文化與技術三部曲 · SF-01｜專訪 John Mark Agosta

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John: Okay, so my name is John Mark Agosta. I was born in New York and I came to Stanford for graduate school in 1981 and I’ve continued here in tech. After 10 years at Stanford, I got a doctorate. I spent 10 years at Stanford and I did work. Originally I was doing work in public policy and environment and when I got to Stanford, I met people doing early work in artificial intelligence and I immediately got connected into that and started doing work in an area of probabilistic artificial intelligence and continued that as a career. I’ve worked in industry ever since I graduated in 92. I first worked for Stanford Research Institute and then I worked for a small startup that came out of Stanford and when that failed, I worked for another startup. And after that I worked for Intel Research and after Intel Research closed its program, I worked for another startup and then I worked for Toyota for a while in one of their research labs and that came to an end and I worked for another startup. And then I worked for Microsoft which I continued for eight years until last month when I left Microsoft. So I’ve basically had a career as typical in tech where every couple years I wanted to do something else. And none of the startups were successful, which is not strange. And at the same time, while I was a graduate student, my wife was also in tech and she worked in a technology called voicemail which at the time was entirely novel. Nobody knew what voicemail was and so I worked part time for her startup, the startup where she worked over the ten years that it took for them to develop that into a product that was eventually, no, to develop that into a company that was eventually sold to a large, to Akitel, to a telecommunications company. And she went on and worked in other areas of tech so I basically have somewhat two experiences in the tech world over these years.

約翰：好的，我叫約翰·馬克·阿戈斯塔。我出生在紐約，1981年來到史丹佛大學攻讀研究生，並一直在這裏從事技術工作。在史丹佛待了10年後，我獲得了博士學位。我在史丹佛待了10年，做了一些工作。起初，我從事公共政策和環境方面的工作，但當我來到史丹佛後，遇到了一些從事人工智能早期工作的人，我立刻加入其中，開始從事概率人工智能領域的工作，並將其作爲職業發展。自從1992年畢業以來，我一直在工業界工作。我最初在史丹佛研究所工作，然後轉到一家由史丹佛大學孵化的小型初創企業工作，但該企業失敗後，我轉到另一家初創企業工作。在英特爾研究所關閉其項目後，我又轉到另一家初創企業工作，然後在一家豐田的研究實驗室工作一段時間，之後轉到另一家初創企業工作。然後我轉到微軟工作，一直持續了八年，直到上個月離開微軟。 所以基本上，我在科技行業有一個典型的職業生涯，每隔幾年我都想做點別的事情。而且沒有一個創業公司取得了成功，這並不奇怪。與此同時，當我還是一名研究生的時候，我的妻子也在科技行業工作，她從事的是當時完全新穎的語音信箱技術。當時沒有人知道什麼是語音信箱，所以我爲她的創業公司兼職工作，她在那裏工作了十年，將其發展成爲最終被一家大型電信公司Akitel收購的公司。她後來又在科技領域的其他領域工作，所以我在這些年裏基本上有兩種科技世界的經驗。

Yu: Okay, as we mentioned before, this documentary is about counterculture and history of computing. I believe you went through it for some time.

崔雨：好的，正如我們之前提到的，這部紀錄片是關於反文化和計算機歷史的。我相信你已經花了一些時間來研究它。

John: Yes, I’ve seen this, yes.

約翰：是的，我看過了，是的。

Yu: Yes, can you tell me more about your experiences when you were in Stanford?

Yu: 是的，你能告訴我更多你在史丹佛的經歷嗎？

John: Sure, I’ll tell you a little bit more. Well, my time at SRI was kind of past its heyday, right, but Stanford was very new, things were very new, and Stanford, most East Coast universities are somewhat stove-piped or rigid, and they provide constant funding and strong supervision, and Stanford was very porous, it was very open. There would be people showing up in the labs who were often not students, who were also in some way involved. There were a lot of professors who were going out and getting involved in startups and technologies. Of course, we all know this, right? This is our reputation. But remember, in East Coast universities, in many universities, this was, if not discouraged, it was not at all part of the culture. There was a strong distinction between the academic and the industry.

約翰：當然，我會告訴你更多一點。嗯，我在SRI的時候已經過了它的全盛時期，對吧，但史丹佛大學是非常新的，一切都很新鮮，而且史丹佛和大多數東海岸的大學相比，有些僵化，提供持續的資金和強力的監督，而史丹佛則非常開放。實驗室裏經常會有一些不是學生的人出現，他們也以某種方式參與其中。有很多教授會去參與初創企業和技術。當然，我們都知道這一點，對吧？這是我們的聲譽。但請記住，在東海岸的大學，許多大學，這種行爲，如果不是被反對，至少也不是文化的一部分。學術界和工業界之間有很明顯的區別。

In fact, maybe the funny story is just a little vignette, which I think caught my attention was to go ahead. Steve Jobs starts a company called Next, right? And he then gets, I believe, funding from universities. He gets a little bit of funding. Maybe you have to check this. But basically, there’s a crossover where he’s working closely with universities, but he has a company. And the New York Times writes an editorial and says that there’s a conflict of interest here. Now, we thought of it as, this is very natural and it’s beneficial to both sides. But it was not part of the way that the mainstream people thought of the distinction between academic world and the business world. And Stanford, I think, and you can go back to its history 100 years before, Stanford has always had a much more integrated view of business and academic work.

