科技爆发的时代，真的更不应忽略文科生

如果你去问问硅谷的那些工程师和梦想家们，特别是那些35岁以上的人，他们八成都会承认自己是科幻文学的粉丝。科幻电影、漫画和小说在20世纪上半叶红极一时，在20世纪下半叶也热度不减——如今的大多数工程师也正是在这一时期诞生的。并不是说现在科幻文学如今已经过气了，从《西部世界》和《怪奇物语》等美剧的爆红就可以看出，我们对科幻题材依然抱有极度的热忱。而且科幻文学从某种程度上，也在影响着那些塑造科技本身的人。

笔者就是一个出生在20世纪后半叶的人，和很多科技界的朋友一样，我也很喜欢各种题材的科幻作品。我们喜欢那些狂想的未来主义理念，沉迷于科幻作品的宏大预言。但有一类题材总是会让我感到困惑，那就是科技的发展到了失控的地步，并且开始反噬它的创造者。在大多数作品中，一旦发生了这种情况，故事就变成了一个戏剧性的谜题，要解决这个难题，主角就要历尽千辛万苦，要么毁掉它，要么制服它。我读了玛丽·雪莱的《弗兰肯斯坦》后，曾经连续做了几个月的噩梦。

我参与过很多科技项目，但我不得不承认，在设计和商业讨论环节中，我们很少会花时间探讨这个项目会世界带来哪些潜在的负面影响。相反，我们在进行发明创造时，往往只是本着一个极为简单的理念：“我们之所以创造它，是因为我们能。”在多数情况下，我们之所以发明了新技术，是出于某种需求，或者是为了解决一个问题。但是有时从事后来看，我们反而是创造出了新的问题。

我最近与网络安全领域的几个知名高管见了面。在数据世界之中，大概没有其他领域比网络安全领域更能体现科技的黑化带来的恶果了。这些IT高管们告诉我，目前，网络安全占出已经占到了他们的IT预算的25%左右。每天我们都能听到黑客们又黑掉了哪些用户的账户、攻陷了哪些银行和电网。我们的PC、笔记本电脑和手机中病毒已经成了家常便饭，见怪不怪了。有些恶意软件甚至还强迫用户支付赎金，才肯替他们恢复数据。

上世纪60年代，美国国防部高级研究计划局等若干科研机构的大牛们凑在一起，畅想出了互联网的雏形。当时他们只是想建立一个能在全球范围内快捷地分享科研数据和其他信息的媒介平台。然后随着互联网的进化，它事实上已经成为了一切通讯和商业交易的载体，和一切网络攻击的渠道，

这也是一个前所未有地令人分心的时代。我最近有一次开车从纽约市去埃尔迈拉。我在高路上看到一个牌子，上面写着：“离下一个发信息的地点还有三英里，请勿一边驾驶一边发信息。”美国的大多数州已经明令禁止了开车发信息这种危险行为，然而我们每周几乎都听到司机朋友边开车边玩手机，结果不幸出了车祸的消息。

科技对精力的蚕食已经到了有史以来最高的水平。上个月我在夏威夷的毛伊岛度假时，我惊讶地发现，人们徜徉在美丽的拉海纳镇的海滩上，然而他们却都在看手机。手机的吸引力简直像万有引力一样无处不在。有天晚上，我们老两口跟儿子儿媳妇和两个孙女在海边的一家餐厅吃晚饭，在等待上菜的时间里，大家都在低头看手机，对近在眼前的美景却孰视无睹。

我觉得乔布斯和苹果公司肯定想不到，iPhone或者智能手机有朝一日会如此占用人们的精力。马克·扎克伯格在创办Facebook时也肯定想不到，有朝一日Facebook会变得如此令人上瘾。《精灵宝可梦Go》的出品人Niantic公司也肯定没想过，有人会因为玩他们的游戏而丢了性命。（就在2016年7月该游戏上线后不久，有两个人在“捉妖”的时候掉下了悬崖。）我妻子在“捉妖”的过程中，也与树木和路灯有过好几次“亲密接触”。

在《哈佛商业评论》近日刊登的一篇名为《数据时代的人文艺术》的文章中，作者JM·奥勒贾尔兹指出，呆板的工程思维只会带来短视的创造，因而我们更应该强调人文艺术的重要性。如今的工程师们把创造新技术看得过重了，因而他们的短期目标很有可能带来存在一定风险的长期结果。虽然一些公司已经聘请了专业的伦理学工作者——比如英特尔，但这样的公司毕竟是极少数。在这一点上，所有重视社会道德的科技公司都应该聘用一些具有人类学、心理学和哲学背景的人才。

