You know, we're going to do things a little differently. I'm not going to show you a presentation. I'm going to talk to you. And at the same time, we're going to look at just images from a photo stream that is pretty close to live of things that -- snapshots from Second Life. So hopefully this will be fascinating. You can -- I can compete for your attention with the strange pictures that you see on screen that come from there. I thought I'd talk a little bit about some just big ideas about this, and then get John back out here so we can talk interactively a little bit more and think and ask questions. You know, I guess the first question is, why build a virtual world at all? And I think the answer to that is always going to be at least driven to a certain extent by the people initially crazy enough to start the project, you know.
大家好,今天我想换一种方式来做这个演讲 我不想很正式地站在这里讲,而是通过聊天 同时,给大家看一些图片 都是截自“第二人生”的很逼真的生活场景 所以,希望你们能喜欢 同时,我也会尽量把大家的注意力 从这些奇特图片上吸引过来 我想先谈一下关于这个(第二人生)的大的构想 然后我会请约翰回来,这样我们可以更加互动的交谈、 思考和提问 我想大家关心的第一个问题会是: 为何要建立一个虚拟世界呢? 我认为在一定程度上源于 我自己--一个疯狂到了一定程度 来发起这个项目的人
So I can give you a little bit of first background just on me and what moved me as a -- really going back as far as a teenager and then an adult, to actually try and build this kind of thing. I was a very creative kid who read a lot, and got into electronics first, and then later, programming computers, when I was really young. I was just always trying to make things. I was just obsessed with taking things apart and building things, and just anything I could do with my hands or with wood or electronics or metal or anything else. And so, for example -- and it's a great Second Life thing -- I had a bedroom. And every kid, you know, as a teenager, has got his bedroom he retreats to -- but I wanted my door, I thought it would be cool if my door went up rather than opened, like on Star Trek. I thought it would be neat to do that. And so I got up in the ceiling and I cut through the ceiling joists, much to my parents' delight, and put the door, you know, being pulled up through the ceiling.
先介绍一下我个人的背景资料 以及那些从小到大 真正触动我去尝试创立这个项目的因素 我是个读书很多,很有创造力的孩子,最初迷上了电子设备 随后是电脑编程,那时我年龄还很小。 我总是尝试去动手做东西 沉迷于拆装物件 以及任何手工可以完成的,用木头 电子器件、金属等物品做的东西 举个例子:我有一间卧室(这很有第二人生的感觉) 大家知道,每个十几岁的孩子,都拥有自己栖身的卧室 但是我想让卧室门能够像《星际旅行》中一样 上升开启而不是正常打开,我觉得那将会很酷 因此我爬上天花板 穿过天花板搁栅,(这让我父母很生气) 把门拉了上来
I built -- I put a garage-door opener up in the attic that would pull this door up. You can imagine the amount of time that it took me to do this to the house and the displeasure of my parents. The thing that was always striking to me was that we as people could have so many really amazing ideas about things we'd like to do, but are so often unable, in the real world, to actually do those things -- to actually cobble together the materials and go through the actual execution phase of building something that you imagine from a design perspective. And so for me, I know that when the Internet came around and I was doing computer programming and just, you know, just generally trying to run my own little company and figure out what to do with the Internet and with computers, I was just immediately struck by how the ultimate thing that you would really want to do with the Internet and with computers would be to use the Internet and connected computers to simulate a world to sort of recreate the laws of physics and the rules of how things went together -- the sort of -- the idea of atoms and how to make things, and do that inside a computer so that we could all get in there and make stuff.
我把一个车库的开门机器放在阁楼上 可以把门竖着拉上来 你可以想象一下这花费了我多少时间来改造这间房屋 还要平息父母的不满 这件事情对我启发最深的是:人们 对于自己喜欢的事情总有层出不穷的好想法 然而在真实的世界里,又通常无法真正实现 既无法凑齐所需的材料 也无法在实际执行阶段 来按照你脑海中的设计图来建造它 因此对于我来讲,互联网时代来临的时候 我正在编写电脑程序 努力运作我的小公司 我想应该通过互联网和电脑来做些事情 后来灵光一现,想到人们真正想使用 互联网和电脑来做的事情 是通过互联网和电脑 来模拟一个世界,这个世界重构了物理的法则 和世上万物相互联系的规则 也包括原子的概念和建筑的方法 一切都在电脑中实现,我们都可以进入那个世界,并创造一些东西
And so for me that was the thing that was so enticing. I just wanted this place where you could build things. And so I think you see that in the genesis of what has happened with Second Life, and I think it's important. I also think that more generally, the use of the Internet and technology as a kind of a space between us for creativity and design is a general trend. It is a -- sort of a great human progress. Technology is just generally being used to allow us to create in as shared and social a way as possible. And I think that Second Life and virtual worlds more generally represent the best we can do to achieve that right now. You know, another way to look at that, and related to the content and, you know, thinking about space, is to connect sort of virtual worlds to space. I thought that might be a fun thing to talk about for a second. If you think about going into space, it's a fascinating thing. So many movies, so many kids, we all sort of dream about exploring space. Now, why is that? Stop for a moment and ask, why that conceit? Why do we as people want to do that? I think there's a couple of things. It's what we see in the movies -- you know, it's this dream that we all share.
因此,这对于我来说相当诱人 我只想要有一个地方来供人们建设和创造 所以,我想你们都了解了“第二人生” 的来龙去脉,我认为这非常重要 我还认为,更普遍的来讲,作为创意和设计的平台 互联网技术的应用是一个大趋势 这是人类的一大进步 一般来说,技术只是用来让我们 一边创造,一边去交流和分享 我认为,“第二人生”乃至虚拟世界 代表了目前我们能做到的最高水准 想象一下宇宙空间 从另一个角度来看 将虚拟世界和宇宙空间联系起来 这点比较有趣,值得花时间讨论一下 如果你向往太空 很多的电影,很多的孩子 都梦想着遨游太空。为什么? 停下来反思一下,为什么大家都那样幻想? 为什么我们人类想要那么做? 我觉得原因有很多。正如我们在电影中看到的 这是我们共同拥有的梦想
One is that if you went into space you'd be able to begin again. In some sense, you would become someone else in that journey, because there wouldn't be -- you'd leave society and life as you know it, behind. And so inevitably, you would transform yourself -- irreversibly, in all likelihood -- as you began this exploration. And then the second thing is that there's this tangible sense that if you travel far enough, you can find out there -- oh, yeah -- you have no idea what you're going to find once you get there, into space. It's going to be different than here. And in fact, it's going to be so different than what we see here on earth that anything is going to be possible. So that's kind of the idea -- we as humans crave the idea of creating a new identity and going into a place where anything is possible. And I think that if you really sit and think about it, virtual worlds, and where we're going with more and more computing technology, represent essentially the likely, really tactically possible version of space exploration. We are moved by the idea of virtual worlds because, like space, they allow us to reinvent ourselves and they contain anything and everything, and probably anything could happen there.
如果你进入太空,你将可能重新开始 你会变成另一个人 把你所了解的社会和生活都忘掉 旅程开始之后,你将不可避免的改变自己 而且这改变是不可逆的 另一个原因是那种真实的感觉 如果你旅行的足够远,你会发现 自己一旦到达太空中 未来是不可预测的 那种不一样的感觉 与在地球上看到的完全不同 凡事皆有可能 因此,我们渴望着创造一个新的身份 生活在一个有无限可能的地方 我想,如果你真正坐下来想一想 虚拟世界,伴随着越来越先进的电脑技术 我们将走向何方, 它意味着空间探索 完全有实现的可能 如同太空,我们也能被虚拟世界所打动, 它们让我们重生自我,它们无所不包 蕴含无限可能
You know, to give you a size idea about scale, you know, comparing space to Second Life, most people don't realize, kind of -- and then this is just like the Internet in the early '90s. In fact, Second Life virtual worlds are a lot like the Internet in the early '90s today: everybody's very excited, there's a lot of hype and excitement about one idea or the next from moment to moment, and then there's despair and everybody thinks the whole thing's not going to work. Everything that's happening with Second Life and more broadly with virtual worlds, all happened in the early '90s. We always play a game at the office where you can take any article and find the same article where you just replace the words "Second Life" with "Web," and "virtual reality" with "Internet." You can find exactly the same articles written about everything that people are observing. To give you an idea of scale, Second Life is about 20,000 CPUs at this point. It's about 20,000 computers connected together in three facilities in the United States right now, that are simulating this virtual space. And the virtual space itself -- there's about 250,000 people a day that are wandering around in there, so the kind of, active population is something like a smallish city. The space itself is about 10 times the size of San Francisco, and it's about as densely built out.
给大家一个规模的概念 大部分人意识不到,这就像是 20世纪90年代早期的互联网 事实上,“第二人生”虚拟世界更像是“90年代早期互联网” 让所有人兴奋不已 每出现一个新概念,总有很多炒作和卖点 随着时间的推移,狂热之后变成绝望 所有人都认为这件事情没有可能 “第二人生”,甚至更广义上的虚拟世界 现在的处境,早在90年代初期就出现过。 我们在办公室总做一个游戏,拿任何一篇文章 在里面找到“第二人生”替换为“网络” 找到“虚拟现实”并替换为“互联网” 你会发现完全相同的文章 在不同的时代被人们冠以不同的内容 我来给你一个规模的概念,“第二人生”目前由20000个CPU来运作 这相当于当前20000台电脑 通过三个中心相互连接 来模拟这个虚拟空间。并且在虚拟空间内部 每天有25万个人在畅游其中 在线的人数相当于一座小城市的人口 虚拟空间本身大约是旧金山的10倍大小 并且以同样的密度构造
So it gives you an idea of scale. Now, it's expanding very rapidly -- about five percent a month or so right now, in terms of new servers being added. And so of course, radically unlike the real world, and like the Internet, the whole thing is expanding very, very quickly, and historically exponentially. So that sort of space exploration thing is matched up here by the amount of content that's in there, and I think that amount is critical. It was critical with the virtual world that it be this space of truly infinite possibility. We're very sensitive to that as humans. You know, you know when you see it. You know when you can do anything in a space and you know when you can't. Second Life today is this 20,000 machines, and it's about 100 million or so user-created objects where, you know, an object would be something like this, possibly interactive. Tens of millions of them are thinking all the time; they have code attached to them. So it's a really large world already, in terms of the amount of stuff that's there and that's very important. If anybody plays, like, World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft comes on, like, four DVDs. Second Life, by comparison, has about 100 terabytes of user-created data, making it about 25,000 times larger.