其實，也許這個有趣的故事只是一個小插曲，我認爲引起我的注意是前進的動力。史蒂夫·喬布斯成立了一家叫做Next的公司，對吧？然後，他獲得了大學的資助，我相信他得到了一點點資金。也許你需要查證一下。但基本上，他與大學密切合作，同時擁有一家公司。《紐約時報》發表社論，稱這存在利益衝突。現在，我們認爲這是非常自然的，對雙方都有益。但這並不是主流人士對學術界和商業界之間區別的看法。而史丹佛大學，我想你可以回顧一下它100年前的歷史，一直以來都對商業和學術工作有更爲綜合的觀點。

And I think one of the telltales about that, and here we are kind of off not on the counterculture side, but on the West Coast culture side. One of the first courses as engineers that we took at Stanford was a course in financial accounting. And it was essentially an intro. It was like a first year business school class. Nothing like this would happen in an engineering school on the East Coast. My father was an engineering professor on the East Coast when I grew up. And the class assignment was, they would give you essentially the equivalent of a box of receipts in a shoebox. And they would say, write up the balance sheet and the income statement. Write the accounting statement for this startup. And that was your assignment in how you learned what it meant to start a business. And it wasn’t taught about, it wasn’t an entrepreneurship class. The word entrepreneurship doesn’t really come to the common vocabulary until maybe the 1990s and the 2000s. But it was just so indicative of the idea that a business person and an engineer are basically two sides of one coin, and that’s not good to make a false distinction there. And that was, as I say, so untypical of the East Coast way of thinking about things here.

我認爲其中一個關鍵的指標是，我們在這裏不是在反文化的一邊，而是在西岸文化的一邊。在史丹佛大學，我們作爲工程師的第一門課就是財務會計。這基本上是一門入門課程，就像是商學院的第一年課程。在東岸的工程學院是不會有這樣的課程的。我在長大時，我的父親是東岸的一位工程學教授。課堂作業是，他們會給你一個相當於一盒收據的東西，然後告訴你寫出資產負債表和利潤表。寫出這個初創公司的會計報表。這就是你學習創業意味着什麼的作業。這不是一門創業課程，創業這個詞直到1990年代和2000年代才真正進入常用詞彙。但這只是很明顯地表明，商人和工程師基本上是同一個硬幣的兩面，沒有必要做出虛假的區分。 而這正如我所說的，這在東海岸對於這些事情的思考方式中是非典型的。

As for counterculture, tech was in the early 80s a very playful thing. It was not taken seriously by the mainstream. People were designing games on this thing called an Apple II computer. And it was, for all intents and purposes, it was a game platform and a toy. And nobody, I think, except certain visionaries, saw it as having much potential. The joke about Apple was that it was a bunch of kids who were running this, and that the serious business people on the East Coast would soon overtake Apple. And Apple was considered a very, maybe Apple was maybe the example that we hold up. But this may be true across many of the companies at the time, because there were many. But the thought was that, well, these people, these kids, are going to have fun. But eventually, the serious businesses will take over the space. And the thought that Apple would survive more than a few years was always the general sense of what the mainstream had. So Apple had this kind of cult around it. And I’m sure you will read and find out a lot of connections here. I’m not telling you some newer stories. I’ll give you one little personal vignette.

至於反文化，科技在80年代初是一件非常有趣的事情。它沒有被主流認真對待。人們在一種叫做蘋果II的計算機上設計遊戲。從所有的目的來看，它是一個遊戲平臺和玩具。我認爲除了某些有遠見的人之外，沒有人真正看到它的潛力。關於蘋果的笑話是，這是一羣孩子在運營這個公司，而東岸的嚴肅商人們很快就會超越蘋果。蘋果被認爲是一個非常，也許蘋果是我們所推崇的例子。但這可能是當時許多公司的情況，因爲當時有很多公司。但人們的想法是，這些人，這些孩子，會玩得開心。但最終，嚴肅的企業將接管這個領域。蘋果能夠存活超過幾年的想法一直是主流的普遍觀點。所以蘋果周圍有一種邪教般的氛圍。我相信你會在這裏讀到並找到很多聯繫。我不是在告訴你一些新的故事。我會給你一個小小的個人插曲。

The thing about Steve Jobs is that he was present in the neighborhoods. I grew up in Palo Alto. And you would occasionally see him on the street. He was a somewhat unimposing person. And he was a person who did not isolate himself. So this last year, my son comes back from college. And he’s interested in Zen Buddhism. And so he finds that there’s a Zen Buddhist temple in Mountain View, California, called Kadendo. So we go there. And it’s interesting because it’s both about, it has a tech connection. And it also has the Zen Buddhist connection. Now, you know, Zen is kind of layered in California. During the 50s, several Roshi come over from Japan. And they attract a lot of interest on the West Coast. And the beat generation gets involved with, right, OK, you know some of this story. And so this grows. And there becomes a vibrant community. It maybe doesn’t really understand Zen entirely. But it does become somewhat connected in the popular culture. And it’s kind of different than, you know, of course there had always been a Japanese Buddhist culture with early immigrations in the West Coast. But this is like a layer on top of that. So we’re talking with some of the folks at Kadendo. And one of the stories that comes up is in the origins, when in the 60s and 70s, the early teachings were first being described, the meetings were all in a garage in Silicon Valley, right? So it comes out in a similar way. And it turns out that one of the people who’s involved is Steve Jobs, and that he is taking advantage of this infusion of this new Eastern culture. Now I’m sure there are many stories about Steve Jobs. But he does have this, you know, connection because the Buddhist temple, the Buddhist conundrum that my son is part of was partly paid for, was partly endowed by Steve Jobs. So as I say, you’ll probably find a lot of threads, right, you’ll find a lot of different connections. But that’s just one little example, I think.

