文化與技術三部曲 · SF-03｜專訪 Lee Felsenstein（田野首訪）

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Part 1

第一部分

Yu: Ok, so let’s start with your personal experiences. Can you tell the story of yourself, of how you got enrolled to NASA works and later back to Berkeley? I think the audience is going to be interested in that experience of you.

Yu: 好的，那我們就從你的個人經歷開始吧。你能給我們講講你自己的故事嗎？你是如何加入NASA工作的，然後又回到伯克利的？我想觀衆們會對你的這段經歷很感興趣。

Lee: So I’ll start with my birth, the autobiographical information. I was born in 1945, which makes me a war baby, not a baby boomer. They came in 1946. My family was Jewish. I lived in a very large Jewish community in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is an industrial city, not a cultural or financial city like New York. It became, when I was there, the center of the computer industry. My parents were progressive. They were communists. They were organizers. And they worked in the area of labor and community organization, especially with regards to race. Because when I was about 10 years old, black people began to be moved into the neighborhood. And it was intended to generate a panic among the whites, who would sell their houses at low prices and run. This is an old technique. And so my parents were active in creating a large community organization, black and white, with block organizations. We even had a kids’ block organization, and we would work on cleaning up the street every weekend. I became quite aware this way of the community around me, about community structures, and about the need for people to improve their own situation, not just for individuals.

李：那麼我就從我的出生開始講，自傳式的信息。我出生於1945年，所以我是戰爭時期的嬰兒，不是嬰兒潮一代。他們是在1946年出生的。我的家庭是猶太人。我生活在費城一個非常大的猶太小區裏。費城是一個工業城市，不像紐約那樣是一個文化或金融城市。在我在那裏的時候，它成爲了計算機產業的中心。我的父母是進步的人。他們是共產主義者。他們是組織者。他們在勞工和小區組織方面工作，尤其是關於種族問題。因爲當我大約十歲的時候，黑人開始搬進我們的小區。這是爲了在白人中引起恐慌，讓他們以低價賣掉房子然後逃走。這是一種古老的手法。所以我的父母積極參與創建了一個大型的小區組織，黑人和白人都參與其中，還有街區組織。我們甚至有一個兒童街區組織，每個週末我們都會一起清理街道。通過這種方式，我對我周圍的小區有了很深的認識，瞭解了小區結構，以及人們需要改善自己的處境，而不僅僅是個人。

I went to the public schools, not just for individuals. I attended public schools. And since my father had graduated from the top high school, which was all male at that time, I was guaranteed acceptance there. However, I had to make sure I remained there. My brother and I, who was—my brother was older. No, let me start again. I had to make sure I was accepted, and I had to make sure I stayed. I have an older brother who was three years older than me. He is a famous professor of genetics now. And he was also guaranteed acceptance, and we both went through this high school, Central High School, a very old high school. And did well in our grades. My brother did very well. I did not quite so well. But I stayed in and graduated. Of course, I became very interested in electronics. I was building my own radios when I was 11 years old, listening on headphones, and set up an electronic shop in my basement. I had one friend I worked with. And when I was 13, the two of us built a satellite, a model of a satellite, which had electronics in it that would almost by accident broadcast beeps to a radio nearby. And we had the science fair for the Delaware Valley, so that’s the whole area around Philadelphia. I entered it in the science fair. My team projects were not allowed at that time in 1958. So my friend, Murray, told me, you take it. And I did, and it was entered. And it won the lowest possible award. Of course, that was the year after Sputnik, when satellites were of great interest. This kept me trying to win more awards in later years. I never won anything, but I kept trying.

我上的是公立學校，不只是爲個人而設的。我上的是公立學校。由於我父親畢業於當時全男子高中的頂尖學校，我有保證能被錄取。然而，我必須確保我能留在那裏。我有一個比我大三歲的哥哥。他現在是一位著名的遺傳學教授。他也有保證能被錄取，我們兩個都上了這所古老的中學，中央中學。我們的成績都不錯。我哥哥成績非常好，而我則一般般。但我堅持下來並畢業了。當然，我對電子學非常感興趣。我11歲的時候就開始自己組裝收音機，用耳機聽，還在地下室裏開了一家電子店。我有一個朋友和我一起工作。當我13歲的時候，我們兩個人制作了一個衛星模型，裏面有電子設備，幾乎偶然間向附近的收音機發出了蜂鳴聲。 我們爲特拉華谷地舉辦了科學展覽，這個地區就是費城周圍的整個區域。我參加了這個科學展覽。當時在1958年，我的團隊項目是不被允許的。所以我的朋友穆雷告訴我，你拿去吧。於是我就拿去了，並且參加了展覽。結果它獲得了最低的獎項。當然，那是蘇聯衛星「斯普特尼克」發射後的一年，衛星成爲了大家極大的興趣。這讓我在以後的年份裏一直努力去贏得更多的獎項。我從來沒有贏過什麼，但我一直在嘗試。

And by the time I left high school, I was trained in radio and TV repair. This is not something that is done today, but then we had vacuum tubes and you had to remove them and diagnose it. I left for college after I spent most of the year of 1963 working as a museum demonstrator at the Science Museum of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. As its name implies, a big, important research institution. And they have a museum as well. And I had attended that museum many times as a child. And they had an exhibit where they had the first real commercial computer, the UNIVAC-1, with all the tape drives and everything in a full room behind glass. The institute was using it in its scientific research function. And I had it as an exhibit also. And outside, I had a desk, we had two calculators, we had a little slideshow presentation theater, and all the kids would come in there and I would keep order. So I was the last demonstrator that was assigned to that progress of computation exhibit. And I learned some things from that.

當我離開高中時，我接受了無線電和電視維修的培訓。這是現在不再做的事情，但那時我們使用真空管，必須將它們拆下來進行診斷。在1963年的大部分時間裏，我在費城富蘭克林科學博物館擔任展示員，然後我去上大學。正如其名，這是一個重要的研究機構，同時也有一個博物館。我小時候曾多次參觀過那個博物館。他們有一個展品，展示了第一臺真正的商用計算器UNIVAC-1，配備了所有的磁帶驅動器，整個房間都是玻璃。該研究機構在科學研究中使用它。我也將它作爲展品展示。在外面，我有一個辦公桌，我們有兩臺計算器，還有一個小型幻燈片放映劇院，所有的孩子都會進來，我會維持秩序。所以我是被指派到這個計算進展展示的最後一位展示員。我從中學到了一些東西。

So I went to Berkeley, University of California in 1963, to study electrical engineering. That’s what I was going to do. And I had also heard about San Francisco, the counterculture that was developing there, the beatniks as it were called. I wanted to be close to that. And the book I had read about it said that everybody seemed to be connected with the University of California at Berkeley. So that’s where I went. I had in fact been accepted by two other universities, but I did not have any offer of financial assistance, and I couldn’t afford it. So I entered Berkeley and began my studies. I became involved with a rather small, maybe 200 people group of people who were generally available for protest of anything that affected politics from a left-wing perspective. I have the honor of having walked on the picket line when Madame Nhu from Vietnam, the sister-in-law of Ngo Dinh Nhu, Ngo Dinh Diem, the puppet premier, came to San Francisco and there was a protest. I was joined on that line by Alan Ginsberg, who was perhaps the premier poetic figure from the beatniks. I didn’t say hello to him, but he was there, I was there. And I have that on my resume.

所以我在1963年去了加州大學伯克利分校，學習電氣工程。那就是我要做的事情。我也聽說過舊金山，那裏正在發展的反文化運動，所謂的垮掉的一代。我想離那裏近一點。我讀過一本關於這方面的書，書上說似乎每個人都與加州大學伯克利分校有關聯。所以我就去了那裏。事實上，我確實被其他兩所大學錄取了，但我沒有任何經濟援助的提供，我負擔不起。所以我進入了伯克利並開始了我的學業。我參與了一個相當小的、大約有200人的羣體，他們通常會爲任何從左翼角度影響政治的事情進行抗議。我有幸在越南的阮氏夫人（阮廷娥）來到舊金山並引發抗議時走過抗議隊伍。她是阮廷娥的嫂子，阮廷峙的妻子，阮廷峙是傀儡總理。我在那條抗議隊伍中與艾倫·金斯伯格一起站在一起，他可能是垮掉的一代中最重要的詩人形象。我沒有和他打招呼，但他在那裏，我也在那裏。這也成爲了我的履歷之一。

I got through the first year of my studies with just a little bit short of the grade to get an opportunity for a scholarship. So I needed money, and I learned about the Cooperative Work Study Program in Engineering, which was a job program, basically. The university had a little employment office, and they had companies who participated make very low-level positions available. My position I got was engineering aide, meaning do whatever you’re told, whatever you can do. And I applied, if it was NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Flight Research Center, on the desert in Edwards Air Force Base, California. Now they call it, I’ve forgotten the name. Some pilot got killed and they gave him its name. But anyway, that’s where they had the X-15 rocket plane, where they started with the X-1, breaking the sound barrier. And so in July of 1964, I made my way down there. Part of the job requirement was for a low-level security clearance. And there was a questionnaire, and the questionnaire asked, do you know anybody who was a communist? And I didn’t know that my parents had been members of the party, so I answered no. They kept asking, and I kept answering no. It’s like, please give us the right answer, but no. And so a process began then that went on for about a month and a half. And I was called in for more interviews. And what I learned in the process was that if you’re working for the government, certainly, and you want to have something not happen, make sure that it gives a bureaucrat a problem. The bureaucrat will solve the problem by getting rid of you. And they got rid of me. They basically said, we’re going to recommend your clearance be denied. They didn’t actually do it. They said, you’re going to, and we recommend that you resign and return to Berkeley. As your reason, they said that we’re going to recommend that your clearance be denied. They didn’t actually deny it, so they didn’t have that on paper. And we recommend that you resign the position and to return to school. And so I did that. I wasn’t going to make a big fuss about it.

我在大一的學業中勉強沒有達到獲得獎學金的成績。所以我需要錢，於是我瞭解到工程合作學習計劃，這是一個工作計劃。大學有一個小的就業辦公室，他們與參與的公司合作提供一些低階職位。我得到的職位是工程助理，意思就是做任何你被告知的事情，做你能做的事情。我申請了，如果是NASA，國家航空暨太空總署飛行研究中心，位於加利福尼亞州愛德華茲空軍基地的沙漠上。現在他們稱之爲，我忘記了名字。有一個飛行員被殺了，他們以他的名字來命名。但無論如何，那裏有X-15火箭飛機，他們從X-1開始，打破音障。所以在1964年7月，我前往那裏。工作要求之一是需要低級別的安全許可。有一份問卷，問卷問道，你是否認識任何共產黨員？我不知道我的父母曾經是黨員，所以我回答了否定。他們繼續問，我繼續回答否定。 就像是，請給我們正確的答案，但是沒有。於是，一個大約持續了一個半月的過程開始了。我被召來進行更多的面試。在這個過程中，我學到的是，如果你在政府工作，當然，如果你想讓某件事不發生，確保它給了一個官僚一個問題。官僚會通過擺脫你來解決問題。他們擺脫了我。他們基本上說，我們將建議否決你的許可。他們實際上沒有這樣做。他們說，你將會，我們建議你辭職並返回伯克利。作爲你辭職的理由，他們說我們將建議否決你的許可。他們實際上沒有否決，所以他們沒有寫在紙上。我們建議你辭去職位並返回學校。所以我就這樣做了。我不打算大驚小怪。

And I returned to Berkeley on October 16, 1964. Now, what had happened in my absence at the beginning of October was the beginning of the free speech movement. And this has shaped almost everything I’ve done since then. The free speech movement was a continuation of the civil rights movement that moved from the south to the north. And there were already civil rights protests around employment discrimination underway in San Francisco when I left. And there was a set up to support that movement. And there was support for it being organized at the University of California. There was an entrance to the campus. There were tables that were placed there because they were understood to be outside of the university property. Now, this process got the attention of the local power broker, a senator who owned a newspaper. And he was very conservative. And he began to protest to the university through back channels that the student activity cannot continue. You have to do something about it. And so on September 14th, I was still in Edwards at that time. The university told the students they discovered that they thought the land that the tables were on was not university property. But they discovered they had never done the paperwork to give it to the city and make it public property. And so they all had to take the tables away and stop their support activity. There were rules in place such that if someone wanted to present a speaker at the university, they had to be approved by the administration. And you couldn’t even post a notice without having the university approve it.

