24.《技术的本质》The nature of technology

The book we are talking about today is called The Nature of Technology. The author of this book, Brian Arthur, is a famous technology thinker and the programming language Java was developed based on his ideas. In his book he focuses on the question, what is technology?
In the dictionary we have a clear definition of technology, which is simply some way to turn something that is already there into something new.
But is the question really that simple? The famous economist, Mr He Fan, has said that the level of our understanding of technology is equivalent to that of biology before the emergence of evolution. Think about it: before the emergence of evolution, biologists already knew how to classify animals and understood their habits, but they did not know the origin of life or the direction of animal evolution. Similarly, today, historians, economists and sociologists can tell us the origins of a particular technology and the profound impact it has had on human society, but they can't say where it originated and where it came from.
Brian Arthur has written this book to get to the bottom of the deeper questions about technology. Arthur argues that technology, like living things, has genes, can mutate, and evolves. All technology, stripped of the technology that came before it. Like all living things, they can trace their roots back to their original ancestors.
Kevin Kelly refers to the sum of all technologies as the technological community. The technological realm is the seventh realm of life, alongside the six biological realms, including the plant and animal realms. Technological evolution is very similar to biological evolution in that it evolves from the simple to the complex, from the general to the particular, from the monolithic to the diverse, from the solitary to the cooperative symbiosis between populations If a species is a bunch of permutations of genes, then a technology is also a set of permutations of ideas.
How did technology come into being? First, humans capture a phenomenon. For example, in the field of agriculture, it was discovered that wild grass seeds could feed the hungry and people took the initiative to use this phenomenon for a specific purpose. To take another example, Streptococcus thermophilus, which contains a fragment of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene, can excise viral genes to protect against viruses, and people took the initiative to use this phenomenon to excise genes using CRISPR-Cas9, a technology called gene editing. Then, different technologies were combined, hybridised and borrowed, giving rise to new technologies. For example, the application of gene editing to agriculture. Without pesticides, it also reduces pests and diseases, does not affect yields and is resistant to metal contamination of the soil. And so the technology was born, and after it was born, it had to evolve. Two more things have accelerated the evolution of technology: the first is modularity. Suppose, for example, that each watch has 1,000 parts and the first watchmaker, part by part, fits it. If he makes a small mistake, or if his work is interrupted, he has to start again from scratch. The second watchmaker, divides the watch into 10 modules, each of which has 10 sub-modules, each of which has 10 standardised parts. So, even if he puts it together wrongly or his work is interrupted, only a small part of his labour is lost. What's more, we only have to upgrade one module, combine different modules, and we get a new watch. This is the value of modularity.
The second thing that accelerates technological evolution is borrowing. The vacuum tube can be borrowed from amplifying telephone signals, to logical computing, and you have a computer. GPUs were first used for niche games, but someone applied them to artificial intelligence and solved the arithmetic problem.
So-called new technologies are just a recombination of previously existing technologies. No technology comes out of nowhere. Inventions are, at their core, borrowings. You only have to understand the life of a technology to see how it evolves.
In the past, we thought that technology came from the creation of genius. In reality, technology itself drives its own course. The evolution of technology is unstoppable. We often say that before the iPhone was invented, many technologies had no known use until Steve Jobs came along. In fact, this statement can also be reversed. Even if Steve Jobs had appeared, the iPhone would not have appeared without all those new technologies that were ready to be developed.
It's not what humans want, it's what they can develop. Technology doesn't listen to us, we have to listen to technology. Shitty science fiction likes to imagine that "anything is possible". But in reality, the better the science fiction writer, the more he or she understands that the possibilities of technology are too limited to just make something up as they go along.
We all want to know what the future holds for technology, because new technology means the next windfall. But we also need to recognise the reality that humans may not be able to predict the future of technology. That is what this book brings us.