關於史蒂夫·喬布斯的事情是，他經常出現在小區中。我在帕洛阿爾託長大，偶爾會在街上看到他。他是一個相對低調的人，並且不會孤立自己。所以去年，我兒子從大學回來後對禪宗佛教產生了興趣。他發現加利福尼亞州山景城有一個名爲Kadendo的禪宗佛寺，於是我們去參觀了那裏。有趣的是，這個寺廟既與科技有關，又與禪宗佛教有關。你知道，禪宗在加利福尼亞州有一定的影響力。在50年代，有幾位來自日本的禪師來到這裏，吸引了西岸的很多人的興趣。垮掉的一代也參與其中，你應該對這個故事有所瞭解。於是這個社羣逐漸壯大起來，也許並不完全理解禪宗，但它在流行文化中有一定的影響力。這與早期日本移民在西岸建立的佛教文化有所不同，可以說是在其之上的一層。我們正在與Kadendo的一些人交談。 其中一個故事是關於起源的，當在60年代和70年代，早期的教學首次被描述時，所有的會議都在硅谷的一個車庫裏，對吧？所以它以類似的方式呈現出來。結果發現，其中一個參與其中的人是史蒂夫·喬布斯，他正在利用這種新的東方文化的融入。現在我確定關於史蒂夫·喬布斯有很多故事。但他確實有這種聯繫，因爲我兒子所參與的佛教寺廟，佛教的困惑部分是由史蒂夫·喬布斯部分支付的。所以我說，你可能會找到很多線索，對吧，你會找到很多不同的聯繫。但這只是一個小例子，我想。

I had first come to California as a student visiting a roommate from college in the 70s. And California for me was an entirely different world. It was so eye-opening and so diverse. The weather was diverse. The people were doing different things. There were freedoms that in various social ways that we wouldn’t have allowed or considered on the East Coast. There were people who seemed to have leisure that I couldn’t really grasp where they seemed to have so much free time. And there were just ideas, some of them very silly, but some of them very novel, that were entertained. And you could do things. There was what I would call kind of a culture of yes. People would say, let’s do something. And someone would say, yes, let’s go and do it. And of course, there was the drug culture. But there was also a literary culture. There was an artistic culture, people I knew who were doing interesting things in arts were often out here. And there was on the East Coast a certain kind of exclusivity. You kind of had to show your membership. If you wanted to be involved with an artistic community, you kind of had to have a credential or something that would enter you into that. Here, there was this much more openness of what I would call a culture of yes. And I think it helped breed a bunch of the creativity and was something that was borrowed from the counterculture more generally across the culture here. Because of that, the tech activities here, as I say, were not considered mainstream. Now, I think what happens is slowly people start realizing. You have some interesting stories. You’ve probably read them about the so-called troublemakers at Xerox PARC. And another interesting story. So I come here and I’ve used computers. I know I’m versatile at the command line on early computers. This is even before PCs, right? I’ve sat down and I’ve worked at a terminal. And I had been working in the Environmental Protection Agency as an intern before I came to California. So I joined the Environmental Club at Stanford. We want to write a newsletter. So one of the members of the club says, well, I’ll take you to my office where I’m an intern. It’s Xerox PARC. And we’ll write a newsletter there. So we go there. And this is a modern building. We go inside. And there’s this machine and it has this mouse attached to it. And it has images on the screen. And I had never imagined anything like this. It was like this is beyond my comprehension. It was such an amazing vision. And this is like 1981. This is before the Mac. And we sit down and we build a newsletter. And we typeset it and we put little pictures in it. And we print it out on this automatic printer that prints a bitmap image of what we actually had on the screen. And having only seen computers that type out text on a line, it was just mind-boggling at the time. And it was like, oh, sure, let’s just go to my office and we’ll do this. It wasn’t like we needed permission or it was expensive. Or it was just there. And I wish I could remember the name of the student. I won’t get it right. His first name was Bruce. But he had been an intern or he had been a high school student who worked, was brought in at Xerox PARC. There was a fellow named Larry Tesler who in some later times becomes kind of part of the story. But they had brought in high school students because they were building something called Small Talk. And they wanted to show that this was possible for a high school student to use and understand. And he was part of that experiment. So that’s just kind of part of the openness that and just a range of new ideas that were accessible that just made it so mind-boggling for me at the time. And as I say, you know, I would talk to my friends on the East Coast and they would say, Stanford, is that a good school? And they had really very little idea of this. And I would talk about these things. And it was like, well, you know, that’s not all that serious stuff, is it?

