比尔・乔伊：从 Sun 缔造传奇到新征程探索 | 技术巨擘与乔伊法则的深远影响

注：本文为 “Bill Joy” 相关合辑。
英文引文，机翻未校。
中文引文，略作重排。
如有内容异常，请看原文。

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比尔・乔伊：从 Sun 缔造传奇到新征程探索 | 技术巨擘与乔伊法则的深远影响

从 Sun 的奠基者到技术版图的拓荒者

• Sun 时期的辉煌成就：作为 Sun 的创始人之一和长达 21 年的首席科学家，他不仅参与设计了为公司带来上百亿美元营收的 Sparc 微处理器，更以战略眼光全力支持 Java 从编程语言发展为全球流行的开发平台，主持开发的 Jini（连接分布式系统）、Jxta（P2P 协议）等技术，持续拓展着网络时代的应用边界。

• 技术基因的深度沉淀：在 Sun 成立前，他已为 Unix 注入现代操作系统基因（分页虚存、网络功能等），独立编写的 TCP/IP 栈成为 BSD 系统核心，vi 编辑器和 csh 更是成为程序员的 “生存必备工具”，这些成果为其在 Sun 的创新奠定了坚实基础。

乔伊法则：穿透行业的创新启示

• 法则的核心智慧：1990 年提出的 “乔伊法则”——“无论你是谁，大多数绝顶聪明的人都在为另外一个人工作”，精准揭示了高科技产业的创新规律：最顶尖的人才和突破性想法往往存在于组织外部。
• 实践中的价值映射：这一法则不仅解释了 Sun 等企业对外部创新资源的吸纳逻辑，更成为后世企业突破内部局限、整合全球智慧的重要指导，如海尔提出 “世界就是我的研发部”，正是对该法则的生动实践。

新征程：从技术殿堂到人文思辨

• 离开 Sun 后的持续探索：2003 年离开 Sun 后，他并未止步于技术研发，而是将目光投向更广阔的人类命运命题，思考技术与社会、伦理的深层关联。

• 超越技术的公共关怀：其在《为何未来不需要我们》中对生物技术、纳米技术风险的警示，以及对科学伦理、市场机制与技术失控的探讨，展现了技术巨擘跳出专业领域、践行公共知识分子责任的独特轨迹，为新征程赋予了更厚重的人文底色。

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技术天才与公共知识分子 —— Bill Joy

posted @ 2005-09-14 10:01 shipfi

Bill Joy，一位其貌不扬的瘦高个，拥有凌乱的亚麻色头发，被《财富》杂志誉为 “网络时代的爱迪生”。他是 Sun 公司的创始人之一，并在 Sun 公司担任首席科学家长达 21 年。他是一位令人崇敬的软件天才，同时也是一个标准的技术狂人。在记载英雄的历史中，我们注意到，天赋和近乎疯狂的偏执这两者总是结伴出现，并在英雄的身上达到一种交融的境界。

然而，软件英雄史诗令人遗憾地忽略了 Bill Joy 的另一面 —— 作为一名以追求公民社会正义和道德为己任的公共知识分子。他也曾多次尝试，希望通过自己的独立思考，并以个人言论的方式来影响社会，推动社会进步和解决公共问题。

Unix 的起源与发展

话说当年，AT&T 在反垄断法的判决下，不得已放弃了从 Unix 开发和支持中获利的念头，从而专心致志地开始卖 Unix 的源代码许可证。当时，Bill Joy 所在的 Berkeley 计算机科学系就在贝尔实验室所发布的源代码的基础上，开始了他们的 Unix 研究 —— 可能当时所有人都没有意识到，这一行为对后来的世界产生了多大的影响。在 Berkeley 持续不断的研究中，Unix 具备了如此多的现代操作系统特征：基于分页的虚存系统、统一的文件系统、强大而完善的脚本、网络等。

最早基于分页的虚存系统就是由 Bill Joy 加入到 Unix 内核中的，这使得 Unix 得以打败 DEC 的 VMS 操作系统而成功获得 DARPA 的支持。国防部雄厚的资金成为 Bill Joy 和他的伙伴们强有力的支柱，让他们能够源源不断地发挥灵感，继而完成了 csh、vi、TCP/IP 等。csh（C Shell）以其强大的功能获得了广大程序员的喜爱；vi 至今仍在数不胜数的平台上运行，包括各种不同版本的 Unix 和 Linux；至于 TCP/IP 就更不用说了，您能在遥远的中国了解到 Bill Joy 的英雄历程，正是基于 TCP/IP 的互联网所赐。1984 年，Bill 又发布了 NFS 网络文件系统，其后则是在此基础上的 PC - NFS。

Sun 公司与 Java 的崛起

在成立 Sun 微系统公司后，Bill Joy 又担当设计了 Sparc 微处理器最关键的一部分电路。每年 Sun 公司靠 Sparc 服务器和工作站的生意能赚到上百亿美元。而 Java 虽然是由 Sun 的 James Gosling 所写，却也是因为他的全力支持，从而走到台前，从一种编程语言演变成为今天流行的开发平台。

在 Java 之后，Bill Joy 还主持了 Jini —— 一种连接分布式计算机系统的技术的开发。任何联网的小装置（数码相机、电视机、打印机等）都可以由包含有 Java 写成的简单程序实现自己的功能，并且供其他设备使用；还有 Jxta，这是一套开放的 P2P 协议，允许任何互联网上相连的设备（如手机与 PDA，个人电脑与服务器）交流和协作。

技术成就与影响

在短短的二十年内，Bill Joy 创造出了那么多令人心动的软件，不得不令人折服。可提到哪一个对程序员的影响最大呢？人们众说纷纭。也许小小的 Vi 编辑器的影响是最持久的。正如 Reg 网络杂志做的调查，大多数程序员都评论说：“没有 NFS、Java 和其他的技术还能活；但是如果没有 Vi，简直没法活了！”

公共知识分子的角色

Bill Joy 能在 IT 圈外广为人知，不仅因为他是个技术天才，也不仅因为他是个人人羡慕的亿万富翁，主要还是因为 2000 年他在《连线》杂志上发表的一篇文章《未来还需要我们吗》。他宣称生物技术和纳米技术的轻率进展也许会给人类带来灭顶之灾，也许未来不再需要人类。

Joy 的这篇跨越其专业的文章引来了很大争议。有人认为，Joy 只是个程序员，并没有资格谈论生物技术的复杂性。即使是 IT 界的同仁尼葛洛庞帝在接受采访时也说：“Bill Joy 当年写这篇文章时，正处在中年危机之中。我正好知道这一点。因此其文反映了他那段时间的失意。”

难道只有所谓的专业人士才有资格评说技术灾难吗？难道公众就缺乏基本的分析与判断吗？所以，Bill Joy 面对这些非难并不放在心上，他认为提出这个命题的目的不是危言耸听，而是要让公众都关心技术危害的问题，思考我们应该做些什么来避免不想见到的未来。这就是一个知识分子的公共良知。

此外，他还陆续发表了《为数字革命而设计》等多篇涉及技术的文化影响的文章，引起了广泛的关注。

离开 Sun 公司与未来展望

2003 年 9 月，Bill Joy 离开 Sun。当时 Sun 公司的股票也应声下跌了 3.2%。后来，Bill Joy 在接受《连线》杂志的采访时高兴地说：“嗨，我辞职了！” 可是这并不意味着他的职业生涯就此结束。除了每天在家中面壁沉思外，他还在考虑着未来的技术。说不定哪一天这个网络的爱迪生又会带给我们新的惊喜。

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乔伊法则

乔伊法则的定义

该法则由太阳微系统公司的创办人比尔・乔伊于 1990 年提出：“无论你是谁，大多数绝顶聪明的人都在为另外一个人工作。” 对于组织而言，最聪明的人永远在企业外部，这条法则在高科技产业内广为人知。

应用乔伊法则的关键

创新往往都出现在公司外部，因此应用乔伊法则的关键在于：要善于调动公司外部各方能人智士的集体智慧。背负创新使命的企业面临的首要挑战，就是找到途径挖掘公司外的知识，组织的资本、人才都可以从社会上得来。

乔伊法则的启示

就算是 Google 能够聚集业界所有顶尖人才，相关研究还是指出，最复杂的技术问题经常是不相干领域的专家解决的。公司再大也不可能覆盖全世界最聪明的人，因此海尔的张瑞敏提出：“世界就是我的研发部，世界就是我的人力资源部”，着力于整合全球的人才资源。

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Hope Is a Lousy Defense.

希望是一种糟糕的防御

SPENCER REISS
DEC 1, 2003 12:00 PM

Introduction to Bill Joy

比尔・乔伊简介

Sun refugee Bill Joy talks about greedy markets, reckless science, and runaway technology. On the plus side, there’s still some good software out there. There are geeks and then there’s Bill Joy – 49-year-old software god, hero programmer, cofounder of Sun Microsystems and, until he quit in September, its chief scientist. Beginning in 1976, he spent zillions of hours in front of a keyboard, coding the now-ubiquitous Berkeley strain of the Unix operating system; then he godfathered Sun’s Java programming language and helped design servers that were the Internet’s heaviest artillery. In the early 1990s, he kept his job but bolted Silicon Valley, “leaving the urgent behind to get to the important,” he says. In 2000, he wrote the Wired cover story “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” a Cassandra cry about the perils of 21st-century technology and a striking display of ambivalence from a premier technologist. Now, at home 8,000 feet up in Aspen, Colorado, he talks about building a technological utopia while worrying about a techno-apocalypse.
离开 Sun 的比尔・乔伊谈论贪婪的市场、鲁莽的科学和失控的技术。好的一面是，仍然有一些不错的软件存在。有极客，然后还有比尔・乔伊 —— 这位 49 岁的软件之神、英雄级程序员、Sun Microsystems 的联合创始人，以及直到他在 9 月辞职前的公司首席科学家。从 1976 年开始，他在键盘前花费了无数个小时，编写如今无处不在的 Unix 操作系统伯克利版本；随后他成为 Sun 的 Java 编程语言的教父，并助力设计了互联网上最强大的服务器。20 世纪 90 年代初，他保住了工作，却离开了硅谷，他说这是 “抛开紧急的事情，去做重要的事情”。2000 年，他撰写了《连线》杂志的封面故事《为何未来不再需要我们》，这是对 21 世纪技术危险性的卡珊德拉式警告，也彰显了一位顶尖技术专家的矛盾心态。如今，乔伊居住在科罗拉多州阿斯彭海拔 8000 英尺的家中，他一边畅谈构建技术乌托邦，一边担忧技术末日的降临。

Leaving Sun and Reflections on His Tenure

离开 Sun 及其任职反思

WIRED: We’re tempted to say, “End of an era.”
JOY: I don’t see it that way. I try to work on things that won’t happen unless I do them. Not all those things are strongly advantaged by my being at Sun.
《连线》：我们忍不住想说，“一个时代的结束。”
乔伊：我不这么认为。我尽量做一些如果我不做就不会发生的事情。并非所有这些事情都因为我在 Sun 而更具优势。

Still, 21 years at Sun. Did you get a gold watch?
They gave me a clear plastic globe or something.
不过，在 Sun 工作了 21 年。你得到一块金表了吗？
他们给了我一个透明塑料地球仪之类的东西。

And now Scott McNealy is the last founder left, right?
We’re all still alive.
那么现在，斯科特・麦克尼利是最后一位留在公司的创始人了，对吧？
我们还都活着呢。

I mean, left at the company.
We’re still there in spirit. There are an awful lot of good people at Sun who have been there a long time. Sometimes, founders leaving is a good thing. You start to get in the way.
我是说，还在公司里。
我们在精神上依然与公司同在。Sun 有很多优秀的员工，他们在那里工作了很长时间。有时候，创始人离开是件好事。你会开始碍手碍脚。

No doubt, but you were pretty loosely tethered at the best of times.
I’ve always said that all successful systems were small systems initially. Great, world-changing things - Java, for instance - always start small. The ideal project is one where people don’t have meetings, they have lunch. The size of the team should be the size of the lunch table.
毫无疑问，但即使在最好的时期，你也没怎么受到束缚。
我一直说，所有成功的系统最初都是小型系统。那些伟大的、能改变世界的事物 —— 比如 Java—— 总是从小处起步。理想的项目是人们不开会，而是一起吃午饭交流。团队规模应该和餐桌大小相当。

Views on Innovation and Operating Systems

关于创新与操作系统的观点

You’re doing a startup?
Did I say that? Well, maybe.
你在做一家创业公司吗？
我说过吗？嗯，也许吧。

But innovation is supposed to be dead.
Nonsense. Moore’s law still has at least a decade to go with conventional silicon. That’s a factor of 100 in performance, which means that with some work to make the algorithms run faster, we’ve got maybe a factor of a thousand improvement still to come. If you give me machines that are a thousand times as powerful as today’s at the same price, I ought to be able to do something radically better. Thirty years ago a supercomputer was 80 megahertz. Now a personal computer is 2 gigahertz, and yet the software isn’t 25 times better. I just got a new Mac with two 2-gigahertz processors, 8 gigabytes of memory, and a half a terabyte of internal disk.
但据说创新已经消亡了。
胡说。对于传统硅材料而言，摩尔定律至少还有十年的有效期。这意味着性能将提升 100 倍，也就是说，如果我们能让算法运行得更快，或许还能有 1000 倍的提升空间。如果能给我一台价格和现在相同、但性能是如今 1000 倍的机器，我应该能做出一些本质上更出色的东西。30 年前，超级计算机的频率是 80 兆赫兹。现在，个人电脑的频率是 2 吉赫兹，然而软件却没有好 25 倍。我刚买了一台新的 Mac，它有两个 2 吉赫兹的处理器、8GB 内存和 500GB 内置硬盘。

Good for Apple. So what?
So you have the ability to hold a huge simulation all in memory - a database becomes a data structure. Add 64-bit computing and I can do breathtaking visualization. But that’s not a space I’m going to go into, by the way. People’s expectations in three dimensions are so high. On the other hand, existing operating systems, especially the ones provided by the reigning monopolist here, are deeply flawed. So there’s enormous opportunity.
对苹果公司来说是好事。那又怎样呢？
这样你就能把大型模拟全部放在内存中 —— 数据库变成了数据结构。再加上 64 位计算，我就能做出令人惊叹的可视化效果。不过，顺便说一句，我不会涉足那个领域。人们对三维的期望太高了。另一方面，现有的操作系统，尤其是这里占主导地位的垄断企业所提供的，存在严重缺陷。所以这里有巨大的机会。

Is that something that you’d want to take on?
Jini networking technology was a partial attempt. Rather than writing distributed applications, you write a program - the whole system is an application program. But Jini was a solution to a problem that people didn’t know they had.
你愿意接受这个挑战吗？
Jini 网络技术就是一次部分尝试。不是编写分布式应用程序，而是编写一个程序 —— 整个系统就是一个应用程序。但 Jini 解决的是人们当时还没意识到的问题。

Which was?
Reliable and secure systems. We all know that now - 4,000 known Microsoft viruses later, The Wall Street Journal says.
是什么问题呢？
可靠且安全的系统。现在《华尔街日报》称，已知的微软病毒已有 4000 种，我们都清楚这一点了。

And yet you’ve been famously cool about Linux.
Re-implementing what I designed in 1979 is not interesting to me personally. For kids who are 20 years younger than me, Linux is a great way to cut your teeth. It’s a cultural phenomenon and a business phenomenon. Mac OS X is a rock-solid system that’s beautifully designed. I much prefer it to Linux.
然而你对 Linux 一直保持着一种著名的冷静态度。
重新实现我 1979 年设计的东西，我个人并不感兴趣。对于比我年轻 20 岁的人来说，Linux 是个很好的入门途径。它既是一种文化现象，也是一种商业现象。Mac OS X 是一个设计精美的、坚如磐石的系统。我比 Linux 更喜欢它。

What about the open source idea in general?
Open source is fine, but it doesn’t take a worldwide community to create a great operating system. Look at Ken Thompson creating Unix, Stephen Wolfram writing Mathematica in a summer, James Gosling in his office making Java. Now, there’s nothing wrong with letting other people help, but open source doesn’t assist the initial creative act. What we need now are great things. I don’t need to see the source code. I just want a system that works.
那么总体来说，开源理念怎么样呢？
开源是不错，但创建一个伟大的操作系统并不需要一个全球性的社区。看看肯・汤普森创造了 Unix，斯蒂芬・沃尔夫勒姆在一个夏天就编写了 Mathematica，詹姆斯・高斯林在自己的办公室里开发出了 Java。当然，让其他人帮忙没什么问题，但开源对最初的创造性行为并没有帮助。我们现在需要的是优秀的成果。我不需要看源代码。我只想要一个能正常运行的系统。

And that beats Windows.
My goal is to do great things. If I do something great, maybe it’ll beat Microsoft. But that’s not my goal. I find Windows of absolutely no technical interest. They took systems designed for isolated desktop systems and put them on the Net without thinking about evildoers, as our president would say.
那就打败 Windows 了。
我的目标是做出伟大的事情。如果我做出了伟大的成果，或许它能打败微软。但那不是我的目标。我觉得 Windows 在技术上毫无吸引力。他们把为孤立的桌面系统设计的系统放到了网上，却没有考虑到作恶者，就像我们总统说的那样。

Concerns About Technological Risks

对技术风险的担忧

Still, a lot of people have lost a lot of money over the years shorting Microsoft.
We’re just lucky that no one has sent around a virus that erases people’s disk drives. I sure hope that doesn’t happen, but it’s not exactly hard to imagine someone doing it. And hope is a lousy defense.
不过，这些年来，很多人做空微软损失了很多钱。
我们只是很幸运，还没有人传播一种能擦除人们硬盘驱动器的病毒。我真心希望这种事不会发生，但不难想象会有人这么做。而希望是一种糟糕的防御手段。

At last, a warning about impending technological disaster. Are you more or less worried than when you wrote “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us”?
My biggest worry then was that people weren’t paying attention. Obviously 9/11 changed that, but I’m not sure we’ve learned the right lessons. We can’t go out and rid the world of evil, as our president seems to think. These technologies won’t stop themselves, so we need to do whatever we can to give the good guys a head start. And we still don’t get it about epidemics. Even SARS was just a TV story about a bunch of people wearing masks.
终于，你对即将到来的技术灾难发出了警告。比起你写《为何未来不再需要我们》的时候，你是更担心了还是没那么担心了？
当时我最大的担忧是人们没有关注这个问题。显然，9/11 事件改变了这一点，但我不确定我们是否吸取了正确的教训。我们不能像总统似乎认为的那样，去清除世界上的邪恶。这些技术不会自行停止发展，所以我们需要尽一切可能让好人抢占先机。而且我们对流行病仍然缺乏了解。即便是非典，也只是变成了电视上一群人戴口罩的新闻报道而已。

