文化與技術三部曲 · SF-06｜專訪 Lee Felsenstein（Community Memory 專題）

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Yu: You can talk more about your experience about community memory.

Yu: 你可以多談談你對社區記憶的經驗。

Lee: OK. Around 1971, I was working and I was recovering from my depression and about to reenter the University of California. I lived in Berkeley and I was experimenting and exploring. Now, let’s stop this. I lived in Berkeley and I was exploring with possible users of a computer network system. I had had the realization in 1970 that a network of computers was what I wanted to create, what I needed to create. I’ll say that again. I had had the realization in 1970 that what I was looking for was a network of computers that could be used by a wide range of people, some of whom in the counterculture, some not. And I had no idea where I was going to get a computer for that purpose. In 1971, computers were big and expensive. So I was walking in the street one night and someone who knew me from my activist work came up to me and said, Lee, Lee, there’s a group of people in San Francisco who have gotten a computer to do the kind of stuff you’re talking about. And I wasn’t even aware I’d been talking about it. So I got the information from him and I contacted them.

李：好的。大約在1971年，我正在工作，正在從我的抑鬱症中恢復，並準備重新進入加州大學。我住在伯克利，進行着實驗和探索。現在，我們停下來吧。我住在伯克利，與可能成爲計算機網絡系統用戶的人進行探索。我在1970年意識到，我想要創建的是一個計算機網絡，也是我需要創建的。我再說一遍。我在1970年意識到，我正在尋找的是一個可以被廣泛人羣使用的計算機網絡，其中一些人屬於反主流文化，一些人則不是。而我完全不知道我將從哪裏獲得這樣的計算機。在1971年，計算機又大又貴。所以有一天晚上，我在街上走着，一個認識我的活動家過來對我說，李，李，舊金山有一羣人已經弄到了一臺可以做你說的那種東西的計算機。而我甚至都不知道我曾經談論過這個。所以我從他那裏得到了信息，並與他們取得了聯繫。

They were in San Francisco. They worked in a building that was being set up as a kind of counterculture group work-live area. And it was all very unofficial. And one of the groups was a group that had formed to bring computer power to the counterculture. They weren’t sure how. They started out by trying to get donations to rent computer time on a time-sharing system, which of course would not be present where they were. They would have only a terminal. And they had the idea that they could put terminals in the various switchboards. Now switchboards were not telephone switchboards like we understand. They were groups that did information referral. And so, say, the free clinic at Berkeley would have a switchboard. And they would go into that to ask questions, to offer help, make connections regarding things that the free clinic was doing. There were other places. Each had their own interest area. They all had switchboards. It was their public access, their home page, as we would say today. And they were all done with nothing but file cards and one person keeping everything in their heads. And that person wouldn’t last very long. Someone else would have to come in and pick up the work. And their way of organizing would be different from the previous way. So I had researched them. I had gone around and found out what they were doing and came away not very hopeful. But this group had also had the same idea. If they could get a computer time and they could get terminals set up there, they could have a kind of a unified file system. Well, they hadn’t gotten very far. But by the time I contacted them, I mean, they had been working since 1970, so they’d been working for over a year. And they had an offer of a computer. And this was a big computer. It was a time-sharing mainframe computer called an SDS 940. And this had been arranged through a very unusual set of circumstances that nobody could replicate today. But this represented a pretty fair amount of money. And they had also gotten a large amount of money by non-profit standards along with it because it needed a lot of additional support and so forth. And they needed an engineer with my skills. And I was interested in that because I had this idea that they were in fact interested in too, of creating an information retrieval system, a program, and making it accessible through terminals to the switchboards. So I began working with them. I finished up my work at the company. By the end of 1971, reentered the Department of Electrical Engineering at Berkeley and was going back and forth between them.

他們在舊金山。他們在一棟正在建設中的建築物工作，這是一個類似反文化羣體工作生活區的地方。而且這一切都非常非正式。其中一個羣體是一個致力於將計算器力量帶給反文化的羣體。他們不確定該如何做到這一點。他們起初試圖通過捐款來租用共享系統上的計算器時間，當然這種系統在他們所在的地方是不存在的。他們只能使用終端機。他們有一個想法，即他們可以將終端機放在各種交換機上。現在，這裏所說的交換機不是我們理解的電話交換機。它們是提供信息轉介服務的羣體。所以，比如，伯克利的免費診所會有一個交換機。他們會進去詢問問題，提供幫助，建立關聯，與免費診所所做的事情相關。還有其他地方，每個地方都有自己的興趣領域。它們都有交換機。這是他們的公共接入，就像我們今天所說的主頁。而且所有這些都只是用文件卡片和一個人記住所有事情來完成的。而這個人不會持續很長時間。其他人必須接手工作。 他們的組織方式與以前的方式不同。所以我對他們進行了研究。我四處走訪，瞭解了他們在做什麼，但並不抱有太大的希望。但這個團隊也有同樣的想法。如果他們能獲得計算機時間，並在那裏設置終端，他們就可以擁有一種統一的文件系統。嗯，他們沒有取得太大進展。但在我聯繫他們的時候，他們已經從1970年開始工作了，所以他們已經工作了一年多。他們有一臺計算機的提議。而且這是一臺大型計算機，一個叫做SDS 940的分時共享主機。這是通過一系列非常特殊的情況安排的，今天沒有人能夠複製。但這代表了相當大的一筆錢。根據非營利標準，他們還得到了一大筆資金，因爲它需要很多額外的支持等等。而且他們需要一個具備我的技能的工程師。我對此很感興趣，因爲我也有這個想法，即創建一個信息檢索系統，一個程序，並通過終端使其可供交換機使用。 所以我開始和他們合作。我完成了在公司的工作。到1971年底，重新進入伯克利的電氣工程系，來回穿梭於兩者之間。