我第一次來到加州是在70年代，當時我是作爲一名學生來探望大學室友的。對我來說，加州是一個完全不同的世界。它是如此開眼界，如此多元化。天氣多變，人們從事不同的事情。在各種社會方式上，有一些自由是我們在東海岸不會允許或考慮的。有些人似乎擁有我無法理解的閒暇時間。還有一些想法，有些非常愚蠢，但有些非常新奇，都受到了娛樂。你可以做很多事情。我會稱之爲一種「肯定文化」。人們會說，讓我們做些什麼。然後有人會說，是的，讓我們去做吧。當然，那裏有毒品文化。但也有文學文化。有藝術文化，我認識的在藝術領域做有趣事情的人經常在這裏。而在東海岸，有一種特定的排他性。如果你想參與藝術社羣，你必須展示你的成員身份。你必須擁有一個證書或其他能讓你進入其中的東西。 在這裏，有一種更加開放的文化，我稱之爲「肯定文化」。我認爲這種文化培養了許多創造力，並且這種文化的源頭可以追溯到整個反主流文化。正因爲如此，這裏的科技活動並不被視爲主流。現在，我認爲情況正在慢慢改變。你可能讀過一些關於施羅克斯PARC的所謂麻煩製造者的有趣故事。還有另一個有趣的故事。所以我來到這裏，我使用過計算機。我知道如何在早期計算機上使用命令行。這甚至是在個人計算機出現之前，對吧？我坐下來在一個終端機前工作。在來到加州之前，我曾在環境保護署實習。所以我加入了史丹佛大學的環保俱樂部。我們想要寫一份通訊。於是俱樂部的一位成員說，好吧，我帶你去我實習的辦公室，那裏是施羅克斯PARC，我們可以在那裏寫通訊。於是我們去了那裏。那是一座現代化的建築。我們走進去，看到一臺機器，上面連接着一個鼠標，屏幕上有圖像。 我從未想象過會有這樣的事情。就好像這超出了我的理解範圍。這是一個如此驚人的景象。而這是在1981年。在Mac出現之前。我們坐下來製作一份通訊。我們排版並在其中插入小圖片。然後我們用這臺自動打印機將其打印出來，打印出屏幕上實際顯示的位圖圖像。之前只見過能夠在一行上打印文本的電腦，當時這簡直讓人難以置信。就像是，哦，當然，我們只需去我的辦公室，我們就能做到這一點。不需要徵求許可，也不需要花費很多錢。它就在那裏。我希望我能記住那個學生的名字。我記不太清楚了。他的名字是布魯斯。但他曾經是一名實習生，或者是一名被引進施樂帕克的高中生。有一個叫拉里·特斯勒的傢伙在後來的某個時候成爲了這個故事的一部分。但他們引進高中生是因爲他們正在開發一種叫做Small Talk的東西。他們想要展示這對於一名高中生來說是可能的，並且可以理解。他就是那個實驗的一部分。 這只是開放性的一部分，還有一系列新的想法可以接觸，這對我來說真是令人難以置信。就像我說的，你知道，我會和東海岸的朋友聊天，他們會問，史丹佛是好學校嗎？他們對此幾乎一無所知。我會談論這些事情，但他們會說，那些不是很嚴肅的事情吧？

We were also, I think, you know, there was this kind of interesting layer of Japanese culture that comes into the West Coast. And maybe that takes a little bit of explaining, especially since the perception of Japanese culture in the United States and the perception that I’m sure you come from with China, you see it from different sides. But one of the things that I think we were fascinated with and was, became part of the counterculture is we got involved in martial arts. And we considered it a kind of mental discipline and training. And this was, again, something that was new and foreign and somewhat a common theme. This was one common cultural theme that you found that appeared in the counterculture on the West Coast, especially, you know, in the university settings we had an Aikido club that was of a very high rank. And of course, most of the people in it had some tech interest and basis. And why those two things come together is not obvious. But I mentally kind of associate those in my mind.

我想，我們也有一種有趣的日本文化層面滲入到了西海岸。也許這需要一點解釋，特別是在美國對日本文化的認知和你們中國對日本文化的認知肯定是不同的。但有一件事情我認爲我們很着迷的是，我們參與了武術。我們將其視爲一種精神修養和訓練。這是一種新的、外來的、相對普遍的文化主題。在西海岸的反主流文化中，尤其是在大學環境中，你會發現這是一個共同的文化主題。我們有一個非常高級的合氣道俱樂部，當然，大部分成員都對科技感興趣並有相關基礎。爲什麼這兩個事物會聯繫在一起並不明顯。但在我的腦海中，我將它們聯繫在一起。

Yu: So can we say that, like, to you, like counterculture is like more entertaining? Because you mentioned a lot of.

Yu: 那我們可以說，對你來說，反文化更有趣咯？因爲你提到了很多。

John: I wouldn’t use that word, really. Really? No, why would, entertaining? I mean, the counterculture, right, I grew up in the 60s. And I was in the middle of it because when I go to college, when I look at colleges, right, when I first visit colleges, they’re all closed because of strikes. So I go to visit colleges. I want to see some classes. I want to meet some students and professors. And everything is closed down and everybody’s out in the street. And that’s my impression, right? That’s my first impression of going to college. And, you know, there were many currents going on in this country in the 60s. It was a very divisive time. And again, I don’t have to repeat the history, but the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, the acceptance of drugs, the sexual revolution. It was such a massive social change that it was not isolated to the West Coast at all. In fact, it was probably about isolated within America. But that was the wave that, you know, continues. And, you know, by the 70s and 80s, the counterculture is kind of getting encrusted. It’s kind of getting mainstreamed. It’s getting commercialized. It’s losing a lot of. It’s not developing. It’s getting a little bit solidified. So when we’re talking about the counterculture in the 80s in the West Coast, it’s almost strange to call it counterculture because it’s been around for 20, 30 years. And it’s now become kind of part of the culture itself. It’s kind of mainstreamed in the West Coast.

