New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson
New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson
新世界：我们正生活在 J.G. 巴拉德或威廉·吉布森笔下的未来
Don’t let the absence of a flying car in your garage distract you: we are definitely now living in a version of the future out of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson. Every day I notice a news story that startles or alarms me, that feels like pure cyberpunk, nestled between reports about council bin collections and cabinet reshuffles. 别让车库里没有飞行汽车这件事分散了你的注意力：我们现在绝对生活在 J.G. 巴拉德（J.G. Ballard）或威廉·吉布森（William Gibson）笔下的某种未来版本中。每天，我都会注意到一些让我震惊或警觉的新闻，它们读起来就像纯粹的赛博朋克，却夹杂在市政垃圾收集和内阁改组的报道之间。
“The first ever IV Drip clinic to appear in the centre of a shopping mall, our Westfield clinic is a must-stop shop when doing a bit of retail therapy. From Vitamin Drips to Instant Vitamin D Testing, Get A Drip Westfield has it all. Book your appointment today!” Publicity for Get A Drip Limited “首家出现在购物中心内的静脉滴注诊所，我们的 Westfield 诊所是您在进行‘零售疗法’时的必经之地。从维生素点滴到即时维生素 D 检测，Get A Drip Westfield 应有尽有。立即预约您的服务！”——Get A Drip Limited 宣传语
This made me think of Michael Moorcock’s habit of opening stories or chapters with startling newspaper clippings that revealed the future apocalypse already underway in the present, or Ballard’s typographic collages. So I began snipping. 这让我想起了迈克尔·穆尔科克（Michael Moorcock）的习惯：他喜欢用令人震惊的剪报来开启故事或章节，揭示出未来末日已在当下悄然发生；或者像巴拉德那样，使用排版拼贴画。于是，我开始剪报。
“A video has been shared on social media with claims it shows a robotic dog patrolling the grounds of a ‘migrant hotel’. But this is false – while the footage does appear to show a robotic dog, it was filmed in the grounds of a building housing a religious group in Crewe.” Full Fact, 4 November 2025 “一段在社交媒体上分享的视频声称，它展示了一只机器狗在一家‘移民酒店’的场地巡逻。但这并非事实——虽然视频中确实出现了一只机器狗，但它拍摄于克鲁（Crewe）一个宗教团体居住的建筑场地内。”——Full Fact，2025年11月4日
It’s not quite Blade Runner but it might be Robot Jox or Bubblegum Crisis. 这还不完全是《银翼杀手》，但可能更接近《机器人大擂台》（Robot Jox）或《泡泡糖危机》（Bubblegum Crisis）。
“Soul ‘musician’ Sienna Rose has made headlines this week as suspicions mount that her music is a product of artificial intelligence… On Spotify, her sound is described as a blend of the ‘elegance of classic soul with vulnerability of modern R&B’, while she is simply referred to as ‘an anonymous neo-soul singer’. Many fans have taken note of the reference to her anonymity, which makes her 2.6million monthly listeners all the more staggering.” NME, 17 January 2026 “灵魂乐‘音乐人’西耶娜·罗斯（Sienna Rose）本周登上头条，因为人们越来越怀疑她的音乐是人工智能的产物……在 Spotify 上，她的声音被描述为‘经典灵魂乐的优雅与现代 R&B 的脆弱感’的融合，而她仅被称为‘一位匿名的现代灵魂乐歌手’。许多粉丝注意到了她匿名这一点，这使得她每月 260 万的听众数量显得更加惊人。”——NME，2026年1月17日
In the middle of a video about stationery and everyday tech on YouTube the other day there was a passing shot of two robots kickboxing in a cage; another robot was taking coffee orders at a kiosk. This was (blandly) “cool to see”. 前几天，在 YouTube 上观看一个关于文具和日常科技的视频时，中间闪过一个镜头：两个机器人在笼子里进行踢拳比赛；另一个机器人在售货亭点咖啡。这（平淡地）被视为“看起来很酷”。