For the next six months, I finished my degree work. And then I moved into the building where that computer was. There were people living there and working there. About 50 people lived there. About 150 people worked there. And I then brought in some people I had met along the way. One was Ephraim Lipkin, a systems programmer. One was Judith Milhon, who was a hard to describe, but she was Ephraim’s long-term partner and had been using computers for a while. He had taught her and she was using them with her daughter. Another fellow, Mark Spakowski and Ken Kolstad, who Ephraim had met when he was in Buckminster Fuller’s World Game, which had come to San Francisco in 1970. So I got them involved in the idea. And in 1972, I graduated. That would be June. We worked then to build the information retrieval system. I was working on setting up and maintaining the computer because my expertise is not software but hardware.

在接下來的六個月裏，我完成了我的學位工作。然後我搬進了那臺計算機所在的建築物裏。那裏有人居住和工作。大約有50個人住在那裏。大約有150個人在那裏工作。然後我帶來了一些我在途中遇到的人。其中一個是系統程序設計師Ephraim Lipkin。另一個是Judith Milhon，她很難描述，但她是Ephraim的長期伴侶，並且已經使用計算機一段時間了。他教過她，她也和她的女兒一起使用計算機。另外還有一位名叫Mark Spakowski和Ken Kolstad的人，他們是Ephraim在1970年參加Buckminster Fuller的世界遊戲時認識的，該遊戲在1970年來到了舊金山。所以我讓他們參與了這個想法。在1972年，也就是六月，我畢業了。然後我們開始建立信息檢索系統。我負責設置和維護計算機，因爲我的專長不是軟件，而是硬件。

And by sometime in 1973, we had the software ready. But we didn’t have anybody who would want to use it. And some of us, including Ephraim, not me, went to a meeting with librarians. It was a county library of libraries, a county reference library. They would exchange books. And they met with them and the librarian said, it looks like you have a library with no books on the shelf. Why don’t you put some books on the shelf and see what happens? And Ephraim came back and said, I’ve been thinking about this. Why don’t we just put a terminal out in public and see who uses it? Now, fortunately, we had designed the software, and Ephraim was very essential in this, to allow the user to choose their own index words. So if you think about putting a note up on a bulletin board, there are categories on the bulletin board. You choose the category, but somebody else defines those categories. Items for sale, items wanted, jobs wanted, cars. But we had designed software that would allow anybody to invent a category for the item. And so that’s what we did.

到了1973年的某個時候，我們已經準備好了軟件。但是我們沒有任何人願意使用它。我們中的一些人，包括以弗拉姆，不是我，去參加了一個與圖書館員的會議。那是一個縣級圖書館，一個縣級參考圖書館。他們會交換圖書。他們與他們見面，圖書館員說，看起來你們有一個沒有書的圖書館。爲什麼不把一些書放在書架上，看看會發生什麼？以弗拉姆回來後說，我一直在思考這個問題。爲什麼我們不在公共場所放一個終端，看看誰會使用它？現在，幸運的是，我們設計了軟件，以弗拉姆在其中起到了非常重要的作用，允許用戶選擇自己的索引詞。所以，如果你想在公告板上張貼一張便條，公告板上有各種類別。你選擇類別，但是其他人定義了這些類別。出售物品，求購物品，求職，汽車。但是我們設計了一款軟件，允許任何人爲物品發明一個類別。所以我們就這樣做了。

First of all, we talked to the student government at the University of California, because they had set up a record store. They wanted to drive prices of records down, and they did. So it was a very popular place. We went to what amounts to the board of directors, which was the student government council. We said, we would like to do this at this record store, and they said, great, go do it. No further information needed. So we set up a terminal. It was a teletype terminal. It’s on the picture. It’s shown in the picture up here behind me. That’s on a little card table, and what’s under that box is a teletype. It’s a teletype printer. It makes a lot of noise. Tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, like that. And there was a modem somewhere on the floor. And somebody had to sit there, because a teletype needs to have its paper changed. It can jam. These were old teletypes. That’s how we got them. Not brand new.

首先，我們與加州大學的學生政府進行了交談，因爲他們建立了一家唱片店。他們希望降低唱片的價格，他們也做到了。所以那是一個非常受歡迎的地方。我們去了類似董事會的地方，也就是學生政府委員會。我們說，我們想在這家唱片店做這件事，他們說，太好了，去做吧。不需要進一步的信息。所以我們設置了一個終端。那是一個電傳終端。在圖片上可以看到。在我身後的圖片上可以看到。它放在一張小桌子上，那個盒子下面是一個電傳打印機。它會發出很多噪音。嘀嘀嘀嘀嘀嘀嘀嘀嘀，就像這樣。地板上有一個調制解調器。有人必須坐在那裏，因爲電傳打印機需要更換紙張。它可能會卡住。這些都是舊的電傳打印機。這就是我們得到它們的方式。不是全新的。

It was in front of, as you see, a bulletin board, a paper bulletin board used for musicians. And we got a lot of musicians’ traffic on the computer, because they could see this was a superior technology. They could still put things on the paper bulletin board, but they could also do creative searches and add their own index headings on a computer. So it became popular. Only one person that I ever saw said, a computer? Oh, no, I don’t want a computer around. And we thought a lot of people would do that, but no, only one person. And so we ran it there. We never announced it. So we were also printing up on this line printer that we had. We could do a whole line at a time. A digest, a paper copy of what was in the computer. And we would leave a copy there, so if you took time to look through it, there’s a sample here of some pages from it.