But the future really does need us, right? Someone has to write the software.
Well, that was Wired’s title, not mine. But I stand by everything I wrote. I just wish people reading it on the Web could tell more easily when it’s me speaking and when I’m quoting someone else - the Unabomber, for instance. Such is the fate of the engineer: hoist by my own device.
但未来真的需要我们，对吧？总得有人来编写软件。
嗯，那是《连线》杂志的标题，不是我的。但我坚持我写的每一个字。我只是希望在网上读这篇文章的人能更容易分辨出哪些是我自己说的，哪些是我引用别人的话 —— 比如那位邮包炸弹客。这就是工程师的命运：被自己的发明所累。

You’ve talked about that story as “public penance.” For what?
Success. I benefited a lot from earlier generations’ sacrifice in setting up the system so I could be as creative as I wanted to be. It was a part of me giving back.
你把那篇文章称为 “公开忏悔”。是为了什么呢？
为了成功。前辈们为建立这个体系做出了牺牲，让我能尽情发挥创造力，我从中受益匪浅。这是我回报的一种方式。

Did the criticisms of it affect you?
Not really. Very few of them were well-considered. It seems that people don’t really want to spend much time thinking about this stuff. The most interesting criticisms focused on what needs to be done.
这些批评对你有影响吗？
并没有。很少有批评是经过深思熟虑的。似乎人们并不愿意花太多时间思考这些问题。最有意思的批评集中在需要采取什么行动上。

Which you didn’t write about.
If I had proposed a set of solutions, it wouldn’t have been as striking. Shortly after the article came out I did publish a short list of suggestions as an op-ed in the Washington Post. I wish it had received more attention.
而你并没有写这些内容。
如果我当时提出了一套解决方案，那篇文章就不会那么引人注目了。文章发表后不久，我在《华盛顿邮报》上发表了一篇评论文章，列出了一些建议。我希望它能得到更多关注。

Balancing Progress and Responsibility

平衡进步与责任

You did once say that we shouldn’t “let the future just happen.” Haven’t laissez-faire and free markets won out over planned economies?
Our problem is no longer “going faster,” getting to the future as fast as possible, but rather dealing with limits - limiting our own greed to avoid disaster in the environment and limiting what rogue individuals and states can do. Market mechanisms don’t address these problems. Things that aren’t accounted for in the cost equations - especially catastrophic events, the value of our survival - don’t get dealt with.
你曾经说过，我们不应该 “让未来就那样发生”。难道自由放任和自由市场没有战胜计划经济吗？
我们的问题不再是 “加快速度”，不再是尽可能快地奔向未来，而是要应对各种限制 —— 限制我们自身的贪婪以避免环境灾难，限制流氓个体和国家的行为。市场机制无法解决这些问题。那些没有纳入成本核算的东西 —— 尤其是灾难性事件、我们的生存价值 —— 都得不到处理。

Are you any more at peace with what you see coming?
Not when the forces at play are so powerful that we have such strongly negative possible outcomes. Do we care whether we get a police state without civil liberties because the government’s “protecting us” from terrorists? I think we do care. Are people paying enough attention to stop it? I don’t think so.
对于你所预见的未来，你是否更心安了一些？
当各种力量如此强大，可能会导致如此严重的负面后果时，我无法心安。我们会在乎因为政府要 “保护我们免受恐怖分子侵害” 而变成一个没有公民自由的警察国家吗？我认为我们会在乎。人们是否足够关注以阻止这种情况发生呢？我觉得没有。

There must be something to be cheerful about.
How about, there’s so much good software that can be written for the machines that we have now, let alone those that are a hundred times faster. When Moore’s law ceases to be true, maybe around 2014 - that would be a good time to retire.
总该有一些值得高兴的事情吧。
比如，对于我们现在拥有的机器，还有那么多优秀的软件可以编写，更不用说那些速度会快上 100 倍的机器了。当摩尔定律不再成立时，也许在 2014 年左右 —— 那将是退休的好时机。

Whatever happened to the book you were writing to follow up the article?
I’ve written two manuscripts. The first was a wake-up call - that’s obviously not the book we need anymore. The second was prescriptive, and the problem is, I’m not satisfied with the prescriptions that I have. You don’t get two shots at something like this, so I’m holding off.
你说过要写一本跟进那篇文章的书，后来怎么样了？
我写了两份手稿。第一份是一个警钟 —— 显然，那已经不是我们现在需要的书了。第二份是提供解决方案的，但问题是，我对自己提出的那些解决方案并不满意。对于这样的事情，你没有两次机会，所以我暂时搁置了。

Meanwhile the markets continue to pour money into the fields that worry you - genomics, nanotechnology, and robotics.
Because they don’t have to pay the bill.
与此同时，市场继续向你担心的领域投入资金 —— 基因组学、纳米技术和机器人技术。
因为他们不必为此买单。

You mean the damages if something goes wrong?
Right. But I’m afraid we’re not going to have this discussion until there’s a really big accident, and maybe not even then. Assuming any of us are still around to have the discussion.
你是说如果出了问题，他们不用承担损失吗？
对。但我担心，除非发生一场非常严重的事故，否则我们不会进行这样的讨论，甚至到那时可能也不会。前提是我们中还有人能留下来讨论这件事。

A cynic would say that your Wired story made noise but the result was you in an Audi ad with “Jini” and “Java” painted on your face.
As long as the Bush administration is in power, nothing’s going to get done about any of this. The liability is going to get transferred to the next generation, like everything else.
一个愤世嫉俗的人会说，你在《连线》杂志上的文章引起了轰动，但结果却是你出现在奥迪广告中，脸上还画着 “Jini” 和 “Java”。
只要布什政府还在执政，这些事情都不会有任何进展。就像其他所有事情一样，责任将会转嫁给下一代。

But you’ve said aspects of the war on terrorism infringe on civil liberties. Aren’t you calling for something similar with respect to technology?
I’m not saying the government should do it. Centralized strategies - things like Admiral Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness program - don’t work. What I’m saying is “physician, heal thyself.” People in the various scientific communities have to police themselves.
但是你说过，反恐战争的某些方面侵犯了公民自由。难道你不是在呼吁对技术采取类似的措施吗？
我不是说政府应该这么做。集中化的策略 —— 比如波因德斯特上将的 “全面信息感知” 计划 —— 是行不通的。我想说的是 “医生，先治好你自己”。各个科学界的人必须进行自我监管。

Like the Russell - Einstein Manifesto from 1955 - where we get the phrase “weapons of mass destruction.”
I certainly think a Hippocratic Oath for scientists would be useful. And I think an essential part of getting control of technology will be for international organizations to take a lead in promoting ethical scientific behavior. The Pugwash organization’s work on sensible nuclear policy is a strong example.
就像 1955 年的《罗素 - 爱因斯坦宣言》—— 我们从那里得到了 “大规模杀伤性武器” 这个短语。
我当然认为为科学家设立一个希波克拉底誓言会很有用。而且我认为，要控制技术，关键在于国际组织带头倡导符合伦理的科学行为。帕格沃什组织在合理核政策方面所做的工作就是一个很好的例子。

But what will get the scientific community to accept being told what to do?
Catastrophe. We have scientists saying they want to publish pathogen gene sequences on the Net. One consequential accident and we’ll want to throw those researchers in jail.
但是，怎样才能让科学界接受别人对他们指手画脚呢？
灾难。我们有科学家说他们想在网上公布病原体的基因序列。一旦发生重大事故，我们就会想把那些研究人员关进监狱。

So much for progress.
What are we in such a hurry for?
这就是所谓的进步。
我们这么着急是为了什么呢？

Easy for you to say. You live in Aspen.
We don’t need a lot of economic growth to address the problem of the world’s poor. We put subsistence farmers out of business because that’s our choice. Clean water would do more to alleviate disease than high - tech medicine.
你说得倒是轻松。你住在阿斯彭。
要解决世界贫困人口的问题，我们不需要大量的经济增长。我们让自给自足的农民破产，因为那是我们的选择。清洁的水比高科技药物更能减轻疾病。

Downsizing expectations? That’s pretty pessimistic.
I’m not a pessimist. Democracy is about individuals giving up the ability to do whatever they want so that everybody can have some rights. We may have to give up some of the power of high - technology if we want to keep our civil liberties. And that is a choice, whether we realize it or not.
降低期望？这听起来很悲观。
我不是悲观主义者。民主是指个人放弃为所欲为的能力，这样每个人才能拥有一些权利。如果我们想保留我们的公民自由，我们可能不得不放弃一些高科技的力量。无论我们是否意识到，这都是一种选择。

Tell that to the happy workaholic hordes of Silicon Valley or Wall Street.
Hey, I quit my job.
去跟硅谷或华尔街那些快乐的工作狂们说这些吧。
嘿，我已经辞职了。

All right, you win. What are you doing for fun these days?
I’m figuring out a meditation wall for my apartment in New York. Eight feet high by 12 feet wide, with an array of overlapping rear projectors, each with a tiny Linux box and connected by gigabit Ethernet. I would love to get 72 dpi but will probably settle for less - about 30 megapixels for the whole thing. [Former Walt Disney Imagineering guru] Bran Ferren and Danny Hillis [inventor of massively parallel supercomputing] at Applied Minds are building it for me. It’s very bright. Given that it’s in an apartment, the main limitation will be power availability. I’ll also need some great 30 - megapixel images. Any ideas? I can always put a picture of stars on the wall. In Manhattan, you can’t see them - except, of course, in a blackout.
好吧，你赢了。这些天你做什么来取乐呢？
我正在为我在纽约的公寓设计一面冥想墙。它高 8 英尺，宽 12 英尺，配有一组重叠的背投投影仪，每个投影仪都连接着一个小型 Linux 主机，并通过千兆以太网相连。我希望能达到 72dpi 的分辨率，但可能只能达到更低的水平 —— 整个墙面大约 3000 万像素。[前迪士尼幻想工程大师] 布兰・费伦和应用思维公司的丹尼・希利斯 [大规模并行超级计算的发明者] 正在为我建造它。它非常明亮。由于它是在公寓里，主要的限制将是电力供应。我还需要一些很棒的 3000 万像素的图像。有什么主意吗？我总可以在墙上挂一张星星的图片。在曼哈顿，你看不到星星 —— 当然，停电的时候除外。

Reheating Java

重燃 Java 之火

Facing tough times, Sun looks for a new source of cash.
Kevin Kelleher
面临困境，Sun 寻求新的资金来源。
凯文・凯勒赫

Introduced by Bill Joy and a team of Sun engineers in 1995, Java was hailed for its ability to run software applications on any platform. Half programming language, half operating system, Java has lived up to its billing - breathing life into Web browsers, bridging incompatibility gaps, and, lately, giving us videogames on our cell phones.
1995 年，比尔・乔伊和 Sun 的一组工程师推出了 Java，它因能够在任何平台上运行软件应用程序而广受赞誉。Java 一半是编程语言，一半是操作系统，它没有辜负人们的期望 —— 为 Web 浏览器注入了活力，弥合了不兼容的鸿沟，最近还让我们的手机上有了视频游戏。

What can’t Java do? For starters, make Sun any real money. After eight years, the only significant income the company gets from Java is from licensing - a mere penny or two of every dollar of Sun revenue.
Java 不能做什么？首先，它不能为 Sun 带来真正的利润。八年来，该公司从 Java 获得的唯一重要收入来自许可费 —— 仅占 Sun 每美元收入中的一两美分。

From the beginning, Sun intended Java to be primarily a loss leader for hardware. The more Java - enabled Web sites there were and the greater the number of programmers using Java for ecommerce software, the bigger the (perceived) need for Sun’s high - end Web servers. The company made the decision not to sell Java by itself for fear of cutting into server sales.
从一开始，Sun 就打算让 Java 主要成为硬件的亏本引流产品。支持 Java 的网站越多，使用 Java 编写电子商务软件的程序员数量越多，（人们认为的）对 Sun 高端 Web 服务器的需求就越大。该公司决定不单独销售 Java，担心这会影响服务器的销售。

For a while, this strategy worked fine. In the late ’90s, Java helped sell untold Sparc servers - untold because Sun’s not saying. But then Dell came along and cut Sun off at the knees with cheap servers running Linux software. IBM and BEA Systems, meanwhile, latched on to Java and sold it in the lucrative market for application server software, which helps link computers to backend databases over the Web. Today, those companies own a majority of the $3.9 billion annual business. “When Java hit, it was the greatest thing since canned beer,” says John Rymer, a vice president at Giga Information Group. “Sun began with the upper hand, but it lacked a software strategy that was worth a damn.”
有一段时间，这种策略效果很好。20 世纪 90 年代末，Java 帮助 Sun 卖出了数量不详的 Sparc 服务器 —— 不详是因为 Sun 没有透露。但后来戴尔出现了，用运行 Linux 软件的廉价服务器给了 Sun 沉重打击。与此同时，IBM 和 BEA 系统公司抓住了 Java，在利润丰厚的应用服务器软件市场上销售它，这种软件有助于通过 Web 将计算机与后端数据库连接起来。如今，这些公司占据了这一每年 39 亿美元业务的大部分份额。“Java 问世时，它是自罐装啤酒以来最棒的东西，” 吉加信息集团副总裁约翰・赖默说。“Sun 一开始占据优势，但它缺乏一个像样的软件战略。”

Now, with its expensive servers out of vogue and revenue half of what it was a few years ago, Sun is trying to make Java pay off. That’s why the company is jumping into the Java - based application market that it shrugged off in the late ’90s. The strategy: price war. Sun wants to do to IBM, BEA, and Oracle on the software front what Dell did to Sun in hardware.
如今，随着其昂贵的服务器不再流行，收入也只有几年前的一半，Sun 正试图让 Java 带来回报。这就是为什么该公司要进军它在 20 世纪 90 年代末不屑一顾的基于 Java 的应用程序市场。策略是：价格战。Sun 希望在软件领域对 IBM、BEA 和甲骨文做戴尔在硬件领域对 Sun 所做的事情。

Under the fancy label Java Enterprise System, Sun has created a Java - based software package - Web server applications, email management, ID authentication - that it’s pushing to the corporate world at the low, low price of $100 per employee. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s executive VP of software, claims the fee (a fraction of what market leaders charge) will make Sun “the Wal - Mart of software,” winning in market share what it loses on price.
在华丽的 “Java 企业系统” 标签下，Sun 创建了一个基于 Java 的软件包 —— 包括 Web 服务器应用程序、电子邮件管理、身份认证 —— 并以每位员工 100 美元的极低价格向企业推广。Sun 软件执行副总裁乔纳森・施瓦茨声称，这一费用（仅为市场领导者收费的一小部分）将使 Sun 成为 “软件界的沃尔玛”，在市场份额上弥补在价格上的损失。

Because no Sun strategy is complete without an anti - Microsoft component, the company has reassembled a Java desktop package - a Mozilla browser and StarOffice applications - also priced at $100.
因为 Sun 的任何战略都少不了反微软的成分，该公司重新整合了一个 Java 桌面软件包 —— 包括 Mozilla 浏览器和 StarOffice 应用程序 —— 定价也是 100 美元。

Will the new approach work? Hotels.com director of architecture Brad Schneider likes the pricing scheme for the Java Enterprise System, but his bosses are freaked out about buying from a company they think could go under any day now. “People talk about Sun like it might have the doors chained,” he says.
这种新方法会奏效吗？Hotels.com 的架构总监布拉德・施耐德喜欢 Java 企业系统的定价方案，但他的老板们对从一家他们认为随时可能倒闭的公司购买产品感到恐慌。“人们谈论 Sun 时，就好像它的大门可能随时会被锁上一样，” 他说。

Sun also has a consumer strategy for Java. The company is starting a cell phone branding ploy - la “Intel Inside.” Nearly 120 million mobile phones use Java to download games, mostly in Europe and Japan. Sun foresees phone manufacturers and service providers promoting the “Java Powered” tagline to their customers.
Sun 还为 Java 制定了一项消费者战略。该公司正启动一项手机品牌策略 —— 类似 “英特尔酷睿”。近 1.2 亿部手机使用 Java 下载游戏，主要集中在欧洲和日本。Sun 预计手机制造商和服务提供商将向其客户推广 “Java 动力” 这一标语。

If the flurry of activity reeks of desperation, well, these are desperate times. Sun’s stock is off 95 percent from its 2000 high and its prognosis is somewhere between deathwatch and takeover. “Should we have done this earlier?” asks John Loiacano, VP of Sun’s Operating Platform Group. “Of course we should have.”
如果这一系列的活动散发着绝望的气息，那么，现在确实是绝望的时刻。Sun 的股价较 2000 年的高点下跌了 95%，其前景介于观望其倒闭和被收购之间。“我们应该早点这么做吗？”Sun 操作系统平台集团副总裁约翰・洛亚卡诺问道。“当然应该。”

Kevin Kelleher (kpk99@yahoo.com) profiled the Wired 40 companies in Wired 11.07
凯文・凯勒赫（kpk99@yahoo.com）在《连线》11.07 期对《连线》40 强公司进行了介绍。

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Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us

为什么未来不需要我们

BILL JOY
THE BIG STORY
APR 1, 2000 12:00 PM

Our most powerful 21st - century technologies—robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech—are threatening to make humans an endangered species.
我们 21 世纪最强大的技术 —— 机器人技术、基因工程和纳米技术 —— 正威胁着使人类成为濒危物种。

The Awakening

觉醒

FROM THE MOMENTI became involved in the creation of new technologies, their ethical dimensions have concerned me, but it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil, the deservedly famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and many other amazing things.
从我开始参与新技术的创造那一刻起，我就一直关注着它们的伦理问题，但直到 1998 年秋天，我才开始焦虑地意识到我们在 21 世纪面临的巨大危险。我可以将我的不安追溯到我遇到雷・库兹韦尔的那一天，他是当之无愧的著名发明家，发明了第一台盲人阅读机和许多其他令人惊叹的东西。