約翰：真的，我不會用那個詞。真的嗎？不，爲什麼要用「有趣」這個詞？我的意思是，反文化，對吧，我在60年代長大。而且我正好處在其中，因爲當我去大學，當我看大學的時候，它們都因爲罷工而關閉。所以我去參觀大學。我想看看一些課程。我想見見一些學生和教授。但是一切都關閉了，每個人都在街上。這就是我的印象，對吧？這是我去大學的第一印象。你知道的，60年代這個國家有很多潮流。那是一個非常分裂的時期。再說一遍歷史也沒必要，但是婦女運動、民權運動、越戰、毒品的接受、性革命等等。這是如此巨大的社會變革，它不僅僅侷限於西岸。事實上，它在美國內部也只是侷限於某些地區。但那就是那股浪潮，你知道的，它持續着。到了70年代和80年代，反文化開始變得僵化。它開始變得主流化。它開始被商業化。它失去了很多東西。它沒有發展。 它已經有點固化了。所以當我們談到80年代西岸的反文化時，幾乎奇怪地稱之爲反文化，因爲它已經存在了20、30年。現在它已經成爲西岸文化的一部分，已經變得有點主流了。

Yu: I’m also curious about your experience of the counterculture, also include to mention the Zen Buddhist. Do you think this kind of trend affects you when you’re doing your engineering or something, when you’re doing your – when you’re running your own business or this kind of thing? How this kind of culture affects you, affects your career?

Yu: 我也很好奇你在反主流文化方面的經歷，還有提到禪宗佛教。你覺得這種潮流會對你在工程或其他方面的工作產生影響嗎？當你經營自己的事業或其他類似的事情時，這種文化會對你的職業生涯產生什麼樣的影響？

John: I mean, in a couple ways, I think there’s some overlaps. As I say, Stanford had a much freer attitude. And it meant some people could just get lost inside of Stanford and never complete their work or never get any focus. But with the counterculture came, I think, a different risk-taking attitude. And I think that was adopted across different areas. So I think people in businesses were willing to take risks. Because they were familiar with a social milieu where there was more risk-taking. Now, the irony is if you go back to early capitalism, right, that risk-taking attitude exists very early on. It’s not reinvented. Or it is kind of reinvented, I think, a little bit ironically in the counterculture.

約翰：我的意思是，從幾個方面來看，我認爲有一些重迭之處。正如我所說，史丹佛大學有一種更自由的態度。這意味着有些人可能會在史丹佛大學迷失自我，從未完成他們的工作或者沒有任何專注。但隨着反文化的出現，我認爲帶來了一種不同的冒險態度。我認爲這種態度在不同領域得到了採納。所以我認爲企業中的人們願意冒險。因爲他們熟悉一個更加冒險的社會環境。現在，具有諷刺意味的是，如果回顧早期的資本主義，對冒險的態度早在很早之前就存在了。它並沒有被重新發明。或者可以說，在反文化中有一種有點諷刺的重新發明。

Why don’t you repeat the question again? Because I think there’s something else in there.

爲什麼你不再重複一次問題呢？因爲我覺得裏面還有其他的東西。

Yu: Yeah, like the counterculture you experienced, how this kind of thing affects you when you’re doing your engineering or you’re running your business or you’re doing other kind of works as a.

Yu: 對啊，就像你所經歷的反主流文化一樣，這種事情在你從事工程、經營業務或從事其他工作時會對你產生影響。

John: I think risk attitude is, it kind of sums up a bunch of it. So I come to Stanford, and I’m not in computer science. I’m in a department called Engineering Economic Systems. And today it doesn’t exist. It came out of the engineering department in the 60s. And it was kind of a reaction. It was in some way its own kind of intellectual counterculture against the more traditional engineering approaches. So we were taught, instead of being taught, I just go into some technical stuff here. Typical control theory is taught with transfer functions. We were taught state space control theory. Typical statistics is taught with classical statistics. We were taught Bayesian statistics. So in all the different technical areas, they had assembled a bunch of professors who were using novel, innovative ways that were somewhat distinct from the conventional engineering ways. So there was, in that department, a sense of, I wouldn’t really call it counterculture, but it had that kind of, let’s take some larger risks in the way we approach problems. And people in their doctoral work were doing things that were a little bit outside of conventional. People were taking on some more ambitious ideas, many of them somewhat fanciful or maybe not so solidly well-founded. For example, we were working with this idea of using probabilities to express reasoning in terms of AI. And that, at the time, was completely outside of the mainstream. Today, it’s grown into the mainstream. It’s now been integrated into the mainstream. So you can think of that as a different kind of risk, pushing intellectual boundaries. And Stanford was not averse to that. There was a little more of this kind of what I call culture of yes. Sure, yes, go try it. You could, I think, say it has a, which came first, I don’t know, the counterculture, that more risk seeking attitude. But it did pervade work. And I picked a topic for my thesis work that was, today, looking back on it, it was an interesting idea. But at the time, I said, could I use these probability networks to do computer vision? And well, it was an interesting idea. That’s all I can say right now about it. I learned a lot. I came up with some interesting thoughts. But it was perhaps, and I could say this modestly before its time, but it never really became, never really grew into that mainstream. But the fact that I could write a thesis in such an unconventional idea was, I think, characteristic.