就像你看到的那樣，在那裏有一個佈告欄，一個供音樂家使用的紙質佈告欄。因爲他們可以看到這是一種優越的技術，所以我們在計算機上吸引了很多音樂家的流量。他們仍然可以在紙質佈告欄上張貼東西，但他們也可以在計算機上進行創造性的搜索並添加自己的索引標題。所以它變得很受歡迎。我只見過一個人說，計算機？哦，不，我不想在身邊有計算機。我們以爲很多人會這樣做，但只有一個人。所以我們在那裏運行它。我們從未宣佈過。所以我們還在這臺行式打印機上打印。我們可以一次打印一整行。這是計算機中的內容的摘要，紙質副本。我們會留下一份副本，所以如果你花時間翻閱，這裏有一些頁面的樣本。

And we found that people used it for much more imaginative uses than we had assumed. We thought there would be only cars, jobs, and housing as the headings. That’s what everyone thought. But it was almost impossible to find anything that used only one heading. And people’s imagination is very clever. We told people, think of a word that someone would have used on the item that you want to see. Type the word in, push the green button, which was the carriage return button, and this initiated a search for it. And then it would print out the first lines of ten of the items that it found. So you had this little summary, a little one-line summary. And if you liked it, you would type in the number you saw, and it would print the whole item out. One item was an entire picture, a graphic of a sailboat done in teletype, in print, like typewriter graphics done with characters. I don’t think anybody sat there and actually typed that in there. I think they probably worked with us to enter it from the computer itself, and I would have done it that way. But we never know, because we really didn’t require identification, and we really didn’t know who was using it. Only whoever walked to that place. And there was another terminal in San Francisco. There’s a section of San Francisco that a lot of students went to after they left the university, the mission district. But there were a lot of other people. It was a very lively district, mostly Central American, Latino. And someone in there, in the library that was a branch, got us to put a terminal in. So we had those two places, one in Berkeley, one in San Francisco, across the bay, that were operational. There was another two places that were much less public.

我們發現人們對它的使用比我們預想的更有創意。我們原以爲只會有汽車、工作和住房這些標題。這是每個人都認爲的。但是幾乎不可能找到只使用一個標題的東西。而且人們的想象力非常聰明。我們告訴人們，想一個詞，這個詞是別人在你想看的物品上可能使用的。輸入該詞，按下綠色按鈕，也就是回車鍵，這樣就會開始搜索。然後它會打印出找到的前十個物品的第一行。所以你會得到這個小小的摘要，一個簡短的一行摘要。如果你喜歡，你可以輸入你看到的編號，它就會打印出整個物品。其中一個物品是一幅完整的圖片，一艘帆船的圖形，用電傳打字機的方式打印出來，就像用字符做的打字機圖形。我不認爲有人坐在那裏真的把它輸入進去。我想他們可能和我們一起在計算機上輸入的，我會這樣做。但我們永遠不知道，因爲我們真的不需要身份證明，也不知道誰在使用它。只有那些走到那個地方的人。 而且在舊金山還有另一個終端。舊金山有一個區域，很多學生離開大學後會去的地方，那就是米申區。但那裏也有很多其他人。那是一個非常熱鬧的區域，主要是中美洲和拉丁裔的人。在那裏的一個分館圖書館裏，有人讓我們放置了一個終端。所以我們有了這兩個地方，一個在伯克利，一個在舊金山，橫跨海灣，都是可以使用的。還有另外兩個地方，但不太對外開放。

And it was quite a success as far as we were concerned, because we were looking for the question, would people use this at all? And if so, would they use it in any way that was helpful to them and which captured the interest of more people? We weren’t looking for how we could make money out of it. That would come later, and it never came for us. But the primary aspect was we wanted a method, a tool. But we wanted a tool people could use when they wanted to form and reform communities. People are not frozen in communities. There’s a natural tendency to try to explore other connections. So we wanted to provide a tool that would help them do that. So I think it was a success. I, for instance, met the guy with whom I worked for one of my careers, designing computer stuff for the personal computer industry, when that occurred. This was all before personal computers. And I met him through community memory. In fact, I didn’t even see his item. Somebody told me about it.

對我們來說，這是相當成功的，因爲我們當時在尋找的問題是，人們是否會使用這個工具？如果使用的話，他們是否會以任何對他們有幫助且能吸引更多人的方式使用？我們並不是在尋找如何從中賺錢，這樣的事情會在之後發生，但對我們來說，最重要的是我們想要一個方法，一個工具。我們希望提供一個工具，讓人們在想要建立或改變社羣時可以使用。人們並不會被困在社羣中，他們自然而然地會嘗試尋找其他連結。所以我們希望提供一個能幫助他們做到這一點的工具。所以我認爲這是一個成功的案例。例如，我曾經在一個職業中遇到了一位合作伙伴，我們一起爲個人計算機產業設計計算機設備，而這一切都是在個人計算機出現之前。我是通過社羣記憶認識他的，事實上，我甚至沒有看到他的貼文，是有人告訴我他的存在的。

And that’s one of those dynamics that we wanted to support particularly. The idea is that people want to find the person with whom they want to exchange some information. Now, that information they exchange I call primary information. And who the other person is and how to reach them, that is secondary information. The community memory system was set up to exchange only secondary information because we knew we couldn’t handle all the primary information. Some people thought that we were trying to do a computer system that would replace primary information exchange per face-to-face contact, which is ridiculous. We wanted to allow that contact. We wanted to make it possible. And I like to say that we opened the door to cyberspace and found that it was hospitable territory. I’ll say this again. What we found was that we opened the door to cyberspace and found that it was hospitable territory. The word cyberspace didn’t exist at the time, but now it does. And this explains it rather well. Once we knew that, a lot of other things could be done. So we ran that system.