我在1964年10月16日回到了伯克利。在我不在的十月初發生了一件事，那就是言論自由運動的開始。這幾乎塑造了我之後的一切。言論自由運動是民權運動的延續，從南方傳到了北方。當我離開時，舊金山已經有了關於僱傭歧視的民權抗議活動，並且有一個支持該運動的組織。加州大學也在組織支持活動，校園入口處擺放了桌子，因爲它們被認爲是校外的。這個過程引起了當地權力經紀人的注意，他是一位擁有報紙的保守派參議員。他開始通過後門向大學抗議，表示學生活動不能繼續下去，必須採取措施。於是在9月14日，當時我還在愛德華茲，大學告訴學生他們發現那些桌子所在的土地並不屬於大學。 但他們發現他們從未辦理文件將其交給城市並使其成爲公共財產。因此，他們都不得不拿走桌子，停止他們的支持活動。根據規定，如果有人想在大學演講，必須經過行政部門的批准。甚至連張貼通知都需要經過大學的批准。

In 1964, the students were in no mood for such opposition because Freedom Summer had happened in Mississippi and Alabama, organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who had organized the sit-in protests and so forth. And there they were trying to register voters. What they also wanted was to get white students in the north to experience the terror that was in place in the south. And they were successful doing that. Some people died. And when they returned in September, it was as if they were veterans returning from combat. They sensed that clearly. And now the university says, no, you can stop doing that. They weren’t going to stop doing it. In fact, they were going to do it back at the university. And so they decided all of the political groups which spanned the entire spectrum, from the ultra-conservative right to the ultra-left, came together because their interest was threatened. They formed a working group. They decided to go not just set up tables where they were currently, but to go into the university in front of the administration building and set up a table there. And of course, the administrators came out and took their names and people would fill the place. And so there were hundreds of names taken. The next day that was continuing and the university made a very stupid decision. They had the campus police pull up a car out front because they had one person who was a graduate of the university, whom they had cited. And you weren’t supposed to be there if you weren’t a student. So he was to be arrested. There was a law that had recently been passed about arresting. You could arrest non-students on campus. They put him in the police car at noon. This is when everybody came off campus to go get lunch. Ten thousand people must have been passing by. And as soon as they put him in the police car, everybody shouted, sit down, which they would do in the south. Everybody sat down, captured the car. They held it for 32 hours. The fellow inside was unable to go to the restroom, but he he wanted to be in that car. And people began to ask for permission, take off their shoes and stand on the car and talk to the crowd. They brought in an amplifier. And so this went on, as they say, for 32 hours. The university began to negotiate or at least act as if they were negotiating. That was the beginning of a negotiation process that was still underway when I returned to campus. What was going on there was, I consider, a revolution. I consider revolutions are mass events. This was certainly a mass event. It overthrows an existing order. Now, the order we were overthrowing was known in Latin as in loco parentis, that the university acted in the place of the parent. And at that time was in loco parentis. The university was acting in place of the parent. At that time, the age of majority, the age when one was considered to become an adult, was 21. And so most of the students were minors, were children. So the university was acting as a parent to the children. That had to go. And the third characteristics of a revolution are that they have much greater consequences than are anticipated. We only wanted our tables. What we got was the counterculture. Because we won. It took until December. By that time I had returned to campus. I had my old job back. My professor was sympathetic because he and his mother had fled Hitler in 1938. And as soon as he heard that I was out of the NASA, he said, you have your old job back if you want it. So I was working on campus. No classes, no homework. I could participate. And I did.

1964年，學生們對這樣的反對毫不感興趣，因爲密西西比和亞拉巴馬州發生了自由夏季運動，由學生非暴力協調委員會組織，他們組織了靜坐抗議等活動。他們試圖註冊選民。他們還希望讓北方的白人學生體驗南方的恐怖。他們成功了。有些人死了。當他們在九月回來時，就像是從戰場上歸來的老兵一樣。他們清楚地感受到這一點。現在大學說，不，你們可以停止這樣做了。他們不會停止。事實上，他們打算在大學裏繼續這樣做。所以他們決定所有政治團體，從極端保守派到極左派，都聚在一起，因爲他們的利益受到了威脅。他們組成了一個工作小組。他們決定不僅在他們目前所在的地方設立桌子，還要進入大學行政大樓前設立一個桌子。 當然，管理人員出來了，記下了他們的名字，人們紛紛湧入了那個地方。於是，數百個名字被記下。第二天這種情況還在繼續，大學做出了一個非常愚蠢的決定。他們讓校園警察把一輛車開到前面，因爲他們有一個畢業於該大學的人被他們罰款了。如果你不是學生，你就不應該在那裏。所以他要被逮捕。最近通過了一項關於逮捕的法律。你可以在校園逮捕非學生。他們在中午把他放進了警車。這時候每個人都離開校園去喫午飯。一萬人肯定經過了這裏。他們一把把他推進警車，大家都喊着坐下，這是南方人的做法。每個人都坐下，圈住了車。他們把車圈住了32個小時。裏面的人無法上廁所，但他想待在那輛車裏。人們開始請求許可，脫下鞋子站在車上和人羣交談。他們帶來了一個擴音器。所以這個情況持續了32個小時，就像他們所說的那樣。 大學開始談判，或者至少表現得像是在談判。這是一個談判過程的開始，當我回到校園時，這個過程仍在進行中。在那裏發生的事情，我認爲是一場革命。我認爲革命是大規模的事件。這絕對是一場大規模的事件。它推翻了現有的秩序。現在，我們推翻的秩序在拉丁語中被稱爲in loco parentis，即大學代替父母的地位。當時大學就是在代替父母。當時，成年的年齡，也就是被認爲成年的年齡，是21歲。所以大多數學生都是未成年人，是孩子。大學就像父母一樣照顧着孩子。這種情況必須改變。革命的第三個特點是，它們的後果比預期的要大得多。我們只是想要我們的桌子。但我們得到的是反文化。因爲我們贏了。直到12月才實現。那時我已經回到校園。我重新得到了我的舊工作。我的教授很同情，因爲他和他的母親在1938年逃離了希特勒。 當他聽說我已經離開NASA時，他說，如果你想的話，你可以回到你的舊工作。所以我在校園裏工作。沒有課程，沒有功課。我可以參與其中。而我也確實參與了。

We had the sit-in. It was known in the official stories, the Sproul Hall sit-in. It was the sit-in and everyone knows about it from the histories. December 2, 1964, I was in there. I was arrested. I had to make that decision when I came back because the security people at NASA said, you keep your nose clean and you can be back here next year if you want. If I learned how to give the right answers to the bureaucrats’ questions. But I decided no. I would take the advice in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Where Huck has to decide whether or not to assist Jim the slave in escaping. And he has a struggle with his conscience. He’s being told, you’ll go to hell if you do this. But Jim is his friend. And in the book, it’s an important point. He says, all right, I’ll go to hell. I’ll help my friend. And I had to make that decision. So if I never get a job in the government, I’ll survive. But I’ve got to do this. So I spent one night in jail and my professor got me out and the whole thing went forward.

我們進行了靜坐抗議。官方故事稱之爲斯普勞爾大廳靜坐抗議。這是一次靜坐抗議，每個人都從歷史中知道這件事。1964年12月2日，我在那裏。我被逮捕了。回來後，我必須做出決定，因爲NASA的安全人員告訴我，只要保持乾淨，明年你還可以回來。只要我學會如何對官僚問題給出正確的答案。但我決定不這麼做。我會遵從馬克·吐溫的《哈克費恩歷險記》中的建議。在書中，哈克必須決定是否幫助逃亡的奴隸吉姆。他在內心掙扎。有人告訴他，如果你這麼做，你會下地獄。但吉姆是他的朋友。在書中，這是一個重要的觀點。他說，好吧，我願意下地獄。我要幫助我的朋友。我也必須做出這個決定。所以，即使我在政府找不到工作，我也能生存下去。但我必須這麼做。所以我在監獄裏待了一個晚上，我的教授幫我保釋，整個事情繼續進行下去。

But in January of 1965, the university had basically given up. And they said, our point was, this is a public university. It is public property. You don’t have the right to prevent the application of the Constitution on this property. A private property owner can do it. So private universities aren’t part of what we’re talking about. But this is public space. And we want to be able to use public space the way the Constitution guarantees us. And so we were fighters for the Constitution. And we won. The faculty came to support us in a meeting of the faculty senate. So what do you do when you win? Suddenly, everybody felt as if everything was possible. I’d felt that way myself. I signed up for a political science course. I was an engineering student. We don’t do that. But I did. And I began writing my ideas about organizing a free university. A lot of other people did things. They started little magazines. And they had tables on campus with their advertising and so forth. This was unheard of. This was the beginning of the counterculture as we know it, the current counterculture. It could be that as many as 5,000 to 10,000 students left the university. Nobody has studied this. Somebody should study it. And decided, I’m not going on this university track. I want to do what I want to do. And they became the basis of the San Francisco hippie community, the Haight-Ashbury. Where did those people come from? They were there starting in 1965. In fact, the Vietnam War was escalating at that point. We heard a little bit about it. But somebody at the end of the last rally said, Wait a minute now. We have a war we need to stop. And that grew and grew and grew.

但在1965年的一月，大學基本上已經放棄了。他們說，我們的觀點是，這是一所公立大學。這是公共財產。你沒有權利阻止憲法在這個財產上的應用。私人財產所有者可以這樣做。所以私立大學不屬於我們所討論的範疇。但這是公共空間。我們希望能夠按照憲法保證的方式使用公共空間。所以我們是憲法的捍衛者。我們贏了。教職員會在一次教職員會議上支持我們。那麼當你贏了之後，你該怎麼辦呢？突然間，每個人都覺得一切都是可能的。我自己也有這種感覺。我報名參加了一門政治學課程。我是一名工程學生。我們不這樣做。但我做了。我開始寫下我對組織一所自由大學的想法。很多其他人也做了一些事情。他們開始出版小雜誌。他們在校園裏擺放桌子做廣告等等。這是前所未聞的。這是我們所知的反文化的開始。可能有多達5,000到10,000名學生離開了大學。沒有人研究過這個。 有人應該研究這個。然後決定，我不會走上這條大學的道路。我想做我想做的事情。他們成爲了舊金山嬉皮士小區海特-阿什伯裏的基礎。這些人從哪裏來？他們從1965年開始就在那裏。事實上，越戰當時正在升級。我們對此有一點了解。但在最後一次集會結束時，有人說，等一下。我們有一場需要停止的戰爭。這個想法越來越大。

So we were then into what you would call the 60s. And I was in it. I saw myself as a technologist because that’s really what I knew. I was no good with people. I couldn’t organize or anything. But when you organize, you need some technology. And I tried to work on that. Now during this time, an event took place which was critical in my development. We were at the headquarters of the Free Speech Movement, which is a little house. And some people ran up and said, the police have surrounded the campus. Now they hadn’t. Campus is gigantic. You can’t surround it. But suddenly everyone was concerned. Somebody there knew me. Their father had been an engineer. And they said, quick, make us a police radio. Well, I knew that in 1939, their father’s day, the police radio frequencies were just above the standard broadcast frequency. So you could reach in the back of a radio and readjust a particular adjustment and bring that down and you could listen to police calls. But in 1964, that was not possible. It was a different frequency band, different modulation scheme, everything. And I felt, how can I explain this to everyone? Everyone’s looking at me. It sounded to me as if everybody had said, make us a police radio all at once. So I said, you don’t understand. It’s harder to do. And everyone at once, as far as I thought, responded, never mind about that. Make us a police radio. And I realized at that point that I was already too late. They weren’t going to get their police radio. But I had been waiting for people to tell me what they needed me to do. And that was my mistake that I realized. I had to go out and discover what I could do, what technologies I could find and learn and put together so that the next time this happened, I would be able to say, well, you can’t have that, but here’s what you can have that I’ve got ready. If I couldn’t do that, I had no business even pretending to be a technologist for this group. And so from that point on, I became an explorer. And nobody was going to tell me what I had to do because nobody even knew that that problem existed. So I had to find out what could be done, what needed to be done, what I could do, what I could get other people to do, and put things together and have them ready. And so I went on through several years doing that, not having much in the way of results. I helped organize radio squads for big demonstrations. But all that really didn’t make any difference. But again, from that point on, I was on the path of exploration because no other path would get me where I thought I had to go. Now, in the process of all this, there was a point when there was a gigantic demonstration. I was heavily involved. There were police informants that I was assigned to get out of there. And then it was over. And my world collapsed in on me. I entered what the psychologists call a stage of depression. I suddenly lost all motivation. I could go to classes, but I couldn’t do homework. I would eat dinner, fall into bed, and sleep until the next morning. This is not an uncommon condition. It is known as the common cold of mental illness. But I couldn’t stay in school. So I had to drop out. I didn’t consider going to the hospital. The treatments were very early at that time. And I think I did the right thing.

所以我們當時進入了你們所稱之爲60年代。而我就在其中。我把自己看作是一個技術專家，因爲那是我真正瞭解的領域。我不擅長與人打交道，也不擅長組織什麼。但是當你組織時，你需要一些技術。我試圖在這方面做些工作。在這段時間裏，發生了一件對我的發展至關重要的事件。我們當時在自由言論運動的總部，一個小房子裏。有人跑過來說，警察包圍了校園。事實並非如此。校園非常大，無法被包圍。但突然間大家都很擔心。那裏有人認識我，他們的父親曾經是一名工程師。他們說，快，給我們做一個警察無線電。嗯，我知道在1939年，也就是他們父親的時代，警察無線電頻率剛好在標準廣播頻率之上。所以你可以伸手進入收音機的後面，調整一個特定的設置，將頻率調低，然後你就可以聽到警察的呼叫。但是在1964年，那已經不可能了。頻率段不同，調製方案也不同，一切都不同。我感到困惑，我怎麼向大家解釋這個問題呢？大家都在看着我。 對我來說，聽起來好像每個人都說，立刻給我們做一個警察無線電。所以我說，你們不明白，這很難做到。然後每個人都立刻回答，不要管那些。給我們做一個警察無線電。我意識到那時我已經太晚了。他們不會得到他們的警察無線電。但我一直在等人們告訴我他們需要我做什麼。這是我的錯誤，我意識到了。我必須去發現我能做什麼，我能找到和學習什麼技術，並將它們結合起來，這樣下次發生這種情況時，我就能說，嗯，你不能得到那個，但這是我準備好的你可以得到的。如果我做不到這一點，我就沒有資格假裝成這個團體的技術專家。所以從那時起，我成爲了一個探險家。沒有人會告訴我我必須做什麼，因爲沒有人甚至知道那個問題的存在。所以我必須找出可以做什麼，需要做什麼，我能做什麼，我能讓其他人做什麼，然後把這些東西組合起來並準備好。所以我接下來幾年一直這樣做，但成果不多。 我幫忙組織了大型示威活動的無線電小組。但那真的沒有什麼差別。但從那時起，我就走上了探索的道路，因爲沒有其他道路能帶我到我認爲必須去的地方。在這一切的過程中，有一個時刻有一次巨大的示威活動。我深度參與其中。有些警察線人是被我指認而趕出去的。然後一切結束了。我的世界在我身上崩潰了。我進入了心理學家所稱的抑鬱階段。我突然失去了所有的動力。我可以去上課，但我無法做作業。我會喫晚飯，然後倒在牀上，睡到第二天早上。這並不是一種罕見的狀況。它被稱爲心理疾病的普通感冒。但我無法繼續上學。所以我不得不退學。我沒有考慮去醫院。當時的治療方法還很早期。我認爲我做了正確的選擇。

So I knew that companies were advertising for electronics technicians. I knew I was sufficiently skilled to be an electronics technician. And so I put together a little resume of my summary of my three cooperative work-study experiences and took it down to a company that I knew about. They looked at it. They said, this doesn’t look like a technician. This looks like a junior engineer. Would you be willing to take a test? And that was exactly what I had spent years learning how to do, take tests. I did very well on the test. I was sent to what turned out to be the best possible place. And I was designing electronic equipment for use in cassette tape reproduction, which was one of the big business that this company had. So I worked in that for a total of four years. But there was another time when I dropped out of that and worked for the Underground Press, which I had been assisting with since 1966. No, 60. Yes, six. So I dropped out. I went to work. I dropped out of that. I went into the counterculture. And finally, I ran out of money. And a psychologist told me, how have you managed to avoid psychotherapy? Which was a good question to hear. I had to, apparently, I was a candidate. So I dropped back in. I called my old boss and said, could you use my talents again? And he said, yes. And so I went back to the job. I went into psychotherapy. And that was the end of 1969.

所以我知道公司正在招聘電子技術人員。我知道我有足夠的技能成爲一名電子技術人員。於是我整理了一份簡歷，總結了我三次合作工讀經驗，然後拿到了一家我知道的公司。他們看了看，說這看起來不像是一個技術人員，這看起來像是一個初級工程師。你願意參加一個測試嗎？這正是我多年來學習如何參加測試的內容。我在測試中表現得非常好。我被派到了一個最好的地方。我在那裏設計用於卡帶複製的電子設備，這是該公司的主要業務之一。所以我在那裏工作了四年。但也有一段時間，我退出了那份工作，轉而爲地下報紙工作，我從1966年開始就一直在協助。不，是60年。是的，六十年。所以我退出了。我去工作了。我退出了那個工作。我加入了反主流文化。最後，我沒錢了。一位心理學家問我，你是如何避免心理治療的？這是一個好問題。顯然，我是一個候選人。 於是我又回來了。我給我的舊上司打了個電話，問他是否還需要我的才能？他說是的。於是我又回到了工作崗位。我開始接受心理治療。這就是1969年的結束。

So I spent the year of 1970 and 71 in therapy and working. And I was in good enough condition to return to the university in 1971. I had told myself that when I dropped out, I was five years ahead of my classmates. So I had five years to get my degree. So I made it in four and a half. And then by that time, my explorations in the counterculture had pointed me towards a goal and a method of getting to the goal. I’m going to break here. I think I should go to the bathroom. And this is a very good time to break because now this is the rest of the story. You should be asking that question now. May I?

所以我在1970年和1971年度度過了治療和工作。我當時的狀態足夠好，可以在1971年回到大學。我告訴自己，當我輟學時，我比同學們領先五年。所以我有五年的時間來獲得學位。結果我用了四年半就完成了。到那個時候，我在反主流文化中的探索已經指引我朝着一個目標和達到目標的方法前進。我要在這裏停一下。我想我應該去洗個手間。現在正是休息的好時機，因爲接下來就是故事的餘下部分。你現在應該問這個問題了。可以嗎？

Lee: I’m going to step back now to the free speech movement and move forward in another line of discussion about community technology. The free speech movement was successful not because it organized everything in a rigid fashion and told people what to think. It was successful because it created the conditions through which a large group of people, there were 20,000 students on campus, formed a community. It did that by establishing structures of communication. I won’t go into the details, but we had ways of finding out what the discussions were like, of being able to aggregate those discussions and then transmit back to the people who were, for instance, students who were running the student game room, which was a big place, meeting a lot of students all day long. The discussion would be about what’s going on with this protest. They would know because their friends were on the steering committee, the executive committee, and they were reporting up the line and they were getting information back. So we had an information feedback loop going. We had several of those. The key was that, as someone told me later, the barriers to communication between people went down. You could talk with anyone about the crisis and they could talk to you and you could establish a relationship. You couldn’t do that previously. Everybody was in their own little box. It was that creation of community, providing the ability for people to create their own community among themselves that was the successful factor in the free speech movement. As I said, the free speech movement was formative for me and for thousands of others. This was demonstrated by the fact that so many people began to live their lives in a different way. I guess I did too. My becoming an explorer was my expression of counterculture.

李：現在我要回到言論自由運動，並在另一個討論小區科技的方向上前進。言論自由運動之所以成功，並不是因爲它以嚴格的方式組織一切並告訴人們該怎麼想。它之所以成功，是因爲它創造了一個條件，使得一大羣人（校園上有20,000名學生）形成了一個小區。它通過建立溝通結構來實現這一點。我不會詳細講述，但我們有方法瞭解討論的內容，能夠彙總這些討論，然後將信息傳遞給那些管理學生遊戲室（一個很大的地方，每天都有很多學生聚集在那裏）的學生。討論的內容可能是關於抗議活動的進展。他們之所以知道，是因爲他們的朋友在指導委員會、執行委員會上，他們向上報告，然後再得到信息反饋。所以我們建立了一個信息反饋循環。我們有幾個這樣的循環。關鍵在於，正如有人後來告訴我，人與人之間的溝通障礙降低了。 你可以和任何人談論危機，他們也可以和你交談，你們可以建立關係。以前你做不到這一點。每個人都活在自己的小盒子裏。正是通過創造社區，爲人們提供了在他們之間建立自己社區的能力，這纔是言論自由運動的成功因素。正如我所說，言論自由運動對我和成千上萬的其他人來說都具有重要意義。這一點可以通過如此多的人開始以不同的方式生活來證明。我想我也是如此。我成爲一名探險家是我對反主流文化的表達。

So I came out of that thinking it’s not that hard to create community, to create the possibility of community. We have seen this too in the civil rights movement in the South. That’s where they created community, mostly around the churches. It was that community that carried out the protests, not individuals. I knew that as a technologist I had to work in the future. I had to try to create the tools necessary for people to be able to create such communities on an ongoing basis. I couldn’t have it focused on one kind of community, one set of politics, one set of issues. There had to be general tools that everybody could use. What were those tools? I had to try things. I began making contact with people in the counterculture. I was writing for an underground paper which had started out of the Vietnam War protests in 1965. I came in 1966. I stayed with them until about 1969. I gathered a lot of contacts that way. I had to work with people in the counterculture. Even though I was often wearing a suit for my job, dressed like the opposition, people didn’t see it that way.

所以我從中得出的結論是，創建小區並不是那麼困難，創造小區的可能性也是如此。我們在南方的民權運動中也看到了這一點。那是他們圍繞教堂創建的小區。正是這個小區進行了抗議活動，而不是個人。作爲一名技術專家，我知道我必須致力於未來。我必須試圖創造出讓人們能夠持續創建這樣小區所需的工具。我不能將其侷限於一種小區、一套政治觀點或一系列問題。必須有通用的工具供每個人使用。那些工具是什麼？我必須嘗試一些事情。我開始與反主流文化的人們取得聯繫。我曾經爲一份地下報紙寫作，該報紙始於1965年的越戰抗議活動。我在1966年加入，一直待到1969年左右。通過這種方式，我建立了很多聯繫。我必須與反主流文化的人們合作。即使我在工作中經常穿着西裝，像對立派系一樣打扮，但人們並不這麼看待。

I thought that the underground press being a community-based newspaper would be a good vehicle, but it turned out not to be so. Because of the structure of communication, in a newspaper everything is printed the same way. It is basically a broadcast medium. There is an editor. Everything goes through the editor. They have their particular interests. There were things like personal advertisements there, but they quickly evolved into sex ads, prostitution ads, and so forth. They sold papers, but that was not the goal. The goal was to create feedback loops within the community. I had to give up on publication. One of the things we printed in the bar, in the underground page, and one of the things we printed was a listing of what are called switchboards. These are places you can call. They all have a phone number. They would take a particular area of interest and they would collect questions and offers of information and offers of resources and make connections between them. People would call and say, I need something. Somebody had already called in and said I have something that maybe somebody can use. They all focused on a particular area of interest. I went out and I researched. I talked with them. I found it was a start because it was not broadcast communication. It was non-broadcast communication through the telephone. The media we have for non-broadcast communication are, of course, personal discussion, telephone, and postal. That’s pretty much it prior to computers. So I knew about them.

