Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
硅谷误读了科幻小说，正在破坏民主
In her upcoming book “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State,” Jill Lepore warns that tech companies are increasingly replacing the functions of democratic government. This shift, she said, marks “a return to tyranny and mystification in the form of rule by algorithms, corporations, machines.” 在即将出版的新书《人造国家的兴衰》（The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State）中，吉尔·莱波雷（Jill Lepore）警告称，科技公司正日益取代民主政府的职能。她说，这种转变标志着“一种以算法、企业和机器统治为形式的暴政与神秘化的回归”。
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, I spoke to Lepore — a Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for her history of the U.S. Constitution — about the evolution of what she described as “the idea that we should live under an artificial state or government by machines.” 在 TechCrunch 的《Equity》播客最新一期节目中，我采访了莱波雷——她是一位哈佛大学历史学家、《纽约客》特约撰稿人，最近凭借其关于美国宪法的历史著作获得了普利策奖。我们探讨了她所描述的“我们应该生活在人造国家或机器统治之下”这一理念的演变。
“I’m not an anti-technologist,” Lepore insisted. Instead, she said, “My beef is the ways in which private corporations have increasingly taken on the functions of the state.” “我不是反技术主义者，”莱波雷坚持道。相反，她说：“我所不满的是私营企业日益承担起国家职能的方式。”
While Lepore’s book examines technocratic philosophies that go back centuries, she argued that many of Silicon Valley’s “charismatic or not-so-charismatic leaders” — especially Elon Musk — seem to be ushering in a future pulled from misread pulp science fiction and comic books. 虽然莱波雷的书考察了追溯至几个世纪前的技术官僚哲学，但她认为，硅谷的许多“有魅力或没那么有魅力的领导者”——尤其是埃隆·马斯克——似乎正在引领一个从被误读的通俗科幻小说和漫画书中提取出来的未来。
“But what’s funny about Musk is, the stuff he likes actually completely defeats and defies all of his political beliefs,” she said. “但马斯克有趣的地方在于，他喜欢的东西实际上完全击败并违背了他所有的政治信仰，”她说。
Our conversation also covered Apple’s famous “1984” Macintosh ad, why it’s “bananas” to call Twitter a digital town hall, and the current data center backlash. Keep reading for highlights, edited for length and clarity. 我们的谈话还涵盖了苹果著名的“1984”麦金塔电脑广告、为什么称 Twitter 为“数字市政厅”是“荒谬的”，以及当前针对数据中心的抵制浪潮。请继续阅读经过编辑、删减和整理的访谈要点。
So you’ve probably had to do this a lot already, but can you explain what you mean by the “artificial state”? 你可能已经解释过很多次了，但你能解释一下你所说的“人造国家”是什么意思吗？
By the artificial state, I mean a kind of state that is replacing the liberal democratic nation-state in the United States and around the world. It’s both a real thing, a construct, but it’s also an idea. And so, in this book “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State,” I trace the rise of the idea that we should live under an artificial state or government by machines. I also trace the notion that this is an inevitable failure, that the artificial state cannot survive, and I trace that idea through science fiction. 我所说的“人造国家”，是指一种正在取代美国乃至全球自由民主民族国家的国家形态。它既是现实存在，也是一种建构，同时也是一种理念。因此，在《人造国家的兴衰》这本书中，我追溯了“我们应该生活在人造国家或机器统治之下”这一理念的兴起。我也追溯了“这注定会失败、人造国家无法生存”这一观点，并通过科幻小说来梳理这一思想。
At one point, you say the rise of the artificial state marks the end of centuries of democracy and equal rights, and it’s “a return to tyranny and mystification in the form of rule by algorithms, corporations, machines.” Can you just say a little bit more about why you see it in such stark terms? 你曾提到，人造国家的兴起标志着几个世纪以来民主和平等权利的终结，是“以算法、企业和机器统治为形式的暴政与神秘化的回归”。你能多谈谈为什么你用如此严峻的措辞来描述它吗？
Yeah, I do have a pretty negative view of it, and I think it’s important to distinguish the artificial state from technology itself or modes of technology. I’m not an anti-technologist. I’m married to a computer scientist. I’m really excited about all kinds of intellectual revolutions that we’re in the midst of right now. That’s not my beef, right? My beef is the ways in which private corporations have increasingly taken on the functions of the state. No one consented to that. 是的，我的确对此持相当负面的看法。我认为区分“人造国家”与“技术本身”或“技术模式”非常重要。我不是反技术主义者，我的丈夫就是一位计算机科学家。我对我们目前正处于其中的各种智力革命感到非常兴奋。那不是我所不满的，对吧？我所不满的是私营企业日益承担起国家职能的方式。没有人同意这样做。