這是我們特別想要支持的一種動態之一。想法是人們想要找到與他們交換一些信息的人。現在，他們交換的信息我稱之爲主要信息。而對方是誰以及如何聯繫他們，這是次要信息。社區記憶系統被設立來僅交換次要信息，因爲我們知道我們無法處理所有的主要信息。有些人認爲我們試圖建立一個可以取代面對面交流的計算器系統，這是荒謬的。我們想要允許這種交流。我們想要使其成爲可能。我喜歡說我們打開了通往網絡空間的大門，發現它是一個好客的領土。我再說一遍。我們發現的是，我們打開了通往網絡空間的大門，發現它是一個好客的領土。當時還不存在"網絡空間"這個詞，但現在有了。這解釋得相當好。一旦我們知道了這一點，就可以做很多其他的事情。所以我們運行了那個系統。

I think the terminal at the record store moved down to a place that was called the Whole Earth Access Store, which was modeled after the Whole Earth Catalog. The Whole Earth publisher didn’t know about it, but they agreed to it. And we had no longer a teletype, but a more modern video terminal there. And from that, I got involved in the search for what became the personal computer. Because we knew we had to provide for a lot of terminals, keyboard and screen. People think that’s all there is in a computer, because that’s all they use it for. No, the terminal has much less than what is in a computer. It has only enough memory for what’s on the screen. And yeah, it’s got a keyboard, but it has no computational capability at all. That’s what we could do in 1973. And I went looking for solutions to the problem of not only low-cost terminals, but also terminals that would survive in a public environment. And there were certain developments at that time. Really, the personal computer revolution started the year of 1973. But not for anything I did. It was because somebody published an article in a technical magazine. You can build your own terminal. Use your own TV for the display. Build this box, and you can type and put things up on the screen. Oh, and it can be a computer terminal, too, they said. Well, it turns out that it wasn’t suited to be a computer terminal. Because when you got to the end of the screen, the last character on the line, the screen would disappear, and you’d start the next screen. That isn’t helpful for a terminal. So I talked with its inventor, and we discussed things. I found out what his next approach would be.

我想唱片店的終端搬到了一個叫做Whole Earth Access Store的地方，這是按照Whole Earth Catalog的模式建立的。Whole Earth出版商並不知道這件事，但他們同意了。我們不再使用電傳打字機，而是使用了一個更現代化的視頻終端。從那時起，我開始參與尋找後來成爲個人電腦的東西。因爲我們知道我們必須爲許多終端提供鍵盤和屏幕。人們認爲這就是電腦的全部，因爲他們只是用它來這樣。不，終端比電腦少得多。它只有足夠的內存來顯示屏幕上的內容。是的，它有一個鍵盤，但它根本沒有計算能力。這就是我們在1973年能做到的。我開始尋找解決低成本終端問題的方法，同時也要能在公共環境中使用的終端。那個時候有一些相關的發展。實際上，個人電腦革命始於1973年。但這與我無關，而是因爲有人在一本技術雜誌上發表了一篇文章。你可以自己建造終端，使用自己的電視作爲顯示器。 建造這個盒子，你可以在屏幕上輸入和放東西。噢，他們說它還可以成爲一個計算機終端。嗯，結果證明它並不適合作爲一個計算機終端。因爲當你到達屏幕的末尾，行的最後一個字符時，屏幕會消失，然後你就會進入下一個屏幕。這對終端來說並不有用。所以我和它的發明者交談，我們討論了一些事情。我瞭解到他的下一個方法是什麼。

And I began to think, okay, what do we need here?

然後我開始思考，好的，我們在這裏需要什麼？

Now, at that time, also, same year, a Catholic philosopher who had left the priesthood, the Jesuit priesthood, and spent years studying how people lived in Central America, published a little book called Tools for Conviviality. And in the book, he described what he had learned in Central America. When radio appeared there, two years later, there were people in the same village who knew how to fix the radio. They had always been in the village. They had never been out for training or anything. See, that would have been the industrial approaches. We’ll train service technicians, and some of them will go to Central America, who knows why. But no, it was people who were there. In two years, the radio would need servicing because they were vacuum tube radios, and they were burned out like lamp bulbs. But by that time, a few people would have been exploring the radio, trying to learn all they could about how it works and how it could be fixed. And when the first failure occurred, they were on. They had to really learn what they needed. It was all done by informal networks of discussion and so forth.