译文：
今天要聊的这本书叫《技术的本质》。这本书的作者布莱恩·阿瑟是著名的技术思想家，编程语言Java就是根据他的思想开发的。他在书里主要探讨了一个问题，技术是什么？
在词典里，我们对技术有明确的定义，简单来说，技术是一些方法，可以把已经有东西变成新的东西。
但是，问题真的有这么简单吗？著名经济学家何帆老师就说过：我们对技术的认识水平，相当于进化论出现之前的生物学。你想想，进化论出现以前，生物学家已经懂得动物分类，了解动物的习性，但他们并不知道生命的起源，也不知道动物演化的方向。同样的，今天，历史学家、经济学家和社会学家也能告诉我们某一项技术的来龙去脉，还有它给人类社会带来的深远影响，但他们却说不清技术的起源和它的来龙去脉。
布莱恩·阿瑟写这本书，就是为了弄清楚有关技术更深层的问题。阿瑟认为，技术像生物一样，有基因，能突变，而且会不断进化。所有的技术，都脱胎于此前的技术。就像所有的生物，都能追根溯源地找到原始的祖先。
凯文·凯利把所有技术的总称为技术界。技术界和植物界、动物界等六个生物界并列，是生命的第七个界。技术进化和生物进化非常类似，都是从简单演化到复杂，从一般到特别，从一元化到多元化，从单打独斗到种群间合作共生如果说一个物种就是一堆基因的排列组合，那么，一项技术也是一组想法的排列组合。
技术是怎么诞生的呢？首先，人类捕捉到了一个现象。比如，在农业领域，人们发现，野生草籽可以充饥，人们主动利用这个现象来达到特定目的，于是就有了，从“天赐圣米”到人工播种，出现了一项技术叫农业。再举一个例子，含有 CRISPR-Cas9 基因片段的嗜热链球菌，可以切除病毒基因，抵御病毒的侵袭，人们又主动利用这个现象，用 CRISPR-Cas9 来切除基因，这项技术叫基因编辑。接着，不同的技术组合、杂交、借用，催生了新的技术。比如，把基因编辑应用于农业。不打农药，也能减少病虫害，不影响产量，还能抵御土壤的金属污染。技术就这样诞生了，诞生之后，技术还要进化。又有两件事加速了技术的进化：第一是模块化。假设，每只手表有 1000 个零件，第一个制表匠，一个零件一个零件地安装。如果他出了一个小错，或者是工作被打断，就得从头再来。第二个制表匠，把手表分为 10 个模块，每个模块中又有 10 个小模块，每个小模块中有 10 个标准化的零部件。那么，即使他装错了，或是工作被打断，损失的只是一小部分劳动。更重要的是，我们只需要对一个模块进行升级，对不同的模块进行组合，就可以得到一块新的手表。这就是模块化的价值。
第二个加速技术进化的是借用。真空管能从放大电话信号，借用到逻辑计算，就有了计算机。电池本来是用在手机上，把它借用到汽车，就有了特斯拉。GPU 最早只服务于小众的游戏，有人把它应用到人工智能，解决了算力问题。
所谓新技术，不过是此前已有技术的重新组合。没有什么技术是横空出世的。发明的核心是借用。你只要了解了技术的身世，就能发现它进化的轨迹。
过去，我们以为技术源自天才的创造。实际上，技术本身就在推动自己的进程。技术的进化不可阻挡。我们经常会说，在iPhone发明之前，很多技术都不知道有什么用途，直到乔布斯出现。其实这句话也可以反过来说，就算有乔布斯出现，没有那些已经准备好的新技术，iPhone也不会出现。
不是人类想要什么，就能研发出什么。技术不听我们的，我们得听技术的。低劣的科幻作品喜欢天马行空的想象，认为科技的发展是“一切皆有可能"”。但实际上，越是优秀的科幻作家越是明白，技术的可能性是十分有限的，不能随心所欲地编造一个东西。
我们都想要知道技术未来会怎么发展，因为新技术意味着下一个风口。但是，我们也要认清现实，人类或许无法预知技术的未来。这就是这本书带给我们的启示。