这是它的规模。现在,这个虚拟空间正在快速扩张 服务器的数量每个月增长5%左右 当然,与真实世界迥然不同的是 所有的一切都像互联网一样 扩张的非常快,呈几何级数的增长 因此,这样的空间探索 与“第二人生”里面的内容相匹配 并且我认为"内容"是关键 对于虚拟世界来说最重要的是 去创造一个无限可能的空间 人类对此非常敏感 当你看到它时,你就会明白什么时候可以做什么事情 你也知道什么时候又不可以 今天的“第二人生”是这样的20000台机器 以及用户创造的1亿个物件所构成 一个物件就像是这样的东西,可能是互动性的 上千万种物件总在运转 它们内涵代码 从数量上来看它已经是一个非常庞大的世界了 这个规模很重要 如果任何人在玩"魔兽世界"之类的游戏 魔兽世界的容量也就是4张DVD大小 相比较而言,“第二人生”拥有大约10万个G 的用户数据,这让它会(比魔兽世界)大25000倍
So again, like the Internet compared to AOL, and the sort of chat rooms and content on AOL at the time, what's happening here is something very different, because the sheer scale of what people can do when they're enabled to do anything they want is pretty amazing. The last big thought is that it is almost certainly true that whatever this is going to evolve into is going to be bigger in total usage than the Web itself. And let me justify that with two statements. Generically, what we use the Web for is to organize, exchange, create and consume information. It's kind of like Irene talking about Google being data-driven. I'd say I kind of think about the world as being information. Everything that we interact with, all the experiences that we have, is kind of us flowing through a sea of information and interacting with it in different ways. The Web puts information in the form of text and images. The topology, the geography of the Web is text-to-text links for the most part. That's one way of organizing information, but there are two things about the way you access information in a virtual world that I think are the important ways that they're very different and much better than what we've been able to do to date with the Web.
如果拿互联网与美国在线相比 那时AOL的聊天室及其内容 与发生在这里的事情是非常不同的 因为人们可以做的事情 规模之庞大令人匪夷所思 最后一个主要的想法:几乎千真万确的 无论这个东西向着什么方向发展 虚拟世界的功能要比网络本身重要很多 下面我来做两个证明 笼统的来讲,我们使用网络是为了组织、交换 创造和使用信息 就像Irene谈到Google是数据驱动的一样 我认为世界是信息构成的 和我们互动的一切,经历的所有东西 就像航行在一片信息的海洋 只是以不同方式交流而已 网络将信息以文本和图像的形式表现出来 网络的拓扑结构、地理构成大都是文本到文本的链接 这是组织信息的一种方式 不过在虚拟世界中人们获取信息的方式 有非常重要的两种 比我们在网络中的方式更好
The first is that, as I said, the -- well, the first difference for virtual worlds is that information is presented to you in the virtual world using the most powerful iconic symbols that you can possibly use with human beings. So for example, C-H-A-I-R is the English word for that, but a picture of this is a universal symbol. Everybody knows what it means. There's no need to translate it. It's also more memorable if I show you that picture, and I show you C-H-A-I-R on a piece of paper. You can do tests that show that you'll remember that I was talking about a chair a couple of days later a lot better. So when you organize information using the symbols of our memory, using the most common symbols that we've been immersed in all our lives, you maximally both excite, stimulate, are able to remember, transfer and manipulate data. And so virtual worlds are the best way for us to essentially organize and experience information.
第一点是 虚拟世界的第一点不同就是 在虚拟世界中展现给你的信息 运用了最强大的视觉符号 这是人类世界最直观的东西 下面举个例子,C-H-A-I-R是一个英文单词, 但是一张椅子的图片是一个世界通用符号 所有人都知道它意味着什么。无需解释 如果给你这幅图片,和一张“C-H-A-I-R”的纸 图片的印象更加深刻 可以做一些测试 几天之后谈论起“椅子”,你会记得更牢 因此当使用记忆中的“符号”来组织信息时 那些生活中最常见的符号 会让你最大限度的兴奋、激动 并能够更好的回忆、传递和处理数据。 所以虚拟世界是我们对信息进行基本的 组织和体验的最佳方式
And I think that's something that people have talked about for 20 years -- you know, that 3D, that lifelike environments are really important in some magical way to us. But the second thing -- and I think this one is less obvious -- is that the experience of creating, consuming, exploring that information is in the virtual world implicitly and inherently social. You are always there with other people. And we as humans are social creatures and must, or are aided by, or enjoy more, the consumption of information in the presence of others. It's essential to us. You can't escape it. When you're on Amazon.com and you're looking for digital cameras or whatever, you're on there right now, when you're on the site, with like 5,000 other people, but you can't talk to them. You can't just turn to the people that are browsing digital cameras on the same page as you, and ask them, "Hey, have you seen one of these before? Because I'm thinking about buying it."
而且我认为有些事情人们已经讨论了20年 大家知道,3D,那些对我们来说 神奇而重要的仿真环境。 那么第二个因素,我认为这点不那么显而易见 就是在虚拟世界里创造、使用和探索信息的经历 本质上隐藏在社交活动中 你总是与其他人在一起 作为人类,我们是社会性的动物,必须,或者得益于, 享受着别人提供的信息 对我们来说这是最基本的,没人可以例外 当你在“亚马逊”上寻找数码相机或其他什么商品时, 当你在网站上时,你与其他5000个人在一起 但是你不能跟他们交谈 你不能就这样冲着别人 和你一起数码相机的人,问道 “喂,你看上哪款了?我想买一台。”
That experience of like, shopping together, just as a simple example, is an example of how as social creatures we want to experience information in that way. So that second point, that we inherently experience information together or want to experience it together, is critical to essentially, kind of, this trend of where we're going to use technology to connect us. And so I think, again, that it's likely that in the next decade or so these virtual worlds are going to be the most common way as human beings that we kind of use the electronics of the Internet, if you will, to be together, to consume information. You know, mapping in India -- that's such a great example. Maybe the solution there involves talking to other people in real time. Asking for advice, rather than any possible way that you could just statically organize a map.