对于科技创新还会带来哪些后果，我不做想象。作为父亲和爷爷，我承认我需要更积极地进行自我约束。我的希望是，我们所有人都能在这个方向上更进一步，创造出既有影响力又有思想性的技术，进而更好地造福我们的生活和整个世界。（财富中文网）

本文原载于Time.com。

蒂姆·巴嘉林是业内顶尖的行业顾问、分析师和未来主义者，他的研究领域主要包括个人电脑和消费科技。他是Creative Strategies, Inc公司总裁，自1981年起，他就在这家公司工作了。当时他作为咨询顾问，曾为业内多数知名软硬件厂商提供过分析。

译者：朴成奎

If you talk to the engineers and dreamers in Silicon Valley, especially anyone over 35, they'll probably admit to being into science fiction. This genre of movies, comic books and novels was huge in the first half of the last century and remained strong through its second half, when most of today's engineers were born. That's not to say science fiction's allure has faded — if anything, the popularity of shows like Westworld and Stranger Things suggests we're as fascinated as ever — but to point out that it had a great influence on those creating today’s technology.

I was born in the latter part of the last century, and like many of my geek friends, was into science fiction at all levels. We loved its heady futuristic ideas and reveled in its high-minded prophesies. But there is one theme in science fiction that always troubled me: when technology runs amok and subverts its creators. Usually when this happens, the story becomes a dramatic puzzle, whose solution involves the protagonists expending tons of creative energy in an effort to either destroy their mutinous creation or contain it. I had nightmares for months after I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

I've been involved in dozens of technology projects, but I have to admit that seldom in our design or business discussions do we spend much time on the potential negative impact of our work on the world. Instead, we abide by an engineering mantra often embodied in the concept "We create it because we can." Indeed, in most cases we create technology because we see a need, or to solve a problem. But sometimes in hindsight it seems we wind up creating new ones.

I recently spent time with key execs in the security and cybersecurity space. Perhaps no other area in our digital world underlines the flip side of technological progress. IT execs tell me that security is now about 25% of their IT budget spend. Each day we hear of hackers targeting user identities, financial networks and power grids, and malware routinely targets PCs, laptops and smartphones, holding them hostage till users pay a ransom fee to recover their data.

When the folks at DARPA and other agencies blueprinted the Internet in the 1960s, the idea was to have a medium in which to share scientific data and other information quickly and on a global scale. But as the Internet has evolved, it's become the de facto medium for just about any type of communication, commercial transactions, and yes, hacking that impacts us for better and worse.

It's also been responsible for an unprecedented age of distraction. I was recently in New York and had to drive from northern New York City to the Elmira area on the state's freeways. For the first time, I saw signs that said "Next texting stop is 3 miles ahead. Don’t text and drive." Most states have already outlawed texting while driving, and yet we hear almost weekly of traffic accidents cased by oblivious drivers tapping blithely on smartphones.

The level of distraction caused by technology (driving or no) is at an all-time high. While on vacation in Maui, Hawaii last month, I was stunned to see people pulling out their smartphones and checking them while walking around beautiful Lahaina and other areas of the island. The gravitational pull of these devices is ubiquitous. During a dinner with my wife, my son and his wife and our two granddaughters at a beachside restaurant, I caught all of us looking at our phones as we waited for our food, paying no heed to the gorgeous scenery right in front of us.

I don’t believe Steve Jobs and Apple dreamed the iPhone or smartphones in general would engender this level of diversion. I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg, when he created Facebook, foresaw how distracting and addictive Facebook would become. And I don’t think Niantic, the creators of Pokémon Go, fully thought through the tectonic fantasy-reality collisions of their augmented reality app (shortly after its launch in early July 2016, two people playing the game walked off a cliff). My wife has had close encounters with trees and light posts herself while chasing down some of the game's secretive critters.

In a recent Harvard Business Review piece titled "Liberal Arts in the Data Age," author JM Olejarz writes about the importance of reconnecting a lateral, liberal arts mindset with the sort of rote engineering approach that can lead to myopic creativity. Today's engineers have been so focused on creating new technologies that their short term goals risk obscuring unintended longterm outcomes. While a few companies, say Intel, are forward-thinking enough to include ethics professionals on staff, they remain exceptions. At this point all tech companies serious about ethical grounding need to be hiring folks with backgrounds in areas like anthropology, psychology and philosophy.

I have no illusions about the cat being out of the bag (it's hence shacked up with YouTube), and as a parent and grandparent, admit I need to be proactive about self-policing. My hope is that we can all move a little more in that direction, creating technology that is both impactful and thoughtful in its engagement with our lives and the world.

This article was originally published at Time.com

Tim Bajarin is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts and futurists, covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Mr. Bajarin is the President of Creative Strategies, Inc and has been with the company since 1981 where he has served as a consultant providing analysis to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry.