The woman knows that, in the Hadzas' case here -- digging roots to share with men in exchange for meat -- she knows that all she has to do to get access to protein is to dig some extra roots and trade them for meat. And she doesn't have to go on an exhausting hunt and try and kill a warthog. And the man knows that he doesn't have to do any digging to get roots. All he has to do is make sure that when he kills a warthog it's big enough to share some. And so both sides raise each other's standards of living through the sexual division of labor.
所以這個行為是什麼時候開始的?(指互相工作) 這行為持續多久了?這有什麼含意? 嗯,我認為人類最古老的互相工作版本, 應該是從性別分工開始。 但我沒有證據可以證實。 只是看起來,我們剛開始, 就是男性為女性工作,女性也為男性工作。 今日,在採獵者的聚落裡(以打獵和採集為生), 那是一種以覓食來分工的體系, 大致上分為男性狩獵者和女性採集者。 當然不是都能這麼簡單地區分。 不過這是男女之間分工的 主要區分方式。 而這種系統的美妙之處, 就是男女兩邊都有受益。 在這個哈扎人的例子中(註:Hadza,坦桑尼亞的原住民), 這個女人 知道要去挖植物根莖,以便跟男人換肉品, 她知道想獲得更多蛋白質食品, 就必須挖更多的根莖品去跟男人換肉。 她不需要耗盡體力去打獵, 或是去殺疣豬。 男人也知道他們不需要 挖土找根莖食品。 他只需要確保,當他獵捕到疣豬時, 這隻疣豬夠大有辦法分給別人。 所以這男女雙方都因為性別分工, 而提昇彼此的生活水準。
When did this happen? We don't know, but it's possible that Neanderthals didn't do this. They were a highly cooperative species. They were a highly intelligent species. Their brains on average, by the end, were bigger than yours and mine in this room today. They were imaginative. They buried their dead. They had language, probably, because we know they had the FOXP2 gene of the same kind as us, which was discovered here in Oxford. And so it looks like they probably had linguistic skills. They were brilliant people. I'm not dissing the Neanderthals. But there's no evidence of a sexual division of labor. There's no evidence of gathering behavior by females. It looks like the females were cooperative hunters with the men. And the other thing there's no evidence for is exchange between groups, because the objects that you find in Neanderthal remains, the tools they made, are always made from local materials. For example, in the Caucasus there's a site where you find local Neanderthal tools. They're always made from local chert. In the same valley there are modern human remains from about the same date, 30,000 years ago, and some of those are from local chert, but more -- but many of them are made from obsidian from a long way away. And when human beings began moving objects around like this, it was evidence that they were exchanging between groups.
人類什麼時候開始這樣做?我們不知道,但是 尼安德塔人就沒這樣做。 牠們是種高度合作的物種。 他們是有高度智能的物種。 到目前為止,他們的大腦 比這間會議室的你我都還要大。 牠們很有想像力。牠們會火葬死者。 牠們可能用語言溝通, 因為我們跟牠們都有一種FOXP2基因, 是由牛津大學研究發現的。 這個基因讓牠們有語言能力。 牠們是種傑出的人種。我並不是輕視尼安德塔人。 但是,真的沒有任何證據 顯示牠們有男女分工的跡象。 沒任何證據說明女性就負責採集。 看起來像是女性會跟男性一起出外打獵。 另一件事就是,沒有證據顯示 牠們群體之間會做交易。 因為從尼安德塔人留下的物品發現, 牠們製作的器具, 原料都是從當地取得的。 舉例來說,在高加索山那一帶, 附近發現了尼安德塔人的物品。 牠們用當地的燧石製作。 在同一個山洞裡,也有現代人的遺物, 幾乎同一個時段,大約三萬年前。 現代人所遺留下來的物品有些是用燧石製作, 但是有更多的物品 是用非常非常遙遠的地區才有的黑耀石。 當人類開始 到處轉移這些物品時, 也證明了群體之間會作交易。
Trade is 10 times as old as farming. People forget that. People think of trade as a modern thing. Exchange between groups has been going on for a hundred thousand years. And the earliest evidence for it crops up somewhere between 80 and 120,000 years ago in Africa, when you see obsidian and jasper and other things moving long distances in Ethiopia. You also see seashells -- as discovered by a team here in Oxford -- moving 125 miles inland from the Mediterranean in Algeria. And that's evidence that people have started exchanging between groups. And that will have led to specialization.