“British police have helped seize a record nine-tonne haul of cocaine from a ‘narco sub’ in the Atlantic Ocean… The mammoth seizure weighed nearly as much as a school bus and the sub was 230 nautical miles from the Azores when it was intercepted… The semi-submersible eventually sank before authorities could take all its cargo, sending 35 of the 300 packages to the bottom of the Atlantic.” Sky News, 27 January 2026 “英国警方协助在大西洋的一艘‘毒品潜艇’中查获了创纪录的 9 吨可卡因……这次巨额查获的重量几乎相当于一辆校车，潜艇在被拦截时距离亚速尔群岛 230 海里……这艘半潜艇在当局取走所有货物前最终沉没，导致 300 包货物中的 35 包沉入大西洋底。”——天空新闻，2026年1月27日
What the visionaries got wrong, it turns out, was what would go digital. Did anybody bet on cigarettes? Or scooters? Or that neon would be replaced by LEDs? 事实证明，那些预言家们搞错的是：什么东西会数字化。有人押注过香烟吗？或者滑板车？又或者霓虹灯会被 LED 取代？
“A humanoid robot named Edward Warchocki chased away a herd of wild boars in Warsaw, shouting ‘Go away!’ in Polish as the animals fled into the forest, in video footage released on Sunday…” Reuters, 14 April 2026 “周日发布的一段视频显示，一个名叫爱德华·瓦尔乔基（Edward Warchocki）的人形机器人在华沙驱赶了一群野猪，它用波兰语大喊‘走开！’，随后动物们逃进了森林……”——路透社，2026年4月14日
My personal moment of future shock came when a delivery robot trundled past me on Gloucester Road in Bristol, weaving between Saturday afternoon drunks and stoners, some of whom chased it and blocked its way. 我个人经历的“未来冲击”时刻是：当一个送货机器人在布里斯托尔的格洛斯特路上蹒跚而过，穿梭在周六下午的醉汉和瘾君子之间时，其中一些人甚至追赶它并挡住了它的去路。
“Four child-sized humanoid robots take the stage at an arena in eastern Seoul, and as the opening beats of a song by K-pop star G-Dragon begin, they start to dance… Arms swinging, legs stepping in sync, heads bobbing, wigs and baggy clothes swishing, until – mid-performance – one of them seemingly malfunctions and has to be removed from the stage… Welcome to Galaxy Robot Park, a new 16,500 square metre facility in Gangdong district that its creators claim is the world’s first robot theme park.” The Guardian, 25 May 2026 “四个儿童大小的人形机器人走上首尔东部一个竞技场的舞台，随着 K-pop 明星 G-Dragon 歌曲的开场节奏响起，它们开始跳舞……手臂摆动，双腿同步迈步，头部晃动，假发和宽松的衣服随之摆动，直到表演中途，其中一个似乎发生了故障，不得不被移出舞台……欢迎来到银河机器人公园，这是位于江东区的一个占地 16,500 平方米的新设施，其创造者声称这是世界上第一个机器人主题公园。”——《卫报》，2026年5月25日
More often, the shock is that there is no shock. My mum uses the voice-activated computer in her house to remind herself to take the sprouts off the boil. 更多时候，令人震惊的是“没有震惊”。我妈妈用家里的声控电脑提醒自己把煮沸的芽甘蓝关火。
“[Shania] Collins had enjoyed modest success as a sprinter, with contracts from Puma and Adidas. But by 2024, with her career stalled and earnings shrunk, she retired at 29 to begin a long screening process to follow her parents into working for the [Drug Enforcement Agency]… Then organizers of the Enhanced Games, a controversial sports startup, got in touch last fall with an offer. The organizers were planning a one-day competition of sprinting, swimming and weightlifting in Las Vegas that would not only allow but encourage doping. And it paid the kind of money that might take some athletes years to make — six-figure salaries, on top of prize money of up to $250,000 for event winners and $1 million for a world record.” NBC News, 26 May 2026 “[莎妮娅]·柯林斯（Shania Collins）曾作为短跑运动员取得过不错的成绩，并拥有彪马和阿迪达斯的合同。