Schumpeter
The age of smart machines
智器时代
Brain work may be going the way of manual work
手动代替脑转
May 25th 2013 |From the print edition
IN HIS first novel, "Player Piano" (1952), Kurt Vonnegut foresaw that industry might one day resemble a "stupendous Rube Goldberg machine" (or as Brits would say, a Heath Robinson contraption). His story describes a dystopia in which machines have taken over brain work as well as manual work, and a giant computer, EPICAC XIV, makes all the decisions. A few managers and engineers are still employed to tend their new masters. But most people live in homesteads where they spend their time doing make-work jobs, watching television and "breeding like rabbits".
在Kurt Vonnegut（库尔特•冯内古特）的第一部小说《player piano（自动钢琴）》(1952)中，他预言了在未来某天，工业会"以化简为繁的方式制造取之不尽的饭碗(惊人的鲁比戈德堡机)color]"（或者用Brits的话说，一个健全的鲁滨逊机制）。书里描述了一个糟糕的社会，那里机器可以取代脑力工作，也可以完成体力工作，另外还有一台巨型计算机EPICCAC XIV负责做出所有决策。几个经理人和工程师仍受雇于他们的新主人，维护照顾这个机器。但大多数人都窝在家里做一些没事找事的事情，看看电视，还有"像兔子一样繁衍"。
It is impossible to read "Player Piano" today without wondering whether Vonnegut's stupendous machine is being assembled before our eyes. Google has designed self-driving cars. America's military-security complex has pioneered self-flying killing machines. Educational entrepreneurs are putting enlightenment online. Are we increasingly living in Vonnegut's dystopia? Or are the techno-enthusiasts right to argue that life is about to get a lot better?
现在再读《Player Piano》时，不可能还怀疑Vonnegut的巨大机器不会出现在现实之中了。谷歌已经设计了自动智能车。美国国防集团在智能歼灭飞行器上的发展也令人望尘莫及。教育届的企业家也在正在将启迪教育连到互联网里。难道我们正渐渐地与Vonnegut的糟糕的世界趋同了吗？亦或是技术狂热派仍一成不变的认为生活即将变得更好吗？
Two things are clear. The first is that smart machines are evolving at breakneck speed. Moore's law―that the computing power available for a given price doubles about every 18 months―continues to apply. This power is leaping from desktops into people's pockets. More than 1.1 billion people own smartphones and tablets. Manufacturers are putting smart sensors into all sorts of products. The second is that intelligent machines have reached a new social frontier: knowledge workers are now in the eye of the storm, much as stocking-weavers were in the days of Ned Ludd, the original Luddite. Bank clerks and travel agents have already been consigned to the dustbin by the thousand; teachers, researchers and writers are next. The question is whether the creation will be worth the destruction.
有两件事清楚明了。一，智能机器正在耸人的高速发展。约每18个月计算机运算能力就翻一番的摩尔定律仍旧普适。而这种运算能力正从笔记本电脑向着人们的口袋移动。超过110万人拥有智能手机和平板电脑。制造业厂商紧跟着把传感器安装在所有产品里。二，只能机器已经达到了前所未有的社会极限：脑力劳动者现在处于台风眼中，类似于织袜工人原来曾是Luddite[勒德分子(1811-1816年英国捣毁纺织机械抗议资本家的团体成员)] ，现在称Ned Ludd。成千上万的银行职员和旅行经理人都丢了饭碗；老师、调查员以及作家也即将中弹。而问题是，创造的价值是否等于被毁灭的价值？
Two academics at MIT's Sloan Business School, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, have taken a surprisingly Vonnegutish view on this: surprising because management theorists like to be on the side of the winners and because MIT is one of the great strongholds of techno-Utopianism. In "Race Against the Machine", their 2011 book, they predict that many knowledge workers are in for a hard time. There is a good chance that technology may destroy more jobs than it creates. There is an even greater chance that it will continue to widen inequalities. Technology is creating ever more markets in which innovators, investors and consumers―not workers―get the lion's share of the gains. The Brynjolfsson-McAfee thesis explains one of the most puzzling aspects of the modern economy: why so much technological creativity can co-exist with stagnating wages and mass unemployment.
两位麻省理工大学斯隆商学院的学者，Erik Brynjolfsson和Andrew McAfee在这方面出奇地采取了Vonnegut式的观点：令人吃惊的原因有二，一是因为理论家总喜欢与赢家为营，还有，麻省理工是技术乌托邦主义最强大的靠背之一。2011年他们合著的书《Race Against the Machine（与机器之战）》中有预言许多脑力工作者将会很难熬。在很大程度上科技将摧毁的岗位比它创造的多。更大程度上科技还会继续加剧社会差距。科技为革新派、投资人、消费者们，而不是工人们，创造着多了又多的市场，好让利益获得方独占鳌头。Brynjolfsson-McAfee理论解释了当下经济体系里最复杂方方面面之一：为什么科技创新能和薪资拖滞还有大规模失业并存于世。
A new study by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), "Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business and the global economy", shines a light on this problem and produces lots of examples of the way the internet is revolutionising knowledge work. Law firms are using computers to search through masses of legal briefs and precedents. Financial companies are using computers to monitor news feeds and make financial bets on the basis of the information they uncover. Hospitals are using robots to perform keyhole surgery.