我原以爲地下報紙作爲一份以小區爲基礎的報紙會是一個好的傳播工具，但事實並非如此。由於溝通結構的關係，在報紙中一切都以相同的方式印刷出來，基本上是一種廣播媒體。有一位編輯，所有內容都要經過編輯的審覈，他們有自己的特定興趣。起初那裏有一些個人廣告，但很快就演變成了性服務廣告、賣淫廣告等等。雖然這些廣告賣得很好，但這並不是我們的目標。我們的目標是在小區中建立反饋循環。我不得不放棄出版。我們在酒吧裏印刷了一些東西，地下版面上有一個列表，列出了所謂的交換電話。這些地方都有一個電話號碼。他們會收集特定領域的問題、信息和資源提供，並在它們之間建立聯繫。人們會打電話來說，我需要某樣東西。已經有人打電話來說，我有一些東西可能有人可以用。他們都專注於特定的領域。我出去做了一些研究。 我和他們交談過。我發現這是一個開始，因爲這不是廣播通訊。這是通過電話進行的非廣播通訊。在計算機出現之前，我們用於非廣播通訊的媒介當然包括個人討論、電話和郵件。大致就是這樣。所以我對它們有所瞭解。

I figured maybe they could use some improvements in their technology of keeping their files because it was all random. The file would basically be the thinking of one person and when they got burned out, overloaded, someone else would come in and start all over again. Now, I had been introduced to computers in 1959 when I was a freshman in high school. My brother started a computer club. He wanted me to be the chief engineer because he knew I was into electronics. That didn’t go very well. We were trying to issue commands to something in a way that was totally random. We got random results. I decided that computers were too complex. One little mistake and it goes to hell. Forget about computers. I studied analog electronics, audio, and so forth. That lasted until 1970. I had done good analog design work for the company I was with. When I returned after I called up and dropped back in, they had a new contract for a digital system. If I wanted to work, I would work on that. It had its analog elements. I worked with those, but I couldn’t avoid having to learn to write programs to make them work. I did so. They sent me to learn a particular simple programming language. In that process, because in those days, 1970, there were no personal computers. They sent me to a place where you could use terminals on a computer. The computer was on a network. The instructors would tell me, they turned off the computer in Los Angeles and shifted our job over to the computer in Kansas City. Geography is irrelevant. This is interesting. This is my introduction to computer networks. They showed how when you’re writing a file and you store it, if you put asterisks in front of the name, one, two, or three asterisks, you make it accessible to different levels of public access. Three asterisks, everybody on the system can view it. I realized, ah, so there’s my introduction to databases. I didn’t know the term at the time. I said, you could create communities of interest this way. Of course, I had been researching and learning what was going on with people in group households and so forth. Trying to find out what could be done with information there.

我想也許他們在文件保存技術方面需要一些改進，因爲一切都是隨機的。文件基本上是一個人的思考，當他們精疲力竭、超負荷時，另一個人會接手重新開始。我在1959年上高中時就接觸到了計算機。我哥哥成立了一個計算機俱樂部，他希望我成爲首席工程師，因爲他知道我對電子學很感興趣。但結果並不理想。我們試圖以完全隨機的方式向某個東西發出指令，結果也是隨機的。我認爲計算機太複雜了，一個小錯誤就會導致一切崩潰。我放棄了計算機，轉而學習模擬電子學、音頻等等。這種情況一直持續到1970年。我在所在公司做了很好的模擬設計工作。當我回來後，他們有了一個新的數字系統合同。如果我想工作，就得從事這個項目。其中也有一些模擬元素。我和這些元素一起工作，但無法避免學習編寫程序使它們正常運行。於是我開始學習一種簡單的編程語言。 在那個過程中，因爲在那些日子裏，也就是1970年，還沒有個人計算機。他們把我送到一個可以使用計算機終端的地方。這臺計算機連接在一個網絡上。教師告訴我，他們關掉了洛杉磯的計算機，把我們的工作轉移到堪薩斯城的計算機上。地理位置不重要。這很有趣。這是我對計算器網絡的初次接觸。他們展示了當你寫一個文件並存儲它時，如果在名字前面加上星號，一個、兩個或三個星號，你可以使其對不同級別的公共訪問可見。三個星號，系統上的每個人都可以查看它。我意識到，啊，這就是我對數據庫的初次瞭解。當時我還不知道這個術語。我說，你可以通過這種方式創建興趣小區。當然，我一直在研究和了解人們在羣體住戶中的情況等等。試圖找出在那裏可以做些什麼。

It struck me finally that what I was looking for was a network of computers. I remember saying, oh, where am I going to get a computer? But within a year, I was in contact through my counterculture contacts with a group that had been working on establishing just that kind of computer. In fact, they had secured a mainframe computer. It was the same computer that Doug Engelbart, a famous person in our industry, had used to perform what has been known as the mother of all demonstrations and demos. He showed how you could use a computer personally. It changed a lot of people’s thinking, including my own. I didn’t even know that it was his computer that had been returned in exchange for another one that we had set up. I was responsible for maintenance. I made contact with a group. I joined up. As soon as I graduated with my degree, I was living and working in that building, setting up and maintaining that computer. I came to them and said, I have this idea that I want to pursue. I want to try to be able to create lists of what people have to offer and have people who want to make connections, do things, need things, make contact through that same means. I knew I was trying to do that all along. I just didn’t know the technology. Now I was there with the technology. I was halfway trained in how to use it. I brought more people in. We created a project. We called it the Community Memory Project. After years of work, I didn’t do any of the software. We had an information retrieval system that was up to the task. It was one where nobody decides the categories in advance. The users assign categories to their answers. We tried to get the switchboards to use it. They had never heard of us. They weren’t going to put any money, if they didn’t have any money, to rent a terminal so they could use it over the phone. That was how it had to be used in 1973.

終於我明白我所追尋的是一個計算機網絡。我記得當時我問自己，哪裏可以找到一臺計算機呢？但在一年內，透過我在反主流文化圈子的人脈，我認識了一個致力於建立這種計算機網絡的團體。事實上，他們已經獲得了一臺大型計算機。這臺計算機正是我們行業中著名的人物道格·恩格爾巴特用來進行被稱爲「所有演示和展示之母」的演示的同一臺計算機。他展示瞭如何個人使用計算機，這改變了很多人的思維，包括我自己。我甚至不知道那臺計算機是他的，後來被換成了另一臺我們設置的計算機。我負責維護這臺計算機，並與這個團體取得了聯繫，最終加入了他們。畢業後，我立刻住在那棟大樓裏工作，設置和維護那臺計算機。我向他們提出了一個想法，我想嘗試創建一個人們可以列出自己提供的東西，並通過這種方式與需要聯繫、做事情、需要東西的人建立聯繫的清單。 我一直知道我在努力做那件事。只是我不知道技術。現在我有了技術。我已經學會了一半如何使用它。我引進了更多的人。我們創建了一個項目。我們稱之爲「社區記憶項目」。經過多年的工作，我沒有做任何軟件。我們有一個能夠勝任的信息檢索系統。這是一個沒有人事先決定類別的系統。使用者將類別分配給他們的答案。我們試圖讓交換機使用它。他們從未聽說過我們。如果他們沒有錢租用終端機來通過電話使用它，他們不會投入任何資金。那就是1973年使用它的方式。

Someone else, Ephraim Lipkin, a friend of mine I had brought in to be a systems programmer, said, what if we just put a terminal out in public and saw what people did with it? You collect something into the database. Our problem now is we have nothing in the database. It’s completely irrelevant. So we did that. The student government at Berkeley had a record store. They had established, in order to drive down prices of records, and we asked if we could put a terminal in the record store. The student council said, fine, go ahead and do it. No bureaucracy. So we did. In August of 1973, we opened our Teletype terminal, a noisy teleprinter. It worked at 10 characters per second, chump, chump, chump, chump, chump, chump, chump, chump, chump like that. In the hallway of the record store, which was on the second floor, next to a bulletin board that was used by musicians, and I was afraid people would talk to it and say, what is this? It’s a computer. Do you want to use it? They would say, no, I’m afraid of computers. But that didn’t happen. Completely the opposite happened. Only one person ever had that reaction.

有人，Ephraim Lipkin，是我的朋友，我讓他來當系統程序設計師，他說，要不我們在公共場所放一個終端機，看看人們會怎麼用？你把東西收集到數據庫裏。我們現在的問題是，數據庫裏什麼都沒有。完全不相關。所以我們就這麼做了。伯克利的學生會有一家唱片店。他們爲了降低唱片價格而成立，我們問他們能不能在唱片店放一個終端機。學生會說，好啊，去吧。沒有繁文縟節。所以我們就這麼做了。1973年8月，我們開放了我們的Teletype終端機，一臺嘈雜的電傳打字機。它每秒鐘可以打10個字符，咚、咚、咚、咚、咚、咚、咚、咚、咚，就像這樣。它放在唱片店的走廊裏，走廊在二樓，旁邊有一個供音樂家使用的佈告欄，我擔心人們會跟它說話，問這是什麼？這是一臺計算機。你想用嗎？他們可能會說，不，我害怕計算機。但事實並非如此。完全相反的事情發生了。只有一個人有這種反應。

And so we would say, would you like to use our electronic bulletin board? We’re using a computer. There was this thing, and the person who was saying this was seated next to it, not in front of it. And it was in a sound-obscuring cardboard box, but it had two holes. You could put your hands in there and use the keyboard. And you could pull a clear vinyl panel off and take out the paper. So you could walk away with the printout. And everybody said, oh, that’s great, can I use it? And they did. And in fact, we thought originally there would be like three categories, jobs, cars, and housing. But it completely spanned the entire human spectrum. In fact, we thought it became a problem. And very few things clustered together in the information space. And we went on through various generations of it trying to encourage that clustering. It’s still a problem. But people used it. And they had uses they had in mind for it. And they brought them to there. Somebody somehow entered a typewriter graphic. You could create a picture out of typewriter, in this case teletype characters. You had a graphic of a sailboat. How they entered it would have taken hours. I don’t know. But they did that. And Post It, just for artistic sake, a poet would enter little lines of verse and say, for more poetry, call the following number. He would sell them poetry.

所以我們會說，你想使用我們的電子公告板嗎？我們正在使用一臺電腦。有這樣一件事，說這話的人坐在它旁邊，而不是面對着它。它被放在一個隔音的紙板盒子裏，但是有兩個孔。你可以把手放進去使用鍵盤。你還可以拿下一個透明的乙烯基面板，取出紙張。所以你可以帶着打印出來的東西離開。每個人都說，哦，太棒了，我可以用嗎？他們確實使用了。事實上，我們最初認爲會有三個類別，工作、汽車和住房。但它完全涵蓋了整個人類範圍。事實上，我們認爲這成爲了一個問題。在信息空間中，很少有東西聚集在一起。我們通過各種世代的嘗試來鼓勵這種聚集。這仍然是一個問題。但人們使用了它。他們對它有自己的用途，並將它們帶到了那裏。有人以某種方式輸入了一個打字機圖形。你可以用打字機（在這種情況下是電傳打字機）字符創建一幅圖片。他們輸入這個可能花了幾個小時。我不知道。但他們確實做到了。 而且發佈它，僅僅爲了藝術的緣故，一位詩人會輸入一些小詩句，然後說，想要更多詩歌，請撥打以下號碼。他會賣詩給他們。

We had somebody where we asked, we entered a question, where can I find good bagels in the Bay Area? The bagel was circular, big, walled. And they weren’t very available then. They were East Coast. I had eaten them all growing up. And so two people responded, here’s where you can find them. Here’s another place you can find bagels. The third person was the gleaner. He said, if you call the following phone number and ask for the following name, an ex-bagel maker will teach you how to make bagels. And this was a spontaneous learning exchange. Now, learning exchanges have been postulated in 1970 in a book by Ivan Pillich called De-Schooling Society. And here it was. It just came in out of the front door. So we had moments like that, and we had a lot of the whole spectrum of results. But I like to say that in opening community memory this way, we opened the door to cyberspace and found that it was hospitable territory. People could use cyberspace, could use the space, the information space, within a networked computer system. And they could have fun with it. They could use it for more creative things than we could think of. And so this, as I think about it more, was a great discovery. And we went ahead. The first system stayed up until 1975. We approved it slightly. And I began designing a modem because modem prices were too high. And I didn’t know that I could successfully design a modem, but I did. And then we decided to split our group off from the group with the computer, largely because that computer was a drag on our development. It took a lot of effort to get it up, get it working. You think you plug a computer into the wall. No. You needed wires this thick, three of them, mounted in big conduits and so forth. And then you needed air conditioning. It had to be in its own room. It was like seven or eight refrigerator-sized cabinets. The mainframe computer was not going to be useful. There was a new generation already coming in, a mini-computer. So we decided, okay, we’re going to shift it over. We’re going to stop this experiment and get the next one ready. And we’re going to design some software products and finance it that way.

