文化與技術三部曲 · SF-11|專訪 Brewster Kahle

2024 年 9 月 8 日於舊金山,與 Brewster Kahle 的訪談。Kahle 為 Internet Archive 的創辦人,長年致力於建構全球性的數位公共圖書館,是將網際網路檔案化、對抗資訊消逝最重要的實踐者之一。

訪談圍繞 Internet Archive 的起源與使命、Wayback Machine 的運作、以及數位時代的公共記憶與 反文化 技術傳統之間的連結。

本文為《文化與技術三部曲》矽谷章節的田野訪談稿。

採訪人員:黃孫權、崔雨、蔡澤銳。


Yu: Can you briefly introduce yourself to the audiences?

Yu:你能向觀衆簡單介紹一下自己嗎?

Brewster: I’m Brewster Kahle, the digital librarian and founder of the Internet Archive.

布魯斯特:我是布魯斯特·卡勒,互聯網檔案館的數字圖書館員和創始人。

Yu: We know this because there is a librarian outside this office.Like,why there is a sign outside this room?

崔雨:我們知道這是因爲辦公室外面有一個圖書館員。就像,爲什麼這個房間外面有一個標誌呢?

Brewster: This is my office here, and I’m the librarian of the Internet Archive and trying to build a library of everything, a digital library of Alexandria.

布魯斯特:這是我的辦公室,我是互聯網檔案館的圖書館員,致力於建立一個包羅萬象的圖書館,一個數字化的亞歷山大圖書館。

Yu: Okay. So, since this documentary is about personal computing and counterculture, can you give us some clue, like, what is your experiences on these two things?

Yu: 好的。所以,既然這個紀錄片是關於個人計算和反主流文化的,你能給我們一些線索嗎,比如說,你對這兩件事有什麼經歷?

Brewster: The personal computers were this explosion of ideas of how people can empower themselves.And I was there then in going and helping build these computers by hand and making them useful by making new programs and giving them away so that other people can go and control their lives in a way that was not possible in the 60s and 70s. It was controlled by publishers and big institutions and personal computers had the opportunity to make it so that we were being empowered to put things out on our own.

布魯斯特:個人計算機是一種思想爆炸,讓人們能夠賦予自己力量的方式。當時我參與了手工製造這些計算機的過程,通過開發新的程序並免費分享,使它們變得有用,讓其他人能夠掌控自己的生活,這在60年代和70年代是不可能的。過去由出版商和大機構掌控,而個人計算機創造了機會,讓我們能夠自主發佈自己的東西。

Yu: I think that Internet Archive has done a lot of things related to the community and the cooperative ways. How do you think the similarities you guys share with the 70s personal computing groups like Homebrew Computer Clubs and so on?

YU:我認爲互聯網檔案館在社區和合作方式方面做了很多事情。你認爲你們與70年代的個人計算機團體(如Homebrew Computer Clubs等)有哪些相似之處?

Brewster: The Internet Archive is a direct descendant from those hippie projects to go and take back the power for the people. So, the Internet Archive is by being from the Internet and the World Wide Web after the Bulletin Boards is sort of in that inheritance. As part of that, the Internet Archive plays a role in supporting and believing in, providing institutional knowledge, archiving the old ideas and making it available to the new young generation that want these principles themselves how can they learn from the past? The Internet Archive hopefully is there for them.

布魯斯特:互聯網檔案館是那些嬉皮士項目的直接後裔,旨在爲人民奪回權力。因此,互聯網檔案館作爲互聯網和萬維網的一部分,繼承了佈告欄之後的使命。作爲其中的一部分,互聯網檔案館在支持和相信提供機構知識、存盤舊思想並使其對新一代年輕人可用方面發揮著作用,這些年輕人希望從過去中學習這些原則。互聯網檔案館希望能爲他們提供幫助。

Yu: What kind of things you learned most from the past when you were working on Internet Archive projects?

Yu:在你從事互聯網檔案館項目的過程中,你從過去的經驗中學到了哪些最重要的東西?