Ray and I were both speakers at George Gilder’s Telecosm conference, and I encountered him by chance in the bar of the hotel after both our sessions were over. I was sitting with John Searle, a Berkeley philosopher who studies consciousness. While we were talking, Ray approached and a conversation began, the subject of which haunts me to this day.
雷和我都是乔治・吉尔德的 “电信宇宙” 会议的演讲嘉宾，会议结束后，我在酒店酒吧偶然遇到了他。当时我正和研究意识问题的加州大学伯克利分校哲学家约翰・塞尔坐在一起。在我们交谈时，雷走了过来，于是开始了一场至今仍困扰着我的对话。

I had missed Ray’s talk and the subsequent panel that Ray and John had been on, and they now picked right up where they’d left off, with Ray saying that the rate of improvement of technology was going to accelerate and that we were going to become robots or fuse with robots or something like that, and John countering that this couldn’t happen, because the robots couldn’t be conscious.
我错过了雷的演讲以及他和约翰随后参加的小组讨论，他们接着刚才的话题继续聊了起来，雷说技术进步的速度将不断加快，我们最终会变成机器人，或者与机器人融合，或者类似的事情。约翰则反驳说这不可能发生，因为机器人不可能有意识。

While I had heard such talk before, I had always felt sentient robots were in the realm of science fiction. But now, from someone I respected, I was hearing a strong argument that they were a near - term possibility. I was taken aback, especially given Ray’s proven ability to imagine and create the future. I already knew that new technologies like genetic engineering and nanotechnology were giving us the power to remake the world, but a realistic and imminent scenario for intelligent robots surprised me.
虽然我以前也听过类似的言论，但我总觉得有感知能力的机器人只是科幻小说里的东西。但这次，从我尊敬的人那里，我听到了一个强有力的论点，认为这种机器人在近期就有可能出现。这让我感到震惊，尤其是考虑到雷在想象和创造未来方面的卓越能力。我早就知道，像基因工程和纳米技术这样的新技术赋予了我们改造世界的力量，但关于智能机器人即将出现的现实且迫在眉睫的情景还是让我感到意外。

It’s easy to get jaded about such breakthroughs. We hear in the news almost every day of some kind of technological or scientific advance. Yet this was no ordinary prediction. In the hotel bar, Ray gave me a partial preprint of his then - forthcoming book The Age of Spiritual Machines, which outlined a utopia he foresaw—one in which humans gained near immortality by becoming one with robotic technology. On reading it, my sense of unease only intensified; I felt sure he had to be understating the dangers, understating the probability of a bad outcome along this path.
人们对这类突破性进展很容易麻木。我们几乎每天都会在新闻中听到某种技术或科学的进步。然而，这并非一般的预测。在酒店酒吧里，雷给了我一本他即将出版的书《灵性机器的时代》的部分校样，书中描绘了他预见的一个乌托邦 —— 人类通过与机器人技术融为一体而获得近乎永生。读完这本书后，我的不安感愈发强烈，我确信他一定低估了危险，低估了沿着这条道路走向糟糕结局的可能性。

The New Luddite Challenge

新卢德主义的挑战

First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
首先，让我们假设计算机科学家成功开发出比人类更擅长做一切事情的智能机器。那么，所有的工作都将由庞大且高度组织化的机器系统来完成，人类无需付出任何努力。可能出现以下两种情况之一：要么允许机器自行做出所有决策，无需人类监督；要么保留人类对机器的控制权。

If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine - made decisions will bring better results than man - made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
如果允许机器自行做出所有决策，我们无法对结果做出任何推测，因为不可能猜测这些机器会如何行动。我们只是指出，人类的命运将受制于机器。有人可能会说，人类不会愚蠢到把所有权力都交给机器。但我们并不是说人类会自愿将权力交给机器，也不是说机器会主动夺取权力。我们只是认为，人类很容易让自己陷入如此依赖机器的境地，以至于除了接受机器的所有决策外，别无选择。随着社会和其所面临的问题越来越复杂，机器也越来越智能，人们会越来越多地让机器为自己做决策，因为机器做出的决策比人类的更好。最终，可能会达到这样一个阶段：维持系统运行所需的决策将复杂到人类无法做出明智的判断。到那时，机器将实际上处于控制地位。人们无法简单地关闭机器，因为他们对机器的依赖程度如此之高，关闭机器就等于自杀。

On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite—just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft - hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.
另一方面，也有可能保留人类对机器的控制权。在这种情况下，普通人可能仍然可以控制自己的某些私人机器，例如汽车或个人电脑，但对大型机器系统的控制权将掌握在一个小精英阶层手中 —— 就像今天一样，但有两个区别。由于技术的进步，精英阶层将对大众拥有更大的控制权；而且由于人类的工作不再必要，大众将变得多余，成为系统的无用负担。如果精英阶层冷酷无情，他们可能会决定直接消灭大众。如果他们比较人道，可能会利用宣传或其他心理或生物技术手段来降低出生率，直到人类大众灭绝，让世界只属于精英阶层。或者，如果精英阶层由心软的自由主义者组成，他们可能会决定扮演人类的 “好牧羊人”。他们会确保每个人的基本需求得到满足，所有孩子都在良好的心理环境下成长，每个人都有健康的爱好来打发时间，并且任何可能感到不满的人都会接受 “治疗”，以解决他们的 “问题”。当然，生活将变得毫无意义，人们必须通过生物或心理工程来消除他们对权力的需求，或者将他们的权力欲望转化为某种无害的爱好。这些经过改造的人类可能在这样的社会中感到幸福，但他们肯定不会自由。他们将被降低到家畜的地位。

In the book, you don’t discover until you turn the page that the author of this passage is Theodore Kaczynski—the Unabomber. I am no apologist for Kaczynski. His bombs killed three people during a 17 - year terror campaign and wounded many others. One of his bombs gravely injured my friend David Gelernter, one of the most brilliant and visionary computer scientists of our time. Like many of my colleagues, I felt that I could easily have been the Unabomber’s next target.
在这本书中，直到你翻到下一页才会发现这段话的作者是西奥多・卡钦斯基 ——“无政府主义者炸弹客”。我不是卡钦斯基的辩护者。他的炸弹在长达 17 年的恐怖活动中杀死了 3 人，并使许多人受伤。他的一个炸弹严重炸伤了我的朋友大卫・盖勒特纳，他是我们这个时代最杰出、最有远见的计算机科学家之一。和我的许多同事一样，我感到我很容易成为无政府主义者炸弹客的下一个目标。

Kaczynski’s actions were murderous and, in my view, criminally insane. He is clearly a Luddite, but simply saying this does not dismiss his argument; as difficult as it is for me to acknowledge, I saw some merit in the reasoning in this single passage. I felt compelled to confront it.
卡钦斯基的行为是谋杀性的，在我看来，是精神错乱的犯罪行为。他显然是一个卢德主义者，但仅仅这样说并不能驳倒他的论点；尽管我很难承认，但我确实认为这段话中的推理有一些合理之处。我觉得有必要正视它。

Kaczynski’s dystopian vision describes unintended consequences, a well - known problem with the design and use of technology, and one that is clearly related to Murphy’s law—“Anything that can go wrong, will.” (Actually, this is Finagle’s law, which in itself shows that Finagle was right.) Our overuse of antibiotics has led to what may be the biggest such problem so far: the emergence of antibiotic - resistant and much more dangerous bacteria. Similar things happened when attempts to eliminate malarial mosquitoes using DDT caused them to acquire DDT resistance; malarial parasites likewise acquired multi - drug - resistant genes.
卡钦斯基的反乌托邦愿景描述了技术设计和使用中的一个众所周知的问题 —— 意外后果，这显然与墨菲定律有关 ——“凡是可能出错的，都会出错。”（实际上，这是芬纳格尔定律，这本身就表明芬纳格尔是对的。）我们过度使用抗生素导致了迄今为止可能最大的此类问题：抗生素耐药性更强、更危险的细菌的出现。类似的情况也发生在用 DDT 消灭疟蚊导致它们获得 DDT 抗性，疟原虫也获得了多药耐药基因。

The cause of many such surprises seems clear: The systems involved are complex, involving interaction among and feedback between many parts. Any changes to such a system will cascade in ways that are difficult to predict; this is especially true when human actions are involved.
许多此类意外的原因似乎很清楚：这些系统是复杂的，涉及许多部分之间的相互作用和反馈。对这种系统的任何改变都会以难以预测的方式产生连锁反应；当涉及人类行为时，尤其如此。

The Dangers of Self-Replicating Technologies

自我复制技术的危险

I started showing friends the Kaczynski quote from The Age of Spiritual Machines; I would hand them Kurzweil’s book, let them read the quote, and then watch their reaction as they discovered who had written it. At around the same time, I found Hans Moravec’s book Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. Moravec is one of the leaders in robotics research, and was a founder of the world’s largest robotics research program, at Carnegie Mellon University. Robot gave me more material to try out on my friends—material surprisingly supportive of Kaczynski’s argument. For example:
我开始向朋友们展示《灵性机器的时代》中卡钦斯基的那段话；我会把库兹韦尔的书交给他们，让他们读那段话，然后观察他们发现作者是谁时的反应。大约在同一时间，我发现了汉斯・莫拉维克的书《机器人：从普通机器到超凡心智》。莫拉维克是机器人研究领域的领导者之一，也是卡内基梅隆大学世界上最大的机器人研究项目的创始人。《机器人》一书为我提供了更多可以用来测试我朋友的素材 —— 这些素材意外地支持了卡钦斯基的论点。例如：

The Short Run (Early 2000s)
短期（2000 年代初）

Biological species almost never survive encounters with superior competitors. Ten million years ago, South and North America were separated by a sunken Panama isthmus. South America, like Australia today, was populated by marsupial mammals, including pouched equivalents of rats, deers, and tigers. When the isthmus connecting North and South America rose, it took only a few thousand years for the northern placental species, with slightly more effective metabolisms and reproductive and nervous systems, to displace and eliminate almost all the southern marsupials.
生物物种几乎从未在与更优秀的竞争者的遭遇中存活下来。一千万年前，南美洲和北美洲被下沉的巴拿马地峡分隔开来。像今天的澳大利亚一样，南美洲当时生活着有袋类哺乳动物，包括有袋的老鼠、鹿和老虎的同类。当连接北美和南美洲的地峡升起时，只用了几千年，北方的胎盘类物种凭借略胜一筹的新陈代谢、繁殖和神经系统，就取代并消灭了几乎所有的南方有袋类动物。

In a completely free marketplace, superior robots would surely affect humans as North American placentals affected South American marsupials (and as humans have affected countless species). Robotic industries would compete vigorously among themselves for matter, energy, and space, incidentally driving their price beyond human reach. Unable to afford the necessities of life, biological humans would be squeezed out of existence.
在一个完全自由的市场中，优秀的机器人肯定会对人类产生像北美胎盘类动物对南美有袋类动物（以及人类对无数物种）那样的影响。机器人产业将为了物质、能源和空间而激烈竞争，顺便将它们的价格推高到人类无法承受的水平。无法负担生活必需品的人类将被挤出生存空间。

There is probably some breathing room, because we do not live in a completely free marketplace. Government coerces nonmarket behavior, especially by collecting taxes. Judiciously applied, governmental coercion could support human populations in high style on the fruits of robot labor, perhaps for a long while.
也许还有一些回旋余地，因为我们并不生活在一个完全自由的市场中。政府通过征税等方式强制实施非市场行为。如果运用得当，政府的强制力可以用机器人的劳动成果来维持人类的高生活水平，也许可以维持很长一段时间。

A Textbook Dystopia
教科书式的反乌托邦

A textbook dystopia—and Moravec is just getting wound up. He goes on to discuss how our main job in the 21st century will be “ensuring continued cooperation from the robot industries” by passing laws decreeing that they be “nice,” and to describe how seriously dangerous a human can be “once transformed into an unbounded superintelligent robot.” Moravec’s view is that the robots will eventually succeed us—that humans clearly face extinction.
这是一本教科书式的反乌托邦 —— 而莫拉维克才刚刚开始。他继续讨论我们在 21 世纪的主要工作将是通过立法规定机器人产业 “表现友好”，以 “确保机器人产业的持续合作”，并描述了一个人类一旦 “变成不受限制的超级智能机器人” 会有多危险。莫拉维克的观点是，机器人最终会取代我们 —— 人类显然面临着灭绝。

I decided it was time to talk to my friend Danny Hillis. Danny became famous as the cofounder of Thinking Machines Corporation, which built a very powerful parallel supercomputer. Despite my current job title of Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems, I am more a computer architect than a scientist, and I respect Danny’s knowledge of the information and physical sciences more than that of any other single person I know. Danny is also a highly regarded futurist who thinks long - term—four years ago he started the Long Now Foundation, which is building a clock designed to last 10,000 years, in an attempt to draw attention to the pitifully short attention span of our society. (See “Test of Time,” Wired 8.03.)
我决定该和我的朋友丹尼・希利斯谈谈了。丹尼作为 “思考机器” 公司的联合创始人而声名鹊起，该公司制造了一台非常强大的并行超级计算机。尽管我目前在 Sun Microsystems 的头衔是首席科学家，但与其说我是一名科学家，不如说我是一名计算机架构师，我比任何人都更尊重丹尼在信息科学和物理科学方面的知识。丹尼也是一位备受尊敬的长期未来学家 —— 四年前，他创立了 “长今基金会”，该基金会正在制造一台设计寿命为 10000 年的时钟，试图引起人们对社会可怜的短视的关注。（参见《时间的考验》，《连线》8.03。）

So I flew to Los Angeles for the express purpose of having dinner with Danny and his wife, Pati. I went through my now - familiar routine, trotting out the ideas and passages that I found so disturbing. Danny’s answer—directed specifically at Kurzweil’s scenario of humans merging with robots—came swiftly, and quite surprised me. He said, simply, that the changes would come gradually, and that we would get used to them.
于是，我飞往洛杉矶，专门与丹尼和他的妻子帕蒂共进晚餐。我像往常一样，把那些令我感到不安的想法和段落一一列举出来。丹尼的回答 —— 专门针对库兹韦尔关于人类与机器人融合的场景 —— 来得很快，也让我颇感意外。他简单地说，这些变化会逐渐发生，我们会慢慢习惯的。

But I guess I wasn’t totally surprised. I had seen a quote from Danny in Kurzweil’s book in which he said, “I’m as fond of my body as anyone, but if I can be 200 with a body of silicon, I’ll take it.” It seemed that he was at peace with this process and its attendant risks, while I was not.
但我想我也没有完全意外。我在库兹韦尔的书中看到过丹尼的一句引言，他说：“我像任何人一样喜爱我的身体，但如果我能用硅的身体活到 200 岁，我会选择的。” 看来他对这个过程及其伴随的风险泰然处之，而我却做不到。

The Threat of Unintended Consequences

意外后果的威胁

While talking and thinking about Kurzweil, Kaczynski, and Moravec, I suddenly remembered a novel I had read almost 20 years ago - The White Plague, by Frank Herbert - in which a molecular biologist is driven insane by the senseless murder of his family. To seek revenge he constructs and disseminates a new and highly contagious plague that kills widely but selectively. (We’re lucky Kaczynski was a mathematician, not a molecular biologist.) I was also reminded of the Borg of Star Trek, a hive of partly biological, partly robotic creatures with a strong destructive streak. Borg - like disasters are a staple of science fiction, so why hadn’t I been more concerned about such robotic dystopias earlier? Why weren’t other people more concerned about these nightmarish scenarios?
在谈论和思考库兹韦尔、卡钦斯基和莫拉维克时，我突然想起了近 20 年前读过的一部小说 —— 弗兰克・赫伯特的《白色瘟疫》，小说中，一名分子生物学家因家人被无端谋杀而精神失常。为了报复，他制造并传播了一种新的、高度传染性的瘟疫，这种瘟疫广泛传播，但选择性地杀人。（我们运气好，卡钦斯基是个数学家，而不是分子生物学家。）我也想起了《星际迷航》中的博格人，这是一个部分生物、部分机械的生物群体，具有强烈的破坏性。博格人式的灾难是科幻小说的常见题材，那我为什么之前没有更担心这种机器人反乌托邦呢？为什么其他人对这些噩梦般的场景也不够重视呢？

Part of the answer certainly lies in our attitude toward the new—in our bias toward instant familiarity and unquestioning acceptance. Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st - century technologies—robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology—pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self - replicate. A bomb is blown up only once—but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control.
答案的一部分肯定在于我们对新技术的态度 —— 我们倾向于迅速熟悉并毫无保留地接受。我们已经习惯了几乎习以为常的科学突破，但还没有意识到，21 世纪最具吸引力的技术 —— 机器人技术、基因工程和纳米技术 —— 与以往的技术相比，带来了不同的威胁。具体来说，机器人、人工生物和纳米机器人有一个危险的放大因素：它们可以自我复制。炸弹只爆炸一次，但一个机器人可以变成许多个，并且迅速失控。

Much of my work over the past 25 years has been on computer networking, where the sending and receiving of messages creates the opportunity for out - of - control replication. But while replication in a computer or a computer network can be a nuisance, at worst it disables a machine or takes down a network or network service. Uncontrolled self - replication in these newer technologies runs a much greater risk: a risk of substantial damage in the physical world.
过去 25 年里，我的大部分工作都在计算机网络领域，发送和接收消息为失控的复制创造了机会。然而，尽管计算机或计算机网络中的复制可能是一个麻烦，但最坏的情况也不过是使一台机器瘫痪或导致一个网络或网络服务崩溃。这些新技术中的不受控制的自我复制带来了更大的风险：在物理世界中造成重大损害的风险。

Each of these technologies also offers untold promise: The vision of near immortality that Kurzweil sees in his robot dreams drives us forward; genetic engineering may soon provide treatments, if not outright cures, for most diseases; and nanotechnology and nanomedicine can address yet more ills. Together they could significantly extend our average life span and improve the quality of our lives. Yet, with each of these technologies, a sequence of small, individually sensible advances leads to an accumulation of great power and, concomitantly, great danger.
这些技术中的每一个都充满了无限的希望：库兹韦尔在他的机器人梦想中看到的近乎永生的愿景推动着我们前进；基因工程可能很快就能为大多数疾病提供治疗，即使不是彻底治愈；纳米技术和纳米医学可以解决更多的问题。它们共同可以显著延长我们的平均寿命，提高我们的生活质量。然而，随着这些技术中的每一种，一系列小的、各自合理的进步导致了巨大的力量积累，相应地也带来了巨大的危险。