我們問了一個人，我們提出了一個問題，哪裏可以找到灣區好喫的貝果？貝果是圓形的，又大又厚。當時並不容易找到。它們主要在東岸流行。我從小就喫過它們。然後有兩個人回答說，你可以在這裏找到它們。還有另一個地方也有貝果。第三個人是一個蒐羅者。他說，如果你撥打以下電話號碼，並提到以下名字，一位前貝果製作師傅會教你如何製作貝果。這是一次即興的學習交流。學習交流的概念最早在1970年由伊凡·皮利奇在《去學校化的社會》一書中提出。而這次交流就是這樣發生的，毫無預警地出現在我們面前。所以我們有這樣的時刻，也有各種各樣的結果。但我喜歡說，通過這種方式開放社區記憶，我們打開了通往網絡空間的大門，並發現這是一個友好的領地。人們可以利用網絡空間，可以在網絡化的計算器系統中使用信息空間。他們可以從中獲得樂趣，可以用它來做比我們能想到的更有創意的事情。所以，當我越想越多時，我覺得這是一個偉大的發現。 然後我們繼續前進。第一個系統一直持續到1975年。我們稍微批准了它。然後我開始設計一個調制解調器，因爲調制解調器的價格太高了。我不知道我能否成功設計一個調制解調器，但我做到了。然後我們決定將我們的小組從那個有計算機的小組中分離出來，主要是因爲那臺計算機對我們的發展造成了阻礙。要讓它運作起來需要付出很多努力。你以爲只需要將計算機插入插座就可以了。不是這樣的。你需要三根這麼粗的電線，安裝在大型管道中等等。然後你還需要空調。它必須放在自己的房間裏。它就像七八個冰箱大小的櫃子。這臺大型計算器將不再有用。已經有一代新的迷你計算器出現了。所以我們決定，好吧，我們要轉移過去。我們要停止這個實驗，準備下一個。我們要設計一些軟件產品，用這種方式來籌措資金。

So we went ahead and took until 1983. So that would be seven years or so. In the meantime, I went through my explorations. I was also exploring in basically pre-personal computer groups. These are computer people who wanted to figure out what would a personal computer be like. How would it be used? Before they were in existence, they knew they were coming. So that brought me into the personal computer industry. I had gained some skills with digital technology, and I was able to design some of the first personal computer accessories, the first visual display of text that worked with personal computers. I worked in a new way by opening up a window onto the memory so the computer can access the memory very, very rapidly. That’s how they worked. Prior to this, there was another program that would take information out of the memory, line it up into a series of characters, send it out to a device, the terminal. That would take this series of characters and commands and create an image out of that, text or graphics, who knows. That was the regular way things were done. I could see that the data’s in there in memory. In fact, inside the terminal itself, not a computer, there’d be a memory. You had to do that in order to have the display of information. So why not make that memory just a part of the computer’s memory? And I did. And it worked very well. And so I created a specification for a design that would grow into a computer of its own if people would form a computer club around it. My idea for computers in public operation was it was possible, if the design was such, that it grows a computer club around itself. It’s like a coral structure. Living coral elements grow on this skeleton.

所以我們繼續進行，直到1983年。大約七年左右。與此同時，我進行了一些探索。我也在基本上是在個人電腦羣體中進行探索。這些是想要弄清楚個人電腦會是什麼樣子的計算機人士。它將如何使用？在它們出現之前，他們就知道它們即將到來。這使我進入了個人電腦行業。我掌握了一些數字技術的技能，並且能夠設計一些最早的個人電腦配件，第一個與個人電腦兼容的文本可視化顯示。我通過打開一個窗口進入內存的方式來進行工作，這樣計算機就可以非常快速地訪問內存。這就是它們的工作原理。在此之前，還有另一個程序，它會將信息從內存中取出，將其排列成一系列字符，發送到設備，即終端。終端會將這一系列字符和命令創建成一個圖像，文本或圖形，誰知道呢。這是常規的做法。我可以看到數據就在內存中。實際上，在終端本身內部，不是計算機，會有一個內存。 你必須這樣做才能顯示信息。那爲什麼不把那個內存變成計算機的一部分呢？我做到了。而且效果非常好。因此，我創造了一個設計規範，如果人們圍繞它組建一個計算機俱樂部，它就能成長爲一臺獨立的計算機。我對於公共操作的計算機有一個想法，只要設計得當，它就能夠圍繞自身成長一個計算機俱樂部。就像珊瑚結構一樣，活珊瑚元素在這個骨架上生長。

So I was ready when 1975 arrived and the personal computer arrived, not only with the conceptual information and the technical skills, but also I was in the milieu of people who were going to create personal computers. I wasn’t somebody working for IBM there or hearing about them and saying, oh, really, I should get involved somehow. No, I was there. I was in the middle. And that was my exploration philosophy that I had applied to my life. And so I was able to be the first one to put the text screen on the TV or closer to the monitor, which are better than TVs. And I had this modem designed. Very quickly I was able to get that into production as a kit. Usually modems have very critical adjustments, and that’s the problem with them. I made one that would adjust itself based upon the data that it would receive. So in 1976 that was on the market. It was a modem kit. It dropped modem prices by a factor of three. In 1976 also that video display adapter came on the market. And I was then asked to design a computer around it. And that was, we took orders starting in 1976 when Apple was not yet finished with developing the Apple II. And then I got very busy doing that. The Community Memory Project was moving along as best it could.

所以，當1975年來臨時，個人計算機也隨之而來，我不僅具備了概念性的信息和技術技能，而且我身處於將要創造個人計算機的人羣中。我不是在那裏爲IBM工作，或者聽說了他們的事情，然後說，哦，真的，我應該以某種方式參與其中。不，我就在那裏。我就在其中。這就是我對生活的探索哲學。因此，我能夠第一個將文本屏幕放在電視上或更接近顯示器上，這比電視更好。我還設計了這個調制解調器。很快，我就能夠將其作爲一個套件投入生產。通常，調制解調器需要進行非常關鍵的調整，這就是它們的問題所在。我設計了一個可以根據接收到的數據自動調整的調制解調器。所以在1976年，它上市了。那是一個調制解調器套件。它將調制解調器的價格降低了三分之一。同樣在1976年，那個視頻顯示適配器也上市了。然後，有人請我設計一臺圍繞它的計算器。從1976年開始，我們開始接受訂單，而蘋果公司還沒有完成開發蘋果II。然後，我忙着做那個。 社區記憶計劃正在盡力進行中。

And so I was asked to design the Osborne I, the first portable computer, and offered a piece of the company as payment for it. And I did that. And the computer was sufficiently successful. And I got sucked into the company. And the company went bankrupt in 1983, and I became available again. But I was able to extract a certain amount of money from people who got greedy and wanted shares my stock so that I could finance the operations of Community Memory. I know that Adam Osborne, who started that computer, absolutely despised my doing this. He thought I was a clown. He was throwing my money away. Well, he went bankrupt.

所以有人要求我設計奧斯本I號，這是第一臺便攜式計算機，並提供了一部分公司股份作爲報酬。我答應了這個要求。這臺計算機取得了相當大的成功。我也被捲入了這家公司。然而，該公司在1983年破產，我又重新變得自由了。但是，我能夠從那些貪婪地想要購買我的股票的人那裏獲得一筆錢，以便爲社區記憶的運營籌措資金。我知道，那位開始這個計算器的亞當·奧斯本對我這樣做非常厭惡。他認爲我是個小丑，在浪費我的錢。結果，他自己破產了。

But in 1983 we were close to getting a second system going, but we didn’t have the money. And we showed it at a place where Steve Wozniak saw it. He said, oh, this is great. If you need any grants or anything, let me know. And we all looked at each other and said, yeah, what do we do? He said, just write a – put it down on a piece of paper where it is. I’ll produce the money. And we were a bunch of intellectuals, and they couldn’t produce anything shorter than eight pages. And Wozniak did not want to read eight pages. In fact, he acted as if he was afraid of it. I’m not going to read that. So there ensued a process of trying to get back in touch with him. Eventually I said, look, they’re starting to eat each other. We’re out of money. We need some money. He said, okay, okay, come down and pick up a check. We went down to Cupertino, to Apple. He wasn’t there. There was a check for twice the amount he had promised. So I can’t complain. Wozniak was a great help there. He enabled us to get our second system out into public. That worked in four supermarkets and a couple of other places, a bar. And it had a lot of improvements. There were three such levels of improvement, a total of three.

但在1983年，我們差點就要啓動第二個系統了，但我們沒有錢。我們在一個史蒂夫·沃茲尼亞克看到的地方展示了它。他說，哦，這太棒了。如果你們需要任何資助或其他東西，告訴我。我們互相看了看，說，是啊，我們該怎麼辦？他說，只要把它寫在一張紙上，我會提供資金。我們是一羣知識分子，無法寫出少於八頁的東西。沃茲尼亞克不想讀八頁。事實上，他表現得好像害怕它。我不會讀那個的。於是我們開始努力與他取得聯繫。最後我說，看吧，他們開始互相攻擊了。我們沒錢了。我們需要一些錢。他說，好吧，好吧，過來拿支票吧。我們去了庫比蒂諾，去了蘋果公司。他不在那裏。有一張比他承諾的金額多一倍的支票。所以我不能抱怨。沃茲尼亞克在那方面幫了大忙。他使我們的第二個系統能夠面向公衆。它在四家超市和其他幾個地方，還有一家酒吧中運行，並且有很多改進。 有三個這樣的改進層次，總共三個。

Learning all the time. And by the time of the third system, we had written a text browser, rather like the Netscape browsers, but not graphic, just text. And we had run on the lowest possible level, IBM PC, flown out. And we were now working using very simple motors that could be more complex. We had technology by that time, 1990s, that could be extensible so that we would no longer be stuck to a single computer for a database. We knew about the Internet before it existed. Arbanet, we knew about. We designed a software so that it could talk over the Internet. For the purpose, the Internet was made from backend to backend, computer to computer. Well, in 1992, I was out of money and couldn’t support it anymore. And community memory was, by 1992, I was out of money. Community memory had some software that could have been used by personal computer users. And I made the decision not to do that. That was because community memory was never supposed to be for computer users, for computer people, require any skill in using computers. And I maintained that as a principle. Now. We were also beginning to encounter problems of disputes. People would say, that person said something bad about me. I want that taken down. Well, our principle was everything stays on. And we tried to mediate it. We tried to work out strategies of avoiding it, of legal strategies. And I could see that was going to be a big part of the future. So I made the decision in 1992 when community memory ran out of its funding, that we would shut it down. And try to spread the idea and work into the future. I guess I was pretty used to working in the future. So that was the end of the community memory project as a public phenomenon. Of course, the principle is still there. I’m writing about it. I’ve got a book that I’m going to get out.

一直在學習。到了第三個系統的時候，我們已經寫了一個文本瀏覽器，有點像網景瀏覽器，但沒有圖形，只有文本。我們在最低的水平上運行，IBM PC，已經散佈出廠了。而且我們現在使用的是非常簡單的電機，可以更復雜。到了那個時候，也就是90年代，我們已經有了可以擴展的技術，不再侷限於單一計算機的數據庫。在互聯網出現之前，我們就已經知道了。我們知道了阿帕網。我們設計了一款軟件，可以通過互聯網進行通信。爲此，互聯網是從後端到後端，從計算機到計算機的。嗯，在1992年，我沒錢了，無法繼續支持它。而且到1992年，社區記憶已經有了一些可以供個人電腦用戶使用的軟件。但我決定不這樣做。因爲社區記憶從來不是爲了計算機用戶，爲了計算機人而存在的，不需要任何使用計算機的技能。我一直堅持這個原則。現在。我們也開始遇到爭議的問題。有人會說，那個人說了一些壞話關於我。 我希望那個被撤下來。嗯，我們的原則是一切都保留下來。我們試圖進行調解。我們試圖制定避免它的策略，法律策略。我可以看到這將成爲未來的重要組成部分。所以，當社區記憶的資金用盡時，我在1992年做出了關閉它的決定。並嘗試將這個想法和工作傳播到未來。我想我已經習慣了在未來工作。所以，社區記憶項目作爲一個公共現象就此結束了。當然，原則仍然存在。我正在寫關於它的書。我有一本書要出版。

Yu: Sorry. Just wait a minute. We need to change the battery again.