麦肯锡全球研究所（MGI）一项新的研究是，"分裂的科技：进步会改变生活、商业和全球经济"，在此议题上提出了新的观点，并在 因特网是智力革命的产物方面 做了许多例证。律师事务所用电脑在巨量的条款简章和以前的案例中翻寻。财务公司用电脑监测新闻的反馈，在他们获取的信息基础上做出财务决策。医院则用机器人锁眼切口手术。
The rate of progress, says MGI, is set to increase dramatically thanks to a combination of Moore's law and the melding of three technologies: machine learning, voice recognition and nanotechnology. Tiny computers will be able to perform jobs once regarded as the peculiar preserve of humans: most middle-class people will soon have access to electronic personal assistants (to book flights or co-ordinate diaries) and wearable physicians (to keep a permanent watch on their vital organs).
MGI称，不断加速的进步应归功于摩尔定律和3种科技的混合：机器学习，语音识别以及纳米技术。智器被视作奇异而完整的人，微型计算机将完成各种各样的工作：大多数中产阶级很快将拥有电子个人助理（比如预定机票和日程安排）以及便携式医生（永久监测重要器官的健康）。
MGI puts a typically positive spin on all this. It argues that being spared relatively undemanding tasks will free knowledge workers to deal with more complex ones, making them more productive. It argues that the latest wave of innovation will be good for both entrepreneurs and consumers. Small businesses will be able to act like giant ones, because cloud computing will give them access to huge processing power and storage, and because the internet destroys distance. Innovators will be able to test their new ideas with prototypes, then produce them for niche markets. Consumers captured much of the economic gains created by "general-purpose technologies" like steam and electric power, because they stimulated competition as well as increasing efficiency. MGI reckons that so far they have captured two-thirds of the gains from the internet.
MGI对以上种种做了一贯的正面评价。称被空闲的脑力工作者从相对低级的工作解脱就能够去处理更复杂的工作，提高效率。还说最新的创新成果对企业家和消费者都于其有利可图。因云计算的流行，巨大的处理能力和存储空间唾手可得，以及互联网消灭了距离，小型公司能够像大规模公司一般运作。开发者能用新点子原型进行测试，然后投放在适当的市场。消费者则在"通用科技"中获得很多便捷，比如蒸汽和电力 ，因为激发竞争力就是提高效率。MGI估计，截至目前，他们已经从互联网中赚取了三分之二的涨幅。
Techno-backlash
科技反动
Nevertheless, MGI's study has some sympathy with Messrs Brynjolfsson and McAfee. It worries that modern technologies will widen inequality, increase social exclusion and provoke a backlash. It also speculates that public-sector institutions will be too clumsy to prepare people for this brave new world. Policymakers need to think as hard about managing the current wave of disruptive innovation as technologists are thinking about turbocharging it. For one thing, the purpose of education systems, and the skills and knowledge that they impart, will need to be rethought: "chalk and talk" instruction will be done best by machines, freeing teachers to become more like individual coaches to their pupils.
然而，MGI的研究还是有某些对Messrs Brynjolfsson和McAfee的认同的。他们担心因科技发展而造成的社会不平等扩张，加剧社会排外情节，激起反动。它也怀疑公共事业部门会能力不足不能引领人们勇敢面对全新时代。政策制定者需像科学家思考涡轮增压机那样好好思考在分裂的创造中经营智能化大潮。首当其冲地，教育体系的目的和学生被传授的技能亟待重定位：机器得最好的完成"注入式教学"的工作，让老师在师生关系中更能扮演学生个人导师一角。
Knowledge-intensive industries will also have to rethink cherished practices. For a start, in an age in which information and processing power are ubiquitous, they will have to become less like guilds, whose reflexes are to regulate supply and restrict competition, and more like mass-market businesses, whose instinct is to maximise the customer base. Innovation will disrupt many areas of skilled work that have so far had it easy. But if we manage them well, smart machines will free us, not enslave us.