The Unique Dangers of 21st - Century Technologies

21 世纪技术的独特危险

What was different in the 20th century? Certainly, the technologies underlying the weapons of mass destruction (WMD)—nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC)—were powerful, and the weapons an enormous threat. But building nuclear weapons required, at least for a time, access to both rare—indeed, effectively unavailable—raw materials and highly protected information; biological and chemical weapons programs also tended to require large - scale activities.
20 世纪有什么不同呢？当然，大规模杀伤性武器（WMD）的基础技术 —— 核、生物和化学（NBC）—— 是强大的，这些武器是巨大的威胁。但制造核武器至少在一段时间内需要获得稀有的 —— 事实上是实际上无法获得的 —— 原材料和受到高度保护的信息；生物和化学武器项目也需要大规模的活动。

The 21st - century technologies—genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR)—are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable the use of them.
21 世纪的技术 —— 基因学、纳米技术和机器人技术（GNR）—— 是如此强大，以至于它们可以产生全新的事故和滥用类别。最危险的是，这些事故和滥用第一次广泛地在个人或小团体的范围内。它们不需要大型设施或稀有原材料。知识本身就能使它们被使用。

Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of knowledge - enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely amplified by the power of self - replication.
因此，我们不仅有大规模杀伤性武器的可能性，还有知识赋能的大规模杀伤（KMD），这种破坏性由于自我复制的力量而被极大地放大了。

I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation - states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.
我认为毫不夸张地说，我们正处于极端邪恶进一步完善的关键时刻，这种邪恶的可能性远远超出了大规模杀伤性武器带给国家的范围，进而赋予了极端个人一种令人惊讶且可怕的权力。

Personal Reflections

个人反思

NOTHING ABOUT THE wayI got involved with computers suggested to me that I was going to be facing these kinds of issues.
我接触计算机的方式并没有让我意识到我会面临这样的问题。

My life has been driven by a deep need to ask questions and find answers. When I was 3, I was already reading, so my father took me to the elementary school, where I sat on the principal’s lap and read him a story. I started school early, later skipped a grade, and escaped into books—I was incredibly motivated to learn. I asked lots of questions, often driving adults to distraction.
我的一生都被一种强烈的好奇心和求知欲所驱动。3 岁时，我就已经会读书了，所以父亲带我去了小学，我坐在校长的腿上给他读了一个故事。我早早地开始了学业，后来还跳了一个级，我一头扎进了书本 —— 我有着强烈的学习动力。我问了很多问题，常常让大人们感到烦恼。

As a teenager I was very interested in science and technology. I wanted to be a ham radio operator but didn’t have the money to buy the equipment. Ham radio was the Internet of its time: very addictive, and quite solitary. Money issues aside, my mother put her foot down—I was not to be a ham; I was antisocial enough already.
青少年时期，我对科学和技术非常感兴趣。我想成为一名业余无线电爱好者，但没有钱购买设备。业余无线电在当时就像互联网一样：极具吸引力，而且相当孤独。撇开钱的问题不谈，我妈妈坚决反对 —— 我不能成为业余无线电爱好者；我已经够孤僻的了。

I may not have had many close friends, but I was awash in ideas. By high school, I had discovered the great science fiction writers. I remember especially Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit Will Travel and Asimov’s I, Robot, with its Three Laws of Robotics. I was enchanted by the descriptions of space travel, and wanted to have a telescope to look at the stars; since I had no money to buy or make one, I checked books on telescope - making out of the library and read about making them instead. I soared in my imagination.
我可能没有很多亲密的朋友，但我满脑子都是想法。到了高中，我发现了那些伟大的科幻作家。我特别记得海因莱因的《穿太空服去旅行》和阿西莫夫的《我，机器人》，其中的机器人三定律令人印象深刻。我对太空旅行的描述着迷了，想拥有一台望远镜来观察星星；由于我没有钱买或做一台，我从图书馆借了关于制作望远镜的书，读了关于制作它们的内容。我在想象中遨游。

Thursday nights my parents went bowling, and we kids stayed home alone. It was the night of Gene Roddenberry’s original Star Trek, and the program made a big impression on me. I came to accept its notion that humans had a future in space, Western - style, with big heroes and adventures. Roddenberry’s vision of the centuries to come was one with strong moral values, embodied in codes like the Prime Directive: to not interfere in the development of less technologically advanced civilizations. This had an incredible appeal to me; ethical humans, not robots, dominated this future, and I took Roddenberry’s dream as part of my own.
周四晚上，我父母去保龄球馆，我们孩子们独自在家。这是吉恩・罗登贝瑞的《星际迷航》原版播出的夜晚，这个节目给我留下了深刻的印象。我开始接受人类在太空的未来，西方风格，有大英雄和冒险。罗登贝瑞对未来的几个世纪的设想是具有强烈的道德价值观的，体现在像 “首要指令” 这样的准则中：不干预技术上不那么先进的文明的发展。这对我有着难以抗拒的吸引力；在这个未来中，占据主导地位的是有道德的人类，而不是机器人，我将罗登贝瑞的梦想作为我自己的梦想的一部分。

The Allure of Computing

计算机的吸引力

I excelled in mathematics in high school, and when I went to the University of Michigan as an undergraduate engineering student I took the advanced curriculum of the mathematics majors. Solving math problems was an exciting challenge, but when I discovered computers I found something much more interesting: a machine into which you could put a program that attempted to solve a problem, after which the machine quickly checked the solution. The computer had a clear notion of correct and incorrect, true and false. Were my ideas correct? The machine could tell me. This was very seductive.
我在高中时数学成绩优异，当我作为本科工程专业的学生进入密歇根大学时，我选修了数学专业的高级课程。解决数学问题是一项令人兴奋的挑战，但当我发现计算机时，我发现了一些更有趣的东西：一台机器，你可以将一个试图解决问题的程序输入其中，之后机器会迅速检查解决方案。计算机对正确和错误、真实和虚假有着清晰的概念。我的想法正确吗？机器可以告诉我。这非常吸引人。

I was lucky enough to get a job programming early supercomputers and discovered the amazing power of large machines to numerically simulate advanced designs. When I went to graduate school at UC Berkeley in the mid - 1970s, I started staying up late, often all night, inventing new worlds inside the machines. Solving problems. Writing the code that argued so strongly to be written.
我有幸得到了一份为早期超级计算机编程的工作，并发现了大型机器在数值模拟先进设计方面的惊人能力。当我在 20 世纪 70 年代中期进入加州大学伯克利分校攻读研究生学位时，我开始熬夜，常常整夜不睡，在机器里创造出新的世界。解决问题。编写那些强烈渴望被写出来的代码。

In The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone’s biographical novel of Michelangelo, Stone described vividly how Michelangelo released the statues from the stone, “breaking the marble spell,” carving from the images in his mind. In my most ecstatic moments, the software in the computer emerged in the same way. Once I had imagined it in my mind I felt that it was already there in the machine, waiting to be released. Staying up all night seemed a small price to pay to free it—to give the ideas concrete form.
在欧文・斯通的传记小说《痛苦与狂喜》中，他生动地描述了米开朗基罗是如何将雕像从石头中释放出来的，“打破大理石的魔咒”，从他脑海中的图像进行雕刻。在我最狂喜的时刻，计算机中的软件也是以同样的方式出现的。一旦我在脑海中想象出了它，我就感觉它已经在机器里了，等待着被释放出来。熬夜似乎是为了释放它 —— 赋予这些想法具体形式 —— 所付出的微不足道的代价。

After a few years at Berkeley I started to send out some of the software I had written—an instructional Pascal system, Unix utilities, and a text editor called vi (which is still, to my surprise, widely used more than 20 years later)—to others who had similar small PDP - 11 and VAX minicomputers. These adventures in software eventually turned into the Berkeley version of the Unix operating system, which became a personal “success disaster”—so many people wanted it that I never finished my PhD. Instead I got a job working for Darpa putting Berkeley Unix on the Internet and fixing it to be reliable and to run large research applications well. This was all great fun and very rewarding. And, frankly, I saw no robots here, or anywhere near.
在伯克利待了几年后，我开始向其他拥有类似小型 PDP - 11 和 VAX 小型机的人发送我编写的一些软件 —— 一个教学用 Pascal 系统、Unix 工具和一个名为 vi 的文本编辑器（令我惊讶的是，它在 20 多年后仍然被广泛使用）。这些软件的探索最终变成了 Unix 操作系统的伯克利版本，这对我来说是一个 “成功的灾难”—— 太多人想要它了，以至于我都没能完成我的博士学位。相反，我得到了一份为 Darpa 工作的职位，把伯克利 Unix 放到互联网上，并修复它，使其可靠，并能很好地运行大型研究应用。这一切都非常有趣，也非常有回报。坦白说，我在这里，或者附近，都没有看到任何机器人。

The Evolution of a Technologist

技术专家的演变

Still, by the early 1980s, I was drowning. The Unix releases were very successful, and my little project of one soon had money and some staff, but the problem at Berkeley was always office space rather than money—there wasn’t room for the help the project needed, so when the other founders of Sun Microsystems showed up I jumped at the chance to join them. At Sun, the long hours continued into the early days of workstations and personal computers, and I have enjoyed participating in the creation of advanced microprocessor technologies and Internet technologies such as Java and Jini.
然而，到了 20 世纪 80 年代初，我快被淹没了。Unix 的发行非常成功，我的单人小项目很快有了资金和一些员工，但在伯克利，问题总是办公空间而不是资金 —— 没有足够的空间来容纳项目所需的帮助，所以当 Sun Microsystems 的其他创始人出现时，我抓住机会加入了他们。在 Sun，长时间的工作延续到了工作站和个人电脑的早期，我乐于参与创建先进的微处理器技术和互联网技术，比如 Java 和 Jini。

From all this, I trust it is clear that I am not a Luddite. I have always, rather, had a strong belief in the value of the scientific search for truth and in the ability of great engineering to bring material progress. The Industrial Revolution has immeasurably improved everyone’s life over the last couple hundred years, and I always expected my career to involve the building of worthwhile solutions to real problems, one problem at a time.
从这一切来看，我相信大家应该清楚我不是一个卢德主义者。我始终坚信科学探索真理的价值，以及伟大的工程带来物质进步的能力。工业革命在过去几百年里极大地改善了每个人的生活，我始终期待我的职业生涯能够一次解决一个实际问题，逐步构建有价值的解决方案。

I have not been disappointed. My work has had more impact than I had ever hoped for and has been more widely used than I could have reasonably expected. I have spent the last 20 years still trying to figure out how to make computers as reliable as I want them to be (they are not nearly there yet) and how to make them simple to use (a goal that has met with even less relative success). Despite some progress, the problems that remain seem even more daunting.
我没有失望。我的工作比我期望的产生了更大的影响，比我合理预期的得到了更广泛的应用。在过去的 20 年里，我仍然在努力弄清楚如何让计算机达到我想要的可靠性（它们离这个目标还差得远），以及如何让它们变得简单易用（这个目标相对而言取得的成功更少）。尽管取得了一些进展，但剩下的问题似乎更加艰巨。

But while I was aware of the moral dilemmas surrounding technology’s consequences in fields like weapons research, I did not expect that I would confront such issues in my own field, or at least not so soon.
但尽管我意识到技术后果在武器研究等领域带来的道德困境，我没有想到我将在自己的领域面临这样的问题，至少不会这么快。

PERHAPS IT ISalways hard to see the bigger impact while you are in the vortex of a change. Failing to understand the consequences of our inventions while we are in the rapture of discovery and innovation seems to be a common fault of scientists and technologists; we have long been driven by the overarching desire to know that is the nature of science’s quest, not stopping to notice that the progress to newer and more powerful technologies can take on a life of its own.
也许，当我们处于变革的漩涡中时，很难看到更大的影响。当我们沉浸在发现和创新的狂喜中时，无法理解我们发明的后果，这似乎是科学家和技术人员的通病；长期以来，我们一直被科学探索的渴望所驱使，却没有停下来注意到，向更新、更强大的技术的进步可能会自行发展。

I have long realized that the big advances in information technology come not from the work of computer scientists, computer architects, or electrical engineers, but from that of physical scientists. The physicists Stephen Wolfram and Brosl Hasslacher introduced me, in the early 1980s, to chaos theory and nonlinear systems. In the 1990s, I learned about complex systems from conversations with Danny Hillis, the biologist Stuart Kauffman, the Nobel - laureate physicist Murray Gell - Mann, and others. Most recently, Hasslacher and the electrical engineer and device physicist Mark Reed have been giving me insight into the incredible possibilities of molecular electronics.
我早就意识到，信息技术的重大进步并非来自计算机科学家、计算机架构师或电气工程师的工作，而是来自物理学家的工作。20 世纪 80 年代初，物理学家斯蒂芬・沃尔夫勒姆和布罗斯・哈斯拉赫向我介绍了混沌理论和非线性系统。在 20 世纪 90 年代，我通过与丹尼・希利斯、生物学家斯图尔特・考夫曼、诺贝尔物理学奖得主默里・盖尔曼等人的交谈，了解了复杂系统。最近，哈斯拉赫和电气工程师、器件物理学家马克・里德向我展示了分子电子学的惊人可能性。

In my own work, as codesigner of three microprocessor architectures—SPARC, picoJava, and MAJC—and as the designer of several implementations thereof, I’ve been afforded a deep and firsthand acquaintance with Moore’s law. For decades, Moore’s law has correctly predicted the exponential rate of improvement of semiconductor technology. Until last year I believed that the rate of advances predicted by Moore’s law might continue only until roughly 2010, when some physical limits would begin to be reached. It was not obvious to me that a new technology would arrive in time to keep performance advancing smoothly.
在我的工作中，作为三种微处理器架构 ——SPARC、picoJava 和 MAJC 的共同设计者，以及几种实现方式的设计者，我深入且亲身体验了摩尔定律。几十年来，摩尔定律正确预测了半导体技术呈指数级的改进速度。直到去年，我还相信摩尔定律预测的进步速度可能只会持续到大约 2010 年，届时一些物理极限将开始被触及。我不清楚是否有新技术能及时出现，以保持性能的平稳提升。

But because of the recent rapid and radical progress in molecular electronics—where individual atoms and molecules replace lithographically drawn transistors—and related nanoscale technologies, we should be able to meet or exceed the Moore’s law rate of progress for another 30 years. By 2030, we are likely to be able to build machines, in quantity, a million times as powerful as the personal computers of today—sufficient to implement the dreams of Kurzweil and Moravec.
但由于分子电子学的最近快速且激进的进步 —— 其中单个原子和分子取代了光刻晶体管 —— 以及相关的纳米级技术，我们应该能够在接下来的 30 年里达到或超过摩尔定律的进步速度。到 2030 年，我们可能能够大规模生产比当今个人电脑强大一百万倍的机器 —— 足以实现库兹韦尔和莫拉维克的梦想。

As this enormous computing power is combined with the manipulative advances of the physical sciences and the new, deep understandings in genetics, enormous transformative power is being unleashed. These combinations open up the opportunity to completely redesign the world, for better or worse: The replicating and evolving processes that have been confined to the natural world are about to become realms of human endeavor.
随着这种巨大的计算能力与物理科学的操作进步以及遗传学的新深入理解相结合，巨大的变革力量正在被释放。这些组合带来了重新设计整个世界的机会，无论好坏：那些被限制在自然界的复制和进化过程即将成为人类活动的领域。

In designing software and microprocessors, I have never had the feeling that I was designing an intelligent machine. The software and hardware is so fragile and the capabilities of the machine to “think” so clearly absent that, even as a possibility, this has always seemed very far in the future.
在设计软件和微处理器时，我从未有过我在设计一台智能机器的感觉。软件和硬件如此脆弱，机器的 “思考” 能力又明显缺失，即使是作为一种可能性，这也似乎总是在遥远的未来。

But now, with the prospect of human - level computing power in about 30 years, a new idea suggests itself: that I may be working to create tools which will enable the construction of the technology that may replace our species. How do I feel about this? Very uncomfortable. Having struggled my entire career to build reliable software systems, it seems to me more than likely that this future will not work out as well as some people may imagine. My personal experience suggests we tend to overestimate our design abilities.
但现在，考虑到大约 30 年后人类水平的计算能力将成为现实，一个新的想法出现了：我可能正在创造工具，这些工具将使构建可能取代我们人类的技术成为可能。我对这个想法感到怎么样？非常不安。在我的整个职业生涯中，我一直努力构建可靠的软件系统，对我来说，这个未来可能不会像有些人想象的那么顺利。我的个人经验表明，我们往往会高估自己的设计能力。

Given the incredible power of these new technologies, shouldn’t we be asking how we can best coexist with them? And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn’t we proceed with great caution?
鉴于这些新技术的巨大威力，难道我们不应该考虑如何与它们和平共处吗？如果我们的灭绝是我们技术发展的一个可能，甚至是可能的结果，难道我们不应该谨慎行事吗？

The Dream of Robotics and Its Implications

机器人技术的梦想及其含义

THE DREAM OFrobotics is, first, that intelligent machines can do our work for us, allowing us lives of leisure, restoring us to Eden. Yet in his history of such ideas, Darwin Among the Machines, George Dyson warns: “In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines.” As we have seen, Moravec agrees, believing we may well not survive the encounter with the superior robot species.
机器人技术的梦想首先是，智能机器可以为我们工作，让我们过上悠闲的生活，重返伊甸园。然而，在他关于这些想法的历史著作《机器中的达尔文》中，乔治・戴森警告说：“在生命和进化这场游戏中，桌边有三个玩家：人类、自然和机器。我坚定地站在自然这一边。但我怀疑，自然站在机器那一边。” 正如我们所看到的，莫拉维克也同意这一观点，他认为我们很可能无法在与更优秀的机器人种族的遭遇中幸存下来。

How soon could such an intelligent robot be built? The coming advances in computing power seem to make it possible by 2030. And once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species—to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself.
这样的智能机器人能多快被制造出来呢？即将到来的计算能力的进步似乎使这在 2030 年成为可能。一旦存在智能机器人，那么制造能够自我复制并进化的机器人种族就只有一步之遥了。

A second dream of robotics is that we will gradually replace ourselves with our robotic technology, achieving near immortality by downloading our consciousnesses; it is this process that Danny Hillis thinks we will gradually get used to and that Ray Kurzweil elegantly details in The Age of Spiritual Machines. (We are beginning to see intimations of this in the implantation of computer devices into the human body, as illustrated on the cover of Wired 8.02.)
机器人技术的第二个梦想是，我们将逐渐用我们的机器人技术取代我们自己，通过下载我们的意识来实现近乎永生；丹尼・希利斯认为我们会逐渐习惯这个过程，而雷・库兹韦尔在《灵性机器的时代》中优雅地详细描述了这一过程。（我们开始在计算机设备植入人体中看到这一趋势的迹象，如《连线》8.02 封面所示。）