約翰：我認爲風險態度，它有點總結了一些東西。所以我來到史丹佛，我不是學計算機科學的。我在一個叫做工程經濟系統的部門。而今天這個部門已經不存在了。它起源於60年代的工程系。它在某種程度上是對更傳統的工程方法的一種反應。所以我們學的不是傳統的控制理論，而是狀態空間控制理論。傳統統計學被教授的是古典統計學，而我們學的是貝葉斯統計學。所以在各個技術領域，他們聚集了一羣教授，他們使用了一些新穎、創新的方法，這些方法與傳統的工程方法有所不同。所以在那個部門裏，有一種，我不會真的稱之爲反文化，但它有那種，讓我們在解決問題的方式上冒一些更大的風險。而且在他們的博士研究中，他們做的事情有點超出了傳統的範疇。 人們開始提出一些更具野心的想法，其中許多有些幻想或者可能不太堅實。例如，我們正在探索使用機率來表達人工智能的推理。當時，這完全不符合主流觀點。如今，它已經成爲主流，融入了主流。所以你可以把它看作是一種不同類型的風險，推動了知識界的界限。而史丹佛大學對此並不反感。這種我所謂的“肯定文化”在這裏更爲普遍。當然，是的，去試試看。我想你可以說這種風險尋求的態度是先有的，但它確實滲透到了工作中。我爲我的論文選擇了一個當時看來很有趣的想法。但是，當時我問自己，我能否使用這些概率網絡來進行計算器視覺呢？嗯，這是一個有趣的想法。現在我只能這樣說。我學到了很多，提出了一些有趣的思考。但或許可以謙虛地說，它出現得有些提前，但從未真正成爲主流。 但事實上，我能夠以如此非傳統的觀點寫出一篇論文，我認爲這是具有特色的。

Yu: I’m also very curious about, do you guys, in your department, cooperate with other?

崔雨：我也很好奇，你們在你們的部門裏，有和其他部門合作嗎？

John: You mean the department I was in?

約翰：你是指我所在的部門嗎？

Yu: Yeah, in Stanford. Do you guys cooperate with other engineers who is, maybe, major in computer engineering or something? Do you guys, like, study together? How do you think?

Yu: 是的，在史丹佛大學。你們會和其他學電腦工程之類的工程師合作嗎？你們會一起學習嗎？你覺得怎麼樣？

John: Well, we were in a lab. We were in a lab called the robotics lab. And I was, perhaps, the only person from my department in that lab, because that lab had people from pretty much every other engineering department in the same lab. So there was a much stronger sense of not being constrained within your department, if that’s what you’re asking about.

約翰：嗯，我們當時在一個實驗室裏。這個實驗室叫做機器人實驗室。而且我可能是唯一一個來自我係的人在那個實驗室裏，因爲那個實驗室裏有來自其他工程系的人。所以如果你問的是是否受到系所限制的感覺，那種感覺在那個實驗室裏就不太明顯了。

Yu: Okay. And how do you think the people who worked with you at that time take the risk-taking trend, as you mentioned? In your works. Like, are they willing to take more risk in their engineering or something? Like, how do you find this thing?

Yu: 好的。那你覺得當時和你一起工作的人們對於你提到的冒險趨勢有什麼看法呢？在你們的工作中。比如說，他們是否願意在工程方面冒更多的險？你是如何看待這一點的？

John: The risk-taking, and this is, maybe, you could even go into some theory here. Risk-taking has to be shared among everybody in the project, in the group. If you have some people who are very risk-taking and very risk-averse, it really makes it hard to figure out how to divide up the work, right? So, and even if I looked at the startup my wife was in, I think to make this work, people have to share the risk and be able to take on the risk as a group. You can’t have some people who are just, oh, I’ll just do what is most likely to be successful. I’ll just take on the small risks and everybody else can take on the large risks. No, I don’t think we ever had those kind of discussions. It’s interesting, the very first piece of the very first, I wouldn’t call it research, the first study project I did with my advisor was on risk-sharing among people in a group. How quantitatively you would use a person’s risk preference to decide how to share, I’ll go into a little more detail, to share the outcomes of a, call it a syndicate or a project or a partnership. So, we had actually, maybe we never put these two things side by side together, you know, one of the things we were doing in the statistics work and the Bayesian decision making that we were doing was working with a tangible measure of risk. What is a person’s risk preference? How can I quantify that? How can I put a dollar amount on what their risk preferences are? And I think that it was, in a way, this seemed very sensible. Since we were taking risks, the idea of quantifying risks was something that we could understand. It was not theoretical. It was something that we could relate on a practical level.

約翰：冒險，或許，你甚至可以在這裏談一些理論。冒險必須在項目或團隊中共同承擔。如果有些人非常喜歡冒險，而另一些人非常害怕冒險，那麼如何分配工作就變得很困難，對吧？即使我看過我妻子所在的初創公司，我認爲要使這個工作成功，人們必須共同承擔風險並作爲一個團隊承擔風險。不能有些人只做最有可能成功的事情，只承擔小風險，而其他人承擔大風險。不，我想我們從來沒有進行過這樣的討論。有趣的是，我和我的導師一起做的第一個研究項目，不算是研究，是關於團隊中人們如何共同承擔風險的。你可以用一個人的風險偏好來量化地決定如何分享一個聯合企業、項目或合作的結果，我稍微詳細解釋一下。 所以，實際上，也許我們從來沒有把這兩件事放在一起考慮過，你知道，我們在統計工作和貝葉斯決策中所做的事情之一就是與風險的有形度量一起工作。一個人的風險偏好是什麼？我如何量化它？我如何用金錢來衡量他們的風險偏好？我認爲，在某種程度上，這似乎是非常明智的。因爲我們在冒險，量化風險的想法是我們能夠理解的。它不是理論上的。它是我們可以在實際層面上理解的東西。

Ray: Do you think there’s any relationship between open source culture?

Ray：你認爲開源文化之間有什麼關係嗎？

John: Well, the culture was originally all open source in the university, right? And DARPA, you know, and the original ARPANET was, I think, the thing that this grew out of. I mean, originally on the ARPANET, I could go in and I could, you know, I could look at FTP files from MIT when I was sitting there at my desk at Stanford and we could share stuff. So I, it’s hard to say because I would have seen that from a very academic viewpoint where everything was shared. And how that actually develops, maybe there’s another, you know, maybe some interesting threads there. Whether that had any strong counterculture flavor, I’m not too sure, but I, yeah, I don’t know.