智力驱动的行业也得重新想想持续发展的问题了。首先，在信息和进程无孔不入的时代，他们应少一些协会制，协会内只会规定供给和限制竞争，多一些大型企业式的制度，最大化消费者规模才是大企业的本能。创造会轻而易举的打断很多领域内的技师工作。但要是我们应用有方，智能机器只会解放人类，而非奴役人类。
The age of smart machines
智器时代
Brain work may be going the way of manual work
手动代替脑转
May 25th 2013 |From the print edition
IN HIS first novel, "Player Piano" (1952), Kurt Vonnegut foresaw that industry might one day resemble a "stupendous Rube Goldberg machine" (or as Brits would say, a Heath Robinson contraption). His story describes a dystopia in which machines have taken over brain work as well as manual work, and a giant computer, EPICAC XIV, makes all the decisions. A few managers and engineers are still employed to tend their new masters. But most people live in homesteads where they spend their time doing make-work jobs, watching television and "breeding like rabbits".
在Kurt Vonnegut（库尔特•冯内古特）的第一部小说《player piano（自动钢琴）》(1952)中，他预言了在未来某天，工业会"以化简为繁的方式制造取之不尽的饭碗(惊人的鲁比戈德堡机)color]"（或者用Brits的话说，一个健全的鲁滨逊机制）。书里描述了一个糟糕的社会，那里机器可以取代脑力工作，也可以完成体力工作，另外还有一台巨型计算机EPICCAC XIV负责做出所有决策。几个经理人和工程师仍受雇于他们的新主人，维护照顾这个机器。但大多数人都窝在家里做一些没事找事的事情，看看电视，还有"像兔子一样繁衍"。
It is impossible to read "Player Piano" today without wondering whether Vonnegut's stupendous machine is being assembled before our eyes. Google has designed self-driving cars. America's military-security complex has pioneered self-flying killing machines. Educational entrepreneurs are putting enlightenment online. Are we increasingly living in Vonnegut's dystopia? Or are the techno-enthusiasts right to argue that life is about to get a lot better?
现在再读《Player Piano》时，不可能还怀疑Vonnegut的巨大机器不会出现在现实之中了。谷歌已经设计了自动智能车。美国国防集团在智能歼灭飞行器上的发展也令人望尘莫及。教育届的企业家也在正在将启迪教育连到互联网里。难道我们正渐渐地与Vonnegut的糟糕的世界趋同了吗？亦或是技术狂热派仍一成不变的认为生活即将变得更好吗？
Two things are clear. The first is that smart machines are evolving at breakneck speed. Moore's law―that the computing power available for a given price doubles about every 18 months―continues to apply. This power is leaping from desktops into people's pockets. More than 1.1 billion people own smartphones and tablets. Manufacturers are putting smart sensors into all sorts of products. The second is that intelligent machines have reached a new social frontier: knowledge workers are now in the eye of the storm, much as stocking-weavers were in the days of Ned Ludd, the original Luddite. Bank clerks and travel agents have already been consigned to the dustbin by the thousand; teachers, researchers and writers are next. The question is whether the creation will be worth the destruction.
有两件事清楚明了。一，智能机器正在耸人的高速发展。约每18个月计算机运算能力就翻一番的摩尔定律仍旧普适。而这种运算能力正从笔记本电脑向着人们的口袋移动。超过110万人拥有智能手机和平板电脑。制造业厂商紧跟着把传感器安装在所有产品里。二，只能机器已经达到了前所未有的社会极限：脑力劳动者现在处于台风眼中，类似于织袜工人原来曾是Luddite[勒德分子(1811-1816年英国捣毁纺织机械抗议资本家的团体成员)] ，现在称Ned Ludd。成千上万的银行职员和旅行经理人都丢了饭碗；老师、调查员以及作家也即将中弹。而问题是，创造的价值是否等于被毁灭的价值？
Two academics at MIT's Sloan Business School, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, have taken a surprisingly Vonnegutish view on this: surprising because management theorists like to be on the side of the winners and because MIT is one of the great strongholds of techno-Utopianism. In "Race Against the Machine", their 2011 book, they predict that many knowledge workers are in for a hard time. There is a good chance that technology may destroy more jobs than it creates. There is an even greater chance that it will continue to widen inequalities. Technology is creating ever more markets in which innovators, investors and consumers―not workers―get the lion's share of the gains. The Brynjolfsson-McAfee thesis explains one of the most puzzling aspects of the modern economy: why so much technological creativity can co-exist with stagnating wages and mass unemployment.
两位麻省理工大学斯隆商学院的学者，Erik Brynjolfsson和Andrew McAfee在这方面出奇地采取了Vonnegut式的观点：令人吃惊的原因有二，一是因为理论家总喜欢与赢家为营，还有，麻省理工是技术乌托邦主义最强大的靠背之一。2011年他们合著的书《Race Against the Machine（与机器之战）》中有预言许多脑力工作者将会很难熬。在很大程度上科技将摧毁的岗位比它创造的多。更大程度上科技还会继续加剧社会差距。科技为革新派、投资人、消费者们，而不是工人们，创造着多了又多的市场，好让利益获得方独占鳌头。Brynjolfsson-McAfee理论解释了当下经济体系里最复杂方方面面之一：为什么科技创新能和薪资拖滞还有大规模失业并存于世。
A new study by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), "Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business and the global economy", shines a light on this problem and produces lots of examples of the way the internet is revolutionising knowledge work. Law firms are using computers to search through masses of legal briefs and precedents. Financial companies are using computers to monitor news feeds and make financial bets on the basis of the information they uncover. Hospitals are using robots to perform keyhole surgery.