Brewster: So the Internet Archive project came out of the visions of the Internet of having everyone have power for themselves to go and learn whatever they wanted to learn but also to publish, to go and make available, make everyone a publisher. This idea really came from maybe the early days of printing but then that gets cooperated by large-scale publishers. Personal computers was a boom in the idea that you can make your own computer for yourself. And this was a revolution and a time of conformity.

布魯斯特:因此,互聯網檔案館項目源於互聯網的願景,即每個人都有權力去學習他們想學的東西,並且可以發佈、提供給他人,使每個人都成爲出版者。這個想法可能源於印刷的早期,但後來被大型出版商所壟斷。個人計算機的出現使得你可以爲自己製作一臺計算機,這是一場革命,也是一個趨同的時代。

Yu: Maybe the next question is a little bit about yourself. What you were doing in the 1970s and 80s?

YU:也許下一個問題有點關於你自己。你在70年代和80年代都在做什麼?

Brewster: In the 1970s I was working on computers that we had built by end. I went and worked and sold computers that were sold as kits before the Apple II even came out. These were to try to empower first geeks but then all sort of people wanted to have access to control their lives.

布魯斯特:在1970年代,我正在使用我們自己組裝的計算機進行工作。在蘋果II推出之前,我去工作並銷售那些以套件形式出售的計算機。起初,這些計算機是爲了讓第一批怪咖們有更多自主權,但後來各種人都想要掌控自己的生活。

Yu: Did you get involved with the counterculture movement a lot or if not, what’s your memory about it?

Yu: 你在反文化運動中參與得很多嗎?如果不是的話,你對它有什麼記憶?

Brewster: When I was in college, we would spend time thinking about let’s drop out of school and form communes and how do we make a better society work together? How do you make people be alive and offer? And often that is without money, without a lot of the organizations and institutions that were putting us into a line. So, yes, I was part of that world or at least the tail end of the hippies. The tail end of the hippies was where the personal computers and then the internet really came from.

布魯斯特:當我在大學時,我們會花時間思考該不該退學組成公社,以及如何讓更好的社會運作?如何讓人們活着並奉獻?而這通常是在沒有金錢、沒有許多機構和組織束縛的情況下。所以,是的,我曾經是那個世界的一部分,或者至少是嬉皮士時代的尾巴。嬉皮士時代的尾巴孕育了個人計算機和互聯網的誕生。

Yu: Since you’re working in this area for quite a long time, do you see what is the biggest shift do you think in the culture from the past to nowadays based on your works? Like maybe a culture environment shifting or something like that?

Yu:既然你在這個領域工作了很長時間,你覺得從過去到現在,文化方面最大的變化是什麼?比如說文化環境的轉變之類的?

Brewster: We succeeded at some of the goals of making everyone a publisher, of making it so that you can be heard, you can connect to people far far away much more easily than the amateur radio systems that sort of came before. We succeeded in many of these things but then we’ve seen them turned against us again by Facebook, Twitter, active poisoning by state governments. In some sense it’s always this Tick-tock where you sort of say okay, now we have some freedoms, now we have some ability to do things and then people come back and exploit it for centralized commercial or political gain. So I guess we’ve just seen it go back and forth but we have to constantly assert ourselves to have these technologies help many people not just a few big players.

布魯斯特:我們在讓每個人成爲出版者的目標上取得了一些成功,讓你能夠被聽到,能夠與遠在千里之外的人更輕鬆地聯繫,比之前的業餘無線電系統更方便。我們在許多方面都取得了成功,但隨後我們看到它們再次被Facebook、Twitter和國家政府的主動破壞所利用。從某種意義上說,這總是一個來回搖擺的過程,你會說好吧,現在我們有了一些自由,現在我們有了一些能力去做事情,然後人們又回來利用它來實現集中化的商業或政治利益。所以我想我們只是看到它來回搖擺,但我們必須不斷主張自己,讓這些技術幫助更多的人,而不僅僅是少數大玩家。

Yu: Next question is to what extent do you think personal computing as a technology facilitates or kind of not so good for your job of keeping everything archived?