地球上出現交易的時間,比農耕早了10倍。 但我們都忘了。我們都以為交易是現代的產物。 群體之間的交易行為, 早在十萬年前就開始了。 甚至還發現非洲的某些地方, 在80萬到120萬年前就有這種跡象, 發現黑耀石和碧玉和其他礦石, 都是遠從衣索匹亞運來的。 你也能發現貝殼-- 由牛津的研究團隊所發現-- 從阿爾及利亞的地中海地區 被送到125英哩遠的內陸地區(約201公里)。 這也顯示人們 開始和不同群體做交易。 這將帶動專業化的行為。
How do you know that long-distance movement means trade rather than migration? Well, you look at modern hunter gatherers like aboriginals, who quarried for stone axes at a place called Mount Isa, which was a quarry owned by the Kalkadoon tribe. They traded them with their neighbors for things like stingray barbs, and the consequence was that stone axes ended up over a large part of Australia. So long-distance movement of tools is a sign of trade, not migration.
要如何分辨這些物品的長距離移動是因為交易, 而不是遷徙所導致? 嗯,像澳洲土著這種採獵者, 他們從伊莎山開採石斧用的礦石(註:位於澳洲東北)。 一個叫卡卡度的部落擁有一個開採場(註:Kalkadoon)。 這部落的人會用礦石來和鄰居做交易, 像是交易魟魚的尾刺。 這尾刺裝在石斧上, 結果這種石斧成為澳洲各地最常見的器具。 所以這種器具的長距離移動 就是交易的徵兆,而非移民導致。
What happens when you cut people off from exchange, from the ability to exchange and specialize? And the answer is that not only do you slow down technological progress, you can actually throw it into reverse. An example is Tasmania. When the sea level rose and Tasmania became an island 10,000 years ago, the people on it not only experienced slower progress than people on the mainland, they actually experienced regress. They gave up the ability to make stone tools and fishing equipment and clothing because the population of about 4,000 people was simply not large enough to maintain the specialized skills necessary to keep the technology they had. It's as if the people in this room were plonked on a desert island. How many of the things in our pockets could we continue to make after 10,000 years? It didn't happen in Tierra del Fuego -- similar island, similar people. The reason: because Tierra del Fuego is separated from South America by a much narrower straight, and there was trading contact across that straight throughout 10,000 years. The Tasmanians were isolated.
如果切斷人與人的交易行為會怎樣? 切斷交易和專業化會怎樣? 答案是 不只是科技的進步會變得緩慢, 事實上還有可能退步。 舉一個塔斯曼尼亞島的例子(澳洲南部的小島)。 塔斯曼尼亞島在一萬年前,海平面上升後, 居住在上面的人, 發展的進度還不只是慢於大陸上的人, 實際上他們還開始退步。 他們放棄了用骨頭做工具的能力, 還有製作釣魚器具、縫紉, 因為上面僅僅四千人的人口, 沒有足夠數量 能維持專業性技能, 以便成為他們的技術。 若現在這房間裡有些人被扔到荒島上, 那這些人口袋裡的東西, 有多少能夠在一萬年後還能持續製作的? 這種事情就沒發生在火地島上(註:位於阿根廷南方)。 類似的島嶼,類似的人。 理由是因為 火地島跟南美大陸只相隔了一條非常狹窄的海峽。 上面的居民跨過海峽做交易接觸 整整有一萬年的歷史。 而塔斯曼尼亞島就完全是個孤島。
Go back to this image again and ask yourself, not only who made it and for who, but who knew how to make it. In the case of the stone axe, the man who made it knew how to make it. But who knows how to make a computer mouse? Nobody, literally nobody. There is nobody on the planet who knows how to make a computer mouse. I mean this quite seriously. The president of the computer mouse company doesn't know. He just knows how to run a company. The person on the assembly line doesn't know because he doesn't know how to drill an oil well to get oil out to make plastic, and so on. We all know little bits, but none of us knows the whole.