But if we are downloaded into our technology, what are the chances that we will thereafter be ourselves or even human? It seems to me far more likely that a robotic existence would not be like a human one in any sense that we understand, that the robots would in no sense be our children, that on this path our humanity may well be lost.
但如果我们将自己下载到技术中，我们此后仍然是我们自己，甚至是人类的可能性有多大呢？在我看来，机器人式的存在在我们理解的任何意义上都不会像人类一样，机器人在任何意义上都不会是我们的孩子，在这条道路上，我们的人性很可能会丧失。

The Promise and Peril of Genetic Engineering

基因工程的希望与危险

Genetic engineering promises to revolutionize agriculture by increasing crop yields while reducing the use of pesticides; to create tens of thousands of novel species of bacteria, plants, viruses, and animals; to replace reproduction, or supplement it, with cloning; to create cures for many diseases, increasing our life span and our quality of life; and much, much more. We now know with certainty that these profound changes in the biological sciences are imminent and will challenge all our notions of what life is.
基因工程承诺通过提高作物产量同时减少农药使用来彻底改变农业；创造成千上万种新的细菌、植物、病毒和动物物种；用克隆来取代或补充繁殖；为许多疾病创造治疗方法，延长我们的寿命，提高我们的生活质量；还有很多很多。我们现在可以肯定，这些生物学领域的深刻变化即将到来，并将挑战我们对生命是什么的所有观念。

Technologies such as human cloning have in particular raised our awareness of the profound ethical and moral issues we face. If, for example, we were to reengineer ourselves into several separate and unequal species using the power of genetic engineering, then we would threaten the notion of equality that is the very cornerstone of our democracy.
例如人类克隆技术，尤其提高了我们对我们面临的深刻伦理和道德问题的认识。例如，如果我们使用基因工程的力量将自己重新设计成几个不同且不平等的物种，那么我们将威胁到平等这一我们民主的基石。

Given the incredible power of genetic engineering, it’s no surprise that there are significant safety issues in its use. My friend Amory Lovins recently cowrote, along with Hunter Lovins, an editorial that provides an ecological view of some of these dangers. Among their concerns: that “the new botany aligns the development of plants with their economic, not evolutionary, success.” (See “A Tale of Two Botanies”) Amory’s long career has been focused on energy and resource efficiency by taking a whole - system view of human - made systems; such a whole - system view often finds simple, smart solutions to otherwise seemingly difficult problems, and is usefully applied here as well.
鉴于基因工程的巨大威力，其使用中存在重大安全问题也就不足为奇了。我的朋友阿莫里・洛文斯最近与亨特・洛文斯共同撰写了一篇社论，从生态学角度阐述了其中一些危险。他们的担忧之一是：“新植物学将植物的发展与它们的经济而非进化上的成功联系起来。”（参见《两种植物学的故事》）阿莫里长期的职业生涯专注于通过整体系统地看待人造系统来提高能源和资源效率；这种整体系统的观点常常能找到简单而聪明的解决方案来解决其他情况下看似困难的问题，这里也适用。

After reading the Lovins’ editorial, I saw an op - ed by Gregg Easterbrook in The New York Times (November 19, 1999) about genetically engineered crops, under the headline: “Food for the Future: Someday, rice will have built - in vitamin A. Unless the Luddites win.”
在读了洛文斯的社论之后，我看到了格雷格・伊斯特布鲁克在《纽约时报》（1999 年 11 月 19 日）上关于转基因作物的评论文章，标题是：“未来的食物：总有一天，大米会有自带的维生素 A。除非卢德主义者赢了。”

Are Amory and Hunter Lovins Luddites? Certainly not. I believe we all would agree that golden rice, with its built - in vitamin A, is probably a good thing, if developed with proper care and respect for the likely dangers in moving genes across species boundaries.
阿莫里和亨特・洛文斯是卢德主义者吗？当然不是。我相信我们都会同意，如果在开发过程中谨慎对待，并且尊重跨越物种边界转移基因可能带来的危险，那么富含维生素 A 的黄金大米可能是一件好事。

Awareness of the dangers inherent in genetic engineering is beginning to grow, as reflected in the Lovins’ editorial. The general public is aware of, and uneasy about, genetically modified foods, and seems to be rejecting the notion that such foods should be permitted to be unlabeled.
正如洛文斯的社论所反映的，人们对基因工程固有的危险的认识开始增加。公众对转基因食品有所了解，并且感到不安，似乎也拒绝了这种食品可以不加标签的想法。

But genetic engineering technology is already very far along. As the Lovins note, the USDA has already approved about 50 genetically engineered crops for unlimited release; more than half of the world’s soybeans and a third of its corn now contain genes spliced in from other forms of life.
但基因工程技术已经发展得相当远了。正如洛文斯所指出的，美国农业部已经批准了大约 50 种转基因作物的无限制释放；如今，世界上超过一半的大豆和三分之一的玉米都含有从其他生物中拼接过来的基因。

While there are many important issues here, my own major concern with genetic engineering is narrower: that it gives the power—whether militarily, accidentally, or in a deliberate terrorist act—to create a White Plague.
尽管这里有许多重要的问题，但我对基因工程的主要担忧更为狭窄：它赋予了人们 —— 无论是军事上、意外地，还是蓄意的恐怖主义行为 —— 制造白色瘟疫的能力。

The Wonders and Dangers of Nanotechnology

纳米技术的奇迹与危险

The many wonders of nanotechnology were first imagined by the Nobel - laureate physicist Richard Feynman in a speech he gave in 1959, subsequently published under the title “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom.” The book that made a big impression on me, in the mid - ‘80s, was Eric Drexler’s Engines of Creation, in which he described beautifully how manipulation of matter at the atomic level could create a utopian future of abundance, where just about everything could be made cheaply, and almost any imaginable disease or physical problem could be solved using nanotechnology and artificial intelligences.
纳米技术的许多奇迹最早是由诺贝尔物理学奖得主理查德・费曼在 1959 年的一次演讲中想象出来的，该演讲后来以《底部有大量空间》为题发表。在 20 世纪 80 年代中期，埃里克・德雷克斯勒的《创造的引擎》给我留下了深刻的印象，他在书中优美地描述了如何通过在原子水平上操纵物质来创造一个富足的乌托邦未来，在那里几乎一切都可以廉价制造，几乎任何可以想象的疾病或物理问题都可以通过纳米技术和人工智能来解决。

A subsequent book, Unbounding the Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution, which Drexler cowrote, imagines some of the changes that might take place in a world where we had molecular - level “assemblers.” Assemblers could make possible incredibly low - cost solar power, cures for cancer and the common cold by augmentation of the human immune system, essentially complete cleanup of the environment, incredibly inexpensive pocket supercomputers—in fact, any product would be manufacturable by assemblers at a cost no greater than that of wood—spaceflight more accessible than transoceanic travel today, and restoration of extinct species.
德雷克斯勒共同撰写的一本后续书籍《未来无极限：纳米技术革命》中，想象了一个拥有分子级 “组装器” 的世界中可能发生的一些变化。组装器可以使太阳能的成本极低，通过增强人体免疫系统治愈癌症和普通感冒，几乎完全清理环境，制造出极其廉价的口袋超级计算机 —— 事实上，任何产品都可以由组装器以不超过木材的成本来制造 —— 使太空飞行比今天的跨洋旅行更容易，甚至可以恢复灭绝的物种。

I remember feeling good about nanotechnology after reading Engines of Creation. As a technologist, it gave me a sense of calm—that is, nanotechnology showed us that incredible progress was possible, and indeed perhaps inevitable. If nanotechnology was our future, then I didn’t feel pressed to solve so many problems in the present. I would get to Drexler’s utopian future in due time; I might as well enjoy life more in the here and now. It didn’t make sense, given his vision, to stay up all night, all the time.
在读了《创造的引擎》之后，我对纳米技术感觉很好。作为一名技术人员，它让我感到平静 —— 也就是说，纳米技术向我们展示了巨大的进步是可能的，甚至也许是不可避免的。如果纳米技术是我们的未来，那么我就不觉得有必要解决当前的这么多问题。我最终会到达德雷克斯勒的乌托邦未来；我还不如在当下享受生活。鉴于他的愿景，一直熬夜加班是没有意义的。

Drexler’s vision also led to a lot of good fun. I would occasionally get to describe the wonders of nanotechnology to others who had not heard of it. After teasing them with all the things Drexler described I would give a homework assignment of my own: “Use nanotechnology to create a vampire; for extra credit create an antidote.”
德雷克斯勒的愿景也带来了很多乐趣。我有时会向那些没有听说过纳米技术的人描述它的奇妙之处。在用德雷克斯勒描述的所有东西逗弄他们之后，我会布置一个我自己的作业：“用纳米技术制造一个吸血鬼；额外加分：制造一种解药。”

With these wonders came clear dangers, of which I was acutely aware. As I said at a nanotechnology conference in 1989, “We can’t simply do our science and not worry about these ethical issues.” But my subsequent conversations with physicists convinced me that nanotechnology might not even work—or, at least, it wouldn’t work anytime soon. Shortly thereafter I moved to Colorado, to a skunk works I had set up, and the focus of my work shifted to software for the Internet, specifically on ideas that became Java and Jini.
这些奇迹伴随着明显的危险，我对此非常清楚。正如我在 1989 年的一次纳米技术会议上所说：“我们不能仅仅做我们的科学研究而不考虑这些伦理问题。” 但随后我与物理学家的对话让我相信，纳米技术可能根本就行不通 —— 或者至少，它不会很快实现。不久之后，我搬到了科罗拉多州，那里有一个我设立的实验室，我的工作重点转向了互联网软件，特别是那些后来成为 Java 和 Jini 的想法。

Then, last summer, Brosl Hasslacher told me that nanoscale molecular electronics was now practical. This was new news, at least to me, and I think to many people—and it radically changed my opinion about nanotechnology. It sent me back to Engines of Creation. Rereading Drexler’s work after more than 10 years, I was dismayed to realize how little I had remembered of its lengthy section called “Dangers and Hopes,” including a discussion of how nanotechnologies can become “engines of destruction.” Indeed, in my rereading of this cautionary material today, I am struck by how naive some of Drexler’s safeguard proposals seem, and how much greater I judge the dangers to be now than even he seemed to then. (Having anticipated and described many technical and political problems with nanotechnology, Drexler started the Foresight Institute in the late 1980s “to help prepare society for anticipated advanced technologies”—most important, nanotechnology.)
然后，去年夏天，布罗斯・哈斯拉赫告诉我，纳米级分子电子学现在已经成为现实。这对我来说是 * 新的 * 消息，我想对很多人来说也是 —— 它彻底改变了我对纳米技术的看法。这让我重新回到《创造的引擎》。在时隔 10 多年后重读德雷克斯勒的作品时，我沮丧地意识到我对他那篇长长的 “危险与希望” 部分记得多么少，其中包括关于纳米技术如何变成 “毁灭引擎” 的讨论。事实上，在我今天重读这些警示性材料时，我发现德雷克斯勒的一些防范措施似乎很幼稚，而且我现在认为的危险比他当时认为的要大得多。（德雷克斯勒预见并描述了纳米技术的许多技术和政治问题，他在 20 世纪 80 年代末成立了远见研究所，以 “帮助社会为预期的先进技术做好准备”—— 最重要的是纳米技术。）

The enabling breakthrough to assemblers seems quite likely within the next 20 years. Molecular electronics—the new subfield of nanotechnology where individual molecules are circuit elements—should mature quickly and become enormously lucrative within this decade, causing a large incremental investment in all nanotechnologies.
在未来 20 年内实现组装器的突破似乎相当有可能。分子电子学 —— 这个纳米技术的新子领域，其中单个分子是电路元件 —— 应该会迅速成熟，并在本世纪内变得极为有利可图，从而导致对所有纳米技术的大量追加投资。

Unfortunately, as with nuclear technology, it is far easier to create destructive uses for nanotechnology than constructive ones. Nanotechnology has clear military and terrorist uses, and you need not be suicidal to release a massively destructive nanotechnological device—such devices can be built to be selectively destructive, affecting, for example, only a certain geographical area or a group of people who are genetically distinct.
不幸的是，与核技术一样，制造用于破坏的纳米技术比制造用于建设的纳米技术要容易得多。纳米技术显然有军事和恐怖主义用途，你不需要自杀式袭击就能释放一个极具破坏性的纳米技术装置 —— 这些装置可以被设计成选择性破坏，例如，只影响某个特定地理区域或具有遗传差异的一群人。

An immediate consequence of the Faustian bargain in obtaining the great power of nanotechnology is that we run a grave risk—the risk that we might destroy the biosphere on which all life depends.
获得纳米技术巨大能力的浮士德式交易的直接后果是，我们面临一个巨大的风险 —— 我们可能会摧毁所有生命所依赖的生物圈。

As Drexler explained:
正如德雷克斯勒所解释的：

“Plants” with “leaves” no more efficient than today’s solar cells could out - compete real plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough omnivorous “bacteria” could out - compete real bacteria: They could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop—at least if we make no preparation. We have trouble enough controlling viruses and fruit flies.
“植物” 拥有与当今太阳能电池效率相同的 “叶子”，可能会胜过真正的植物，用不可食用的叶子挤满生物圈。坚韧的杂食性 “细菌” 可能会胜过真正的细菌：它们可以像花粉一样传播，迅速繁殖，并在几天内将生物圈化为灰尘。危险的复制器可能很容易过于坚韧、微小且传播迅速而无法阻止 —— 至少如果我们不做准备的话。我们控制病毒和果蝇已经够困难的了。

Among the cognoscenti of nanotechnology, this threat has become known as the “gray goo problem.” Though masses of uncontrolled replicators need not be gray or gooey, the term “gray goo” emphasizes that replicators able to obliterate life might be less inspiring than a single species of crabgrass. They might be superior in an evolutionary sense, but this need not make them valuable.
在纳米技术专家中，这种威胁被称为 “灰泥问题”。尽管失控的复制器不必是灰色的或黏糊糊的，但 “灰泥” 一词强调的是，能够消灭生命的复制器可能不如一种狗尾草那么令人振奋。从进化意义上来说，它们可能更优越，但这并不一定使它们有价值。

The gray goo threat makes one thing perfectly clear: We cannot afford certain kinds of accidents with replicating assemblers.
灰泥威胁使一件事变得非常清楚：我们无法承受复制组装器的某些类型的事故。

Gray goo would surely be a depressing ending to our human adventure on Earth, far worse than mere fire or ice, and one that could stem from a simple laboratory accident. Oops.
灰泥肯定是我们人类在地球上冒险的一个令人沮丧的结局，比简单的烈火或冰冻更糟糕，而且可能源于一个简单的实验室事故。哎呀。

The Power of Destructive Self - Replication

破坏性自我复制的力量

IT IS MOSTof all the power of destructive self - replication in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) that should give us pause. Self - replication is the modus operandi of genetic engineering, which uses the machinery of the cell to replicate its designs, and the prime danger underlying gray goo in nanotechnology. Stories of run - amok robots like the Borg, replicating or mutating to escape from the ethical constraints imposed on them by their creators, are well established in our science fiction books and movies. It is even possible that self - replication may be more fundamental than we thought, and hence harder—or even impossible—to control. A recent article by Stuart Kauffman in Nature titled “Self - Replication: Even Peptides Do It” discusses the discovery that a 32 - amino - acid peptide can “autocatalyse its own synthesis.” We don’t know how widespread this ability is, but Kauffman notes that it may hint at “a route to self - reproducing molecular systems on a basis far wider than Watson - Crick base - pairing.”
**最应该让我们停下来的是基因学、纳米技术和机器人技术（GNR）中破坏性自我复制的力量。**自我复制是基因工程的操作方式，它利用细胞的机制来复制其设计，也是纳米技术中灰泥的主要危险。像博格人这样的失控机器人在我们的科幻小说和电影中广为人知，它们通过复制或变异来逃避创作者强加的伦理约束。甚至有可能自我复制比我们想象的更根本，因此更难控制 —— 甚至可能根本无法控制。斯图尔特・考夫曼在《自然》杂志上发表的一篇题为《自我复制：多肽也会》的文章讨论了一种由 32 个氨基酸组成的肽可以 “催化自身的合成” 的发现。我们不知道这种能力有多普遍，但考夫曼指出，这可能暗示了 “一种自我复制分子系统的途径，其基础远远超出了沃森 - 克里克碱基配对”。

In truth, we have had in hand for years clear warnings of the dangers inherent in widespread knowledge of GNR technologies—of the possibility of knowledge alone enabling mass destruction. But these warnings haven’t been widely publicized; the public discussions have been clearly inadequate. There is no profit in publicizing the dangers.
事实上，多年来我们一直清楚地知道 GNR 技术的危险 —— 仅凭知识就能导致大规模毁灭的可能性。但这些警告并没有被广泛宣传；公众的讨论显然是不够的。宣传危险是没有利润的。

The nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) technologies used in 20th - century weapons of mass destruction were and are largely military, developed in government laboratories. In sharp contrast, the 21st - century GNR technologies have clear commercial uses and are being developed almost exclusively by corporate enterprises. In this age of triumphant commercialism, technology—with science as its handmaiden—is delivering a series of almost magical inventions that are the most phenomenally lucrative ever seen. We are aggressively pursuing the promises of these new technologies within the now - unchallenged system of global capitalism and its manifold financial incentives and competitive pressures.
20 世纪用于大规模杀伤性武器的核、生物和化学（NBC）技术主要是军事用途，在政府实验室中开发。相比之下，21 世纪的 GNR 技术有明确的商业用途，几乎完全由企业开发。在这个商业主义胜利的时代，技术 —— 科学作为其助手 —— 正在带来一系列几乎是神奇的发明，这些发明是有史以来最赚钱的。我们正在全球资本主义这一现在无人挑战的体系中，在其众多的经济激励和竞争压力下，积极追求这些新技术的承诺。

This is the first moment in the history of our planet when any species, by its own voluntary actions, has become a danger to itself—as well as to vast numbers of others.
这是我们这个星球历史上第一次，一个物种通过自己的自愿行为，不仅对自己，而且对大量其他生物构成威胁。