麦肯锡全球研究所（MGI）一项新的研究是，"分裂的科技：进步会改变生活、商业和全球经济"，在此议题上提出了新的观点，并在 因特网是智力革命的产物方面 做了许多例证。律师事务所用电脑在巨量的条款简章和以前的案例中翻寻。财务公司用电脑监测新闻的反馈，在他们获取的信息基础上做出财务决策。医院则用机器人锁眼切口手术。
The rate of progress, says MGI, is set to increase dramatically thanks to a combination of Moore's law and the melding of three technologies: machine learning, voice recognition and nanotechnology. Tiny computers will be able to perform jobs once regarded as the peculiar preserve of humans: most middle-class people will soon have access to electronic personal assistants (to book flights or co-ordinate diaries) and wearable physicians (to keep a permanent watch on their vital organs).
MGI称，不断加速的进步应归功于摩尔定律和3种科技的混合：机器学习，语音识别以及纳米技术。智器被视作奇异而完整的人，微型计算机将完成各种各样的工作：大多数中产阶级很快将拥有电子个人助理（比如预定机票和日程安排）以及便携式医生（永久监测重要器官的健康）。
MGI puts a typically positive spin on all this. It argues that being spared relatively undemanding tasks will free knowledge workers to deal with more complex ones, making them more productive. It argues that the latest wave of innovation will be good for both entrepreneurs and consumers. Small businesses will be able to act like giant ones, because cloud computing will give them access to huge processing power and storage, and because the internet destroys distance. Innovators will be able to test their new ideas with prototypes, then produce them for niche markets. Consumers captured much of the economic gains created by "general-purpose technologies" like steam and electric power, because they stimulated competition as well as increasing efficiency. MGI reckons that so far they have captured two-thirds of the gains from the internet.
MGI对以上种种做了一贯的正面评价。称被空闲的脑力工作者从相对低级的工作解脱就能够去处理更复杂的工作，提高效率。还说最新的创新成果对企业家和消费者都于其有利可图。因云计算的流行，巨大的处理能力和存储空间唾手可得，以及互联网消灭了距离，小型公司能够像大规模公司一般运作。开发者能用新点子原型进行测试，然后投放在适当的市场。消费者则在"通用科技"中获得很多便捷，比如蒸汽和电力 ，因为激发竞争力就是提高效率。MGI估计，截至目前，他们已经从互联网中赚取了三分之二的涨幅。
Techno-backlash
科技反动
Nevertheless, MGI's study has some sympathy with Messrs Brynjolfsson and McAfee. It worries that modern technologies will widen inequality, increase social exclusion and provoke a backlash. It also speculates that public-sector institutions will be too clumsy to prepare people for this brave new world. Policymakers need to think as hard about managing the current wave of disruptive innovation as technologists are thinking about turbocharging it. For one thing, the purpose of education systems, and the skills and knowledge that they impart, will need to be rethought: "chalk and talk" instruction will be done best by machines, freeing teachers to become more like individual coaches to their pupils.
然而，MGI的研究还是有某些对Messrs Brynjolfsson和McAfee的认同的。他们担心因科技发展而造成的社会不平等扩张，加剧社会排外情节，激起反动。它也怀疑公共事业部门会能力不足不能引领人们勇敢面对全新时代。政策制定者需像科学家思考涡轮增压机那样好好思考在分裂的创造中经营智能化大潮。首当其冲地，教育体系的目的和学生被传授的技能亟待重定位：机器得最好的完成"注入式教学"的工作，让老师在师生关系中更能扮演学生个人导师一角。
Knowledge-intensive industries will also have to rethink cherished practices. For a start, in an age in which information and processing power are ubiquitous, they will have to become less like guilds, whose reflexes are to regulate supply and restrict competition, and more like mass-market businesses, whose instinct is to maximise the customer base. Innovation will disrupt many areas of skilled work that have so far had it easy. But if we manage them well, smart machines will free us, not enslave us.
智力驱动的行业也得重新想想持续发展的问题了。首先，在信息和进程无孔不入的时代，他们应少一些协会制，协会内只会规定供给和限制竞争，多一些大型企业式的制度，最大化消费者规模才是大企业的本能。创造会轻而易举的打断很多领域内的技师工作。但要是我们应用有方，智能机器只会解放人类，而非奴役人类。
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