Yu: 不好意思，稍等一下。我們需要換電池。

By 1992 I was out of money community memory was out of money but we did have a system that could have been used by dial in access from personal computers which had never been there at the beginning. And there were people who were asking for it but I made the decision that we would not do that we would not go to online access because whoever did that had to have a computer which opened the door to how much software that computer could run and how fast and it might give them an advantage as we see from the botnets and so forth bots on the internet now who continually access stuff and can deny access or at least overload things or fill it full of nonsense. So I knew that such things were possible so I maintained the principle that we do not allow the connection of computers to our system. It’s people have to be using it directly. So I decided that we had to shut down and we would publish whatever we could make our software available but in effect the experiment had reached a point where it couldn’t continue. We were also encountering what could be legal problems when people wanted things statements taken off the system they wanted things censored. So we tried various approaches we had a lawyer talking with us who informed us that no policy is a policy and you could have a policy of no policy. Well I don’t know how to make that work. But possibly as a result of our success we were going to face a whole new set of problems that we had not anticipated. So I needed to find a job and I did in fact a research institution opened up they wanted me and I’m glad I went there for eight years but we couldn’t do community memory at the same time. So we shut it down. They gave all of the storage to the computer history museum they have it.

到了1992年，我已經沒有錢了，社區記憶也沒有錢了，但我們有一個可以通過個人計算機撥號訪問的系統，這在一開始是不存在的。有人要求這樣做，但我做出了決定，我們不會提供在線訪問，因爲那樣做的人必須擁有一臺計算機，這就打開了這臺計算機可以運行多少軟件以及運行速度的大門，這可能給他們帶來優勢，就像現在互聯網上的機器人網絡和其他機器人一樣，它們不斷訪問內容，可以拒絕訪問或者至少使事情過載或充滿無意義的內容。所以我知道這樣的事情是可能的，所以我堅持原則，不允許將計算器連接到我們的系統上。人們必須直接使用它。所以我決定我們必須關閉，並且我們將發佈我們能夠提供的軟件，但實際上這個實驗已經達到了無法繼續的地步。我們還遇到了可能的法律問題，當人們希望從系統中刪除某些內容時，他們希望對某些內容進行審查。 所以我們嘗試了各種方法，我們有一位律師與我們交談，他告訴我們沒有政策也是一種政策，你可以有一項沒有政策的政策。嗯，我不知道如何讓它起作用。但可能由於我們的成功，我們將面臨一整套我們沒有預料到的新問題。所以我需要找一份工作，事實上，一個研究機構開了一家，他們想要我，我很高興去了那裏八年，但我們不能同時進行社區記憶。所以我們關閉了它。他們把所有的存儲都交給了計算機歷史博物館，他們有它。

I’m continuing to plan on the next version of community memory which would use phones and we have a gigantic network there that’s all in existence. It has some requirements that you’ll have to see. But I’m working on the principles of operation as it appears to the user. And the question I have to answer is how do people behave when in a public group. If you think of an open space like a plaza or something and you imagine this is a thought experiment suddenly it’s populated by people who don’t know each other they suddenly appear and then we wait and see what happens. So what do you imagine happens? Well, I think that some people will start making spoken observation for anyone to hear they don’t know who the other people are they just say how did we get here or whatever it is and so forth. And some people will in effect start making little performances this way so that’s the start of it. And some people will cluster and want to listen to this so there’ll be the listeners and then some people will emerge as participants in the conversation and this will form little groups and there are other processes take place. People will go move back and forth between listeners or lurkers and participants and there’ll be a core of participants which might lead to what I call calving like having a cow having a calf giving birth to a calf, glaciers do this, they calve off icebergs so a group might then form and continue their own version of the conversation away from the initial group and the initial group will have a life cycle of its own. I mean just because people get tired but also you know an orator could incite mob violence that happens or they could sell them something. So I’ve got some principles that I’ve laid out and I want to continue refining them. I want to talk with people about that. I’ve written a book about this stuff and I’m going to it might be published by the time you get to see this and I want to encourage discussion about that but it won’t be hard to implement it. The trick is to implement the right thing and what I mean by that and what has to be taken care of in any such public information system such community based information system is the community support and governance of the system. So the whole issues of somebody said something bad about me I want them you know punished that sort of thing that’s to be handled by the community that supports the system. It is a commons of information like the agricultural commons of pre-capitalist Europe which were enclosed as part of the development of capitalism. They became private property of the landlord and so the commons of information become enclosed and privatized and it became the mass media in various forms which includes the online media but no commons can function without a governance structure and this has been observed historically fisheries are commons you can’t enclose them but they have governance structures.

我正在繼續計劃下一個社區記憶的版本，它將使用手機，並且我們有一個巨大的網絡存在。它有一些要求，你需要看一下。但我正在研究操作原則，就像對用戶而言一樣。我需要回答的問題是，當人們在公共羣體中時，他們會如何行爲。如果你想象一個開放的空間，比如一個廣場，然後你想象這是一個思想實驗，突然出現了一些彼此不認識的人，然後我們等待並觀察發生了什麼。那麼你認爲會發生什麼呢？嗯，我認爲有些人會開始發表口頭觀察，供任何人聽到，他們不知道其他人是誰，他們只是說我們是怎麼到這裏的之類的話。還有一些人會以某種方式開始進行小小的表演，這就是開始。然後一些人會聚集在一起，想要聽這些觀察，所以會有聽衆，然後一些人會成爲對話的參與者，這樣就形成了小團體，還會發生其他的過程。 人們會在聽衆或潛水者與參與者之間來回移動，並且會有一個核心的參與者，這可能會導致我所謂的「分娩」，就像母牛生小牛一樣，冰川也會這樣，它們會分娩冰山，所以一個羣體可能會形成，並在初始羣體之外繼續他們自己的對話版本，而初始羣體將有自己的生命週期。我的意思是，人們會因爲疲倦而離開，但也可能是因爲演說者煽動了暴力事件，或者他們可能向他們推銷東西。所以我有一些原則，我已經提出並且希望繼續完善它們。我想與人們討論這個問題。我已經寫了一本關於這些事情的書，當你看到這個時可能已經出版了，我希望鼓勵對此進行討論，但實施它不會很難。關鍵是實施正確的事情，而在任何這樣的公共信息系統中，必須注意的是小區對系統的支持和治理。 所以，有人說了一些壞話關於我，我希望他們受到懲罰，這種事情應該由支持這個系統的社區來處理。這是一個信息的共同體，就像前資本主義歐洲的農業共同體一樣，在資本主義發展的過程中被封閉起來。它們成爲地主的私有財產，信息的共同體也被封閉和私有化，成爲各種形式的大衆媒體，包括在線媒體，但沒有共同體可以在沒有治理結構的情況下運作，這在歷史上已經被觀察到，漁業是共同體，你不能封閉它們，但它們有治理結構。

There have been people writing about what they call the tragedy of the commons which is like oh you can drive something in common like this but it will turn into a tragedy because some people will get greedy and overuse it and so forth. Well maybe they would but this means that that’s what happens when the governance structure fails. Plenty of that has been observed but plenty of success has been observed. So in designing the commons of information for the future we need to understand that it includes a governance structure which is not top down from the national government or whatever it’s bottom up from the community and that is a real challenge now. It has been my observation that politics is exercised by the control of the army, when you think of it the lord stays in power because he has an army and the commanders of the army will listen to the lord, and the army will listen to the commander those are information channels and if you disrupt those channels, there’s been plenty of history of this, the army no longer follows the orders of the lord and follows orders from somewhere else. And 20th century has seen a lot of that. So if you’re designing a governing structure you have to do it by designing the channels of information exchange. Now I don’t know how you do that. I don’t have the answer but I know that’s where you have to start consider this. I think it was von Bismarck who said politics is the art of the possible. Then you should ask who is it that determines what is possible.I modestly rise as an engineer and say we do the creative people who develop the technologies and and the art, develop what is possible, everyone else gets a hold of it turns it to their own use, sells it, buys it, criticizes it, whatever but the people who are creating the possibilities are the technologists and the artists. And I’m a very strong proponent for incorporating the two. I’m hoping on setting up a consulting organization and I want to have a strong core of experienced technologists. I’m particularly looking at people who are too old to be hired like myself along with artists and people who are versed in the humanities because that needs to be in the mixture and so if you hear from me in the future saying I have this thing it’s a continuation of community memory. There’s going to be a lot of non-technical people involved in that and that process remains to be designed. That’s a good point to stop for now.

有人寫過所謂的“公地悲劇”，就是說你可以共同使用某樣東西，但會變成悲劇，因爲有些人會貪婪地過度使用等等。也許他們是對的，但這意味着當治理結構失敗時就會發生這種情況。我們已經觀察到了很多這樣的情況，但也觀察到了很多成功的案例。因此，在設計未來的信息共享時，我們需要明白它包括一種治理結構，不是自上而下的國家政府或其他機構，而是自下而上的社區參與，這是一個真正的挑戰。我觀察到政治實際上是通過控制軍隊來行使的，想想看，領主之所以能保持權力，是因爲他有一支軍隊，軍隊的指揮官會聽從領主的命令，而軍隊會聽從指揮官的命令，這些都是信息傳遞的渠道。如果你破壞了這些渠道，歷史上就有很多這樣的例子，軍隊就不再聽從領主的命令，而聽從其他地方的命令。20世紀就見證了很多這樣的情況。 所以，如果你正在設計一個治理結構，你必須通過設計信息交流的渠道來實現。現在我不知道你該如何做到這一點。我沒有答案，但我知道這是你必須開始考慮的地方。我想是俾斯麥說過政治是可能性的藝術。那麼你應該問的是，是誰決定了什麼是可能的。作爲一名工程師，我謙虛地提出，我們這些創造性的人開發技術和藝術，開發出了可能性，其他人則利用它，賣掉它，買它，批評它，無論如何，但創造可能性的人是技術人員和藝術家。我非常支持將這兩者融合在一起。我希望建立一個諮詢組織，並且希望擁有一支經驗豐富的技術人員核心團隊。我特別關注那些像我這樣年紀太大而無法被僱用的人，以及藝術家和熟悉人文學科的人，因爲這需要在混合中存在。所以，如果你未來聽到我說我有這個東西，它是社區記憶的延續。 在這個過程中將會有很多非技術人員參與，而這個過程仍待設計。現在是停下來的好時機。

Well we’ll go up there and look at the art right and film there and I’ll be talking about that my father was a commercial artist and so forth and I grew up with drawing lots of things so there’s more to talk about.

好吧，我們會上去看藝術品，拍攝一下，然後我會談談我的父親是一位商業藝術家之類的，我從小就喜歡畫很多東西，所以還有更多可以談論的。

Part 2

第二部分

exhibit

展示

So we’re at the Internet Archives here, which is a former church, a sacred space in its day. And to a certain extent, it is still a sacred space because here’s where in the background, what sounds like church organs running continuously are the computers that sift through the Internet and archive things. This is where they store it. Now, also the statues of the people around I find very affecting because these are people who have volunteered to help here. They won’t include me. I haven’t done that. But it bears and brings to mind the fact that it’s all about people. Computers are only useful for people. And so as we go ahead and think about things like artificial intelligence and so forth, computers are to be used humanistically. That’s the only thing that makes sense. So anybody who’s an engineer like me, who’s been given a very narrow problem to solve, really should ask how does this affect people? How does it assist them? What is the reflection on people? And so that the people, the statues here bring that to mind. I find that very important. So as I said, we have the computers here that are rather remind me of organs and churches. They run continuously. Previously, they were arrayed along the back, almost like an altar. Now they have little smaller altars.

所以我們現在在互聯網檔案館，這裏曾經是一座教堂，是一個神聖的空間。在某種程度上，它仍然是一個神聖的空間，因爲在背景中，聽起來像教堂風琴一樣持續運行的是篩選互聯網並存檔的計算機。這就是它們存儲的地方。此外，周圍的人物雕像也讓我感到很震撼，因爲這些人是自願來這裏幫助的。他們不會包括我。我沒有做過那樣的事情。但這讓我想起了一個事實，那就是這一切都關乎人。計算機只對人有用。所以當我們考慮人工智能等事物時，計算機應該以人爲本。這是唯一有意義的。所以像我這樣的工程師，被賦予一個非常狹窄的問題要解決，真的應該問問這對人有什麼影響？它如何幫助他們？對人的反映是什麼？所以這裏的人物雕像讓我想到了這一點，我覺得這非常重要。正如我所說，我們這裏有一些計算機，它們讓我想起了風琴和教堂。它們持續運行着。 以前，它們排列在後面，幾乎像一個祭壇。現在它們有一些小一點的祭壇。

I see we have some computer art exhibit here. I don’t know what it is, but the wisdom of the Apple. And the Apple computers were always designed really for image handling. The very first Apple computer was not. It did have a little screen, but you could only put characters on it very slowly. The design I did, really before that, showed how to get the characters on as fast as the computer could run. And Apple picked that up and they have carried it forward pretty far. And so I see a lot of images. They say, come on in. The stairs are to the right. Let’s go up and see.