約翰：嗯，文化最初在大學裏都是開放源碼的，對吧？還有DARPA，你知道的，最初的ARPANET，我想這就是它的起源。我的意思是，最初在ARPANET上，我可以進去，你知道，我可以在史丹佛的辦公桌前查看麻省理工學院的FTP文件，我們可以分享東西。所以，很難說，因爲我當時是從非常學術的角度看待這個問題的，一切都是共享的。關於它是如何發展的，也許還有其他一些有趣的線索。至於它是否具有強烈的反文化風味，我不太確定，但是，是的，我不知道。

Yu: Much more commercial, commercial, like commercial flavor more than counterculture flavor.

崔雨：更商業化，商業化，更喜歡商業味道勝過反文化味道。

Well, we had a very disdainful attitude towards companies like IBM that wanted to make everything proprietary. And I don’t really know where the counterculture side here, but it was often the case where people made claims about the value of their proprietary software. The technology was moving so fast that the open source stuff was often better and more advanced than the proprietary stuff. And those were always fun times when you could show that. You didn’t have to go for the proprietary stuff that the open source stuff out-competed it. Some of that might have been a myth, right? That might have been something we like to believe. But that was kind of the thought at the time. Open source really doesn’t become an established thing basically until the open source Unix operating systems come out. Until, well, actually I guess the first thing is Richard Stallman is the father of that whole thing, right? But he starts with the compiler and editor, with Emacs and the C compiler. Again, there are probably people who are much deeper into that area than I am. But we didn’t really, in the early, early days, we didn’t really talk about open source because it was nothing to distinguish. There was nothing distinguished there. And I think when it became something that was viable and people said, oh, I can use this for serious, real problems and it’s as good as anything that’s proprietary, that doesn’t really occur until like the 1990s, 2000, the whole internet revolution time. And then sharing becomes much easier. We didn’t have GitHub repositories, you know, in those days. Yeah.

嗯，我們對像IBM這樣想要將一切都專有化的公司持有非常輕蔑的態度。我真的不知道這裏的反文化方面是什麼，但通常情況下，人們對他們專有軟件的價值提出了許多主張。技術發展得如此迅速，以至於開源軟件往往比專有軟件更好、更先進。當你能夠證明這一點時，那真是有趣的時刻。你不必選擇那些被開源軟件超越的專有軟件。其中一些可能是一種神話，對吧？那可能是我們喜歡相信的東西。但那是當時的想法。開源在真正成爲一個確立的事物之前，主要是在開源Unix操作系統問世之後纔開始。嗯，實際上，我想第一個開始的是Richard Stallman，他是整個開源運動的奠基人，對吧？但他是從編譯程序和編輯器開始的，使用了Emacs和C編譯程序。再說一次，可能有些人對這個領域比我更深入瞭解。但在早期，我們並不真正談論開源，因爲當時沒有什麼可以區分的。 那裏沒有什麼特別的東西。我認爲，當它變成一個可行的東西，人們說，哦，我可以用這個來解決嚴肅、真實的問題，而且它和任何專有軟件一樣好，這種情況直到1990年代、2000年代的整個互聯網革命時期才真正發生。然後分享變得更容易了。在那些日子裏，我們沒有GitHub存儲庫。是的。

I think this question is a little bit strange, but I’m very curious about what is the pop music, your guys’ favorite when you were in Stanford, like do you guys share your favorite song or something, or do you just like listen to pop music?

我覺得這個問題有點奇怪，但我非常好奇在史丹佛時，你們最喜歡的流行音樂是什麼，你們有分享喜歡的歌曲之類的嗎，還是隻是喜歡聽流行音樂？

Well, I was in classical music. So I had a banter of classical music. And I also, the music I listened to was often the folk music and some of the more relaxed style of music. But you know what’s funny is there were a lot of, even within the tech community, there were a lot of bands. A lot of people who just put together bands and would throw parties. And the people who you knew who were various tech people in different departments or students in different departments, wouldn’t they be playing guitar, or they’d be playing drums, or something like that. There was one, I wish I could remember, at Stanford, there was one band called the Wizards. And Stanford had given them a residence on campus that was left over. I don’t know exactly how Stanford made the case, or they made the case for it. But they all lived in a house, and they would throw parties. And by night, they were a band. And we would go, and we would dance, and whatever.

嗯，我以前是從事古典音樂的。所以我對古典音樂有一些瞭解。我也經常聽民間音樂和一些比較輕鬆的音樂。但你知道有趣的是，即使在科技界，也有很多樂隊。很多人組建樂隊並舉辦派對。你認識的那些科技人員或不同部門的學生，他們會彈吉他，或者打鼓，或者其他樂器。在史丹佛大學，有一個樂隊叫做"Wizards"。史丹佛大學給了他們一個校園內的住所。我不太清楚史丹佛是如何說服的，但他們都住在一起，然後舉辦派對。到了晚上，他們就是一個樂隊。我們會去參加，跳舞，享受音樂。

Yu: Everybody loves folk?

Yu: 大家都喜歡民謠嗎？

John: No, it wasn’t folk music at that time.That was a rock band. Yeah. But I think the overlap between some interest in music and tech, you often found people who had musical talents who were also good in tech. They often had some correspondence.