YU:下一個問題是您認爲個人計算機作爲一種技術在多大程度上有助於或對您的檔案工作有益?

Brewster: One of the key things of the personal computer is it’s a universal machine. It can do anything you want by just programming it to be different. This is different from say a video game platform where it only plays the things that are told to it by the corporation or even your phones are basically controlled and locked down. The personal computer was open and this is the key concept of publishing or freedom of the press or where libraries are from so the internet archive completely depends on this openness and empowering where the control is in the people’s hands not in the corporations that are making a device that you have to use.

布魯斯特:個人計算機的關鍵之一就是它是一臺通用機器。只要透過編程,它可以做任何你想做的事情。這與遊戲平臺不同,遊戲平臺只能播放公司告訴它的東西,甚至你的手機也基本上受到控制和限制。個人計算機是開放的,這是出版或新聞自由的關鍵概念,也是圖書館的基礎,因此互聯網檔案庫完全依賴這種開放性和賦予人們控制權,而不是由製造必須使用的設備的公司控制。

Yu: I heard that you’ve went through a hard time because of the suing.

YU:我聽說你因爲被起訴而經歷了一段艱難的時期。

Brewster: Yes.

布魯斯特:是的。

Yu: Do you have anything to comment like why you think people are kind of suing you guys ?What do you think it means to you?

Yu: 你有什麼評論嗎?爲什麼會起訴你們?你覺得這對你們意味着什麼?

Brewster: When something new comes along it is sometimes disturbing to those that are very comfortable in the way they used to exploit people and if there’s a change that shifts the power more towards people rather than the corporations or the governments they’re going to push back. And we have had a long period of time in the internet actually that allowed the internet to grow and change whether it was Bulletin Boards and then like there were still fights all the way through but we are seeing a really strong push by governments and now corporations to try to shut down the freedoms that we have become comfortable with. In such a way that I don’t know how they think they can roll back time where all of their control is in their hands but this is a constant fight and the Internet Archive is part of the internet that is fighting for people’s access.

布魯斯特:當有新事物出現時,對於那些習慣於剝削人民的方式並感到非常舒適的人來說,有時會感到不安。如果有一個改變將權力更多地轉向人民而不是企業或政府,他們將會反擊。在互聯網上,我們經歷了一個很長的時期,這段時間允許互聯網成長和變革,無論是在佈告欄上還是其他地方,我們仍然看到了一系列的爭鬥,但現在我們看到政府和企業正在強烈推動,試圖限制我們已經習慣的自由。他們以一種方式進行,我不知道他們如何想要回到他們掌握所有控制權的時代,但這是一場持續不斷的鬥爭,而互聯網檔案館是互聯網中爲人們的訪問而戰的一部分。

Yu: Okay, and can you talk a little bit about your personal experiences like what makes you want to do this kind of work about the information archive and keep everything open?

Yu: 好的,你能稍微談談你的個人經歷嗎?比如,是什麼促使你從事信息檔案工作並保持一切開放?

Brewster: Personally I think of myself as on the tail end of the hippies.I was a little bit too young for exactly when the hippies were strong but a lot of those principles of let’s spend our time and our lives trying to build a people’s enterprise so that we have a game with many winners so we don’t have just one winner takes all and everybody else is crushed that those principles have directed me for my whole life and when I came of age I said I was good at technology,how do I use technology to make a better world?And the idea of building a library seemed to be a natural thing.So I’ve dedicated my life towards building a library of everything including the dreams of those that came before so that people can learn from them and it’s not just crushed out of existence by those that don’t want you to know.