在那個時候，同一年，一位離開了天主教神職的天主教哲學家，曾花了多年時間研究中美洲人民的生活方式，出版了一本名爲《共融工具》的小書。在這本書中，他描述了他在中美洲學到的東西。當收音機出現在那裏的兩年後，同一個村莊裏有人知道如何修理收音機。他們一直就在村裏，從未接受過培訓或其他什麼。你看，這就是工業化的方法。我們會培訓服務技術人員，其中一些人會去中美洲，誰知道爲什麼。但不，那些人就在那裏。兩年後，收音機需要維修，因爲它們是真空管收音機，像燈泡一樣燒壞了。但到那時，一些人已經開始探索收音機，試圖儘可能瞭解它的工作原理和修理方法。當第一次故障發生時，他們就能上手了。他們必須真正學到他們所需要的東西。所有這些都是通過非正式的討論網絡等方式完成的。

I came to the conclusion that the equipment needed to grow around itself, a human shell of a computer club. Now, I had learned in a fairly informal way, not totally, about electronics. And I had always been interested in understanding how electronic kits, which you put together yourself, how they could be documented, explained. I wanted the kits. I couldn’t get them. I couldn’t afford them. But as I became an electronic engineer and a designer, by that time I already had four years of design experience, I understood that you could design them for people to get involved, to understand how things are done. You could design them so that people could learn their way inside. And my hope was they would form a group, the computer club that would be the protection for the device, so when it needed to be expanded or something, they would be able to do it. They wouldn’t have to come to me. I didn’t want that. And so I created a design specification, a paper description of this, of a personal computer. And if you could start with as a terminal, no thinking capability, just display, input from the keyboard, output to the screen. But you would be able to plug in more and more capability, a microprocessor, more memory, storage, etc. And that was to be a personal computer. So the intention of the design was to make it a personal computer that started as a terminal. So I was then ready in 1974.

我得出了一個結論，那就是成長所需的設備，需要圍繞着一個計算機俱樂部的人類外殼。現在，我以一種相當非正式的方式學習了一些關於電子學的知識，雖然不是完全掌握。我一直對理解電子套件的工作原理很感興趣，這些套件是由自己組裝的，我想知道它們是如何被記錄和解釋的。我想要這些套件，但我買不起。但是當我成爲一名電子工程師和設計師時，那時我已經有了四年的設計經驗，我明白你可以爲人們設計這些套件，讓他們參與其中，理解事物是如何完成的。你可以設計它們，讓人們能夠自己學習。我希望他們能夠組成一個團體，一個計算機俱樂部，成爲這個設備的保護者，這樣當設備需要擴展或者其他操作時，他們就能夠自己完成，不需要來找我。因此，我創建了一個設計規範，一個關於個人電腦的紙質描述。如果你能從一個終端開始，沒有思考能力，只有顯示器和鍵盤輸入，屏幕輸出。 但是你可以插入更多的功能，例如微處理器、更多的內存、儲存空間等等。這就是個人計算機的目的。因此，設計的初衷是將其打造成一臺從終端開始的個人計算機。所以，我在1974年已經準備好了。

At the end of 1974, the first personal computer, the Altair, was announced, the first personal computer kit. And Bob Marsh, the fellow who I had met through community memory, was by then asking me to join him in renting a garage, which we did. He saw this article and he said, we can make boards to plug in for this because it’s obvious it has nothing inside it. It’s only the absolute minimum that makes it a computer. Had no way of getting anything in and out of it except the switches on the front and the lights. So he started a business. I stayed outside the business, but I helped him and charged money for my time. And the whole personal computer industry got off to a bang.

在1974年底，第一臺個人計算機Altair宣佈面世，這是第一臺個人計算機套件。當時我通過社區記憶認識了Bob Marsh，他邀請我和他一起租一個車庫，我們也這麼做了。他看到了這篇文章，他說我們可以製作插入這個計算機的板子，因爲顯然它裏面什麼都沒有。它只是最基本的東西，才能讓它成爲一臺計算機。除了前面的開關和燈光，它沒有其他的進出方式。所以他開始了一個生意。我留在了生意之外，但我幫助了他，並收取了我的時間費用。整個個人計算機行業一飛沖天。

Lee: Is there something you need to deal with?

李：有什麼事情你需要處理嗎？

Huang: I just want to know how people think about the community memory at that time, their response?

黃：我只想知道當時人們對社區記憶的看法，他們的響應是什麼？

Lee: Let me go back to 1975 when we shut it down. We closed down the first system in 1975 in January. And we were going to spend some amount of time by ourselves, by our group. We broke away from the group that had the computer because I didn’t want to live the rest of my life supporting that computer. And we started working on software that would be needed. It took until 1983 before we could show something. And fortunately Steve Wozniak of Apple fame saw it and said, if you need any money, ask me. And he was able to support the first terminal. And he was able to allow us to start the second system. And we set that up in four supermarkets. Cooperative supermarkets. And another place which was a cultural center. But it was open to the public in general. In that cultural center I had the occasion of being there to service the terminal. And someone said to someone else, that’s the people’s computer. Which for those of us on the left is very gratifying. And nowhere had we written that. They came up with the phrase and that was the intention. It was well used. We didn’t really study the usership. But we saw what was being entered. We were trying to experiment to see how we could get them to cluster the keywords together. And that went on and on. There were some teenagers. They started using it. Started writing what we would call spam. Content-less information. But with a lot of boasting and so forth. And they would flood it with keywords, with index words. Way too many. So that anybody who looked at anything got their spam as well as what they were looking for. And that was a problem that would have to be solved. We figured out that probably if we put a coin box on it. There’s a coin slot here. And charged people a quarter, 25 cents, to put in information. But they could search for free. That was a concept. We built the coin box but we never really implemented that.