这种经历就像是一起逛街,这是一个简单的例子, 这就说明了作为社会性生物 我们喜欢如何体验信息 因此,第二个因素,即我们一同体验信息 或希望一同体验信息 对于我们将要在哪里运用技术手段 开展人际互联的基本趋势非常关键 因此我再一次认为,也许在未来十年 就像人类使用互联网的电子设备一样,如果你愿意 与他人一起使用信息,虚拟世界将成为 你最常用的方式 大家知道,制作印度的地图就是一个很好的例子 工作过程中需要实时跟其他人讨论 寻求建议,而不是任何其他的方式 自己独立去画一张地图
So I think that's another big point. I think that wherever this is all going, whether it's Second Life or its descendants, or something broader that happens all around the world at a lot of different points -- this is what we're going to see the Internet used for, and total traffic and total unique users is going to invert, so that the Web and its bibliographic set of text and graphical information is going to become a tool or a part of that consumption pattern, but the pattern itself is going to happen mostly in this type of an environment. Big idea, but I think highly defensible. So let me stop there and bring John back, and maybe we can just have a longer conversation. Thank you. John. That's great.
因此我认为这就是另一个重要因素 我认为不管第二人生走到哪里 不管它是“第二人生”或是以后出现的技术 在全世界很多地方出现的,更广义的东西 这是我们将看到互联网所能做的事情 也是全部流量和所有用户将要寻找的未来 这样互联网和它参考书目式的文本以及图形化的信息将变成一种工具 或信息使用模式的一部分 不过模式本身将很大程度上在这种环境(即“第二人生”)下运作 很大胆的想法,不过我认为非常值得支持 那么让我暂停一下并请约翰回来 可能我们会进行一次更长的对话 谢谢,约翰,非常精彩
(Applause)
(鼓掌)
John Hockenberry: Why is the creation, the impulse to create Second Life, not a utopian impulse? Like for example, in the 19th century, any number of works of literature that imagined alternative worlds were explicitly utopian.
约翰:为什么创造出“第二人生”?你的动力是什么? 难道不是一个乌托邦式的冲动么? 就像是19世纪 任何憧憬另一种世界的文艺作品 都很明显是在描绘乌托邦
Philip Rosedale: I think that's great. That's such a deep question. Yeah. Is a virtual world likely to be a utopia, would be one way I'd say it. The answer is no, and I think the reason why is because the Web itself as a good example is profoundly bottoms-up. That idea of infinite possibility, that magic of anything can happen, only happens in an environment where you really know that there's a fundamental freedom at the level of the individual actor, at the level of the Lego blocks, if you will, that make up the virtual world. You have to have that level of freedom, and so I'm often asked that, you know, is there a, kind of, utopian or, is there a utopian tendency to Second Life and things like it, that you would create a world that has a grand scheme to it? Those top-down schemes are alienating to just about everybody, even if you mean well when you build them. And what's more, human society, when it's controlled, when you set out a grand scheme of rules, a new way of people interacting, or a new way of laying out a city, or whatever, that stuff historically has never scaled much beyond, you know -- I always laughingly say -- the Mall of America, you know, which is like, the largest piece of centrally designed architecture that, you know, has been built.
菲利普:我觉得很好,这是一个很深奥的问题,嗯。 虚拟世界是否可能成为一个乌托邦,我想从一个角度说明 就是否定的,我认为原因是由于 作为一个很好的范例,网络本身是自下而上的构成的 无限可能性的想法,任何事情都可能发生的魅力 只会发生在一种环境里 那就是你确信在这种环境里存在一种最基本的 在个人层面、由下而上的自由 只要你愿意,就能创建虚拟世界 你必须拥有那种程度的自由,因此我经常被问到, 是否存在一种乌托邦 或者“第二人生”是否有乌托邦式或类似的倾向, 这样你就将创造一个具有宏伟的乌托邦计划的世界? 那些自上而下的计划将疏远每个人 即使在你创建它们的时候你的初衷是很好的 另外,人类社会在被控制的时候 在你设置了一系列宏伟的规则和计划的时候 这种人类交互,或城市布局的新方式,或不管什么东西 绝对不会在历史上有深远的影响 我常常嘲笑——美国购物中心 那就像一块最大的中央式设计 建筑物
JH: The Kremlin was pretty big.
约翰:克里姆林宫就是相当巨大的
PR: The Kremlin, yeah. That's true. The whole complex.
菲利普:是的,克里姆林宫。非常正确,那很复杂
JH: Give me a story of a tool you created at the beginning in Second Life that you were pretty sure people would want to use in the creation of their avatars or in communicating that people actually in practice said, no, I'm not interested in that at all, and name something that you didn't come up with that almost immediately people began to demand.
