電腦與詩人

　　The essential problem of man in a computerized age remains the same as it has always been. That problem is not solely how to be more productive, more comfortable, more content, but how to be more sensitive, more sensible, more proportionate, more alive. The computer makes possible a marvellous leap in human proficiency; it pulls down the fences around the practical and even the theoretical intelligence. But the question persists and indeed grows whether the computer will make it easier or harder for human beings to know who they really are, to identify their real problems, to respond more fully to beauty, to place adequate value on life, and to make their world safer than it now is.

　　在計算機時代，人類的基本問題和過去是一樣的。這個問題不僅僅是如何產量更高、如何更舒適、如何更令人滿意，而是如何更敏感、更理智、更均衡、更富有生機。計算機使人類知識的飛躍成為可能;它打破了人的實踐智力、甚至理論智力的藩籬。但計算機是否有助于人類了解人到底是什么呢?是否有助于人識別他們真正的問題呢?是否有利于人類對美好事物作出更為充分的反應呢?是否有助于使我們世界的未來比今天更為安全呢?這問題持續存在并呈增長勢頭。

　　Electronic brains can reduce the profusion of dead ends involved in vital research. But they can't eliminate the foolishness and decay that come from the unexamined life. Nor do they connect a man to the things he has to be connected to -- the reality of pain in others; the possibilities of creative growth in himself; the memory of the race; and the rights of the next generation.

　　電腦能減少生命研究中的許多死胡同。但它不能消除生活中的愚蠢與墮落，也不能把一個人和他不得不與之相聯系的事物聯系起來，如別人的痛苦狀況、自身創造性的機會，種族的印記以及下一代人的權利。

　　The reason these matters are important in a computerized age is that there may be a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, and intelligence with insight. Easy and convenient access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they would lead.

　　這些事情在計算機時代之所以重要是因為有一種把數據誤認為是智慧的趨勢，正如一直存在著混淆邏輯和價值觀、智力和洞察力的趨勢一樣。只有對事實材料的便捷獲取與發現這些材料的意義和這些材料可能悟出的結果的那種渴望與能力相結合，這種獲取或發現才是有意義的。

　　Facts are terrible things if left spreading and unexamined. They are too easily regarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic. It requires a very unusual mind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact. The computer can provide a correct number, but it may be an irrelevant number until judgment is pronounced.

　　任其傳播而沒有經過審查的事實是可怕的。它們太容易被看作已有定論的可靠事實，而不是迫切需要處理，使之具有邏輯條理的原始材料中最原始的材料。懷特埃德說，需要一個非凡的頭腦來分析事實。電腦可以提供一個正確的數據，但數據只有在作出決定時才是有用的。

　　To the extent, then, that man fails to distinguish between the intermediate operations of electronic intelligence and the ultimate responsibilities of human decision, the computer could prove a digression. It could obscure man's awareness of the need to come to terms with himself. It may foster the illusion that he is asking fundamental questions when actually he is asking only functional ones. It may be regarded as a substitute for

　　intelligence instead of an extension of it. It may promote undue confidence in concrete answers. "If we begin with certainties," Bacon said, "we shall end in doubts but if we begin with doubts, and we are patient with them, we shall end in certainties."

　　因而，在人不能區分電子智力的中間運算與人的決定的最終責任的情況下，計算機可能被證明是一種節外生枝。它可能模糊了人還要滿足于自身條件的這種意識。人以為是在探究基礎性問題，而事實上是在探究實用性問題，計算機可能逐漸養成人們的這種錯覺。人們會認為它是智力的替身而不是智力的結果。它會促使人們在具體問題上產生不適當的自信。培根說：“如果我們以肯定開始，我們就會以疑問結束;但如果我們以疑問開始，而且耐心處之，那么我們將會以肯定結束?！?/P>

　　The computer knows how to conquer error, but before we lose ourselves in celebrating the victory, we might reflect on the great advances in the human situation that have come about because men were challenged by error and would not stop thinking and exploring until they found better approaches for dealing with it. “Give me a good fruitful error, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections,” Ferris Greenslei wrote, “You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.”

　　計算機知道如何糾錯，但在我們沉迷于叫好之前，我們應該回顧一下人類的重大進步，因為這種進步是在人類的錯誤、思考、探索、較好的解決辦法的過程中才取得的。費里斯?格林斯里寫道“給我一個碩果累累的錯誤吧，滿足萌牙，卻富有糾錯功能。把那貧瘠的真理留給你吧?！?/P>

　　The biggest single need in computer technology is not for increased speed, or enlarged capacity, or prolonged memory, or reduced size, but for better questions and better use of the answers. Without taking anything away from the technicians, we think it might be fruitful to effect some sort of junction between the computer technologist and the poet. A genuine purpose may be served by turning loose the wonders of the creative imagination on the kinds of problems being put to electronic technology. The company of poets may enable the men who tend the machines to see a wider range of possibilities than technology alone may inspire.

　　計算機技術的最大的，惟一的問題并不是提高速度、擴大內存、增強記憶功能或減小體積，而是提出較好的問題和更好地使用答案。在無礙于技術人員的情況下，我們認為，在計算機老師和詩人之間實現某種結合可能會有所收獲。通過充分發揮由電子技術處理的問題的創造性想象的神奇力量，計算機可能起到真正的作用。與詩人為伍可能使用計算機的人能夠看到比技術自身激發出的更大范圍的可能性。

　　A poet, said Aristotle, has the advantage of expressing the universal; the specialist expresses only the particular. The poet, moreover, can remind us that man's greatest energy comes not from his dynamos but from his dreams. But the quality of a man's dreams can only be a reflection of his subconscious. What he puts into his subconscious, therefore, is quite literally the most important nourishment in the world.

　　亞里斯多德說過，詩人長于表達共性;而老師只能表述某一特性。而且詩人能夠提醒我們：人的最大能量不是來自精力而是來自于他的夢想。但一個人夢想的質量只能是他的下意識的折射。因此，他存入下意識的東西是人世間最重要的營養。

　　Nothing rally happens to a man except as it is registered in the subconscious. This is where event and feeling become memory and where the proof of life is stored. The poet -- and we use the term to include all those who have respect for and speak to the human spirit -- can help to supply the subconscious with material to enhance its sensitivity, thus safeguarding it. The poet, too, can help to keep man from making himself over in the image of his electronic wonders. For the danger is not so much that man will be controlled by the computer as that he may imitate it.

　　什么事情也不會發生，除非人的下意識中留有印跡。下意識就是事件和感覺變成記憶的地方，也是生活證明儲存的地方。詩人――我們用這個詞包括所有尊重人類精神、為人類精神辯護的人，可以幫助向下意識提供素材以增加其靈敏度并維護它。詩人還可以使人不至于按照電子奇跡的形象來改造自己。因為危險不在于人被計算機控制，而在于人模仿它。

　　The poet reminds men of their uniqueness. It is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate on it is a gain.

　　詩人還提醒人們：人是獨一無二的。對其獨一性下一個終級定義是沒有必要的，但對這種獨一性進行思考卻是一種收獲。

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