李：讓我們回到1975年，那時我們關閉了它。我們在1975年1月關閉了第一個系統。我們打算花一些時間獨自工作，與我們的團隊分開。我不想用餘生來支持那臺計算機。我們開始研發所需的軟件。直到1983年我們才能展示出一些東西。幸運的是，蘋果公司的史蒂夫·沃茲尼亞克看到了它，他說，如果你需要錢，就問我。他能夠支持第一個終端機。他也讓我們能夠開始第二個系統。我們在四家合作超市設置了它。還有一個文化中心，對公衆開放。在那個文化中心，我有機會在那裏維修終端機。有人對別人說，那是人民的計算機。對我們這些左派來說，這非常令人滿意。我們並沒有寫下這句話，他們提出了這個詞語，這是我們的意圖。它被很好地使用了。我們並沒有真正研究使用者。但我們看到了輸入的內容。 我們試圖進行實驗，看看如何讓他們將關鍵詞聚集在一起。這一直持續着。有一些青少年開始使用它，開始寫一些我們稱之爲垃圾郵件的內容。沒有實質信息，但卻充滿了吹噓等等。他們會用大量的關鍵詞和索引詞來淹沒它。太多了。所以任何人查看任何內容時，都會得到他們的垃圾郵件以及他們正在尋找的內容。這是一個需要解決的問題。我們想到，也許如果我們在上面放一個投幣箱。這裏有一個投幣口。然後向人們收取25美分的費用來提供信息。但他們可以免費搜索。這是一個概念。我們建造了投幣箱，但我們從未真正實施過。

We noticed that community memory was used by ordinary people as we intended. You didn’t need any technical qualifications to use it. And we tried our best to make sure people knew they wouldn’t break it. It was used by a wide variety. We put terminals into laundromats as well as supermarkets. Because you know in a laundromat you have to wait. And so people would have time for that. And that worked rather well. Some of our people who interviewed people who used it mentioned tow truck drivers, housewives. Really very ordinary people using it and understanding what it was for. I was very enlightened and heartened by that. So that’s what we wanted to have it used for. We went through three versions, improving it every time.

我們注意到社區記憶被普通人使用，正如我們所期望的那樣。你不需要任何技術資格來使用它。而且我們盡力確保人們知道他們不會搞砸它。它被各種各樣的人使用。我們在洗衣店和超市放置了終端。因爲你知道在洗衣店你得等待。所以人們會有時間使用它。這個方法相當成功。我們的一些人訪問了使用它的人，提到了拖車司機、家庭主婦。真的是非常普通的人在使用它，並且理解它的用途。這讓我感到非常開明和振奮。所以這就是我們希望它被使用的方式。我們經歷了三個版本，每次都在改進。

And I’m convinced there’s a fourth version that we could do quite quickly. It does require a little bit more thought, more thinking than doing, however. The system needs to provide a discussion area where people can encounter each other and can sort themselves out. And have this process continue to go. It never really stops. And we can do it with mobile phones, with the network as we have it now, with the web. You wouldn’t see it like it is on a browser. It would be text messages and we can use voice messages. All along I never wanted to have anybody allowed to connect their own computer to it. Because bigger computers means more power, means they get the advantage over other people. And that I wanted to prevent. And eventually in its final system, we were running out of money, we could have put the computer online so people could dial in from their own computers. But I said no. That would limit it to people who had computers in their house. In 1992 that wasn’t everybody. It still isn’t everybody. And so I decided, close it down for now. And we’ll set the next system up when we can. And it was a decision I could make because we didn’t really have any income from it. It was all an expense. So nobody was going to get financially ruined because we shut it down. So we shut the system down and we know that there’s another system that should be possible. And in the meantime, much work has been done by people in the open source software area. So that when I inquired, I asked the designer of this last system, what would it take to re-implement it? The first one had taken six months of work. Upon consideration he said, about two weeks. Because so much of the work has already been done and is available free. So I’m very encouraged by that. In effect, my computer club idea really worked out.

我相信我們可以很快做出第四個版本。不過，這需要更多的思考，比實際操作更需要思考。系統需要提供一個討論區，讓人們可以相互交流和解決問題。這個過程將持續進行，永遠不會停止。我們可以利用現有的移動電話、網絡和互聯網來實現。你不會像在瀏覽器上那樣看到它，而是通過短信和語音信息進行交流。我從來不想讓任何人連接自己的計算機。因爲更大的計算機意味着更多的計算能力，這會讓他們佔據優勢。我想要阻止這種情況發生。最終，在我們的系統即將耗盡資金時，我們可以將計算機聯網，讓人們可以從自己的計算機上撥入。但我說不。那樣會限制只有家裏有計算機的人才能使用。在1992年，並不是每個人都有計算機。所以我決定暫時關閉它。等我們有條件時再建立下一個系統。這是一個我可以做出的決定，因爲我們並沒有從中獲得任何收入。 這只是一筆開支。所以沒有人會因爲我們關閉它而陷入財務困境。所以我們關閉了系統，我們知道還有另一個可能的系統。與此同時，開源軟件領域的人們已經做了很多工作。所以當我詢問時，我問了這個最後一個系統的設計師，重新實施它需要什麼？第一個系統花了六個月的時間。經過考慮，他說大約需要兩個星期。因爲已經完成了很多工作，而且可以免費使用。所以我對此感到非常鼓舞。實際上，我的計算機俱樂部的想法真的實現了。

