Groundbreaking Change

創新衰敗之困

If asked to give one example of a successful innovation in the past 10 years, what would come to mind first?

如果有人讓你舉出一個過去10年間成功創新的例子，你首先想到會是什么?

Apple’s shiny cool gadgets like the iPhone and the iPad? Or the emergence of social networking sites such as the Facebook and its various copycats?

是iPhone、iPad等炫酷的蘋果產品?還是諸如Facebook及眾多仿Facebook的社交網絡的興起?

We admit these devices and applications have greatly changed our lifestyle. We have never before felt so connected and social networking sites are powerful tools in motivating people to take part in worthy social and civic causes.

我們承認，這些設備和應用極大地改變了我們的生活方式。在此之前，我們從未感覺和世界連接得如此緊密;在鼓勵人們投身到有價值的社會和公民事業這一方面，社交網絡發揮著巨大的作用。

We churn out one nifty gadget after another, with bigger screens and less buttons. We tweak text and photo-sharing social networking sites to create a new product to share, perhaps audios and videos. There is a cloud for us to store and share our files.

時髦的發明一個接一個：屏幕越來越大，按鍵越來越少。我們對可以讓人們分享文字和圖片的社交網絡進行改革，創造了一種可以分享音頻、視頻的新產品。有了云服務，我們可以存儲并分享自己的文件。

All of these are wonderful, but what about truly groundbreaking and visionary endeavors that will profoundly change the world and human life?

所有這一切都棒極了，但從真正意義上講，究竟什么才是深刻改變世界和人類生活的富有遠見的創造性貢獻呢?

More than a half century ago science fiction envisioned a future where human beings made routine space trips. They lived in colonies in other galaxies or on the seabed.

半個多世紀前，科幻小說中設想出這樣一個未來：對于人類而言，太空之旅已成為平常事。他們居住在位于其他銀河系或海底的殖民地之上。

They made food out of thin air and could live for 300 years. Unfortunately, none of these things will happen in the foreseeable future.

他們可以利用稀薄的空氣制造食物，壽命能達到 300歲。可惜所有這些在可預見的未來都不會實現。

Is something wrong with our technological development? Steve Blank, writing in The Huffinton Post, blamed social networking and social media companies such as Facebook for stifling innovation.

我們的技術開發是不是出現了什么問題?史提夫·布蘭克在《赫芬頓郵報》上發表文章，指責像Facebook這樣的社交網站和社交媒體公司扼殺了創新。

Blank teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford, Columbia and the US’ National Science Foundation Innovation Corps. He advises people, especially venture capitalists (VC), who want to commercialize inventions.

布蘭克同時在斯坦福大學、哥倫比亞大學以及美國國家自然科學基金創新研究群體任職，教授創業課程。他會為學員，尤其是那些想將新發明商業化的風險投資者們提供建議。

Blank argues that the success of Facebook and other social networking and social media companies is diverting venture capital from serious research with a more uncertain payoff.

布蘭克認為Facebook等社交網站和社交媒體公司的成功，使得那些回報不算明朗的“嚴肅研究”不再受到風險資本的青睞。

He is talking about research that truly visionary VCs should be supporting.

他所說的嚴肅研究是那些真正有遠見的風險投資者應當全力支持的項目。

Instead of “investing in a blockbuster cancer drug that will pay them nothing for 15 years”, Blank says VCs are throwing their money at the latest and possibly greatest social-media idea that can run on smartphones or tablets in hopes of scoring a quick return when it goes big.

與其“投資一種有重大意義的抗癌藥品，十五年都沒有回報，”布蘭克稱：“如今風險投資家更喜歡將資本投向最新、也可能是最棒的，支持智能手機和平板電腦的社交媒體，期望其做大的時候能得到快速收益。”

“In the past,” Blank wrote, “if you were a successful VC, you could make $100 million (637 million yuan) on an investment in five to seven years. Today, social media startups can return hundreds of millions or even billions in less than three years.”

“在過去”，布蘭克寫道：“如果你是位成功的風險投資家，你可以在五至七年內，在一項投資上賺到1億美元(合6.37億人民幣)。今天，社交媒體的新秀們能讓你在不到三年的時間里得到數億甚至數十億的回報。”

On TechCrunch.com, Alexander Haislip, a marketing executive at a tech startup, is even more critical.

在TechCrunch網站上，一位來自新興技術公司的市場主管亞力山大·希斯立普對此的態度則更為苛刻。

Facebook may be doing exciting things with advertising, he acknowledges, but how exciting is advertising, anyway? It’s hardly, he complains, “the best use of the brightest minds of our generation”.

他承認或許Facebook在廣告方面做的很棒，可話說回來，廣告又能多有趣呢?他抱怨道：“這并沒有充分利用我們這一代的聰明才智。”

A 1999 report in the Wire magazine predicted: “The convergence of mobile phones and the Internet, high-speed wireless data access, intelligent networks, and pervasive computing will shape how we work, shop, pay bills, flirt, keep appointments, conduct wars, keep up with our children, and write poetry in the next century.”

一則1999年發表于《Wire》雜志的報道預言稱：“手機、網絡、高速無線數據存取、智能網絡和普適計算將會決定我們下個世紀的工作、購物、付賬、調情、約會、戰爭、與孩子相處，甚至是寫詩的方式。”

Thirteen years later, we are already living in the world the report described. Perhaps it is time for us to ask: What now?

十三年后，我們已經生活在了該報道所預言的世界中。也許現在是時候問問我們自己：“現在該怎么辦?”

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