约翰:给我讲一个关于你最初在 “第二人生”中创造的一件工具吧,你确信人们会使用它 创造“阿凡达”(在线角色)的工具 或人们实际上会说,不,我对这个工具一点都不感兴趣 然后再告诉我一个开始时并不存在 但是人们突然开始需要的东西
PR: I'm sure I can think of multiple examples of both of those. One of my favorites. I had this feature that I built into Second Life -- I was really passionate about it. It was an ability to kind of walk up close to somebody and have a more private conversation, but it wasn't instant messaging because you had to sort of befriend somebody. It was just this idea that you could kind of have a private chat. I just remember it was one of those examples of data-driven design. I thought it was such a good idea from my perspective, and it was just absolutely never used, and we ultimately -- I think we've now turned it off, if I remember. We finally gave up, took it out of the code. But more generally, you know, one other example I think about this, which is great relative to the utopian idea. Second Life originally had 16 simulators. It now has 20,000.
菲利普:我相信这两个问题我可以想到很多例子 讲一个我最中意的工具。我把它嵌入了“第二人生” 我真的对它充满了热情 这是一种走近某人并且跟他进行 更为私人的谈话的功能 但是这并不是即时通讯,因为你必须要跟别人先交朋友 就是这样一个想法,你能进行一次小小的私人谈话 这是一个由数据驱动的设计的例子 我觉得从我的角度看来,这是个很好的想法 但是它完全没有人用,我们最终 我们现在把这项功能关掉了,如果我没记错的话 我们最后放弃了,把这段代码剔除掉了。 但是我想到了另外一个更普遍的例证 它跟乌托邦的想法非常相关 “第二人生”最初有16个模拟器。现在有20000个
So when it only had 16, it was only about as big as this college campus. And we had -- we zoned it, you know: we put a nightclub, we put a disco where you could dance, and then we had a place where you could fight with guns if you wanted to, and we had another place that was like a boardwalk, kind of a Coney Island. And we laid out the zoning, but of course, people could build all around it however they wanted to. And what was so amazing right from the start was that the idea that we had put out in the zoning concept, basically, was instantly and thoroughly ignored, and like, two months into the whole thing, -- which is really a small amount of time, even in Second Life time -- I remember the users, the people who were then using Second Life, the residents came to me and said, we want to buy the disco -- because I had built it -- we want to buy that land and raze it and put houses on it. And I sold it to them -- I mean, we transferred ownership and they had a big party and blew up the entire building. And I remember that that was just so telling, you know, that you didn't know exactly what was going to happen. When you think about stuff that people have built that's popular --
当只有16个模拟器的时候 它仅仅有这个校园那么大 然后我们把它分区:我们设了一个夜总会 设了一个用来跳舞的迪斯科舞池 然后我们设了一个区域,如果你愿意,就可以在这里进行枪战 还有另外一个像木板路一样的区域,有点类似康尼岛 我们制定了分区 人们可以在“第二人生”里四处建设 从一开始最让人激动的就是 我们引入的这种最基本的分区的概念 立刻被彻底的忽视了 整个事情发生的两个月里 即使是“第二人生”时间,这也确实是很短的一段日子 我还记得那些使用“第二人生”的用户们 那些“居民们”找到我说,“我们想买下迪斯科舞厅 我们想买下这个岛屿,把它夷平 然后在上面盖房子。于是我就卖给了他们 这意味着,我们交换了所有权,他们有一大帮人 并且拆掉了整个建筑 我记得这是个很生动的事实,很能说明问题 你不确定未来会发生什么 当你想到人们建造的那些流行事物
JH: CBGB's has to close eventually, you know. That's the rule.
约翰:CBGBs(一个音乐俱乐部)不得不被永久的关闭。这是规律
PR: Exactly. And it -- but it closed on day one, basically, in Internet time. You know, an example of something -- pregnancy. You can have a baby in Second Life. This is done entirely using, kind of, the tools that are built into Second Life, so the innate concept of becoming pregnant and having a baby, of course -- Second Life is, at the platform level, at the level of the company -- at Linden Lab -- Second Life has no game properties to it whatsoever. There is no attempt to structure the experience, to make it utopian in that sense that we put into it. So of course, we never would have put a mechanism for having babies or, you know, taking two avatars and merging them, or something.
菲利普:确实是这样。但是它基本上是在互联网时间的第一天关闭的。 大家知道,举个例子,怀孕 在“第二人生”里,你可以抚养孩子 它完全是运用“第二人生”里内嵌的一些工具来完成的 因此原来固有的怀孕和抚养孩子的概念 “第二人生”,处于一个平台层面和一个公司层面——即“林登实验室” 它无论如何都没有游戏的属性 没有任何去创造经历的企图 去让它变得更乌托邦一些 那么当然,我们从来不会加入抚养孩子或让两个“阿凡达” 结合的机制,或类似的任何东西
But people built the ability to have babies and care for babies as a purchasable experience that you can have in Second Life and so -- I mean, that's a pretty fascinating example of, you know, what goes on in the overall economy. And of course, the existence of an economy is another idea. I didn't talk about it, but it's a critical feature. When people are given the opportunity to create in the world, there's really two things they want. One is fair ownership of the things they create. And then the second one is -- if they feel like it, and they're not going to do it in every case, but in many they are -- they want to actually be able to sell that creation as a way of providing for their own livelihood. True on the Web -- also true in Second Life. And so the existence of an economy is critical.