So the next version of community memory, as I say, will use the connectivity of the phone network. And it will also be able to use new capabilities such as mesh networking. That’s where there is no system. It’s just unit to unit and messages get relayed. Because most of the time, the computer isn’t doing anything. Well, it can engage in communication. As I say, I want to allow it to use voice messages too. Because we have to provide for people who are, let’s say, less literate. And not everybody is literate these days. But everyone knows how to talk. And everybody has used an answering machine one way or the other. And it will be similar to that. So those are some of the areas where I wanted to extend into. And I wanted to become an expected capability for community development. So that if you move into an area, you need to find out what is the community memory system here. And how do you use it. And it should be supported by the people who use it. For whatever expenses are necessary. And the expenses aren’t going to be very great. Not like it used to be. The first computer we used was worth $100,000. And the next one we bought for, I don’t know, $40,000. And the one after that we bought for $20,000. And now it can be used with computers that are thrown away. That’s part of my design concept. So I want it to be something that’s invisible. That’s just expected to be there. So people can contact other people. Can find out who they want to contact. And can explore who are the people around me in this community. In this local community. And also to an extent farther away. You don’t need to have worldwide access. You need local access with a little external access. And as it goes further out, it becomes slower. And you have to put up with more. Maybe pay a little more. But this is something that I believe the world needs now. And will continue to need even more. If we are to really face the challenges that our ecological crisis. And various economic crises that we can expect. When they come along, we need to have strong communities that can deal with them.

所以下一個社區記憶的版本，就像我說的，將使用電話網絡的連接性。它還將能夠使用新的功能，如網狀網絡。這就是沒有系統的地方。只是單位對單位，消息被中繼。因爲大部分時間，計算機都沒有做任何事情。嗯，它可以進行通信。就像我說的，我想讓它能夠使用語音消息。因爲我們必須爲那些讀寫能力較差的人提供服務。現在不是每個人都識字。但每個人都知道如何說話。每個人都用過電話錄音機或其他類似的東西。它將類似於那樣的設備。這些是我想擴展的一些領域。我希望它成爲小區發展的一種預期能力。所以，如果你搬到一個地方，你需要找出這裏的社區記憶系統是什麼，以及如何使用它。它應該得到使用它的人的支持。無論需要多少費用。而這些費用不會很高。不像以前那樣。我們使用的第一臺計算機價值10萬美元。而下一臺我們買的，我不知道，大概4萬美元。 然後我們花了2萬美元買了下一個。現在它可以與被丟棄的計算機一起使用。這是我的設計理念的一部分。所以我希望它是看不見的。它只是被期望存在的。這樣人們可以與其他人聯繫。可以找到他們想聯繫的人。可以探索這個小區中的人。在這個當地小區中。還有在某種程度上更遠的地方。你不需要全球訪問。你只需要本地訪問和一點點外部訪問。隨着距離的增加，速度會變慢。你必須忍受更多。也許需要支付更多。但這是我認爲現在世界所需要的。而且將來會更需要。如果我們真的要面對我們的生態危機和各種經濟危機，我們需要擁有能夠應對這些挑戰的強大小區。

Oh, I didn’t talk about the Osborne or anything. I could just do a few minutes on that. Okay. In 1980, I had just done a computer that was not selling that well. And the company went out of business. And the money I was getting from that disappeared. So I was without any money. At that time, a guy named Adam Osborne. An English chemist, really. Who had gotten into the business of selling books on computers. Had sold his book company. Had a lot of money from that. And he was looking for someone to design a computer according to his ideas. Now, his ideas actually he got from someone else. Like so many people do. And that was for a portable device with a cathode ray screen. Two floppy disks. Keyboard. And it folded up. And there would be space inside. Before you folded it up, you put the floppy diskettes, which were this big at the time. Five inches. Put them in. Close it up. You’ve got everything there. Including your software. And I designed that for him. I got 24% of the company stock for that. A very generous offer at the time. And then we went ahead to manufacture it. That was the Osborne 1 computer. It was the first portable computer that actually sold. We sold 150,000 of them.

哦，我沒有提到奧斯本或其他什麼。我只能談幾分鐘。好吧。1980年，我剛剛做了一臺銷售不佳的計算機。公司倒閉了。我從那裏得到的錢消失了。所以我一無所有。那時候，有個叫亞當·奧斯本的人。一個英國化學家，實際上。他從事銷售關於計算機的書籍的業務。他賣掉了他的書籍公司。從中賺了很多錢。他正在尋找一個人來根據他的想法設計一臺計算機。現在，他的想法實際上是從別人那裏得來的。就像很多人一樣。那就是一個帶有陰極射線屏幕的便攜式設備。兩個軟盤驅動器。鍵盤。它可以折迭起來。裏面還有空間。在你折迭它之前，你把軟盤放進去，當時它們這麼大。五英寸。放進去。關上。你就有了一切。包括你的軟件。我爲他設計了這個。我得到了公司24%的股份。那是當時非常慷慨的提議。然後我們開始生產它。那就是奧斯本1號計算機。它是第一臺真正銷售的便攜式計算機。我們賣出了15萬臺。

And the trouble is, we didn’t really know how to run a business. I was the vice president of engineering. And I did not know what a vice president of engineering did. So I just became, I decided I’ll be the best engineer I can. That’s not the job. And in two years, we went out of business. It went bankrupt. But it had set a lot of expectations for what a portable computer would be. We were working with Japanese companies to develop what we know of today as a portable computer. A laptop computer. It would have been rather thick, but laptop. And in fact, when Osborne went out of business, they asked me, the Japanese, two Japanese companies asked me to contract to provide them with a design that they could take further. I did the design. The company didn’t take it further. But it was extremely educational. I’ll put it that way for me going through that process. This is the boom and bust cycle that Silicon Valley is used to. And you have a failure behind you like that. It doesn’t really disqualify you for anything. In fact, people who are interested in your services know that you now have learned a lot from that. And I never had as big a contract since then, but I didn’t go seek it out. So that’s the Osborne story.