This has been a kind of gradual, largely accidental transformation of how many nation-states around the world work — it’s happened first in the United States. I think often these innovations in bringing new technologies to the operations of government have been extremely well intentioned; they originate with an interest in efficiency and speed and cheapness. And then, I think, only in the last 20, 25 years or so have these decisions been purposeful and deliberate as a kind of usurpation of the role of the nation-state. And that’s not my speculation. You hear a lot of a lot of very prominent tech entrepreneurs talk about wanting to move beyond the era of the nation-state. […] A lot of futurists in the ’90s were libertarians, and they had a specific interest in using the advance of the internet and the successive innovations that followed as a means to eradicate the nation-state. 这是一种渐进的、很大程度上是偶然的转变，改变了全球许多民族国家的运作方式——这种转变首先发生在美国。我认为，将新技术引入政府运作的创新往往初衷是非常好的；它们源于对效率、速度和成本的追求。然后，我认为，直到最近 20 到 25 年左右，这些决策才变得有目的、有预谋，成为一种对民族国家角色的篡夺。这不是我的推测。你听到许多非常著名的科技企业家谈论想要超越民族国家时代。[……] 90 年代的许多未来学家都是自由意志主义者，他们特别热衷于利用互联网的进步及其随后的创新来消灭民族国家。
You talk about, on the one hand, the technologies themselves, and then also the philosophies behind them, the role the corporation has increasingly played. I’m curious to what extent we can separate them. Can we actually have a version of the internet and of social media that doesn’t necessarily lead to this future that it seems like we’re [currently] hurtling towards? 你一方面谈到了技术本身，另一方面也谈到了技术背后的哲学以及企业日益扮演的角色。我很好奇我们能在多大程度上将它们分开。我们是否真的能拥有一个不必必然导致我们（目前）似乎正冲向的那个未来的互联网和社会媒体版本？
Absolutely. I’m a historian. I’m not a tech writer. I’m not a tech journalist. I’m not a computer scientist. I’m a historian, and I’m chiefly a political historian, though I’m also a literary historian. And so, one of the things that I’m really interested in unraveling for readers in this book is all the what-ifs, all the alternatives, the paths along the road that were not taken and why. 当然可以。我是一名历史学家。我不是科技作家，不是科技记者，也不是计算机科学家。我是一名历史学家，主要是政治历史学家，尽管我也是文学历史学家。因此，我在书中真正想为读者揭示的事情之一，就是所有的“如果当初”，所有的替代方案，以及那些未被选择的道路及其原因。
There was, of course, a really avid discussion in the 1990s about what the internet should look like when it was opened up, and what we ended up with, the 1996 Telecommunications Act — I think, a lot of people would say [that] just was a mistake, not an act of sinister intent, right? But it was a product of a particular political moment, really was deeply influenced by Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America, and it’s been very difficult to revisit. I think it’s worth thinking about what were the alternatives that were in play at the time. And you could say the same thing about the personal computer. 当然，在 90 年代，关于互联网开放时应该是什么样子，曾有过非常热烈的讨论。而我们最终得到的 1996 年《电信法》——我想很多人会说那只是一个错误，而不是出于邪恶的意图，对吧？但它是特定政治时刻的产物，深受纽特·金里奇（Newt Gingrich）及其“与美国契约”（Contract with America）的影响，而且很难再回头修正。我认为值得思考的是，当时还有哪些替代方案。对于个人电脑，情况也是如此。
So, to the degree that we can locate an origin point for the promise that better computer technology would make for better democracies, I think the moment you would first look to would be January 1984, that Super Bowl ad that Apple ran for the release of the Macintosh, with the sort of George Orwell, 1984 [theme]. Apple was really big on the idea that mainframe computers represented totalitarianism. They were trying to dismantle the giant gray IBM machines, as in representing them in that ad as a totalitarian state. And the lithe, beautiful, quick, adorable, personal Macintosh would be the ax that would destroy that machine and would usher in a new era in which “1984 would not be ‘1984.’” That was clever advertising. I doubt that anybody at Apple really believed the personal computer was going to be an instrument of personal liberation. 因此，如果我们能找到一个起点，即“更好的计算机技术将带来更好的民主”这一承诺的起源，我认为首先要看的就是 1984 年 1 月，苹果为发布麦金塔电脑而在超级碗播放的那则广告，它带有乔治·奥威尔《1984》的主题。苹果非常推崇“大型机代表极权主义”这一理念。他们试图拆解巨大的灰色 IBM 机器，并在广告中将其描绘成一个极权国家。而轻盈、美观、快捷、可爱的个人麦金塔电脑，将成为摧毁那台机器的斧头，并开启一个“1984 年将不再是《1984》”的新时代。那是聪明的广告宣传。我怀疑苹果公司里是否真的有人相信个人电脑会成为个人解放的工具。