讓我們再回到這張圖片, 問問自己,不只是這東西是誰做的和為誰做, 還要問,誰知道怎麼做。 在這個石斧的例子中,這個人知道如何製作這個石斧。 但是現在誰知道滑鼠要怎麼製作? 沒人,基本上沒人知道。 在這個地球上真的沒人知道滑鼠要怎麼製作。 我是很嚴肅地講這件事情。 就連滑鼠公司的總裁都不會知道。 他只知道如何經營公司。 組裝線上的人也不知道, 因為他不知道如何鑽油井, 然後把石油製作成塑膠,諸如此類的東西。 我們都只了解一小部分,但是沒人知道從頭到尾的製作方式。
I am of course quoting from a famous essay by Leonard Read, the economist in the 1950s, called "I, Pencil" in which he wrote about how a pencil came to be made, and how nobody knows even how to make a pencil, because the people who assemble it don't know how to mine graphite, and they don't know how to fell trees and that kind of thing. And what we've done in human society, through exchange and specialization, is we've created the ability to do things that we don't even understand. It's not the same with language. With language we have to transfer ideas that we understand with each other. But with technology, we can actually do things that are beyond our capabilities.
我要引用一篇非常有名的文章, 由經濟學家李奧那多-里德,在1950年所寫的(註:Leonard Read), 這文章叫'我,鉛筆'(註:I, Pencil)。 文章內容主要是說,一支鉛筆被製造的過程, 還有如何讓人知道筆的製造過程, 因為負責組裝的人不會知道如何採石墨礦。 他們也不會知道如何砍樹等等之類事情。 但是我們透過人類社會中的 交易和專業化, 讓我們能有 不懂整套流程也能做出物品的能力。 這跟語言不一樣。 我們得把腦中的概念轉換成語言 才能了解彼此的概念。 但是在科技上, 我們可以做出超出我們產能的物品。
We've gone beyond the capacity of the human mind to an extraordinary degree. And by the way, that's one of the reasons that I'm not interested in the debate about I.Q., about whether some groups have higher I.Q.s than other groups. It's completely irrelevant. What's relevant to a society is how well people are communicating their ideas, and how well they're cooperating, not how clever the individuals are. So we've created something called the collective brain. We're just the nodes in the network. We're the neurons in this brain. It's the interchange of ideas, the meeting and mating of ideas between them, that is causing technological progress, incrementally, bit by bit. However, bad things happen. And in the future, as we go forward, we will, of course, experience terrible things. There will be wars; there will be depressions; there will be natural disasters. Awful things will happen in this century, I'm absolutely sure. But I'm also sure that, because of the connections people are making, and the ability of ideas to meet and to mate as never before, I'm also sure that technology will advance, and therefore living standards will advance. Because through the cloud, through crowd sourcing, through the bottom-up world that we've created, where not just the elites but everybody is able to have their ideas and make them meet and mate, we are surely accelerating the rate of innovation.
人類的思維能力已經被我們 超越到一個不可思議的程度。 另一方面, 這也是我沒有興趣去爭論有關'智商'的 理由之一。 像是某些人的智商比某些人高的這種問題。 這完全不實際。 跟我們人類社會相關的事情應該是 人們要如何好好傳遞腦中的概念, 還有如何讓這些概念互相合作, 而非是一個人有多聰明。 我們已經創造出所謂的'集體大腦'(collective brain)。 我們都是在網絡上的一個節點。 在這大腦中我們只是其中一個神經元。 在裡面會做概念的交換, 然後兩兩會做結合和交配繁衍, 這就會引起技術的進步, 逐步地,一點一滴地進步。 然而,不好的事情就發生了。 當我們往未來邁進時, 當然會遇到一些挫敗。 可能會發生戰爭、可能會經濟蕭條、 可能會有天然災害。 這個世紀一定會發生一些可怕的事情,這我可以保證。 但我同時也可以保證,人與人的連結 會讓概念結合與交配繁衍的能力, 達到 前所未有的境界。 我也保證 科技將會進步, 因此我們的生活水準會再上升。 透過雲端科技、 透過眾包(註:企業利用網路分配工作、發現創意等等)、 透過這個由上而下的世界, 我們創造的不只是菁英, 任何人都能將他們腦中的概念 互相結合並交配繁衍, 我們一定會加快創新的速度。
Thank you.
感謝各位的聆聽。
(Applause)
(掌聲)