問題是，我們其實不知道如何經營一個企業。我是工程副總裁，但我不知道工程副總裁該做什麼。所以我決定成爲最好的工程師。但那不是我的工作。兩年後，我們破產了，公司倒閉了。但它爲便攜式計算機設定了很多期望。我們當時正在與日本公司合作開發今天我們所知的便攜式計算機，也就是筆記本電腦。它可能會比較厚，但是筆記型的。事實上，當奧斯本公司倒閉時，兩家日本公司請我爲他們提供一個可以進一步發展的設計。我完成了設計，但公司沒有進一步發展。但這對我來說是非常有教育意義的。這就是硅谷熟悉的繁榮和衰退循環。你身後有這樣的失敗，並不真正使你失去資格。事實上，對你的服務感興趣的人知道你從中學到了很多東西。從那以後，我從未簽下過如此大的合同，但我也沒有主動尋找。 這就是奧斯本的故事。

So, this is the Osborne 1. This is a version you can actually pick up. It is heavy. It is 11 kilograms, 23 and a half pounds, and that kind of computer became known as a lug-able. You would lug it along like luggage. It has two floppy disks, a five-inch cathode ray screen. Now that screen was available from three manufacturers because it had been originally ordered for the first IBM portable computer that nobody has ever heard of. And that was something I don’t think, they may have it here, but way over there because it was introduced in 1975. The personal computer industry ignored it. They sold some units to business, they have their customers, but it was just an expanded calculator that could handle text and it had this little tiny screen. They shut that down in 1979 and we picked up the displays. We could use them. Three manufacturers, they all fit the same mountings. Very useful. The floppy disks are five-inch. They are a little under 100 kilobytes and we had a double density option that could be added later. It would all went inside the case. This was not meant to be opened up and modified by the user. This one has a modem on the left side. You have a telephone jack and we had other things that people built to go into those pockets that meant for the floppy disks storage. Most of these were only moved from one side of the office to the other side. The whole idea of the road warrior, the computer, says, that has not the same title on it, but the guy on the left, there are two people, one with a computer and one without. The guy on the left without a computer does not stand a chance. And a picture of one of these, that is actually in Pakistan during the 1980, 1981. The Mujahideen events in Afghanistan. So this is a journalist had gone there and he was able to file his stories and he was able to avoid the Pakistani government censorship because they had never heard of this. They did not know anything about it. All they knew about it is he submitted things to a teletype company and they sent it in.

所以，這就是奧斯本1號。這是一個你實際可以拿起來的版本。它很重。它有11公斤，23.5磅，這種計算機被稱爲可攜式。你會像拖行行李一樣拖着它。它有兩個軟盤驅動器，一個五英寸陰極射線屏幕。現在這個屏幕是由三家製造商提供的，因爲它最初是爲第一臺沒有人聽說過的IBM便攜式計算機訂購的。而且那是在1975年推出的，我不認爲他們可能在這裏有，但是在那邊可能有，因爲個人計算機行業忽視了它。他們向企業銷售了一些單位，他們有他們的客戶，但它只是一個可以處理文本的擴展計算器，並且有這個小小的屏幕。他們在1979年關閉了它，我們拿到了這些顯示器。我們可以使用它們。三家製造商，它們都適用於相同的安裝架。非常有用。軟盤是五英寸的。它們的容量略小於100千字節，我們後來還有一個雙密度選項可以添加。這一切都放在機箱內。這不是用戶打開和修改的。這個上面有一個調制解調器。 你有一個電話插孔，而我們有其他東西，人們建造了進入那些專門用於軟盤存儲的口袋的東西。其中大部分只是從辦公室的一邊搬到另一邊。整個「路上的戰士」，也就是計算機，說的是，上面沒有相同的標題，但左邊有兩個人，一個有計算機，一個沒有。左邊沒有計算機的那個人沒有機會。這是一張實際上是在1980年、1981年的巴基斯坦的照片。這是一位記者去那裏，他能夠發送他的報導，並且能夠避免巴基斯坦政府的審查，因爲他們從未聽說過這個。他們對此一無所知。他們只知道他把東西提交給一家電傳公司，然後他們發送出去。

So it was like many products in Silicon Valley, fast rise, fast fall. But it set some expectations. We set a price for this thing, $1795. And that price survived through generations of laptop computers until the 2000s, I think, or 1990s, 2000s. I am not sure how much of an advancement that was, but it helped other people. People knew they could sell a portable computer for that amount of money and so they did. And of course we have much later versions here, portables. So that this becomes an antique. Very quickly became an antique. But it was a very interesting experience for those of us. Whenever I see one, I feel tired because it was exhausting all the way through. So I don’t do more and more of these. I try to do something better.

所以就像硅谷的許多產品一樣，快速崛起，快速衰落。但它確立了一些期望。我們爲這個東西定了一個價格，1795美元。這個價格一直延續到了筆記本電腦的幾代產品，直到2000年代，我想，或者是1990年代，2000年代。我不確定這算不算是一種進步，但它幫助了其他人。人們知道他們可以以那個價格賣出一臺便攜式電腦，所以他們就這麼做了。當然，我們現在有更晚期的版本，便攜式電腦。所以這變成了一件古董。非常快速地成爲了一件古董。但對我們來說，這是一次非常有趣的經歷。每當我看到一臺，我就感到疲倦，因爲整個過程都很累人。所以我不再做更多這樣的事情。我試着做得更好。