我看到這裏有一些計算機藝術展。我不知道是什麼，但蘋果的智慧。蘋果計算機一直以來都是爲圖像處理而設計的。第一臺蘋果計算機不是這樣的。它有一個小屏幕，但你只能很慢地在上面輸入字符。我在那之前設計的方案，真正展示瞭如何以計算機能運行的速度輸入字符。蘋果採納了這個方案，並且在很大程度上推進了它。所以我看到了很多圖像。他們說，進來吧。樓梯在右邊。我們上去看看吧。

Plenty of images. I don’t see any moving images, but they come and go. Each one is a virtual world. The frame through which you enter a world. You see one here, one there, all around. The meaning of them is something you bring to it. And that needs to be done in terms of presentation and connecting the world that the user brings to the computer with the information that comes from the computer. And here I wanted to mention an important exploration that ought to be done. Come on, I’ve forgotten the name. Impressionism. Impressionism was a major revolution in art. And to this day, I don’t think we know how impressionism works in the mind, in the perceptual system. I was advocating that the research institution where I worked for eight years should make a study of that, should make it an area of exploration, because we need to discover more about this. What are the rules that operate with impressionism and that would obviously lead to extended and then compressed forms of impressionism? I know that you can have very, very simple indicators, graphic indicators that convey information that needs to be conveyed on a verbal, no, not a verbal, on a visual basis. I’ll say that again. I know that there are very simple mechanisms that can be made to convey a small amount of information with a very small amount of hardware using rather subtle indications, especially with regards to light. And this should be explored further. I want to explore it. It sounds like a lot of fun. For instance, persistence of vision, something that can be seen as an obstacle in some presentations, but it’s part of our perception. I want to make a little display with a piece of flexible material with maybe eight or ten tiny light-emitting diodes on it. Like a metronome, it would oscillate. And you can make it with a, if you have a kicker in the bottom, you can make it do that continuously. And then you can spell out, you see an arc of text in your perceptual field. It doesn’t even exist on the retina. It’s still just light moving. But our perceptual mechanism fuses that into a solid object. Now, we can use this elsewhere. And I don’t know what the possibilities are. I want to explore. Other people should explore this. I don’t have to do everything.

大量的影像。我看不到任何移動的影像，但它們來來去去。每一個都是一個虛擬世界。通過它進入一個世界的框架。你在這裏看到一個，在那裏看到一個，到處都是。它們的意義是你帶給它的。而這需要通過展示和連接用戶帶給計算機的世界與來自計算機的信息來完成。在這裏，我想提到一個重要的探索，應該進行的探索。來吧，我忘記名字了。印象派。印象派是藝術上的一次重大革命。直到今天，我認爲我們還不知道印象派在思維和感知系統中是如何起作用的。我曾主張我工作了八年的研究機構應該對此進行研究，將其作爲一個探索領域，因爲我們需要更多地瞭解這個。印象派是如何運作的，顯然會導致印象派的擴展和壓縮形式？我知道你可以有非常簡單的指示符，圖形指示符，以視覺方式傳達需要傳達的信息。我再說一遍。 我知道有非常簡單的機制可以用非常少的硬件傳達少量信息，尤其是通過光線的微妙指示。這個領域還有很多可以探索的地方。我想要去探索它。聽起來很有趣。比如，視覺停留效應，有些演示中可能被視爲障礙，但它是我們感知的一部分。我想做一個小型顯示器，用一塊柔性材料，上面可能有八到十個微小的發光二極管。就像一個節拍器，它會來回擺動。如果在底部加一個踢腳器，它就可以持續地做那個動作。然後你可以在感知領域中看到一段文字的弧線。它甚至不存在於視網膜上，只是光線在移動。但我們的感知機制將其融合成一個實體物體。現在，我們可以在其他地方使用這個。我不知道可能性是什麼。我想要去探索。其他人也應該去探索這個。我不必做所有的事情。

So, these are all very high-quality images. Every hair on that head that was just there, and here’s another head with a lot of hair on it, is perfectly rendered. But the idea of hair, the concept of hair, the feeling of hair can be communicated in other ways, as Impressionism pointed out. And while we’ve done a great deal of work in getting the exact rendering done, there are many other dimensions of rendering that still remain unexplored. And I consider that the future lies there, not with extreme realism. Because this is trempe l’oeil, trick the eye. This is the pre-Impressionist peak of art development. You can go to the museums and see this, and how much better can they get it? Well, then suddenly, Impressionists are there painting very simple things, and you know what they are painting. So, yes, we can see all of this and admire it, look at the beautiful pictures. But what has to be communicated is a great deal more. I mean, a picture of a baby at a mother’s breast with facial expressions communicates a great deal more than just that image. And we are at the stage where we can, in fact, respond to those images in an analog way. Yes, it gets handled digitally, okay, but the sensation is analog.

所以，這些都是非常高質量的圖像。剛纔那個頭上的每根頭髮，還有這裏另一個頭上的許多頭髮，都被完美地呈現出來。但是頭髮的概念、觀念和感覺可以用其他方式來傳達，正如印象派所指出的那樣。雖然我們在確保精確呈現方面做了大量的工作，但仍有許多其他渲染的層面尚未被探索。我認爲未來的發展在於這些層面，而不是極端寫實主義。因爲這是一種欺騙眼睛的技巧。這是藝術發展的前印象派巔峯。你可以去博物館看看，他們能做得更好嗎？然後突然間，印象派畫家們在畫非常簡單的東西，你知道他們在畫什麼。所以，是的，我們可以看到這一切並欣賞它，看着這些美麗的圖片。但是需要傳達的內容遠不止於此。我的意思是，一張描繪母親哺乳嬰兒並帶有面部表情的照片所傳達的內容遠遠超過了單純的圖像。而我們現在正處於可以以模擬方式對這些圖像做出回應的階段。 是的，它以數字方式處理，沒錯，但感覺卻是模擬的。

I, for instance, discovered a principle of virtual kinesthesia. Now, kinesthesia is how you feel what is going on in an image. So, with your hand, you know where your hand is. Now, you want to move a cursor on a screen? It’s like you want to move your hand to where you want it to go. And, in fact, I used an isometric joystick, a force-operated joystick. It doesn’t move at all. It’s just you push on it, and it doesn’t move. It senses your vector of force to move a cursor. All right, this is done, and it’s done in aviation. It’s called fly-by-wire. It takes weeks to learn how to control that because it’s, you know, it’s moving. It’s not what you intend. So, I worked out a principle of different equations of motion on the screen to translate this force into motion of the cursor. That if you apply the principles of different equations of motion and you experiment with different parameters of those equations, it suddenly becomes much more easy to control. You can learn it in a few seconds. Well, I wasn’t able to continue that research. Somebody has to do it. But the idea is that you have a visual feedback of what is your virtual hand. It’s not your real hand. Your hand is down here on the controller. But it’s the hand you imagine. And there are rules that can be discovered, principles that can be discovered, so to make that motion feel comfortable. So, I think I demonstrated that this was possible, but that’s as far as I could go. I have not been able to embody it in any scientific principles or artistic principles. I’m not trained in either of those disciplines. But it’s for people to try.

例如，我發現了一種虛擬肌覺的原理。肌覺是指你感受到圖像中發生的事情的方式。所以，你可以感覺到你的手在哪裏。現在，你想要在屏幕上移動一個光標？就像你想要把你的手移動到你想要去的地方一樣。事實上，我使用了一個等距操縱桿，一個力操作的操縱桿。它根本不動。你只需要對它施加壓力，它就不會動。它能感知你施加的力的方向來移動光標。好了，這個完成了，而且在航空領域已經有了應用。它被稱爲電傳操縱。學會如何控制它需要幾周的時間，因爲它是在移動的。它不是你想要的那樣。所以，我研究出了一種在屏幕上運用不同運動方程的原理，將這種力轉化爲光標的運動。如果你應用不同運動方程的原理，並嘗試不同的參數，你會發現它變得更容易控制。你可以在幾秒鐘內學會它。嗯，我沒有能夠繼續那項研究。必須有人來做。但這個想法是，你可以通過視覺反饋來感知你的虛擬手。它不是你真正的手。 你的手在這裏放在控制器上。但這是你想象中的手。而且有一些可以發現的規則和原則，可以使這種動作感覺舒適。所以，我想我已經證明了這是可能的，但這就是我的極限了。我無法將它體現在任何科學原則或藝術原則中。我在這兩個領域都沒有受過訓練。但這是給人們去嘗試的。

So, the future, I think, of the display lies in bringing that display into the perceptual field and the emotional field of the person who’s observing it, so that the resulting effect is an emotional effect and can be an intellectual effect too. It can open up worlds of information. So, say here’s a picture of someone who’s very starved. Well, that says a lot, you know, that this is even possible, because we know there are people who live and die this way. Well, that stirs the emotions, but it also stirs the intellect. What can we do about it? That feedback loop through the perceptual system and the emotional person, the being, is where I think the frontiers of computer art lie. But we can admire nice pictures here.

所以，我認爲，顯示器的未來在於將顯示器帶入觀察者的感知領域和情感領域，以產生情感效果，也可以是智力效果。它可以打開信息的世界。比如，這是一個非常飢餓的人的照片。這傳達了很多信息，我們知道有人以這種方式生活和死去。這激起了情感，也激發了智力。我們能做些什麼呢？我認爲，通過感知系統和情感個體的反饋循環，計算機藝術的前沿就在這裏。但我們也可以欣賞漂亮的圖片。

My father was an artist. He was trained in an art school. He dropped out in 1930, a very bad time to drop out of anything. But he thought he was going to conquer the world as a magazine illustrator. He tried. He was able at least to keep the family house from being sold out from under them. But I’ve seen his drawings at the age of 21. For several stories, he has a series of paintings he did, and they’re all the same characters from story to story, the same people. So he went on and he made his living by commercial art, laying out catalogs and so forth. But that was never what he really wanted to do. Okay, so let’s see what else there is here.

我父親是一位藝術家。他在一所藝術學校接受過訓練。他在1930年輟學，那是一個非常糟糕的時候輟學。但他認爲自己將成爲一位雜誌插畫家，並試圖征服世界。他嘗試過，至少能夠保住家裏不被賣掉。但我在他21歲時看過他的繪畫。他爲幾個故事畫了一系列的畫，而這些故事中的角色都是相同的，同樣的人物。所以他繼續從事商業藝術，設計目錄等，以維持生計。但那從來不是他真正想做的事情。好吧，讓我們看看還有什麼其他的。

about Internet Archive server

關於互聯網檔案館服務器

Mentioning that it reminds me of stars twinkling in the sky, a constellation of twinkling, yes, flashing stars, but knowing what’s going on in that, that represents a lot of computing power, a lot of storage. And to an engineer it’s very impressive. The art of it is to try to make the very capable, functional stuff appear to be common and comfortable. I try to design what I consider to be classic designs. It’s a design goal that I don’t always get to, where the technology simply fits in your hand or in your space that you’re using it. And there’s nothing remarkable about it until you inquire and find out what is going on with it. Then it becomes quite remarkable. But for the user it has to be something that seems natural. And it’s definitely an art to try to make that happen. I’m sure there are rules, I don’t know what the rules are. But one thing you don’t do is you don’t try to impress anyone. Too many people think that people should be put off by technology, they should be separated by it, they should say, wow, or oh boy, wow, look at that, that’s nothing I’ve ever been involved with. Maybe I could never understand that. Many people tell me that over the years. I talk about computers and they say, oh, I could never understand that. Well, they’re fencing you out.