It might be a familiar progression, transpiring on many worlds—a planet, newly formed, placidly revolves around its star; life slowly forms; a kaleidoscopic procession of creatures evolves; intelligence emerges which, at least up to a point, confers enormous survival value; and then technology is invented. It dawns on them that there are such things as laws of Nature, that these laws can be revealed by experiment, and that knowledge of these laws can be made both to save and to take lives, both on unprecedented scales. Science, they recognize, grants immense powers. In a flash, they create world - altering contrivances. Some planetary civilizations see their way through, place limits on what may and what must not be done, and safely pass through the time of perils. Others, not so lucky or so prudent, perish.
这可能是许多星球上都熟悉的进程 —— 一颗新形成的行星平静地绕着它的恒星旋转；生命缓慢形成；一系列五彩缤纷的生物演化；出现了智能，至少在一定程度上，这种智能具有巨大的生存价值；然后发明了技术。他们意识到，存在着自然法则，这些法则可以通过实验来揭示，而对这些法则的知识既可以拯救生命，也可以以前所未有的规模夺走生命。他们认识到，科学赋予了巨大的力量。在一瞬间，他们创造了改变世界的装置。一些行星文明找到了出路，对可以做什么和不可以做什么设定了限制，并安全地度过了危险时期。其他星球，没有那么幸运或谨慎，就灭亡了。

That is Carl Sagan, writing in 1994, in Pale Blue Dot, a book describing his vision of the human future in space. I am only now realizing how deep his insight was, and how sorely I miss, and will miss, his voice. For all its eloquence, Sagan’s contribution was not least that of simple common sense—an attribute that, along with humility, many of the leading advocates of the 21st - century technologies seem to lack.
这是卡尔・萨根在 1994 年写的《淡蓝色的点》，这本书描述了他对人类在太空未来的设想。我直到现在才意识到他的洞察力有多深，以及我多么怀念他的声音，我将永远怀念他。尽管萨根的论述非常雄辩，但他最重要的贡献之一是简单的常识 —— 这是一种与谦逊一起被 21 世纪技术的主要倡导者们所缺乏的品质。

I remember from my childhood that my grandmother was strongly against the overuse of antibiotics. She had worked since before the first World War as a nurse and had a commonsense attitude that taking antibiotics, unless they were absolutely necessary, was bad for you.
我记得在我小时候，我的祖母强烈反对滥用抗生素。她在第一次世界大战之前就开始当护士，她有一种常识性的态度，认为除非绝对必要，否则服用抗生素对你有害。

It is not that she was an enemy of progress. She saw much progress in an almost 70 - year nursing career; my grandfather, a diabetic, benefited greatly from the improved treatments that became available in his lifetime. But she, like many levelheaded people, would probably think it greatly arrogant for us, now, to be designing a robotic “replacement species,” when we obviously have so much trouble making relatively simple things work, and so much trouble managing—or even understanding—ourselves.
这并不是说她是进步的敌人。她在近 70 年的护理生涯中看到了很多进步；我的祖父是个糖尿病患者，他在有生之年从不断改善的治疗中受益匪浅。但她和许多头脑清醒的人一样，可能会认为我们现在设计一个机器人 “替代物种” 是非常傲慢的，因为我们显然在制造相对简单的东西方面有很大的困难，在管理 —— 甚至理解 —— 我们自己方面也有很大的困难。

I realize now that she had an awareness of the nature of the order of life, and of the necessity of living with and respecting that order. With this respect comes a necessary humility that we, with our early - 21st - century chutzpah, lack at our peril. The commonsense view, grounded in this respect, is often right, in advance of the scientific evidence. The clear fragility and inefficiencies of the human - made systems we have built should give us all pause; the fragility of the systems I have worked on certainly humbles me.
现在我意识到，她对生命的秩序的本质以及与之生活并尊重这种秩序的必要性有着一种意识。这种尊重带来了一种必要的谦逊，我们这些 21 世纪初的人缺乏这种谦逊，这对我们来说是危险的。这种基于尊重的常识观点往往在科学证据之前就是正确的。我们所建立的人造系统的明显脆弱性和低效性应该让我们所有人都停下来思考；我所工作的系统的脆弱性确实让我感到谦卑。

We should have learned a lesson from the making of the first atomic bomb and the resulting arms race. We didn’t do well then, and the parallels to our current situation are troubling.
我们应该从制造第一颗原子弹和随后的军备竞赛中吸取教训。我们当时做得并不好，而且与我们目前的情况相似，这令人不安。

The effort to build the first atomic bomb was led by the brilliant physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was not naturally interested in politics but became painfully aware of what he perceived as the grave threat to Western civilization from the Third Reich, a threat surely grave because of the possibility that Hitler might obtain nuclear weapons. Energized by this concern, he brought his strong intellect, passion for physics, and charismatic leadership skills to Los Alamos and led a rapid and successful effort by an incredible collection of great minds to quickly invent the bomb.
制造第一颗原子弹的工作是由杰出的物理学家 J. 罗伯特・奥本海默领导的。奥本海默对政治并不感兴趣，但他痛苦地意识到，他认为纳粹德国对西方文明构成了严重的威胁，这种威胁之所以严重，是因为希特勒可能会获得核武器。出于这种担忧，他带着自己对物理的热情、强大的智慧和富有魅力的领导才能来到洛斯阿拉莫斯，并领导了一个由众多杰出头脑组成的团队迅速成功地发明了原子弹。

What is striking is how this effort continued so naturally after the initial impetus was removed. In a meeting shortly after V - E Day with some physicists who felt that perhaps the effort should stop, Oppenheimer argued to continue. His stated reason seems a bit strange: not because of the fear of large casualties from an invasion of Japan, but because the United Nations, which was soon to be formed, should have foreknowledge of atomic weapons. A more likely reason the project continued is the momentum that had built up—the first atomic test, Trinity, was nearly at hand.
值得注意的是，即使最初的推动力已经消失，这项工作仍然如此自然地继续下去。在 V-E 日之后不久的一次会议上，一些物理学家认为也许应该停止这项工作，但奥本海默却主张继续。他给出的理由似乎有些奇怪：不是因为担心入侵日本会导致大量伤亡，而是因为即将成立的联合国应该预先了解原子弹。项目继续进行更可能的原因是已经积聚起来的势头 —— 第一次原子弹试验 “三位一体” 即将进行。

We know that in preparing this first atomic test the physicists proceeded despite a large number of possible dangers. They were initially worried, based on a calculation by Edward Teller, that an atomic explosion might set fire to the atmosphere. A revised calculation reduced the danger of destroying the world to a three - in - a - million chance. (Teller says he was later able to dismiss the prospect of atmospheric ignition entirely.) Oppenheimer, though, was sufficiently concerned about the result of Trinity that he arranged for a possible evacuation of the southwest part of the state of New Mexico. And, of course, there was the clear danger of starting a nuclear arms race.
我们知道，在准备第一次原子弹试验时，物理学家们尽管面临许多可能的危险，但还是继续进行了。最初，根据爱德华・泰勒的计算，他们担心原子弹爆炸可能会引燃大气层。后来的修正计算将毁灭世界的危险降低到了三百万分之三的可能性。（泰勒说他后来完全排除了大气层引燃的可能性。）尽管如此，奥本海默对 “三位一体” 的结果仍然非常担忧，他甚至安排了可能的新墨西哥州西南部的疏散。当然，还有引发核军备竞赛的明显危险。

Within a month of that first, successful test, two atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some scientists had suggested that the bomb simply be demonstrated, rather than dropped on Japanese cities—saying that this would greatly improve the chances for arms control after the war—but to no avail. With the tragedy of Pearl Harbor still fresh in Americans’ minds, it would have been very difficult for President Truman to order a demonstration of the weapons rather than use them as he did—the desire to quickly end the war and save the lives that would have been lost in any invasion of Japan was very strong. Yet the overriding truth was probably very simple: As the physicist Freeman Dyson later said, “The reason that it was dropped was just that nobody had the courage or the foresight to say no.”
在第一次成功的试验后的一个月内，两颗原子弹摧毁了广岛和长崎。一些科学家曾建议，只需展示原子弹，而不是投掷到日本城市 —— 他们说这将大大增加战后控制军备的可能性 —— 但没有成功。由于珍珠港事件的悲剧仍然历历在目，很难让杜鲁门总统下令展示这些武器，而不是像他做的那样使用它们 —— 迅速结束战争并拯救在任何入侵日本中可能失去的生命的愿望非常强烈。然而，压倒性的真相可能非常简单：正如物理学家弗里曼・戴森后来所说，“投下原子弹的原因只是没有人有勇气或远见说不。”

It’s important to realize how shocked the physicists were in the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945. They describe a series of waves of emotion: first, a sense of fulfillment that the bomb worked, then horror at all the people that had been killed, and then a convincing feeling that on no account should another bomb be dropped. Yet of course another bomb was dropped, on Nagasaki, only three days after the bombing of Hiroshima.
重要的是要意识到，1945 年 8 月 6 日广岛原子弹爆炸后，物理学家们是多么震惊。他们描述了一系列的情感浪潮：最初，原子弹成功爆炸的成就感，然后是对被杀死的众多人的恐惧，接着是一种确信的感觉，那就是无论如何不能再投下另一颗原子弹了。然而，当然，三天后，另一颗原子弹还是在长崎被投下了。

In November 1945, three months after the atomic bombings, Oppenheimer stood firmly behind the scientific attitude, saying, “It is not possible to be a scientist unless you believe that the knowledge of the world, and the power which this gives, is a thing which is of intrinsic value to humanity, and that you are using it to help in the spread of knowledge and are willing to take the consequences.”
1945 年 11 月，原子弹爆炸三个月后，奥本海默坚定地站在科学态度一边，他说：“如果你不相信对世界的了解以及由此带来的力量对人类具有内在价值，如果你不使用它来帮助传播知识并愿意承担后果，那么你就不可能成为一名科学家。”

Oppenheimer went on to work, with others, on the Acheson - Lilienthal report, which, as Richard Rhodes says in his recent book Visions of Technology, “found a way to prevent a clandestine nuclear arms race without resorting to armed world government”; their suggestion was a form of relinquishment of nuclear weapons work by nation - states to an international agency.
奥本海默随后与其他人在阿奇逊 - 利利恩塔尔报告中工作，正如理查德・罗德斯在他最近的书《技术的愿景》中所说，“找到了一种防止秘密核军备竞赛的方法，而无需诉诸武装世界政府”；他们的建议是一种形式的国家放弃核武器工作，转交给国际机构。

This proposal led to the Baruch Plan, which was submitted to the United Nations in June 1946 but never adopted (perhaps because, as Rhodes suggests, Bernard Baruch had “insisted on burdening the plan with conventional sanctions,” thereby inevitably dooming it, even though it would “almost certainly have been rejected by Stalinist Russia anyway”). Other efforts to promote sensible steps toward internationalizing nuclear power to prevent an arms race ran afoul either of US politics and internal distrust, or distrust by the Soviets. The opportunity to avoid the arms race was lost, and very quickly.
这一提议导致了巴鲁克计划，该计划于 1946 年 6 月提交给联合国，但从未被采纳（也许是因为，正如罗德斯所建议的，伯纳德・巴鲁克 “坚持在计划中加入传统制裁”，从而不可避免地使计划失败，尽管它 “几乎肯定会被斯大林主义的俄罗斯拒绝”）。其他促进合理步骤以实现核能国际化以防止军备竞赛的努力，要么受到美国政治和内部不信任的影响，要么受到苏联的不信任。避免军备竞赛的机会很快就失去了。

Two years later, in 1948, Oppenheimer seemed to have reached another stage in his thinking, saying, “In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge they cannot lose.”
两年后的 1948 年，奥本海默似乎在他的思考中达到了另一个阶段，他说：“在某种粗俗的意义上，这种意义无法被任何粗俗、幽默或夸张完全熄灭，物理学家们已经知道了罪恶；这种知识他们无法失去。”

In 1949, the Soviets exploded an atom bomb. By 1955, both the US and the Soviet Union had tested hydrogen bombs suitable for delivery by aircraft. And so the nuclear arms race began.
1949 年，苏联爆炸了一颗原子弹。到 1955 年，美国和苏联都测试了适合用飞机投掷的氢弹。于是核军备竞赛开始了。

Nearly 20 years ago, in the documentary The Day After Trinity, Freeman Dyson summarized the scientific attitudes that brought us to the nuclear precipice:
大约 20 年前，在纪录片《三位一体之后的第二天》中，弗里曼・戴森总结了将我们带到核边缘的科学态度：

“I have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it’s there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles—this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.”
“我自己也有这种感觉。核武器的光芒。如果你作为一名科学家来接触它们，这是无法抗拒的。感觉到它就在你的手中，释放出这种为恒星提供能量的能量，让它听从你的指挥。去完成这些奇迹，将一百万吨岩石送入天空。它给人一种无限权力的幻觉，而且在某种程度上，它要为我们所有的麻烦负责 —— 你可以称之为技术傲慢，当人们看到他们可以用他们的头脑做些什么时，这种傲慢就战胜了他们。”

Now, as then, we are creators of new technologies and stars of the imagined future, driven—this time by great financial rewards and global competition—despite the clear dangers, hardly evaluating what it may be like to try to live in a world that is the realistic outcome of what we are creating and imagining.
现在，和那时一样，我们是新技术的创造者和想象中的未来的明星，这一次，我们受到巨大的经济回报和全球竞争的驱使 —— 尽管危险显而易见，我们几乎不去评估尝试生活在一个我们正在创造和想象的现实结果的世界里会是什么样子。

The Need for Caution and Responsibility

谨慎和责任的必要性

**IN 1947,**The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists began putting a Doomsday Clock on its cover. For more than 50 years, it has shown an estimate of the relative nuclear danger we have faced, reflecting the changing international conditions. The hands on the clock have moved 15 times and today, standing at nine minutes to midnight, reflect continuing and real danger from nuclear weapons. The recent addition of India and Pakistan to the list of nuclear powers has increased the threat of failure of the nonproliferation goal, and this danger was reflected by moving the hands closer to midnight in 1998.
1947 年，《原子科学家公报》开始在其封面上放置一个末日时钟。50 多年来，它显示了我们面临的相对核危险的估计，反映了变化的国际形势。时钟的指针已经移动了 15 次，今天，指针指向午夜前 9 分钟，反映了核武器持续且真实的危险。印度和巴基斯坦最近加入核大国名单，增加了防扩散目标失败的威胁，这种危险在 1998 年通过将指针更接近午夜来反映。

In our time, how much danger do we face, not just from nuclear weapons, but from all of these technologies? How high are the extinction risks?
在我们这个时代，我们面临的危险有多大，不仅来自核武器，还来自所有这些技术？灭绝的风险有多高？

The philosopher John Leslie has studied this question and concluded that the risk of human extinction is at least 30 percent, while Ray Kurzweil believes we have “a better than even chance of making it through,” with the caveat that he has “always been accused of being an optimist.” Not only are these estimates not encouraging, but they do not include the probability of many horrid outcomes that lie short of extinction.
哲学家约翰・莱斯利研究了这个问题，并得出结论，人类灭绝的风险至少为 30%，而雷・库兹韦尔认为我们 “有超过一半的机会挺过去”，但他也承认他 “一直被指责为乐观主义者”。这些估计不仅不令人鼓舞，而且它们还没有包括许多尚未灭绝但仍然可怕的结局的可能性。

Faced with such assessments, some serious people are already suggesting that we simply move beyond Earth as quickly as possible. We would colonize the galaxy using von Neumann probes, which hop from star system to star system, replicating as they go. This step will almost certainly be necessary 5 billion years from now (or sooner if our solar system is disastrously impacted by the impending collision of our galaxy with the Andromeda galaxy within the next 3 billion years), but if we take Kurzweil and Moravec at their word it might be necessary by the middle of this century.
面对这样的评估，一些严肃的人已经建议我们尽快离开地球。我们将使用冯・诺伊曼探测器在星系之间跳跃并自我复制，从而殖民银河系。这一步在 50 亿年后（或者如果我们的太阳系在接下来的 30 亿年内因与仙女座星系的碰撞而遭受灾难性影响，那么会更早）几乎肯定是必要的，但如果按照库兹韦尔和莫拉维克的说法，这可能在本世纪中叶就是必要的了。

What are the moral implications here? If we must move beyond Earth this quickly in order for the species to survive, who accepts the responsibility for the fate of those (most of us, after all) who are left behind? And even if we scatter to the stars, isn’t it likely that we may take our problems with us or find, later, that they have followed us? The fate of our species on Earth and our fate in the galaxy seem inextricably linked.
这里的道德含义是什么？如果我们必须这么快离开地球，物种才能生存，那么谁来接受那些（毕竟大多数是我们）被留下的人的命运的责任呢？而且即使我们散落到群星之间，难道我们不会带着问题一起走，或者后来发现它们已经跟上来了吗？我们这个物种在地球上的命运和在银河系中的命运似乎密不可分。

Another idea is to erect a series of shields to defend against each of the dangerous technologies. The Strategic Defense Initiative, proposed by the Reagan administration, was an attempt to design such a shield against the threat of a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. But as Arthur C. Clarke, who was privy to discussions about the project, observed: “Though it might be possible, at vast expense, to construct local defense systems that would ‘only’ let through a few percent of ballistic missiles, the much touted idea of a national umbrella was nonsense. Luis Alvarez, perhaps the greatest experimental physicist of this century, remarked to me that the advocates of such schemes were ‘very bright guys with no common sense.’”
另一个想法是建立一系列防御盾牌来抵御每一种危险技术。由里根政府提出的 “战略防御计划” 就是试图设计这样一个防御苏联核攻击的盾牌。但正如参与了该项目讨论的阿瑟・C・克拉克所观察到的：“尽管有可能以巨大的代价建造只会让少数弹道导弹通过的地方防御系统，但备受吹捧的国家保护伞的想法是荒谬的。也许本世纪最伟大的实验物理学家路易斯・阿尔瓦雷斯对我说，这些方案的倡导者是‘非常聪明但没有常识的人’。”

Clarke continued: “Looking into my often cloudy crystal ball, I suspect that a total defense might indeed be possible in a century or so. But the technology involved would produce, as a by - product, weapons so terrible that no one would bother with anything as primitive as ballistic missiles.”
克拉克继续说：“看着我那常常模糊的水晶球，我怀疑一个全面的防御可能在大约一个世纪后确实能够实现。但涉及的技术将产生一种可怕的武器，作为副产品，以至于没有人会去使用像弹道导弹这样原始的东西。”

