人類不應害怕技術 更不該反技術
Lord Byron was a Luddite. The Romantic poet’s only speech in the House of Lords defended the followers of Ned Ludd, who were smashing the mechanical looms in England during the early 1800s because they feared the machines would put people out of work. Back then, some believed that technology would create unemployment. They were wrong. The industrial revolution made England richer and increased the total number of people in work, including in the fabric and clothing industries.
Byron’s daughter Ada, Countess of Lovelace, was More prescient. On a trip through the English Midlands, she admired how punch cards instructed the looms to produce beautiful patterns, and envisaged how such cards could enable the numerical calculator being designed by her friend Charles Babbage to process not just numbers but words, music, patterns and anything else that could be encoded in symbols — a computer, in other words.
拜倫的女兒埃達，也就是洛夫萊斯伯爵夫人(Countess of Lovelace)，則比她父親更有遠見。有一次在英格蘭米德蘭地區旅行時，她看到穿孔卡發出指令使紡織機織出了美麗的圖案，十分歎服，並想到這種穿孔卡可以用在她的朋友查爾斯•巴比奇(Charles Babbage)正在設計的一種數字運算計算機上，讓機器不僅能處理數字，還能處理文字、音樂、圖案及其他任何能夠以符號編程的東西，這也就是計算機的雛形。Today’s pessimists predict that these computers will put people out of work. These latter-day Luddites are also wrong. Technology can be disruptive. It can eliminate jobs, from weavers to buggy-whip makers. But 200 years of data show it improves productivity and increases wealth, leading to more demand and new types of jobs.
今天的悲觀者預言，計算機會讓人們失業。這些當代的盧德派也錯了。技術或許會毀滅一些東西。它會讓一些職業消失，從織工到馬鞭製造者。但200年來的數據顯示，技術能提高生產率，增加財富，從而擴大需求、創造新的工作種類。
Take those mechanical looms. They were invented just after 1800 by Joseph Marie Jacquard in Lyon. Did that end up reducing employment in the textile industry in eastern France? No. Two centuries later, Lyon is Europe’s top centre for high-tech textiles. The city is the home of the Textile and Chemical Institute, 40 labs and schools, 140 companies and 10,000 textile jobs. Nor did the machines destroy employment in England, as Lord Byron feared.
就拿紡織機來說，進入1800年後，約瑟夫•馬裏•雅卡爾(Joseph Marie Jacquard)在里昂發明了這種機器。它最終有沒有導致法國東部紡織業就業人數下降？沒有。兩個世紀過去，如今的里昂是歐洲高科技紡織業的第一大中心。這個城市是紡織與化學研究所(Textile and Chemical Institute)所在地，有40所實驗室和學校，140家公司，還有1萬個紡織業工人。紡織機也沒有像拜倫爵士擔心的那樣，在英國造成大量失業。The combination of computers and the internet began transforming our economy decades ago. The “app economy” is the latest example. It began in 2008 when Steve Jobs yielded to the advice of his team at Apple and decided to let outside developers create apps for the iPhone. The global app economy last year was worth $100bn, more than the film industry. This is an industry that did not exist seven years ago.
幾十年前，計算機和互聯網的結合開始給我們的經濟帶來根本變化。“應用經濟”(app economy)就是最新的例子。2008年，蘋果公司的史蒂夫•喬布斯(Steve Jobs)聽取了手下團隊的建議，決定讓外部程序員開發iPhone應用，“應用經濟”就此誕生。去年，全球“應用經濟”總產值達到1000億美元，超過電影業，而它是一個7年前還不存在的行業。Apps and other advances in technology have helped create new forms of work, such as the “sharing economy” in which enterprising folks can rent out rooms on Airbnb and provide rides on Uber and Lyft. Likewise, online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay have recreated the kind of artisanal cottage industry that existed in the pre-industrial age. If you have a good recipe or can make a cool product or service, you can find customers. If you create a book or song, you now have ways to self-publish and distribute. If you dream up a new specialism — ethical hacker, pet psychologist, nutrition coach? — you have a chance of finding takers. More than 600,000 people nowadays earn a living by selling on Amazon and eBay.
應用和其他技術進步幫助創造了新的工作類型，比如“分享經濟”讓那些有生意頭腦的人能夠在Airbnb上出租空置的房間、在優步(Uber)和Lyft上提供搭乘服務。類似的，亞馬遜(Amazon)和eBay等在線市場讓“前工業時代”的手工作坊行業重新出現。如果你有好的創意、或能夠提供某種吸引人的產品或服務，你就能找到客戶。如今如果你寫了一本書或一首歌，你有辦法自己出版和傳播它。如果你想出了一種新職業——有道德的黑客、寵物心理師或營養教練？——你有機會找到客戶。如今有超過60萬人通過亞馬遜和eBay出售商品和服務賺錢謀生。If new technologies reduced the total number of jobs, we would all be out of work by now. But times of technological advance have been times of job creation. Last year, as whole new waves of robotic systems were introduced, the US added 3m jobs. The unemployment rate hit a six-year low, and average hourly earnings for private sector workers rose.
如果新技術減少了工作崗位總數，那麼我們大家現在肯定都已經失業了。但一直以來，技術進步總是伴隨着就業增加。去年，隨着新一批機器人系統投入使用，美國新增了300萬個工作崗位。失業率觸及6年來新低，私營部門勞動者的平均時薪也提高了。Be wary of those who lament the demise of jobs for checkout clerks and meter readers, as if preserving such jobs will lead to a healthier economy. This Luddite fallacy is based on a presumption that there is only a set amount of goods and services people want. If technology permits those things to be produced more efficiently, Luddites argue, there will be less work to do. In reality, technology leads to an increase in productivity and wealth. That in turn leads to increased demand for goods and services and thus more jobs, including ones in fields we can barely imagine.
警惕那些哀嘆收銀員和抄表員會失去飯碗的人，他們好像覺得保留這類工作崗位會讓經濟更健康。這種盧德式錯誤是基於這樣一種假設，即人們所需商品和服務的數量是固定的。盧德派認爲，如果技術使得這些東西能夠以更高的效率生產出來，那麼需要人們做的工作就會減少。事實上，技術會帶來生產率提高和財富增加。這反過來會使得人們對商品和服務的需求增加，從而創造更多工作崗位，其中一些可能會出現在我們根本難以想象的領域。The writer is chief executive of the Aspen Institute and author of ‘The Innovators’
本文作者是阿斯彭研究所(Aspen Institute)首席執行官、《創新者》(The Innovators)一書作者