布魯斯特:就我個人而言,我認爲自己是嬉皮士時代的尾巴。當嬉皮士運動興盛時,我還有點太年輕,但那些「讓我們花時間和生命來建立一個人民企業,讓我們擁有一個有多個贏家的遊戲,而不是隻有一個贏家獨霸,其他人都被壓垮」的原則一直指引着我一生。當我成年時,我說我擅長技術,我要如何利用技術來創造一個更美好的世界?建立一個圖書館的想法似乎是再自然不過的事情了。所以我將一生奉獻給建立一個包含一切的圖書館,包括那些先人的夢想,讓人們能夠從中學習,而不是被那些不希望你知道的人壓垮而消失。

Huang: Can I ask a question? Back to the 60s the counterculture person with the technology like tools is something like Augmented Human Intelligence, like use a new tool to explore the media and the world. But the young generation, especially my students they just use the phone every day, every hour, every minute. It’s just not like a tool to explore the world but it’s inward enforced. It’s just more closely enclosed with a particular group or a particular person I think. Do you have any comment on this different culture of different generations?

黃:我可以問一個問題嗎?回到60年代,反文化人士使用像增強人類智能這樣的科技工具,就像使用新工具來探索媒體和世界。但是年輕一代,尤其是我的學生,他們每天、每小時、每分鐘都在使用手機。它不再像一個探索世界的工具,而是內在強制的。它更加緊密地與特定的羣體或特定的人相關聯。對於這種不同世代的不同文化,你有什麼評論嗎?

Brewster: When a lot of this started it just allowed us to touch and feel the world that was never really in our grasp. But now it’s becoming sort of part of us. Facebook is even just sort of glued on our phones are glued to our faces all the time. We’re talking about implants that were just part of this networked world. I don’t know that even some of the younger generation know what it was like to might feel like you’re always on a camping trip. Everybody was on a camping trip since they were in connected. That’s what their life was like. Now we’ve got this hyper connection and for better and for worse because it comes with a level of surveillance, expectation that you’re going to answer at all times. We need to keep going and reinventing because otherwise we will be building our own cage that we will be uncomfortable to be in.

布魯斯特:當這一切開始時,它只是讓我們能夠觸摸和感受到從未真正掌握的世界。但現在它正在成爲我們的一部分。Facebook甚至只是黏在我們的手機上,我們一直把手機黏在臉上。我們正在談論那些成爲這個網絡世界一部分的植入物。我不知道甚至有些年輕一代知道什麼感覺像是一直在露營。每個人都一直在連接中,這就是他們的生活。現在我們有了這種超級連接,好壞都有,因爲它帶來了一種監控的程度,期望你隨時回答。我們需要不斷前進和重新創造,否則我們將建造自己的牢籠,讓自己感到不舒服。

Huang&Yu: Yeah,that’s good.

黃&崔雨:對,那很好。

Huang: I have another curious question.The Silicon Valley is a lot of wealthy people, big corporations.And Internet Archive is just like an alternative site or a counter site. Does this big corporation have no pressure on you or your organizations? How do we treat Internet Archive, I mean the big corporation?Or do you have any relationship with them?

黃:我還有一個好奇的問題。硅谷有很多富有的人,大公司。而互聯網檔案館就像是一個另類基地。這樣的大公司對你們或你們的組織有壓力嗎?我們應該如何看待互聯網檔案館與大公司的關係?

Brewster: The Internet Archive lives within a culture of these mega corporations. But we’re kind of the old San Francisco hippies. Right? We’re the old let’s find ways to give it away. Let’s find ways to connect people without necessarily have everybody pay for everything. Everything doesn’t have to be monetized. It’s not part of a VC structure where you’re trying to sell out to go and make your millions. The people that work here are interested in sharing and helping communities and helping lots of communities flower. That is the part of San Francisco that lives on in this organization and lots of pockets of the Internet. Maybe they’re much smaller than the big corporations but they’re there. The dreams are still alive. Let’s nurture them. Let’s make the structures so that the next generation of personal computers will be born, supported and grow.

布魯斯特:互聯網檔案館存在於這些巨型企業的文化中。但我們有點像舊日的舊金山嬉皮士,對吧?我們是那些願意無私奉獻的人,願意找到讓人們互相連接的方式,而不是讓每個人都爲一切付費。不是所有事情都需要商業化。我們不是追求賣出去賺大錢的風險投資結構的一部分。這裏的人們對分享和幫助小區感興趣,希望幫助許多小區繁榮發展。這是舊金山的一部分,也是互聯網的許多角落所繼承的精神。也許它們比大企業小得多,但它們存在着。夢想仍然存在,讓我們培育它們,讓我們建立結構,讓下一代個人計算機能夠誕生、得到支持併成長。

Yu: Do you have any expect to the next generation who is working on a personal computing area or kind of the area you’re already working on?

Yu:對於下一代在個人計算領域或你已經從事的領域有什麼期望嗎?

Brewster: Dream big and you can make it happen. If you keep your northern star and you just kind of keep…I’ve been doing this project since 1980 so now 43 years of just always trying to keep this generally going. You can get really far if you’re obsessed.

布魯斯特:有大夢想,你就能實現它。只要你保持着北極星,繼續努力下去...我從1980年開始進行這個項目,已經持續了43年,一直努力保持着這個狀態。如果你對此癡迷,你可以走得很遠。

Yu: The next question, when is the hardest time in your whole career when you’re working on the Internet Archive project?What is the hardest situation for you?

YU:下一個問題,你在整個職業生涯中,在互聯網檔案館項目上工作時,最困難的時刻是什麼?對你來說,最困難的情況是什麼?

Brewster: The hardest part for me is when people seem mean. When they want to crush other people without real reason or just corporate greed. That’s the hardest thing to really see. The project of the Internet Archive in general has been people just saying thank you. Cause it is just charity. It’s a way of getting things out there. It’s a way of making things preserved. But then there are other people that just try to crush either the Internet Archive or Wikipedia or open source software and they just feel like this is what their corporation wants them or their government wants them to do. That I find deeply sad.

布魯斯特:對我來說最困難的部分是當人們顯得刻薄。當他們想要無故地壓制他人,或者只是出於企業的貪婪。這真的很難看到。總的來說,互聯網檔案館的項目讓人們只是說謝謝。因爲這只是慈善。這是一種將事物公諸於世的方式。這是一種保存事物的方式。但是還有其他人,他們試圖壓制互聯網檔案館、維基百科或開源軟件,他們只是覺得這是他們的公司或政府希望他們做的事情。我覺得這非常令人傷心。

Yu: I wanted to ask you what is the most delightful moment you are working on today? But I think I already got some answers.

YU:我本來想問你今天工作中最令人愉悅的時刻是什麼,但我想我已經得到了一些答案。

Huang: You can talk more about joyful moments? Memories?

黃:你可以多談談快樂的時刻嗎?回憶?

Brewster: I live for people to say thank you. I get a level of satisfaction. It makes me spring out of bed. We do interlibrary loan. So we go and take articles and book chapters and I work late at night to make sure that people have access. And people just come back and say thank you for what you do. 120,000 people donate to the Internet Archive every year. Sometimes it’s $3 and sometimes it’s $5.And they often write a little note and say why. And that makes me just so happy that it is that we can find a way to help people and have people find themselves through all of this information, through past histories, oral histories of people long ago, the early Internet founders, the early personal computer makers, a lot of the early ham radio, the amateur radio people, those people are inspiring a new generation. That is just the value that makes me spring out of bed in the morning and want to go and do this.

布魯斯特:我活在別人對我的感謝中。這種滿足感讓我每天早上都精神抖擻。我們提供圖書館間互借服務,爲人們提供文章和書籍章節的閱讀資源。我經常在深夜工作,確保人們能夠獲得所需。而人們回來對我們表示感謝,這讓我感到非常開心。每年有12萬人捐贈給互聯網檔案館,有時是3美元,有時是5美元。他們通常還會寫一張小紙條,解釋爲什麼捐款。這讓我感到非常幸福,因爲我們能夠幫助人們,讓他們通過這些信息找到自己,瞭解過去的歷史,聆聽過去的口述歷史,瞭解早期的互聯網創始人、個人計算機製造商,以及早期的業餘無線電愛好者。這些人激勵着新一代。這就是讓我每天早上精神抖擻、渴望繼續努力的價值所在。

Yu: I think you mentioned a lot of people attending to the Internet Archive, which makes you feel very good, right? I want to ask, somebody think that people who live in the 70s, they work on personal computing, they are using maybe not very powerful computing machine, but they are really willing to create something. But nowadays, we are use more, maybe our phone is a great computing power, but I think most of the users does not use it in the best way it could be. Do you have any comments on it? Why do you think this kind of thing happens? Should we blame the development of the computing technology? Do you have any comments on it?