提到這讓我想起星星在天空中閃爍的景象，一羣閃爍、閃光的星星，但知道其中所涉及的計算能力和儲存量，對工程師來說真是令人印象深刻。設計的藝術在於嘗試讓功能強大的東西看起來普通而舒適。我試圖設計我認爲經典的設計。這是一個設計目標，我並不總能達到，科技只是簡單地適應你的手或你使用的空間。在你詢問並瞭解它的運作原理之前，它並沒有什麼特別之處。然而，對於使用者來說，它必須是一個看起來自然的東西。而要實現這一點絕對是一門藝術。我相信有一些規則，但我不知道這些規則是什麼。但有一件事是你不試圖給任何人留下深刻印象。太多人認爲人們應該對科技感到陌生，他們應該被科技隔離，他們應該說，哇，或者哦，看那個，那是我從未參與過的東西。多年來，很多人都這樣告訴我。 我談論計算機，他們說，哦，我永遠無法理解那個。嗯，他們正在把你拒之門外。

So you, again, you want to have technology that invites you in, into a relationship with it. And when you walk away from that relationship, you are changed somewhat. And you gradually begin to understand that. The computer didn’t do that to you. You did that with the computer, with the technology. So anyone who’s trying to make it flashy, they could have a lot more lights on there. The original mainframe computers had a light for every bit in the system. It was a big console, very impressive. And everybody who looks at it says, oh, I could never understand that. Well, we’ve gotten beyond that now. There’s still just as many, in fact, a lot more bits in the system. But they don’t need to all have a light, because that is only useful when the thing stops. And you want to diagnose it and say, okay, here I see this, that, this, and then we can step backwards and see what happened. Oh, that’s what went wrong. You don’t need to do that. That’s for engineers, debuggers, troubleshooters. But the whole idea of impressing people with technology is a dead end. It causes them to say that I have no relationship to that. I am an observer. I am a subject. But there’s no part of me that is part of that. So this is getting better. I see fewer lights now in this version than I’ve seen before. They used to be centered on the stage, but they had a better use for the stage. And when I make a respectful gesture to it, I’m joking. There’s nothing in there that I should respect. I should respect, and I do respect, the effort that people put in to get us to this point. But that is, there’s no ghost in the machine. At least it is, as any reality to me. That is all a projection from the people, like the ones we see standing around the room here, who put in the effort to make it exist. So that’s what I respect. Alright. Special thanks to our Patrons.

所以，你又想要擁有一種能夠吸引你進入其中的科技。當你離開這種關係時，你會有所改變。而你漸漸開始明白這一點。計算機並沒有對你做出這種改變。是你與計算機、科技一起做到了這一點。所以，任何試圖讓科技變得華麗的人，他們可以在上面加上更多的燈光。最初的大型主計算機系統中，每個位都有一個燈光。那是一個很大的控制檯，非常令人印象深刻。每個看到它的人都會說，哦，我永遠無法理解那個。好吧，我們已經超越了那個階段。系統中的位數量仍然一樣多，事實上更多了。但它們不需要全部都有燈光，因爲只有在系統停止運作時纔有用。當你想要診斷它並說，好的，我看到這個、那個、這個，然後我們可以向後追溯並看看發生了什麼。哦，這就是出了問題的地方。你不需要這樣做。那是給工程師、調試人員、故障排除者使用的。但是，用科技來給人留下深刻印象的整個想法是一條死路。這會讓人們認爲我與那個沒有關係。我只是一個觀察者。我是一個客體。 但我並不是其中的一部分。所以情況正在變得更好。在這個版本中，我看到的燈光比以前少了。它們曾經集中在舞臺上，但現在舞臺有更好的用途。當我對它做出尊重的姿態時，我是在開玩笑。裏面沒有什麼值得我尊重的東西。我應該尊重，也確實尊重人們爲了讓我們達到這一點所付出的努力。但那只是，對我來說，並沒有什麼機器中的幽靈。至少對我來說，那只是人們的投射。就像我們在這個房間裏看到的人們一樣，他們付出了努力使其存在。所以這就是我所尊重的。好了。特別感謝我們的贊助人。

Why do you use “memory”?

爲什麼你使用「記憶」這個詞語？

Huang: Why do you use the memory? I think the word is so sophisticated. It’s so interesting.

黃：你爲什麼使用記憶？這個字如此複雜，如此有趣。

Lee: Community memory has important meanings to people who hear it. It has been said that the problem with the American society is that it has no memory. And that’s been true, in part because our communication technology and so forth is optimized for fast update and not for memory. Now we’ve got lots of memory. There’s an awful lot of memory in that box and in every computer that we’ve got. In a way, I can say it’s more memory than we know how to use. So when we started, we counterposed the two words. I can’t remember who thought of it. Because that was our purpose, to provide a place where people could come and make statements, ask questions, offer things, and it would remain. And people would then come to it later and engage in the reciprocal process.

李：對於聽到它的人來說，社區記憶具有重要的意義。有人說美國社會的問題在於它沒有記憶。這在某種程度上是真實的，部分原因是因爲我們的通訊技術等都是爲了快速更新而優化，而不是爲了記憶。現在我們擁有大量的記憶。那個盒子和我們每一臺計算機中都有非常多的記憶。某種程度上，我可以說這是比我們知道如何使用的記憶更多。所以當我們開始時，我們將這兩個詞對立起來。我記不起是誰想到的。因爲那是我們的目的，提供一個人們可以來這裏發表聲明、提問、提供東西的地方，並且它會保留下來。然後人們稍後會來到這裏，參與這個互惠的過程。

This was similar to, for instance, a wall that one can write on. I know in recent Chinese history, there’s a lot of things about walls, putting up posters on walls. And that had great importance politically. So we don’t have too many places like this. It’s also a public space in a computer. And so when I talk about empowering public space, that’s the technology that we can use. It’s very powerful indeed, especially with a network. Because then suddenly the public space is wherever the network is, wherever access can be had.

這就像是一面可以寫字的牆壁。我知道在中國近代史上，牆壁上貼海報的事情很多，這在政治上非常重要。所以我們沒有太多這樣的地方。這也是一個公共空間在計算機上。所以當我談到賦予公共空間權力時，這就是我們可以使用的技術。這確實非常強大，尤其是有了網絡。因爲這樣一來，公共空間就在網絡所在的地方，只要能夠接入網絡的地方。

And if I’m going to do the next community memory on telephones, it’s wherever one’s got one. A lot of work has been done into expanding that space, making that expanded. We didn’t have a preset concept. We had a very poor concept. It was quickly shown to be inadequate. And people brought their content to the system. Now that was at a time and before a time when in the early days of the internet, say 1990, 1991 to 93, I was invited to participate in a seminar for top executives of media companies. And they were all trying to find out what is this thing called the internet and what does it mean to our business. And a whole lot of those companies owned the rights to films. And they had an answer, say, well, we own the content, so we own the medium. That’s what it’s going to be used for. People are going to be there to be passive recipients of our productions.

如果我要在下一個社區記憶中談論電話，那就是每個人都有的地方。我們已經做了很多工作來擴大這個空間，使其更加廣闊。我們沒有預設的概念。我們的概念非常糟糕。很快就顯示出不足之處。人們將他們的內容帶到了系統中。那是在互聯網的早期，大約是1990年到1993年之間，我被邀請參加了一個媒體公司高層的研討會。他們都在試圖弄清楚這個被稱爲互聯網的東西是什麼，對我們的業務意味着什麼。其中很多公司擁有電影的版權。他們有一個答案，就是我們擁有內容，所以我們也擁有媒介。它將被用於人們被動地接收我們的作品。

The alternative was the concept of pipes with meters. And for a little while, some of the people in Congress who were arguing about what is this thing, how should we regulate it, somebody got up and said, it’s not a place, somebody said. It’s a network of pipes with meters. There was a network of pipes, the engineers added meters. And he was right. He was a very old politician, I know that. But he grasped this concept. It’s not like everybody took him up on it. When I spoke at that seminar, I said, I’m firmly on the side of pipes because we tried this experiment. And we found that people will provide their own content. And you need to take account of this. You need to know about this. Well, nobody came to me and asked me any questions about it. Probably because I couldn’t show that I’d made a lot of money with this approach. Let that be as it will. But we certainly need pipes to interconnect people with. And the meters, that’s not very important because you really only need a little bit of money to make it work. But you do need to have storage. It’s not just the pipes. On this network, there has to be places for the information to reside and not change. Because far too often, well, in history, information has often been changed, the history has been changed.

另一種選擇是帶有計量器的管道概念。有一段時間，國會中一些人在爭論這是什麼東西，我們應該如何監管它，有人站起來說，這不是一個地方。有人說，這是一個帶有計量器的管道網絡。確實有一個管道網絡，工程師們添加了計量器。他是對的。我知道他是一位非常老的政治家。但他理解了這個概念。並不是每個人都接受了他的觀點。當我在那個研討會上發言時，我說，我堅定地站在管道這一邊，因爲我們嘗試過這個實驗。我們發現人們會提供自己的內容。你需要考慮到這一點。你需要了解這一點。嗯，沒有人來問我任何問題。可能是因爲我不能證明我用這種方法賺了很多錢。無論如何，我們確實需要用管道將人們連接起來。計量器並不是很重要，因爲你只需要一點點錢就可以讓它運轉。但你確實需要有存儲空間。這個網絡上不僅僅是管道，還必須有信息存放的地方，並且不會改變。 因爲太多次了，歷史上的信息常常被改變，歷史也被改變了。

And the technology we’re talking about offers far too easy a path to have history be something that changes minute by minute. When this DVD came out and the CD-ROM came out, some people were saying, okay, we’ll have a service whereby we send people a disc. A new disc arrives every day. We’ll send the old one back or throw it away. They probably would want to have it sent back to ensure that it wasn’t saved. And each disc will have the news of the day and the interpretation of the news of the day. And that interpretation will change depending upon what political slant is desired by the person who’s sending you the disc. So the technology would work fine. The trouble is nobody would be able to store anything. They wouldn’t be able to originate anything. They’d be receiving the information. They would be consumers of information. Now, information cannot be consumed. Once you read something, it doesn’t go away. That kind of a circular disc system would have the old one sent back. So maybe you’re consuming that and it could be destroyed. But we remember things. We can write them down and with a little bit of work, plug in some memory module and save what we’ve seen and see that the next day’s disc does not accord with the previous day’s disc. And that gives us some information that’s very interesting. Information is also useless unless it is communicated. You could say, how much information is back there? The numbers are staggering. But what’s happening with it? Well, it’s being used. That’s the best part about the Internet Archive. People connect to it all the time to see what has happened. I mean, there are snapshots of the Internet back in history residing in those machines. Very, very important thing if they’re used. So community memory was, as I say, opening the door to that. Not just opening the door to cyberspace, but to cyberspace’s library, in effect. And we need that very badly.

而且我們所討論的技術提供了一條過於簡單的道路，使得歷史可以隨時改變。當這個DVD問世並且CD-ROM問世時，有些人說，好吧，我們將提供一項服務，我們會給人們寄送一張光盤。每天都會有一張新的光盤送到。我們會把舊的光盤寄回或者扔掉。他們可能希望把它寄回來以確保它沒有被保存。每張光盤上都會有當天的新聞和對新聞的解讀。而這種解讀將根據發送光盤的人所期望的政治傾向而改變。所以技術本身是可以正常運作的。問題是沒有人能夠存儲任何東西。他們將無法創造任何東西。他們只是接收信息。現在，信息是無法被消耗的。一旦你閱讀了某個東西，它就不會消失。這種循環光盤系統會把舊的光盤寄回去。所以也許你會消耗掉它，它也可能被銷燬。但我們會記住事情。 我們可以把它們寫下來，再稍微加點工作，插入一些記憶模塊，保存我們所見的並發現，隔天的光盤與前一天的光盤不一致。這給了我們一些非常有趣的信息。信息除非被傳達，否則也是無用的。你可以說，那裏有多少信息？數字令人驚人。但它在發生什麼？嗯，它正在被使用。這就是互聯網檔案庫最好的部分。人們經常連接它來查看發生了什麼。我的意思是，那些機器上保存着互聯網歷史的快照。如果它們被使用，這是非常非常重要的事情。所以，社區記憶就像我說的，打開了那扇門。不僅僅是打開了通往網絡空間的大門，還打開了網絡空間的圖書館，實際上。我們非常需要這個。