In Engines of Creation, Eric Drexler proposed that we build an active nanotechnological shield—a form of immune system for the biosphere—to defend against dangerous replicators of all kinds that might escape from laboratories or otherwise be maliciously created. But the shield he proposed would itself be extremely dangerous—nothing could prevent it from developing autoimmune problems and attacking the biosphere itself.
在《创造的引擎》中，埃里克・德雷克斯勒提议我们建立一个积极的纳米技术盾牌 —— 生物圈的一种免疫系统 —— 以抵御可能从实验室逃脱或被恶意创造的各种危险复制器。但他提议的盾牌本身将非常危险 —— 没有什么能阻止它发展出自身免疫问题并攻击生物圈本身。

Similar difficulties apply to the construction of shields against robotics and genetic engineering. These technologies are too powerful to be shielded against in the time frame of interest; even if it were possible to implement defensive shields, the side effects of their development would be at least as dangerous as the technologies we are trying to protect against.
类似的困难也适用于构建防御机器人技术和基因工程的盾牌。这些技术太强大了，在我们感兴趣的时期内无法被防御盾牌阻挡；即使有可能实施防御盾牌，它们的发展的副作用至少和我们试图防御的技术一样危险。

These possibilities are all thus either undesirable or unachievable or both. The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.
因此，这些可能性要么是不可取的，要么是无法实现的，或者两者都是。我看到的唯一现实的选择是放弃：通过限制我们对某些类型知识的追求，来限制那些过于危险的技术的发展。

The Ethical Dilemma of Knowledge and Progress

知识与进步的伦理困境

Yes, I know, knowledge is good, as is the search for new truths. We have been seeking knowledge since ancient times. Aristotle opened his Metaphysics with the simple statement: “All men by nature desire to know.” We have, as a bedrock value in our society, long agreed on the value of open access to information, and recognize the problems that arise with attempts to restrict access to and development of knowledge. In recent times, we have come to revere scientific knowledge.
是的，我知道，知识是好的，追求新的真理也是好的。我们自古以来就在寻求知识。亚里士多德在《形而上学》中以一个简单的陈述开头：“人天生渴望知识。” 长期以来，我们作为社会的一个基本原则，一直认同信息开放获取的价值，并认识到限制知识的获取和发展所引发的问题。在近现代，我们开始崇拜科学知识。

But despite the strong historical precedents, if open access to and unlimited development of knowledge henceforth puts us all in clear danger of extinction, then common sense demands that we reexamine even these basic, long - held beliefs.
但尽管有强大的历史先例，如果从现在开始，对知识的开放获取和无限制发展使我们所有人都面临明确的灭绝危险，那么常识要求我们重新审视这些基本的、长期持有的信念。

It was Nietzsche who warned us, at the end of the 19th century, not only that God is dead but that “faith in science, which after all exists undeniably, cannot owe its origin to a calculus of utility; it must have originated in spite of the fact that the disutility and dangerousness of the ‘will to truth,’ of ‘truth at any price’ is proved to it constantly.” It is this further danger that we now fully face—the consequences of our truth - seeking. The truth that science seeks can certainly be considered a dangerous substitute for God if it is likely to lead to our extinction.
正是尼采在 19 世纪末警告我们，不仅上帝死了，而且 “对科学的信仰，毕竟无可否认地存在着，其起源不可能是基于效用的计算；它必定是起源于‘真理的意志’、‘不惜一切代价的真理’的无用性和危险性不断被证明的事实。” 我们现在完全面临着这种进一步的危险 —— 我们寻求真理的后果。如果科学寻求的真理有可能导致我们的灭绝，那么它确实可以被视为上帝的一个危险替代品。

If we could agree, as a species, what we wanted, where we were headed, and why, then we would make our future much less dangerous—then we might understand what we can and should relinquish. Otherwise, we can easily imagine an arms race developing over GNR technologies, as it did with the NBC technologies in the 20th century. This is perhaps the greatest risk, for once such a race begins, it’s very hard to end it. This time—unlike during the Manhattan Project—we aren’t in a war, facing an implacable enemy that is threatening our civilization; we are driven, instead, by our habits, our desires, our economic system, and our competitive need to know.
如果我们作为一个物种能够达成共识，我们想要什么，我们要去哪里，以及为什么，那么我们就能使我们的未来不那么危险 —— 那么我们或许就能明白我们可以和应该放弃什么。否则，我们很容易想象一场围绕 GNR 技术的军备竞赛会发展起来，就像 20 世纪围绕 NBC 技术那样。这也许是最大的风险，因为一旦这样的竞赛开始，就很难结束它。这一次 —— 与曼哈顿计划期间不同 —— 我们并没有处于战争中，面对一个威胁我们文明的不共戴天的敌人；相反，我们被我们的习惯、欲望、经济体系和竞争性的求知欲所驱使。

I believe that we all wish our course could be determined by our collective values, ethics, and morals. If we had gained more collective wisdom over the past few thousand years, then a dialogue to this end would be more practical, and the incredible powers we are about to unleash would not be nearly so troubling.
我相信我们都希望我们的道路能够由我们的集体价值观、伦理和道德来决定。如果我们在过去几千年里获得了更多的集体智慧，那么这样的对话将更加实际，我们即将释放的惊人力量也不会那么令人担忧。

One would think we might be driven to such a dialogue by our instinct for self - preservation. Individuals clearly have this desire, yet as a species our behavior seems to be not in our favor. In dealing with the nuclear threat, we often spoke dishonestly to ourselves and to each other, thereby greatly increasing the risks. Whether this was politically motivated, or because we chose not to think ahead, or because when faced with such grave threats we acted irrationally out of fear, I do not know, but it does not bode well.
人们本以为我们的自我保护本能会促使我们进行这样的对话。个人显然有这种欲望，但作为一个物种，我们的行为似乎并不利于我们。在处理核威胁时，我们常常对自己和彼此说谎，从而大大增加了风险。我不知道这是出于政治动机，还是因为我们选择不去思考未来，还是因为我们面对如此严重的威胁时因恐惧而做出非理性的行为，但这种状况并不乐观。

The new Pandora’s boxes of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics are almost open, yet we seem hardly to have noticed. Ideas can’t be put back in a box; unlike uranium or plutonium, they don’t need to be mined and refined, and they can be freely copied. Once they are out, they are out. Churchill remarked, in a famous left - handed compliment, that the American people and their leaders “invariably do the right thing, after they have examined every other alternative.” In this case, however, we must act more presciently, as to do the right thing only at last may be to lose the chance to do it at all.
基因学、纳米技术和机器人技术这些新的潘多拉盒子几乎已经打开了，但我们似乎几乎没有注意到。思想无法再被放回盒子里；与铀或钚不同，它们不需要被开采和提炼，而且可以自由复制。一旦它们出来了，就收不回去了。丘吉尔曾经说过一句著名的反面恭维话，美国人民及其领导人 “在尝试了所有其他选择之后，总是会做正确的事情。” 然而，在这种情况下，我们必须更有先见之明，因为只有在最后才做正确的事情可能会失去做这件事的机会。

The Urgency of Ethical Action

伦理行动的紧迫性

AS THOREAU SAID,“We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us”; and this is what we must fight, in our time. The question is, indeed, Which is to be master? Will we survive our technologies?
正如梭罗所说，“我们不是在铁路上旅行；而是铁路在我们身上旅行”；在我们这个时代，我们必须与之斗争。问题确实是，谁将成为主人？我们能否在我们的技术面前幸存？

We are being propelled into this new century with no plan, no control, no brakes. Have we already gone too far down the path to alter course? I don’t believe so, but we aren’t trying yet, and the last chance to assert control—the fail - safe point—is rapidly approaching. We have our first pet robots, as well as commercially available genetic engineering techniques, and our nanoscale techniques are advancing rapidly. While the development of these technologies proceeds through a number of steps, it isn’t necessarily the case—as happened in the Manhattan Project and the Trinity test—that the last step in proving a technology is large and hard. The breakthrough to wild self - replication in robotics, genetic engineering, or nanotechnology could come suddenly, reprising the surprise we felt when we learned of the cloning of a mammal.
我们正被推向这个新世纪，没有计划，没有控制，没有刹车。我们是否已经走得太远而无法改变方向？我不这么认为，但我们还没有尝试，而最后的机会 —— 最后的安全点 —— 正在迅速临近。我们已经有了我们的第一代宠物机器人，以及商业上可用的基因工程技术，我们的纳米技术也在迅速发展。尽管这些技术的发展经历了许多步骤，但并不一定像曼哈顿计划和三位一体试验那样，证明一种技术的最后一步是庞大而艰难的。机器人技术、基因工程或纳米技术中的野生自我复制的突破可能会突然出现，重现我们得知哺乳动物克隆时的惊讶。

And yet I believe we do have a strong and solid basis for hope. Our attempts to deal with weapons of mass destruction in the last century provide a shining example of relinquishment for us to consider: the unilateral US abandonment, without preconditions, of the development of biological weapons. This relinquishment stemmed from the realization that while it would take an enormous effort to create these terrible weapons, they could from then on easily be duplicated and fall into the hands of rogue nations or terrorist groups.
然而，我相信我们确实有强大而坚实的理由抱有希望。我们在上个世纪试图处理大规模杀伤性武器的努力为我们提供了一个放弃的光辉范例：美国单方面、无条件地放弃发展生物武器。这种放弃源于这样的认识：尽管制造这些可怕的武器需要巨大的努力，但从那时起，它们很容易被复制，并落入流氓国家或恐怖组织手中。

The clear conclusion was that we would create additional threats to ourselves by pursuing these weapons, and that we would be more secure if we did not pursue them. We have embodied our relinquishment of biological and chemical weapons in the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
一个明确的结论是，追求这些武器将对我们自己构成额外的威胁，如果我们不追求它们，我们会更安全。我们已经在 1972 年的《生物武器公约》（BWC）和 1993 年的《化学武器公约》（CWC）中体现了我们对生物和化学武器的放弃。

As for the continuing sizable threat from nuclear weapons, which we have lived with now for more than 50 years, the US Senate’s recent rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty makes it clear relinquishing nuclear weapons will not be politically easy. But we have a unique opportunity, with the end of the Cold War, to avert a multipolar arms race. Building on the BWC and CWC relinquishments, successful abolition of nuclear weapons could help us build toward a habit of relinquishing dangerous technologies. (Actually, by getting rid of all but 100 nuclear weapons worldwide—roughly the total destructive power of World War II and a considerably easier task—we could eliminate this extinction threat. )
至于核武器持续的重大威胁，我们现在已经与之共存了 50 多年，美国参议院最近拒绝《全面禁止核试验条约》表明，放弃核武器在政治上不会容易。但随着冷战的结束，我们有一个独特的机会来避免多极化的军备竞赛。在《生物武器公约》和《化学武器公约》的基础上，成功地废除核武器可以帮助我们养成放弃危险技术的习惯。（实际上，通过消除全球除 100 件核武器以外的所有核武器 —— 大致相当于第二次世界大战的总破坏力，而且是一项相对容易得多的任务 —— 我们可以消除这种灭绝威胁。）

Verifying relinquishment will be a difficult problem, but not an unsolvable one. We are fortunate to have already done a lot of relevant work in the context of the BWC and other treaties. Our major task will be to apply this to technologies that are naturally much more commercial than military. The substantial need here is for transparency, as difficulty of verification is directly proportional to the difficulty of distinguishing relinquished from legitimate activities.
验证放弃将是一个困难的问题，但不是一个无法解决的问题。我们有幸已经在《生物武器公约》和其他条约的背景下做了很多相关的工作。我们的主要任务将是将此应用于本质上比军事用途更具商业用途的技术。这里的主要需求是透明度，因为验证的难度与区分放弃的活动和合法活动的难度成正比。

I frankly believe that the situation in 1945 was simpler than the one we now face: The nuclear technologies were reasonably separable into commercial and military uses, and monitoring was aided by the nature of atomic tests and the ease with which radioactivity could be measured. Research on military applications could be performed at national laboratories such as Los Alamos, with the results kept secret as long as possible.
我坦率地认为，1945 年的情况比我们现在面临的要简单：核技术可以合理地分为商业用途和军事用途，而监测则得到了原子试验的性质和放射性易于测量的帮助。军事应用的研究可以在洛斯阿拉莫斯等国家实验室进行，结果尽可能保密。

The GNR technologies do not divide clearly into commercial and military uses; given their potential in the market, it’s hard to imagine pursuing them only in national laboratories. With their widespread commercial pursuit, enforcing relinquishment will require a verification regime similar to that for biological weapons, but on an unprecedented scale. This, inevitably, will raise tensions between our individual privacy and desire for proprietary information, and the need for verification to protect us all. We will undoubtedly encounter strong resistance to this loss of privacy and freedom of action.
GNR 技术并不明显地分为商业用途和军事用途；考虑到它们在市场上的潜力，很难想象只在国家实验室中追求它们。随着它们在商业上的广泛追求，执行放弃将需要一个类似于生物武器的验证机制，但规模是前所未有的。这将不可避免地加剧我们个人隐私和对专有信息的需求与保护我们所有人的验证需求之间的紧张关系。我们无疑会遇到对这种隐私和行动自由丧失的强烈抵制。

Verifying the relinquishment of certain GNR technologies will have to occur in cyberspace as well as at physical facilities. The critical issue will be to make the necessary transparency acceptable in a world of proprietary information, presumably by providing new forms of protection for intellectual property.
验证某些 GNR 技术的放弃必须在网络空间和物理设施中进行。关键问题是如何在一个专有信息的世界中使必要的透明度变得可以接受，这可能需要为知识产权提供新的保护形式。

Verifying compliance will also require that scientists and engineers adopt a strong code of ethical conduct, resembling the Hippocratic oath, and that they have the courage to whistleblow as necessary, even at high personal cost. This would answer the call—50 years after Hiroshima—by the Nobel laureate Hans Bethe, one of the most senior of the surviving members of the Manhattan Project, that all scientists “cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving, and manufacturing nuclear weapons and other weapons of potential mass destruction.” In the 21st century, this requires vigilance and personal responsibility by those who would work on both NBC and GNR technologies to avoid implementing weapons of mass destruction and knowledge - enabled mass destruction.
验证合规还将要求科学家和工程师采用一种强有力的伦理行为准则，类似于希波克拉底誓言，并且他们要有勇气在必要时进行举报，即使这意味着巨大的个人代价。这将回应诺贝尔奖得主汉斯・贝特的呼吁 —— 广岛事件 50 年后 —— 他是曼哈顿计划中幸存的最资深成员之一，他呼吁所有科学家 “停止从事创造、发展、改进和制造核武器和其他潜在大规模杀伤性武器的工作。” 在 21 世纪，这需要那些从事 NBC 和 GNR 技术工作的人保持警惕并承担个人责任，以避免实施大规模杀伤性武器和知识赋能的大规模杀伤。

The Search for a New Ethical Basis

寻找新的伦理基础

THOREAU ALSO SAIDthat we will be “rich in proportion to the number of things which we can afford to let alone.” We each seek to be happy, but it would seem worthwhile to question whether we need to take such a high risk of total destruction to gain yet more knowledge and yet more things; common sense says that there is a limit to our material needs—and that certain knowledge is too dangerous and is best forgone.
梭罗还说过，我们的富有程度与我们能够放下的事物的数量成正比。我们每个人都追求幸福，但似乎值得质疑的是，我们是否需要冒着全面毁灭的高风险去获取更多的知识和更多的东西；常识告诉我们，我们的物质需求是有限的 —— 某些知识过于危险，最好放弃。

Neither should we pursue near immortality without considering the costs, without considering the commensurate increase in the risk of extinction. Immortality, while perhaps the original, is certainly not the only possible utopian dream.
我们也不应该在不考虑代价、不考虑灭绝风险相应增加的情况下追求近乎永生。永生，尽管可能是最初的，但肯定不是唯一的乌托邦梦想。

I recently had the good fortune to meet the distinguished author and scholar Jacques Attali, whose book Lignes d’horizons (Millennium, in the English translation) helped inspire the Java and Jini approach to the coming age of pervasive computing, as previously described in this magazine. In his new book Fraternités, Attali describes how our dreams of utopia have changed over time:
我最近有幸遇到了杰出的作者和学者雅克・阿塔利，他的书《地平线》（英文版为《千年》）帮助启发了 Java 和 Jini 对即将到来的无处不在的计算时代的应对方法，正如本杂志以前所描述的那样。在他的新书《兄弟情谊》中，阿塔利描述了我们的乌托邦梦想是如何随着时间而改变的：

“At the dawn of societies, men saw their passage on Earth as nothing more than a labyrinth of pain, at the end of which stood a door leading, via their death, to the company of gods and to Eternity. With the Hebrews and then the Greeks, some men dared free themselves from theological demands and dream of an ideal City where Liberty would flourish. Others, noting the evolution of the market society, understood that the liberty of some would entail the alienation of others, and they sought Equality.”
“在社会的黎明时期，人们认为他们在地球上的经历不过是一个痛苦的迷宫，在迷宫的尽头有一扇门，通过他们的死亡，通向神灵的陪伴和 * 永生 *。随着希伯来人，然后是希腊人的出现，一些人敢于摆脱神学的要求，梦想一个理想的城邦，在那里 * 自由 * 将蓬勃发展。另一些人，注意到市场社会的演变，认识到一些人的自由将导致其他人的异化，他们寻求 * 平等 *。”

Jacques helped me understand how these three different utopian goals exist in tension in our society today. He goes on to describe a fourth utopia, Fraternity, whose foundation is altruism. Fraternity alone associates individual happiness with the happiness of others, affording the promise of self - sustainment.
雅克帮助我理解了这三种不同的乌托邦目标如何在我们今天的社会中相互冲突。他继续描述了第四个乌托邦，* 兄弟情谊 *，其基础是利他主义。只有兄弟情谊将个人幸福与他人的幸福联系起来，提供了自我维持的希望。

This crystallized for me my problem with Kurzweil’s dream. A technological approach to Eternity—near immortality through robotics—may not be the most desirable utopia, and its pursuit brings clear dangers. Maybe we should rethink our utopian choices.
这让我明确了我对库兹韦尔梦想的问题。通过机器人技术实现永生的技术方法 —— 近乎永生 —— 可能不是最理想的乌托邦，而且追求它带来了明显的危险。也许我们应该重新思考我们的乌托邦选择。