但是作为一种在“第二人生”中可以交易的经历 人们可以去购买“生孩子和抚养孩子的能力” 我的意思是,这是一个在整体经济活动中发生的 非常引人入胜的例子 当然, 这个经济体的存在性是另外一个话题 我没有谈论过这个话题,不过它非常关键 当人们在一个世界里拥有了创造的机会 那他们就真正想去做两件事 一件就是获得他们所创造的物品的公平所有权 第二件是——如果他们喜欢 虽不一定在任何情况下都这样做,人们大都会 希望卖掉他们创造的东西 来获得利益 这在网络上是真理——在“第二人生”中也是 因此“经济”的存在性是很关键的
JH: Questions for Philip Rosedale? Right here.
约翰:有提问的么?就是你了
(Audience: Well, first an observation, which is that you look like a character.)
(听众:嗯,首先我的意见是,你看起来像个游戏角色)
JH: The observation is, Philip has been accused of looking like a character, an avatar, in Second Life. Respond, and then we'll get the rest of your question.
约翰:据观察,有人指责菲利普看起来像一个游戏角色 一个“第二人生”中的“阿凡达” 回应这个质疑,然后我们再听听剩下的问题
PR: But I don't look like my avatar.
菲利普:但我看起来不像我的“阿凡达”
(Laughter)
(笑声)
How many people here know what my avatar looks like? That's probably not very many.
多少人知道我的“阿凡达”长什么样? 可能并没有多少人知道
JH: Are you ripping off somebody else's avatar with that, sort of -- PR: No, no. I didn't. One of the other guys at work had a fantastic avatar -- a female avatar -- that I used to be once in a while. But my avatar is a guy wearing chaps. Spiky hair -- spikier than this. Kind of orange hair. Handlebar mustache. Kind of a Village People sort of a character. So, very cool.
约翰:你在用其他人“阿凡达”形象吗? 菲利普:不,不,没有。我一个同事有一个非常棒的“阿凡达” 一个女性“阿凡达”替身——我以前曾在一段时间里使用过 不过我的“阿凡达”替身是一个穿着皮裤的家伙 尖尖的头发——比这个还尖,稍微有点桔黄色。 八字胡须,稍微有点像乡下人的角色 所以,很酷
JH: And your question?
约翰:那么你的问题是?
(Audience: [Unclear].)
(听众:[不清楚]。)
JH: The question is, there appears to be a lack of cultural fine-tuning in Second Life. It doesn't seem to have its own culture, and the sort of differences that exist in the real world aren't translated into the Second Life map.
约翰:他的问题是,在“第二人生”中出现一种文化微调的缺失 看起来它没有自身的文化背景 而在真实世界中文化间的差异 并没有反映在“第二人生”里面
PR: Well, first of all, we're very early, so this has only been going on for a few years. And so part of what we see is the same evolution of human behavior that you see in emerging societies. So a fair criticism -- is what it is -- of Second Life today is that it's more like the Wild West than it is like Rome, from a cultural standpoint. That said, the evolution of, and the nuanced interaction that creates culture, is happening at 10 times the speed of the real world, and in an environment where, if you walk into a bar in Second Life, 65 percent of the people there are not in the United States, and in fact are speaking their, you know, various and different languages. In fact, one of the ways to make money in Second Life is to make really cool translators that you drag onto your body and they basically, kind of, pop up on your screen and allow you to use Google or Babel Fish or one of the other online text translators to on-the-fly translate spoken -- I'm sorry -- typed text between individuals. And so, the multicultural nature and the sort of cultural melting pot that's happening inside Second Life is quite -- I think, quite remarkable relative to what in real human terms in the real world we've ever been able to achieve. So, I think that culture will fine-tune, it will emerge, but we still have some years to wait while that happens, as you would naturally expect.
菲利普:嗯,首先,我们这个东西还很幼稚 所以它只持续运行了几年而已 所以我们看到的和人类社会进化是一样的 那些慢慢出现的社会现象 因此现在有一种对于“第二人生”公正的意见,即 从文明的立场来看,它更像是西部故事,而不是罗马 也就是说,这种创造文明的微妙互动行为的进化 以现实世界10倍的速度发生着 如果你走进“第二人生”的一个酒吧,在这样的环境下 65%的人并不在美国 他们实际上都说着多种多样,不同的语言 实际上,一种在“第二人生”中赚钱方式 就是做那种非常酷的翻译器,你只要把它们拖拽的你的身上 就能跳到你的屏幕上 让你使用Google或Babelfish 或者任何一种在线文本翻译器来进行实时对话翻译 抱歉——我的意思是翻译人们打出来的文字 因此,发生于“第二人生”里的多元文化和 文化熔炉性是非常 了不起的。它比真实的人类社会 更容易实现文化的交融 所以,我觉得文化自身会微调,它会慢慢涌现 不过我们仍然需要几年来等待它的发生 就像你会自然而然的期望它发生一样
JH: Other questions? Right here.
约翰:有其他问题么?就是你。
(Audience: What's your demographic?)
(听众:“第二人生”的人口统计数据是什么样的?)
JH: What's your demographic? PR: So, the question is, what's the demographic. So, the average age of a person in Second Life is 32, however, the use of Second Life increases dramatically as your physical age increases. So as you go from age 30 to age 60 -- and there are many people in their sixties using Second Life -- this is also not a sharp curve -- it's very, very distributed -- usage goes up in terms of, like, hours per week by 40 percent as you go from age 30 to age 60 in real life, so there's not -- many people make the mistake of believing that Second Life is some kind of an online game. Actually it's generally unappealing -- I'm just speaking broadly and critically -- it's not very appealing to people that play online video games, because the graphics are not yet equivalent to -- I mean, these are very nice pictures, but in general the graphics are not quite equivalent to the fine-tuned graphics that you see in a Grand Theft Auto 4. So average age: 32. I mentioned 65 percent of the users are not in the United States. The distribution amongst countries is extremely broad.
约翰:人口统计数据是什么样的? 菲利普:嗯,问题是,“第二人生”的人口统计数据 那么,“第二人生”居民的平均年龄是32岁 然而,对“第二人生”的使用急剧增长 就像你的实际年龄的增长一样。所以,如同你从30岁长到60岁 有很多人60岁时在使用“第二人生” 这不是一个陡峭的曲线——它非常非常分散 一个从30岁长到60岁的人,从每周在线时间 增长率为40%,所以—— 很多人错误地认为“第二人生” 是某种在线游戏。作为游戏,它没有吸引力—— 我只是从广义和批判的角度来讲—— 对人们来说,它不如玩在线视频游戏更有吸引力, 因为其图像并不能与游戏相比 我的意思是,那里是有很漂亮的图片 但总体来讲,这些图像与那些你在《侠盗猎车手4》中看到的 经过修饰的图像并不能够相比 所以平均年龄:32。 65%的用户并不是美国人 用户的国家分布极度广泛
There's users from, you know, virtually every country in the world now in Second Life. The dominant ones are -- if you take the UK and Europe, together they make up about 55 percent of the usage base in Second Life. In terms of psychographic -- oh, men and women: men and women are almost equally matched in Second Life, so about 45 percent of the people online right now on Second Life are women. Women use Second Life, though, about 30 to 40 percent more, on an hours basis, than men do, meaning that more men sign up than women, and more women stay and use it than men. So that's another demographic fact. In terms of psychographic, you know, the people in Second Life are remarkably dissimilar relative to what you might think, when you go in and talk to them and meet them, and I would, you know, challenge you to just do this and find out. But it's not a bunch of programmers. It's not easy to describe as a demographic. If I had to just sort of paint a broad picture, I'd say, remember the people who were really getting into eBay in the first few years of eBay? Maybe a little bit like that: in other words, people who are early adopters. They tend to be creative. They tend to be entrepreneurial. A lot of them -- about 55,000 people so far -- are cash-flow positive: they're making money from what -- I mean, real-world money -- from what they're doing in Second Life, so it's a very build -- still a creative, building things, build-your-own-business type of an orientation. So, that's it.
世界上任何一个国家都有“第二人生”的用户 其中的优势群体——如果把英国和欧洲算在一起 他们占了“第二人生”55%的用户基础 从消费心态的角度看 哦,还有男女比例:“第二人生”里男女比例基本相当 所以大概现在在线的45%的用户是女性 基于使用时间来看,女性对“第二人生”的使用 大约比男性要多30%-40% 这意味着更多的男性注册了账号 但更多女性登录并使用“第二人生” 所以,出现了另一个人口统计事实 从消费心态角度看,“第二人生”里的人 与你想象中的可能有显著的不同 当你进入“第二人生”与里面的人谈话、会面,那么我会 鼓励你去发现这一点 这里并不是一堆程序员 这并不容易以人口统计的角度来描述 如果我必须勾画出一个整体画卷,我会说,请想想 在eBay出现的最初几年里,谁是真正去逛eBay的人? 可能有一点点像这个:换句话说,那些早期应用者 他们是富有创造力的。他们是具有企业家式的开拓精神的 许多人——迄今为止大概55000人——是赚钱的 他们正在赚钱——我的意思是,真金白银 从他们在“第二人生”里所做的事情中赚钱,所以这是非常有建设性 非常有创造性、建设性的事情,创建你自己的事业 的方向。这就是“第二人生”
JH: You describe yourself, Philip, as someone who was really creative when you were young and, you know, liked to make things. I mean, it's not often that you hear somebody describe themselves as really creative. I suspect that's possibly a euphemism for C student who spent a lot of time in his room? Is it possible?
约翰:菲利普,你将自己描述成为从小就 喜欢去创造一些事物的真正具有创造力的人 我的意思是,你很少听到人们把自己 说成是真正具有创造力的 我怀疑这只是一个在自己房间花费了很多时间的 成绩为C的学生的一种委婉的说辞,有这种可能么?
(Laughter)
(笑声)
PR: I was a -- there were times I was a C student. You know, it's funny. When I got to college -- I studied physics in college -- and I got really -- it was funny, because I was definitely a more antisocial kid. I read all the time. I was shy. I don't seem like it now, but I was very shy. Moved around a bunch -- had that experience too. So I did, kind of, I think, live in my own world, and obviously that helps, you know, engage your real interest in something.
菲利普:我是——我有时成绩是C。你知道,这很有趣 当我读大学时——我学习的是物理学 我真的——这很有趣, 因为确切的来讲我是个不善交际的孩子,我总是在读书 我很害羞,我看起来不像现在这样,我很腼腆 到过很多个城市——也有这种经历 所以我觉得我是生活在我自己的世界里 而且很明显,这有助于你专注于你真正的兴趣
JH: So you're on your fifth life at this point?
约翰:所以在这点上,你处于你的第五次人生中么?
PR: If you count, yeah, cities. So -- but I did -- and I didn't do -- I think I didn't do as well in school as I could have. I think you're right. I wasn't, like, an obsessed -- you know, get A's kind of guy. I was going to say, I had a great social experience when I went to college that I hadn't had before, a more fraternal experience, where I met six or seven other guys who I studied physics with, and I was very competitive with them, so then I started to get A's. But you're right: I wasn't an A student.
菲利普:如果你数过,是的,5个城市。所以 我并没有——我觉得我在学校并没有做出应得的成绩。你是对的 我不是一个那种痴迷于得A的孩子 我想说,当我读大学时,我获得了 以前从未获得的社交经验 还有更多的兄弟般的情谊。在那里我遇到了同样学习物理学的6、7个人, 跟他们在一起我非常具有竞争性 那时我开始得A。不过你是对的:我不是一个A等生
JH: Last question. Right here.
约翰:最后一个问题。就是你
(Audience: In the pamphlet, there's a statement -- )
(听众:在小册子里,有一个声明——)
JH: You want to paraphrase that?
约翰:你先给大家重复一下问题好吗?
PR: Yeah, so let me restate that. So, you're saying that in the pamphlet there's a statement that we may come to prefer our digital selves to our real ones -- our more malleable or manageable digital identities to our real identities -- and that in fact, much of human life and human experience may move into the digital realm. And then that's kind of a horrifying thought, of course. That's a frightening change, frightening disruption. I guess, and you're asking, what do I think about that? How do I --
菲利普:好的,那么我来重复一下 你说在小册子里有个声明 就是相对于真实的自我,我们会更喜欢电脑中的自我 电脑中的自我可塑性更强、操控性更好 实际上,人类生活和经历的许多部分 会进入数字领域 那么当然,这是种很恐怖的想法 这是令人忧虑的变化和可怕的破坏 我想,你所询问的是,我对此怎么看?我怎样——
JH: What's your response to the people who would say, that's horrifying?
约翰:那么你对这种恐怖的事情有何看法?
(Audience: If someone would say to you, I find that disturbing, what would be your response?)
(听众:如果某些人对你说,我发现这令我很困扰, 你的回答会是什么?)
PR: Well, I'd say a couple of things. One is, it's disturbing like the Internet or electricity was. That is to say, it's a big change, but it isn't avoidable. So, no amount of backpedaling or intentional behavior or political behavior is going to keep these technology changes from connecting us together, because the basic motive that people have -- to be creative and entrepreneurial -- is going to drive energy into these virtual worlds in the same way that it has with the Web. So this change, I believe, is a huge disruptive change.
菲利普:嗯,我会告诉他一系列事实。 一、这就像是互联网和电的出现一样令人困扰 就是说,这是一个大的变革,不可避免 所以,任何倒退、故意的行为 或政治行为都不能阻止技术变革 将人们连接在一起 因为人们最基本的动力—— 创造性和开拓精神——将以对网络同样的方式 将能量投入到这些虚拟世界中。 所以我相信,这个变革是一种具有巨大破坏力的变革。
Obviously, I'm the optimist and a big believer in what's going on here, but I think that as -- even a sober, you know, the most sober, disconnected thinker about this, looking at it from the side, has to conclude, based on the data, that with those kinds of economic forces at play, there is definitely going to be a sea change, and that change is going to be intensely disruptive relative to our concept of our very lives and being, and our identities, as well. I don't think we can get away from those changes. I think generally, we were talking about this -- I think that generally being present in a virtual world and being challenged by it, being -- surviving there, having a good life there, so to speak, is a challenge because of the multiculturality of it, because of the languages, because of the entrepreneurial richness of it, the sort of flea market nature, if you will, of the virtual world today.
很明显,我是个乐观主义者,我有坚定的信仰 不过我想——甚至是一个冷静的,最冷静的 独立思考的人,从这些角度来观察这个变化 看到这些数据能得出的结论 也必定是一样的 翻天覆地的变化必将出现 这个变化是颠覆性的 对于人类现在的生存状态来说 相对于我们的身份也是一样 我们逃离不了这些变化 一般来说,我们在讨论这些—— 在现在的虚拟世界里,面临新的问题, 在其中生存,甚至过上一个好的生活,可以这么说, 这是一个挑战。因为它的文化多样性, 因为那些语言, 和那些跳蚤市场的本性,如果你愿意(这么称呼的话)。
It puts challenges on us to rise to. We must be better than ourselves, in many ways. We must learn things and, you know, be more tolerant, and be smarter and learn faster and be more creative, perhaps, than we are typically in our real lives. And I think that if that is true of virtual worlds, then these changes, though scary -- and, I say, inevitable -- are ultimately for the better, and therefore something that we should ride out. But I would say that -- and many other authors and speakers about this, other than me, have said, you know, fasten your seat belts because the change is coming. There are going to be big changes. JH: Philip Rosedale, thank you very much.
它给我们带来了挑战。我们必须在很多方面比现在的自己做的更好 我们必须学习新东西,更加包容 更聪明、更有效率和创造力 相比从前的自己 我相信如果在虚拟世界里是这样 那些变革,即使令人生畏——不可避免 最终我们也会 更好的安全驾驭我们的生活 不过我想说——不仅仅是我,很多其他作家和演说家 都曾说过,系好你的安全带 因为变革就要来临,请做好准备! 约翰:菲利普·罗斯德勒,非常感谢!
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