新時(shí)代的“自動(dòng)化妄想癥”

It is perhaps the delusion of every generation to exaggerate the novelty of their age and believe they face challenges and opportunities that no one has ever faced before. So it is today as we contemplate our automated future.

這或許是每一代人都有的通?。嚎浯笞约核帟r(shí)代的新奇之處，認(rèn)為自己這一代人面臨的挑戰(zhàn)和機(jī)遇是前人從未經(jīng)歷過(guò)的。如今我們?cè)谒伎既祟?lèi)的自動(dòng)化未來(lái)時(shí)也犯了這樣的妄想癥。

The great service of Thomas Rid’s book — Rise of the Machines: The Lost History of Cybernetics — is to highlight how we have been grappling with the relationship between man and machine for longer than we might have imagined. It also shows how the debate has been coloured by the full spectrum of emotions.

托馬斯•里德(Thomas Rid)的著作《機(jī)器的崛起：控制論失落的歷史》(Rise of the Machines: The Lost History of Cybernetics)的重要貢獻(xiàn)在于，它強(qiáng)調(diào)我們很長(zhǎng)時(shí)間以來(lái)—比我們自己所以為更長(zhǎng)—一直在處理人與機(jī)器之間的關(guān)系。它還表明這場(chǎng)辯論籠罩在各種各樣的情緒之中。

According to Rid, the idea of playing God and creating mechanical life predates the invention of the computer by many centuries — at least in the world of mythology. Early Jewish folklore recounted the tale of the golem, a shapeless clay figure brought to life by humans. The Greeks invented Hephaestus, the divine blacksmith, who created automata out of bronze. The Czech playwright Karel ?apek gave us R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), a story about a factory manufacturing artificial workers that popularised the word “robot” when it was staged in the US in 1950.

里德認(rèn)為，扮演上帝、創(chuàng)造機(jī)械生命的想法比電腦問(wèn)世早了許多個(gè)世紀(jì)，至少在神話故事中是如此。早期的猶太民間傳說(shuō)中有“魔像”(golem)的故事，它是一種沒(méi)有形狀的泥人，由人類(lèi)賦予生命。希臘人創(chuàng)造了鐵匠保護(hù)神赫斐斯塔斯(Hephaestus)，他用銅造出了自動(dòng)機(jī)(automata)。捷克劇作家卡雷爾•恰佩克(Karel ?apek)創(chuàng)作出了戲劇《羅薩姆萬(wàn)能機(jī)器人制造公司》(Rossum's Universal Robots)，講述的是一家工廠制造人工勞動(dòng)力的故事，該劇1950年在美國(guó)上演后，“機(jī)器人”這個(gè)詞流行起來(lái)。

Humans may have long obsessed about machines that could think and make decisions on their own. Then, in the 1940s, they began to become a reality as artillery shells equipped with radio fuses helped shoot down V-1 rockets during the second world war. “Never before had one autonomous weapon clashed with another autonomous weapon with so little human interference,” Rid writes.

人類(lèi)可能長(zhǎng)期執(zhí)迷于能夠自主思考和做決定的機(jī)器。上世紀(jì)40年代，這種想法開(kāi)始成為現(xiàn)實(shí)，配備無(wú)線電雷管的炮彈在二戰(zhàn)期間幫助擊落了V-1火箭。里德寫(xiě)道：“從來(lái)沒(méi)有一臺(tái)自動(dòng)武器借助這么少的人為干預(yù)與另一臺(tái)自動(dòng)武器發(fā)生碰撞。”

Norbert Wiener, a brilliant, eccentric MIT mathematician, coined the term cybernetics and emerged as its leading theoretician, publishing Cybernetics; or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine in 1948. As Rid puts it, Wiener and the early cyberneticists replaced the magic of mythology with science.

才華橫溢而性情古怪的麻省理工學(xué)院(MIT)數(shù)學(xué)家諾伯特•威納(Norbert Wiener)創(chuàng)造出了“控制論”(cybernetics)這個(gè)詞，并成為這一領(lǐng)域的領(lǐng)先理論家，他在1948年出版了《控制論》(Cybernetics)，也叫做《動(dòng)物和機(jī)器內(nèi)部的控制和通信》(Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine)。正如里德所言，威納和早期的控制論學(xué)者用科學(xué)取代了神話魔力。

Wiener was seen as the “prophet of the second industrial revolution”, veering from the wildly enthusiastic to the deeply pessimistic. In 1950 he wrote that automatic machines would be the economic equivalent of slave labour, producing an “unemployment situation in comparison with which . . . the depression of the thirties will seem like a pleasant joke”. That view has particular resonance today as we once again fret about the rise of the robots.

