The last time my family was replaced by technology

上一次我的家族被技术“取代”的经历

My great-great-grandfather thought he’d be replaced by technology too. He was a farrier in Mandres-en-Barrois, the small village in rural France where I grew up. Shoeing horses, repairing farmers’ carts. Then he saw a car drive through the next town over, or read an article about it in the paper. I can’t tell what exactly happened in his mind at that moment, but soon after, he became a mechanic, like every man in the family after him.

我的曾曾祖父也曾以为自己会被技术取代。他曾是法国农村曼德尔巴鲁瓦（Mandres-en-Barrois）的一名钉马掌匠，也就是我长大的那个小村庄。他的工作是给马钉掌、修理农夫的马车。后来，他看到一辆汽车驶过邻镇，或者在报纸上读到了关于汽车的报道。我无法确知那一刻他心中作何感想，但不久之后，他转行成了机械师，此后家族里的每一位男性也都继承了这一职业。

In the end, and maybe after a long stretch of grief at trading his horses for engine grease, he kept his purpose: helping people get around. He just changed the technology, going from horses to engines.

最终，或许在经历了告别马匹、转而与机油为伴的漫长痛苦后，他坚守住了自己的使命：帮助人们出行。他只是更换了技术手段，从马匹转向了引擎。

I think about this a lot these days, surrounded as I am by so many developers who wake up every day wondering what’s going to become of them. I must say there is some comfort in knowing that someone in my family had the same doubts before me.

如今，我经常想起这件事。我身边围绕着许多开发者，他们每天醒来都在担忧自己的未来。我必须说，得知我的家族中曾有人在我也面临同样的困惑前就经历过这一切，这让我感到一丝慰藉。

Because, yes, we love to say AI is the biggest revolution since the Industrial Revolution, and that we’re going through a transformation unlike anything we’ve seen before. But that overlooks the farmers who watched the tractor roll in, or the farrier who watched the car arrive. Back then, the revolution was often right next door, hitting your neighbour. They didn’t have X to doomscroll first thing in the morning (lucky them), but they too wondered what on earth they were going to do, imagining the worst.

因为，没错，我们总喜欢说人工智能是自工业革命以来最大的变革，我们正在经历一场前所未有的转型。但这种说法忽略了那些目睹拖拉机开进田野的农夫，或是看着汽车到来的钉马掌匠。在那个年代，变革往往就发生在隔壁，冲击着你的邻居。他们没有 X（推特）可以在清晨醒来时刷个不停（真幸运），但他们也曾忧心忡忡地思考自己到底该怎么办，并设想过最坏的结果。

A century later, the torments felt by my great-great-grandfather are forgotten. The garage feels like it has always been in the family. My father loved his job like few people I know, as if it had run in the family forever. We just kept doing what we had always done: helping people get around. Just as some families in the village still farm the same fields today, mine kept the same purpose.

一个世纪过去了，我曾曾祖父当年的煎熬已被遗忘。修车行仿佛一直就是我们家族的产业。我父亲对这份工作的热爱是我见过的人中少有的，仿佛这真的是我们家族世代相传的事业。我们只是在做我们一直以来都在做的事：帮助人们出行。就像村里有些家庭至今仍在耕种同样的土地一样，我的家族也坚守着同样的使命。

Not every farrier became a mechanic, and I’d never have heard of the ones who didn’t. So I won’t pretend his story proves anything. But it makes me wonder: what if what we loved about this job was never only the code?

并非每一位钉马掌匠都转型成了机械师，而那些没能转型的人，我从未听说过他们的故事。所以我不会假装他的经历能证明什么。但这让我不禁思考：如果说我们热爱这份工作，难道仅仅是因为代码本身吗？

Many of us, deep down, are driven more by the joy of making things, solving problems, and seeing people use what we built than by the act of coding itself. After all, many of us decided we wanted to be developers before learning to code, just to create video games or websites. The desire came before the code.

我们许多人内心深处，比起编写代码这一行为本身，更多是被创造事物、解决问题以及看到人们使用我们构建的产品所带来的快乐所驱动。毕竟，我们许多人在学习编程之前就决定要成为开发者，仅仅是为了制作电子游戏或网站。渴望先于代码而存在。

Be willing to let go of the how to hold on to the why.

愿意放下“如何做”（手段），才能坚守“为何做”（初心）。

2026-09-30