但到了 2024 年，随着职业生涯停滞、收入缩水，她在 29 岁时退役，开始了一项漫长的筛选过程，准备追随父母进入[缉毒局]工作……去年秋天，一家名为“增强运动会”（Enhanced Games）的争议性体育初创公司联系了她，并提供了一份邀约。组织者计划在拉斯维加斯举办一场为期一天的短跑、游泳和举重比赛，不仅允许而且鼓励使用兴奋剂。它提供的报酬是某些运动员可能需要多年才能赚到的——六位数的薪水，外加高达 25 万美元的赛事冠军奖金和 100 万美元的世界纪录奖金。”——NBC 新闻，2026年5月26日
All of this technological advancement, apparently utterly mundane and running in the backgrounds of our lives, is accompanied by a sense of apocalyptic weirdness both in the climate and the culture. 所有这些技术进步，表面上极其平凡，在我们的生活中作为背景运行，却伴随着一种气候和文化上的末日怪诞感。
“Meta has quietly embedded face-recognition technology for its smart glasses into an app downloaded to millions of phones… Code discreetly added to Meta’s AI app over multiple updates this year shows that the feature, internally called ‘NameTag’, identifies people captured by the glasses’ camera and, when activated, alerts the wearer when it recognizes someone.” Wired, 4 June 2026 “Meta 已悄悄将其智能眼镜的面部识别技术嵌入到一个下载量达数百万次的应用程序中……今年多次更新中悄悄添加到 Meta AI 应用程序的代码显示，该功能在内部被称为‘NameTag’，它能识别眼镜摄像头捕捉到的人，并在激活后，当识别出某人时提醒佩戴者。”——《连线》，2026年6月4日
Blade Runner had its acid rain. We have wildfires taking out suburban housing estates in the English Midlands and heat buckling railway tracks. 《银翼杀手》有酸雨。我们则有摧毁英格兰中部郊区住宅区的野火，以及因高温而弯曲的铁轨。
“Two arrests have been made during a police operation using drone technology to target anti-social driving… Dorset Police said its operation on 29 May was in direct response to concerns raised by people living in Sandbanks, Poole… A police drone was deployed over the area to give a higher vantage point to spot any offences of poor driving, allowing officers to then intercept motorists on the ground, said Dorset Police.” BBC, 6 June 2026 “在一次使用无人机技术打击反社会驾驶行为的警察行动中，有两人被捕……多塞特郡警方表示，其 5 月 29 日的行动是直接回应普尔市桑德班克斯（Sandbanks）居民提出的担忧……多塞特郡警方称，一架警用无人机被部署在该区域上方，以提供更高的视角来发现任何不良驾驶行为，从而让地面警员能够拦截驾驶员。”——BBC，2026年6月6日
My brother, a data scientist, told me yesterday that it is now possible to prompt a large language model (LLM) to produce a three-dimensional digital model which you can then realise with a 3D printer. It’s not quite “Tea, Earl Grey, hot,” but it’s alarmingly close. 我弟弟是一名数据科学家，他昨天告诉我，现在已经可以通过提示大语言模型（LLM）来生成三维数字模型，然后用 3D 打印机将其实现。这虽然还不是“伯爵茶，热的”（《星际迷航》中的复制机），但已经非常接近了，令人担忧。
“While spending money on video games is not uncommon, EVE Online stands out because players’ assets can be permanently destroyed; their real-world cash outlay gone in seconds… The game’s financ “虽然在电子游戏中花钱并不罕见，《EVE Online》却很特别，因为玩家的资产可以被永久摧毁；他们投入的现实世界现金在几秒钟内就会化为乌有……该游戏的财务……”