威納被視為“第二次工業(yè)革命的先知”，他從極度熱情轉(zhuǎn)向嚴(yán)重悲觀。1950年，他寫(xiě)道，自動(dòng)機(jī)器將變成經(jīng)濟(jì)中類(lèi)似于奴隸勞動(dòng)力的存在，造成“大量失業(yè)，與之相比……三十年代的蕭條簡(jiǎn)直就是個(gè)愉快的玩笑”。這種觀點(diǎn)在今天有特殊意義，我們?cè)俅螕?dān)心機(jī)器人的崛起。

Rid, a professor in security studies at King’s College London, is a fine chronicler of the debate, deftly recounting the hope, hype, and fears that have accompanied our thinking on automation. “The machines were always a positive and a negative force at the same time, utopian and dystopian at once, although most of the time optimism dominated.”

作為倫敦大學(xué)國(guó)王學(xué)院(King's College London)安全研究方面的教授，里德是一位關(guān)于這場(chǎng)辯論的優(yōu)秀記錄者，他巧妙的記述了我們?cè)谒伎甲詣?dòng)化的過(guò)程中產(chǎn)生的希望、炒作和擔(dān)憂。“機(jī)器總是既正面又負(fù)面，既有些烏托邦又反烏托邦，不過(guò)多數(shù)時(shí)間以樂(lè)觀主義為主。”

Governments and the military dominated the early use of computers in the 1950s and 1960s, with the US army at one time even exploring the deployment in Vietnam of an 18ft, two-legged walking tank known as the Pedipulator.

上世紀(jì)五、六十年代，政府和軍方控制著電腦的早期應(yīng)用，美國(guó)軍方甚至曾考慮在越南部署被稱為“步行機(jī)”(Pedipulator)的18英尺高、用兩條腿走路的坦克。

Radical and libertarian thinkers in the US remained suspicious about computers seeing them as a means of societal control. One described cyborgs as the “illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism”.

美國(guó)激進(jìn)自由主義思想家當(dāng)時(shí)仍對(duì)電腦持懷疑態(tài)度，他們把電腦視為社會(huì)控制的一種手段。有人把半機(jī)器人描述為“軍國(guó)主義和父權(quán)資本主義的私生子”。

But as computers became more powerful and accessible, they were increasingly viewed by hippies on the US west coast as a mechanism for liberation, helping to stimulate the astonishing development of Silicon Valley. Timothy Leary, the US psychologist, compared computers with psychedelic drugs given their mind-enhancing properties.

但隨著電腦變得更強(qiáng)大并被更多人使用，它們?cè)絹?lái)越被美國(guó)西海岸的嬉皮士視為通向自由的途徑，它幫助刺激硅谷的驚人發(fā)展。由于電腦具有提升精神的特性，美國(guó)心理學(xué)家蒂莫西•利瑞(Timothy Leary)把電腦比作致幻藥。

More harmonious visions of man and machine emerged, and by 1995 it was estimated that 10 per cent of the US population could be classified as cyborgs, given their bodies contained implants, such as electronic pacemakers or artificial joints. Richard Brautigan’s poetic vision of computers as “machines of loving grace” began to take shape.

人與機(jī)器更和諧的畫(huà)面出現(xiàn)了，到1995年，據(jù)估計(jì)，美國(guó)10%的人口可以被列為半機(jī)器人，因?yàn)樗麄兊捏w內(nèi)植入了各種設(shè)備，例如電子心臟起搏器或人工關(guān)節(jié)。理查德•布勞蒂根(Richard Brautigan)把電腦視為“慈愛(ài)機(jī)器”的詩(shī)意畫(huà)面開(kāi)始成型。

Rise of the Machines is a fascinating if slightly frustrating book, dazzling in parts but never quite adding up to an integrated whole. One stark lesson is that we should remain wary of all those predicting the future impact of technology. “The futurists, of course, didn’t always get the future wrong, but almost always they got the speed, the scale, and the shape wrong,” Rid writes. “They continue to do so.”

《機(jī)器的崛起》一書(shū)引人入勝，雖說(shuō)可能使人略感沮喪，部分章節(jié)非常出彩，但并未構(gòu)成一個(gè)和諧統(tǒng)一的整體。一個(gè)嚴(yán)酷的教訓(xùn)是，我們?nèi)詰?yīng)警惕所有那些對(duì)技術(shù)在未來(lái)的影響加以預(yù)測(cè)的人士。“當(dāng)然，未來(lái)學(xué)家并非總是把未來(lái)搞錯(cuò)，但他們?cè)谒俣?、?guī)模和形狀方面幾乎總是搞錯(cuò)，”里德寫(xiě)道，“他們將一如既往。”

The reviewer is the FT’s Innovation editor

本書(shū)評(píng)作者是英國(guó)《金融時(shí)報(bào)》創(chuàng)新編輯

Rise of the Machines: The Lost History of Cybernetics; Thomas Rid; Scribe Publications, £20 《機(jī)器的崛起：控制論失落的歷史》(Rise Of Machines：The Lost History of Cybernetics);作者托馬斯•里德(Thomas Rid);Scribe Publications出版社出版;售價(jià)20英鎊