Where can we look for a new ethical basis to set our course? I have found the ideas in the book Ethics for the New Millennium, by the Dalai Lama, to be very helpful. As is perhaps well known but little heeded, the Dalai Lama argues that the most important thing is for us to conduct our lives with love and compassion for others, and that our societies need to develop a stronger notion of universal responsibility and of our interdependency; he proposes a standard of positive ethical conduct for individuals and societies that seems consonant with Attali’s Fraternity utopia.
我们可以在哪里寻找新的伦理基础来确定我们的方向呢？我发现达赖喇嘛的书《新千年伦理学》中的观点非常有帮助。正如大家可能都知道但很少注意的那样，达赖喇嘛认为最重要的是我们要以对他人的爱和同情来生活，我们的社会需要发展一种更强的普遍责任感和相互依存感；他提出了一个对个人和社会都适用的积极伦理行为标准，这似乎与阿塔利的兄弟情谊乌托邦是一致的。

The Dalai Lama further argues that we must understand what it is that makes people happy, and acknowledge the strong evidence that neither material progress nor the pursuit of the power of knowledge is the key—that there are limits to what science and the scientific pursuit alone can do.
达赖喇嘛进一步认为，我们必须理解是什么让人们幸福，并承认有强有力的证据表明，物质进步和对知识力量的追求都不是关键 —— 科学和单纯的科学追求是有局限性的。

Our Western notion of happiness seems to come from the Greeks, who defined it as “the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.”
我们西方对幸福的看法似乎来自希腊人，他们将其定义为 “在赋予他们发展空间的生活中，沿着卓越的方向行使生命力量”。

Clearly, we need to find meaningful challenges and sufficient scope in our lives if we are to be happy in whatever is to come. But I believe we must find alternative outlets for our creative forces, beyond the culture of perpetual economic growth; this growth has largely been a blessing for several hundred years, but it has not brought us unalloyed happiness, and we must now choose between the pursuit of unrestricted and undirected growth through science and technology and the clear accompanying dangers.
显然，如果我们要在即将到来的生活中幸福，我们需要在我们的生活中找到有意义的挑战和足够的发展空间。但我相信我们必须为我们的创造力找到替代的出口，超越持续的经济增长文化；这种增长在过去的几百年里大多是好事，但它并没有给我们带来纯粹的幸福，我们现在必须在通过科学和技术追求无限制、无方向的增长以及随之而来的明显危险之间做出选择。

A Call for Collective Wisdom and Action

呼吁集体智慧与行动

IT IS NOWmore than a year since my first encounter with Ray Kurzweil and John Searle. I see around me cause for hope in the voices for caution and relinquishment and in those people I have discovered who are as concerned as I am about our current predicament. I feel, too, a deepened sense of personal responsibility—not for the work I have already done, but for the work that I might yet do, at the confluence of the sciences.
现在已经过去了一年多，自从我第一次遇到雷・库兹韦尔和约翰・塞尔。我看到了谨慎和放弃的声音，以及那些和我一样对我们当前困境感到担忧的人，这些都让我看到了希望。我也感到一种更强烈的个人责任感 —— 不是因为我已经做过的工作，而是因为我可能在科学的交汇处还要做的工作。

But many other people who know about the dangers still seem strangely silent. When pressed, they trot out the “this is nothing new” riposte—as if awareness of what could happen is response enough. They tell me, There are universities filled with bioethicists who study this stuff all day long. They say, All this has been written about before, and by experts. They complain, Your worries and your arguments are already old hat.
但许多知道危险的人仍然奇怪地保持沉默。当被追问时，他们拿出 “这没什么新意” 的反驳 —— 就好像知道可能发生的事情就足够了。他们告诉我，有许多大学里充满了整天研究这些东西的生物伦理学家。他们说，所有这些以前都已经被专家写过了。他们抱怨说，你的担忧和论点已经过时了。

I don’t know where these people hide their fear. As an architect of complex systems I enter this arena as a generalist. But should this diminish my concerns? I am aware of how much has been written about, talked about, and lectured about so authoritatively. But does this mean it has reached people? Does this mean we can discount the dangers before us?
我不知道这些人把他们的恐惧藏在哪里。作为一名复杂系统的架构师，我以一个通才的身份进入这个领域。但这是否应该减少我的担忧呢？我知道已经有多少东西被写过、谈论过和权威地讲过。但这是否意味着它已经到达了人们那里？这是否意味着我们可以忽视眼前的危险？

Knowing is not a rationale for not acting. Can we doubt that knowledge has become a weapon we wield against ourselves?
知道并不是否定行动的理由。我们能否怀疑知识已经成为我们用来对付自己的武器？

The experiences of the atomic scientists clearly show the need to take personal responsibility, the danger that things will move too fast, and the way in which a process can take on a life of its own. We can, as they did, create insurmountable problems in almost no time flat. We must do more thinking up front if we are not to be similarly surprised and shocked by the consequences of our inventions.
原子科学家的经历清楚地表明了需要承担个人责任，事情发展得过快的危险，以及一个过程可能自行发展的路径。我们可以在几乎没有时间的情况下，像他们一样，创造出无法克服的问题。如果我们不想对我们的发明的后果感到同样惊讶和震惊，我们必须在前面做更多的思考。

My continuing professional work is on improving the reliability of software. Software is a tool, and as a toolbuilder I must struggle with the uses to which the tools I make are put. I have always believed that making software more reliable, given its many uses, will make the world a safer and better place; if I were to come to believe the opposite, then I would be morally obligated to stop this work. I can now imagine such a day may come.
我持续的专业工作是提高软件的可靠性。软件是一种工具，作为一名工具制造者，我必须努力应对我的工具被用于何处。我一直相信，鉴于软件的许多用途，使软件更加可靠会使世界更安全、更好；如果我开始相信相反的情况，那么我将有道德上的义务停止这项工作。我现在可以想象这样的日子可能会到来。

This all leaves me not angry but at least a bit melancholic. Henceforth, for me, progress will be somewhat bittersweet.
所有这些并没有让我感到愤怒，但至少有些忧郁。从今以后，对我来说，进步将有些苦乐参半。

The Importance of Broader Conversations

更广泛对话的重要性

DO YOU REMEMBERthe beautiful penultimate scene in Manhattan where Woody Allen is lying on his couch and talking into a tape recorder? He is writing a short story about people who are creating unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves, because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe.
你还记得在《曼哈顿》中那个美丽的倒数第二个场景吗？伍迪・艾伦躺在沙发上，对着一个录音机说话。他在写一个短篇故事，故事中的人们为自己创造了不必要的、神经质的问题，因为这使他们避免面对更无法解决、更可怕的关于宇宙的问题。

He leads himself to the question, “Why is life worth living?” and to consider what makes it worthwhile for him: Groucho Marx, Willie Mays, the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, Louis Armstrong’s recording of “Potato Head Blues,” Swedish movies, Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, the apples and pears by Cézanne, the crabs at Sam Wo’s, and, finally, the showstopper: his love Tracy’s face.
他问自己，“生活为什么值得过？” 并思考什么使他觉得生活值得：格劳乔・马克斯、威利・梅斯、木星交响曲的第二乐章、路易斯・阿姆斯特朗的《土豆头布鲁斯》唱片、瑞典电影、福楼拜的《情感教育》、马龙・白兰度、弗兰克・辛纳屈、塞尚的苹果和梨、山吾的螃蟹，最后，压轴的是：他心爱的特蕾西的脸。

Each of us has our precious things, and as we care for them we locate the essence of our humanity. In the end, it is because of our great capacity for caring that I remain optimistic we will confront the dangerous issues now before us.
我们每个人都有自己珍贵的东西，当我们关心它们时，我们就找到了我们人性的本质。最终，正是因为我们巨大的关爱能力，我仍然乐观地认为我们将面对现在摆在我们面前的危险问题。

My immediate hope is to participate in a much larger discussion of the issues raised here, with people from many different backgrounds, in settings not predisposed to fear or favor technology for its own sake.
我立即的希望是参与一个更大规模的讨论，与来自许多不同背景的人一起，讨论这里提出的问题，这些讨论的环境不会因为技术本身而倾向于恐惧或偏爱技术。

As a start, I have twice raised many of these issues at events sponsored by the Aspen Institute and have separately proposed that the American Academy of Arts and Sciences take them up as an extension of its work with the Pugwash Conferences. (These have been held since 1957 to discuss arms control, especially of nuclear weapons, and to formulate workable policies.)
作为开始，我已经在阿斯彭研究所赞助的活动中两次提出了许多这些问题，并且我还单独提议美国艺术与科学学院将其作为与普格沃什会议（自 1957 年以来一直讨论军备控制，特别是核武器的军备控制，并制定可行的政策）相关工作的一部分来讨论这些问题。

It’s unfortunate that the Pugwash meetings started only well after the nuclear genie was out of the bottle—roughly 15 years too late. We are also getting a belated start on seriously addressing the issues around 21st - century technologies—the prevention of knowledge - enabled mass destruction—and further delay seems unacceptable.
普格沃什会议在核武器的 “精灵” 已经从瓶子中出来之后才开始 —— 大约迟了 15 年。我们对 21 世纪技术的问题 —— 防止知识赋能的大规模杀伤 —— 的认真应对也起步太晚了，进一步的拖延似乎是不可接受的。

So I’m still searching; there are many more things to learn. Whether we are to succeed or fail, to survive or fall victim to these technologies, is not yet decided. I’m up late again—it’s almost 6 am. I’m trying to imagine some better answers, to break the spell and free them from the stone.
所以，我还在寻找；还有更多东西要学。我们是成功还是失败，是生存还是成为这些技术的牺牲品，还没有决定。我又熬夜了 —— 快凌晨 6 点了。我正在努力想象一些更好的答案，打破魔咒，让他们摆脱束缚。

Notes and References

注释与参考文献

1. The passage Kurzweil quotes is from Kaczynski’s Unabomber Manifesto, which was published jointly, under duress, by The New York Times and The Washington Post to attempt to bring his campaign of terror to an end. I agree with David Gelernter, who said about their decision:
   库兹韦尔引用的段落来自卡辛斯基的《邮包炸弹客宣言》，该宣言是《纽约时报》和《华盛顿邮报》在胁迫下联合发表的，目的是试图终结他的恐怖活动。我同意戴维・盖勒特尔对他们这一决定的评价：

   “It was a tough call for the newspapers. To say yes would be giving in to terrorism, and for all they knew he was lying anyway. On the other hand, to say yes might stop the killing. There was also a chance that someone would read the tract and get a hunch about the author; and that is exactly what happened. The suspect’s brother read it, and it rang a bell.
   “对于这些报纸来说，这是一个艰难的抉择。答应发表，就等于向恐怖主义屈服，而且他们完全有理由认为他可能在撒谎。但另一方面，答应发表或许能阻止杀戮。还有一种可能是，有人读了这份宣言后，会对作者产生某种直觉 —— 事实也确实如此。嫌疑人的哥哥读了之后，立刻意识到了什么。

   “I would have told them not to publish. I’m glad they didn’t ask me. I guess.”
   “我当时会建议他们不要发表。不过，幸好他们没问我。我想是这样。”

   (Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber. Free Press, 1997: 120.)
   （《描绘生命：从邮包炸弹客手中幸存》，自由出版社，1997 年：第 120 页。）

2. Garrett, Laurie. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. Penguin, 1994: 47 - 52, 414, 419, 452.
   劳里・加勒特：《逼近的瘟疫：失衡世界中新出现的疾病》，企鹅出版社，1994 年：第 47 - 52、414、419、452 页。

3. Isaac Asimov described what became the most famous view of ethical rules for robot behavior in his book I, Robot in 1950, in his Three Laws of Robotics: 1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
   艾萨克・阿西莫夫在他 1950 年的著作《我，机器人》中，提出了关于机器人行为伦理规则的最著名观点 —— 机器人三定律：1. 机器人不得伤害人类，也不得因不作为而使人类受到伤害。2. 机器人必须服从人类的命令，除非这些命令与第一定律相冲突。3. 机器人必须保护自身的存在，只要这种保护不与第一定律或第二定律相冲突。

4. Michelangelo wrote a sonnet that begins:
   米开朗基罗写过一首十四行诗，开篇是：

   Non ha l’ ottimo artista alcun concetto
   Ch’ un marmo solo in sè non circonscriva
   Col suo soverchio; e solo a quello arriva
   La man che ubbidisce all’ intelleto.

   Stone translates this as:
   斯通将其译为：

   The best of artists hath no thought to show
   which the rough stone in its superfluous shell
   doth not include; to break the marble spell
   is all the hand that serves the brain can do.

   Stone describes the process: “He was not working from his drawings or clay models; they had all been put away. He was carving from the images in his mind. His eyes and hands knew where every line, curve, mass must emerge, and at what depth in the heart of the stone to create the low relief.”
   斯通这样描述这一过程：“他并非依照自己的草图或黏土模型进行创作，那些都已被收了起来。他是凭着脑海中的意象进行雕刻的。他的眼睛和双手知道每一条线条、每一处曲线、每一块体积应该出现在哪里，也知道要在石头深处的哪个位置雕刻出浅浮雕。”

   (The Agony and the Ecstasy. Doubleday, 1961: 6, 144.)
   （《痛苦与狂喜》，双日出版社，1961 年：第 6、144 页。）

5. First Foresight Conference on Nanotechnology in October 1989, a talk titled “The Future of Computation.” Published in Crandall, B. C. and James Lewis, editors. Nanotechnology: Research and Perspectives. MIT Press, 1992: 269.
   1989 年 10 月第一届纳米技术前瞻会议上，一篇题为《计算的未来》的演讲。收录于 B. C. 克兰德尔与詹姆斯・刘易斯主编的《纳米技术：研究与展望》，麻省理工学院出版社，1992 年：第 269 页。

6. In his 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut imagined a gray - goo - like accident where a form of ice called ice - nine, which becomes solid at a much higher temperature, freezes the oceans.
   库尔特・冯内古特在他 1963 年的小说《猫的摇篮》中，设想了一场类似 “灰色黏菌” 的意外：一种名为 “九号冰” 的冰，在远高于普通冰的温度下就会凝固，它冻结了整个海洋。

7. Kauffman, Stuart. “Self - replication: Even Peptides Do It.” Nature, 382, August 8, 1996: 496.
   斯图尔特・考夫曼：《自我复制：即便是肽也能做到》，《自然》，第 382 期，1996 年 8 月 8 日：第 496 页。

8. Else, Jon. The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and The Atomic Bomb.
   乔恩・埃尔斯：《三位一体之后的日子：J. 罗伯特・奥本海默与原子弹》。

9. This estimate is in Leslie’s book The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction, where he notes that the probability of extinction is substantially higher if we accept Brandon Carter’s Doomsday Argument, which is, briefly, that “we ought to have some reluctance to believe that we are very exceptionally early, for instance in the earliest 0.001 percent, among all humans who will ever have lived. This would be some reason for thinking that humankind will not survive for many more centuries, let alone colonize the galaxy. Carter’s doomsday argument doesn’t generate any risk estimates just by itself. It is an argument for revising the estimates which we generate when we consider various possible dangers.” (Routledge, 1996: 1, 3, 145.)
   这一估计出自莱斯利的《世界末日：人类灭绝的科学与伦理》一书，他在书中指出，如果我们接受布兰登・卡特的 “末日论证”，那么人类灭绝的概率会显著提高。简单来说，“末日论证” 是指 “我们应当不太愿意相信自己处于所有曾经存在过的人类中非常早的位置，例如最早的 0.001%。这会让我们有理由认为，人类不会再存活多个世纪，更不用说殖民银河系了。卡特的末日论证本身并不会产生任何风险估计，它是一种用于修正我们在考虑各种可能的危险时所做出的估计的论证。”（劳特利奇出版社，1996 年：第 1、3、145 页。）

10. Clarke, Arthur C. “Presidents, Experts, and Asteroids.” Science, June 5, 1998. Reprinted as “Science and Society” in Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! Collected Essays, 1934 - 1998. St. Martin’s Press, 1999: 526.
    阿瑟・C. 克拉克：《总统、专家与小行星》，《科学》，1998 年 6 月 5 日。重印于《问候，碳基两足动物！1934 - 1998 年论文集》中的《科学与社会》一文，圣马丁出版社，1999 年：第 526 页。

11. And, as David Forrest suggests in his paper “Regulating Nanotechnology Development,” “If we used strict liability as an alternative to regulation it would be impossible for any developer to internalize the cost of the risk (destruction of the biosphere), so theoretically the activity of developing nanotechnology should never be undertaken.” Forrest’s analysis leaves us with only government regulation to protect us—not a comforting thought.

而且，正如戴维・福里斯特在他的论文《规范纳米技术发展》中所指出的：“如果我们用严格责任替代监管，那么任何开发者都不可能将风险成本（生物圈的破坏）内部化，因此理论上，纳米技术的开发活动绝不应该进行。” 福里斯特的分析让我们只能依靠政府监管来保护自己 —— 这并非一个令人安心的想法。

12. Meselson, Matthew. “The Problem of Biological Weapons.” Presentation to the 1,818th Stated Meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, January 13, 1999.

马修・梅塞尔森：《生物武器问题》，在美国艺术与科学院第 1818 次常会中的演讲，1999 年 1 月 13 日。

13. Doty, Paul. “The Forgotten Menace: Nuclear Weapons Stockpiles Still Represent the Biggest Threat to Civilization.” Nature, 402, December 9, 1999: 583.

保罗・多蒂：《被遗忘的威胁：核武器储备仍是对文明的最大威胁》，《自然》，第 402 期，1999 年 12 月 9 日：第 583 页。

14. See also Hans Bethe’s 1997 letter to President Clinton.

另见汉斯・贝特 1997 年致克林顿总统的信。

15. Hamilton, Edith. The Greek Way. W. W. Norton & Co., 1942: 35.

伊迪丝・汉密尔顿：《希腊方式》，W. W. 诺顿公司，1942 年：第 35 页。

Bill Joy, cofounder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, was cochair of the presidential commission on the future of IT research, and is coauthor of* The Java Language Specification. His work on the Jini pervasive computing technology *was featured in Wired 6.08.

比尔・乔伊，太阳微系统公司的联合创始人兼首席科学家，曾担任总统信息技术研究未来委员会的联合主席，也是《Java 语言规范》的合著者。他在 Jini 普适计算技术方面的研究成果，已在《连线》杂志 6.08 期上专题报道，相关内容可参见 Jini 普适计算技术。

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via：

• “Hope Is a Lousy Defense.” | WIRED
  https://www.wired.com/2003/12/billjoy/

• Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us | WIRED
  https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/

• 技术天才＋公共知识分子 - Bill Joy - shipfi - 博客园
  https://www.cnblogs.com/shipfi/articles/236485.html

• 关于比尔・乔伊（Bill Joy），有哪些有趣的故事？ - 知乎
  https://www.zhihu.com/question/19906424