爱鼓捣的人成就美国的伟大

    在他最近出版的新书《制造者新工业革命》（Makers: the New Industrial Revolution）一书中，克里斯·安德森预言，个人和小团体制造的回归，将撬动信息技术的力量，进而把爱鼓捣的人重新带回这个不是被神秘、而是被各种发现和赋权笼罩的世界。两位作者都强调合作的重要性，但如果说安德森主要关心的是我们将往何处去，那么福奇则用更多的笔墨来描述我们过往的历程。

    他指出美国的许多国父都是能工巧匠，这一点非常契合这些创造力十足的人的生活背景——他们生活在一个几乎享受不到机械之便利的农业社会。富兰克林当然是这方面的典范，但杰斐逊、麦迪逊和华盛顿也是创新者，汉密尔顿则是“今天金融界那些能工巧匠的鼻祖”。

    不幸的是，就其所宣扬的鼓捣行为而言，《鼓捣者》一书本身却并非一个十分成功的例证。作者似乎利用了太多的现成材料，进而使整本书有时似乎缺少一个明确的目的。书中许多内容读起来就像是一段粗略的美国创新史，写到哪里算哪里：其中既有著名的托马斯·爱迪生的故事，又有被频繁提及的施乐帕克研究中心（Xerox PARC）悲剧——后者差不多已经为这家公司发明了一切，但它完全没有把它们派上用场。

    但除了这些耳熟能详的故事之外，还有一些与现代能工巧匠有关的更加有趣的故事。比如乔治·霍茨这位黑客少年，他定制了一部能够在T-Mobile系统上运行的iPhone手机后来用它解开了索尼公司（Sony游戏平台PlayStation 3的密码。还有就是难以抑制创新冲动的迪安·卡门，由他发明但被过度炒作的赛格威（Segway）代步车掩盖了他鼓捣医疗设备的一生。他的众多发明不仅让他变得富有，也改善了世界各地的人们的生活。

    知识总是危险的，福奇并未无视鼓捣行为的危害性。他将兰德公司（RAND Corporation对公共政策采用的定量研究方式描述为一种鼓捣行为，并指控这家智囊机构，称其宣扬美国在核军备竞赛中正落后于苏联这一观点，并无意识地推动一种基于数据并最终使美国陷入越战泥沼的世界观。他指出，最近金融世界的鼓捣行为产生出了诸如债务担保证券（CDD）和信用违约掉期（CDS）这样的创新产品，而这些产品在2007-2008年金融危机中扮演了非常重要的角色。

    福奇依然相信鼓捣的力量，我们也应如此。他最大的担忧在于，我们现在做得还不够。“美国或将丧失其神圣的鼓捣传统，以及一个创新引擎，去驱动一个前所未有的增长时代，”他写道。“经济上的成功给予了我们鼓捣的时间和资源，但它也减弱了我们这样做的动力。”

    然而我们有理由保持乐观。毕竟资本主义总是被谴责破坏其自身的根基。富裕和营销腐蚀了节俭，年轻人决定投身于麦当娜研究、而不是攻读工程或物理学。但假以时日，文化和经济周期就可以产生强大的纠错效果，敦促我们重新鼓捣。

    不要忘了技术。福奇指出，大众融资平台Kickstarter的到来使得初创企业向大众募集资金成为可能。“此处不乏讽刺意味，”他写道。“技术已经重新将鼓捣行为带到了这样一种状态。它不可预知、不受妨碍、充斥着各种可能性。本杰明·富兰克林当年肯定也有过类似的经历。”

    译者：任文科

    In his recent book Makers: the New Industrial Revolution, Chris Anderson foresees a return to individual and small group fabrication that leverages the power of information technology to, in effect, bring back tinkerers in a world enchanted not by mystery but by discovery and empowerment. Both authors emphasize the importance of collaboration, but if Anderson is mainly concerned with where we are going, Foege spends more time on where we've been.

    Many of the Founding Fathers, he notes, were accomplished tinkerers, as befits such creative men living in an agrarian society with few mechanical conveniences. Franklin was of course the archetype, but Jefferson, Madison, and Washington were innovators as well, and Hamilton was "a fitting forbear to today's financial tinkerers."

    Unfortunately, The Tinkerers itself is a not-entirely-successful example of the tinkering it purports to describe. The author works with materials all too readily at hand and sometimes seems to lack a clear purpose. Much of the book reads like a sketchy and haphazard history of American innovation, veering from the well-known story of Thomas Edison to the frequently cited tragedy of the Xerox PARC lab, which seems to have invented practically everything for a company that exploited almost nothing.

    But among these well-worn tales are more interesting stories of modern tinkerers such as George Hotz, a teenage hacker who customized an iPhone to work on the T-Mobile system and later unlocked a Sony PlayStation 3. Then there's the compulsively innovative Dean Kamen, whose invention of the over-hyped Segway scooter has obscured a lifetime of medical-device tinkering that has made him wealthy and improved the lives of people all over the world.

    Knowledge is always dangerous, and the hazards of tinkering aren't lost on Foege. He describes the RAND Corporation's quantitative approach to public policy as a form of tinkering, and indicts it for helping fuel the notion that we were falling behind the Soviets in the nuclear arms race, and for the mindlessly data-driven worldview that led to so much trouble in Vietnam. More recently, he notes, tinkering in the financial world produced such innovations as the collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that played an important role in the financial crisis of 2007-8.

    Foege still believes in tinkering, and so should we. His biggest concern is that we aren't doing enough of it. "The United States risks losing its hallowed tinkerer tradition -- as well as the engine of innovation that fueled an unprecedented era of growth," he writes. "Economic success has given us the time and resources to tinker, but it has also blunted our impetus to do so."

    Yet there are reasons for optimism. Capitalism is always being accused of undermining its own foundations, after all. Affluence and marketing subvert thrift, and the young decide to major in Madonna studies instead of engineering or physics. But over time, culture and economic cycles can have powerful corrective effects, prodding us to tinker anew.

    And don't forget about technology. Foege notes the advent of Kickstarter, for example, which enables crowd-funding of startups. "There's some irony," he writes, "in the fact that technology has helped return tinkering to a state not that far off from the way Benjamin Franklin must have experienced it: unpredictable, unencumbered, and swirling with possibility."