約翰：不，那時候不是民間音樂。那是一支搖滾樂隊。是的。但我認爲在音樂和科技之間有一些重迭，你常常會發現那些在科技方面表現出色的人也具有音樂才能。他們之間常常有一些相應之處。

Ray: I’m wondering, I’m not sure, is there any relationship between your lab and Augmentation Research Center?

Ray: 我想知道，不太確定，你們實驗室和增強研究中心有沒有什麼關係？

I met Doug Engelbert once. But remember, he was at SRI in the 60s. Right? But remember, there are an awful lot of people involved in tech in various ways, in various places, in various labs. So there were certain highlights you would think of, right? But the short answer is no. But remember, I was part of one lab. There was a robotics lab. There was an AI lab. There were probably half a dozen labs at Stanford, in various AI-related areas at the time. So you don’t see the full iceberg of all the different kinds of things that are going on, and many different threads and sub-areas, many not so visible and notable. But it’s very pervasive in that regard.

我曾經遇過道格·恩格爾巴特一次。但記住，他在60年代在SRI工作。對吧？但記住，在各種方式、各種地方、各種實驗室中，有很多人蔘與科技領域。所以有一些你會想到的重點，對吧？但簡單來說是不行的。但記住，我是其中一個實驗室的一部分。有一個機器人實驗室。有一個人工智能實驗室。在當時，史丹佛大學可能有六個實驗室，涉及各種人工智能相關領域。所以你看不到所有不同類型的事情，還有許多不同的線索和子領域，很多不那麼顯著和顯著的。但在這方面，它非常普遍。

Yu: Since you worked in Silicon Valley for a very long time, how do you feel? Is there any difference in the cultural field. Like, do you think the Silicon Valley’s working culture is quite different? How has it changed?

Yu：你在硅谷工作了很長時間，你覺得怎麼樣？文化方面有什麼不同嗎？比如說，你覺得硅谷的工作文化有很大的差異嗎？它有什麼變化？

John: Well, one really big change is that it’s now serious money. It’s big money. And VC money was not so big a thing. Entrepreneurship was sort of there. But as I say, all the original industries in the 80s, Atari and Apple, they were not financially considered significant. And they did not get much attention. And in that sense, it was more fun. So when Steve Jobs leaves Apple, his net value is measured in millions of dollars. It’s today what an engineer might have from their stock. So real money doesn’t enter into Silicon Valley until the 2000s, until the internet revolution. And that whole internet bubble is just a time of just, it was just a time when things were completely unanchored in terms of any reality. The dollar amounts, the things that people were doing, the valuations, the technology ideas, the internet bubble was a really, it was a fun time. It was a big party. It obviously was not going to last. But it just transformed tech in a way where it had gone from a kind of bunch of innocent kids who had these ideas that were panning out, and it seemed that they were maybe onto something, to a place where this is where money can really be made. And we now have some social serious social consequences. And the big money in this country, the economy is driven now by companies that were tech. As I say, no one really paid attention to the West Coast early on from a business point of view. It was not taken seriously. And that made it fun. And that really gave the counterculture a lot of freedom, or vice versa. And it’s so different today.

約翰：嗯，一個真正的巨大變化是現在是嚴肅的金錢。這是大筆錢。風險投資的錢不是那麼重要。創業精神在某種程度上是存在的。但正如我所說的，80年代的所有原始行業，Atari和蘋果，它們在財務上並不被認爲是重要的。它們也沒有得到太多關注。從這個意義上說，那時更有趣。所以當史蒂夫·喬布斯離開蘋果時，他的淨資產以百萬美元計算。這就是今天一位工程師可能從股票中獲得的價值。真正的金錢直到2000年代進入硅谷，直到互聯網革命。整個互聯網泡沫時期只是一段完全脫離現實的時間。金額、人們所做的事情、估值、技術理念，互聯網泡沫是一個非常有趣的時期。這是一個大派對。顯然這種情況不會持續下去。但它確實改變了科技行業，從一羣有這些想法並且似乎有所突破的天真孩子們的地方，變成了一個真正可以賺錢的地方。 現在我們面臨一些嚴重的社會後果。這個國家的大錢，經濟現在是由科技公司推動的。就像我說的，從商業角度來看，早期沒有人真正關注西岸。它沒有被認真對待。這使得它變得有趣。這真的給了反主流文化很多自由，或者反之亦然。而今天則完全不同了。

And the internet archive actually is interesting, because it preserves a little bit of that culture where making money is not the important thing. But right now, tech is just really driven by finances. And it’s much more cutthroat. And there’s a lot of, quote, national. People come from the East Coast, and they come out here, because the opportunities are here to make money. And that was never the case before. And venture capital is now so over. People pivot on it. Venture capital is considered to be such a prime thing. It was not. It was kind of a kind of sideshow at the time. So that major shift, and I place it around the year 2000 when the internet became commercialized. And then over the early 2000s, you have the growth of various companies that are going to eventually become our Googles in such a today.

互聯網檔案館實際上很有趣，因爲它保留了一點那種不以賺錢爲重要事情的文化。但現在，科技行業真的是被金融驅動。而且競爭更加激烈。還有很多所謂的國家級公司。人們從東海岸來到這裏，是因爲這裏有賺錢的機會。而以前從來沒有這種情況。風險投資現在非常熱門。人們都在追逐它。風險投資被認爲是非常重要的事情。但事實上，它以前只是一個次要的側面表演。所以這是一個重大的轉變，我認爲它發生在2000年互聯網商業化的時候。然後在2000年代初，我們看到了各種公司的增長，它們最終會成爲我們今天的谷歌等公司。