YU:我覺得你提到了很多人蔘與互聯網檔案館的事情,這讓你感覺很好,對吧?我想問一下,有人認爲生活在70年代的人,他們使用個人計算機,可能不是很強大的計算機,但他們真的願意創造一些東西。但現在,我們使用更多,也許我們的手機是一個強大的計算工具,但我覺得大多數用戶並沒有充分利用它的潛力。你對此有什麼評論嗎?你認爲爲什麼會發生這種情況?我們應該責怪計算技術的發展嗎?你有什麼評論嗎?

Brewster: It used to be that you could do anything you wanted with like an Apple Ⅱ or a machine. You could program it to do kind of anything. There wasn’t any restrictions. But now, like on a phone, if you try to make an app, it is sort of only these small things that are even allowed to do. Can you imagine not being allowed to use your own computer to do what you want? That is the world we now live in. Or if you want to use your Facebook account, or you know, da da da da da, it is constrained. What we need is an opening, cause that is what makes people come up with new ideas that are not predicated on how you are supposed to do it. Sometimes the phones are too controlled. Certainly the video games are way too controlled. We need to empower people to come up with their own futures, their own ways. Personal computers was like that. The World Wide Web in the early days was like that. How can we reinvent? Maybe it is the decentralized web. Maybe it is something else that carries on the tradition of counterculture in technology.

布魯斯特:以前,你可以用像蘋果Ⅱ或其他機器做任何你想做的事情。你可以編程讓它做任何事情。沒有任何限制。但現在,像手機上,如果你試圖開發一個應用程序,只能做一些小事情。你能想象不被允許使用自己的計算機做自己想做的事情嗎?這就是我們現在生活的世界。或者如果你想使用你的Facebook賬戶,或者你知道的,等等,都有限制。我們需要一個開放的環境,因爲這才能激發人們提出不依賴於傳統方式的新想法。有時候手機太受控制了。當然,視頻遊戲也受到了過度的控制。我們需要讓人們有能力創造自己的未來,自己的方式。個人計算機就是這樣的。早期的互聯網也是如此。我們如何重新創造?也許是去中心化的網絡。也許是其他能延續技術反文化傳統的東西。

Yu: I think I have gone through all the questions you have asked.

YU:我想你已經回答了我提出的所有問題。

Huang & Yu: Do you have anything you want to say? Anything you want to add?

黃&崔雨:你有什麼想說的嗎?有什麼要補充的嗎?

Brewster: You should give away this documentary. You should put it on the internet so that it can be downloaded for free. You should upload it to the internet archive. You should make these dreams that you are collecting from all these people that are now getting pretty old available to the world without restriction. Please.

布魯斯特:你應該把這部紀錄片發佈出去。你應該把它放在網上,讓人們可以免費下載。你應該上傳到因特網檔案庫。你應該讓這些夢想,這些來自那些年事已高的人們的夢想,能夠毫無限制地向全世界展示。拜託了。

Yu: Yes, actually we can do that.

崔雨:是的,實際上我們可以做到。

Huang: We will do a version of a profile and make it open.

黃:我們將製作一個每個人的採訪版本並公開。

Brewster: Make it open.Let’s post it to the internet archive.

Brewster:公開發布吧,我們將其上傳至因特網檔案庫。

Yu: Sure, we can do that.

Yu:當然,我們可以做到。

Brewster: Yay!Thank you

布魯斯特:耶!謝謝你

Huang: Thank you so much.

黃:非常感謝你。

本體論維度 / Ontological Dimensions

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