逐利主義和自由主義之間 技術嬉皮士

They have no name and no leader. But you could call them “techno-hippies”. Somewhere between the cheerful profiteering of Silicon Valley and the libertarianism of online hackers, this loose collection of artists and entrepreneurs is using the profusion of new devices and digital networks to challenge mainstream ideas about capitalism, consumption and the relationship between humans and nature.

這羣人沒有名字，也沒有領袖。但你可以把他們稱作“技術嬉皮士”。他們介於硅谷興高采烈的逐利主義和在線黑客的自由主義之間，是一個藝術家和企業家的鬆散羣體，他們正利用層出不窮的新設備和數字網絡，挑戰有關資本主義、消費以及人類與自然之間關係的主流觀念。

Last month, they descended on Linz, a pretty city perched on the banks of the Austrian Danube that hosts the annual Ars Electronica festival, a digital media event that has become a magnet for counter-cultural technologists from around the world.

上月，他們來到位於奧地利多瑙河沿岸的美麗城市林茨，參加一年一度的電子藝術節(Ars Electronica)，這場數字媒體盛會吸引了全球各地的反主流文化技術專家。

Colonising Linz’s shopping malls, schools and even the local bishop’s residence, this year’s installations ranged from a cathedral being played with lasers like a giant musical instrument, to hermit crabs scuttling around under the burden of miniature 3D-printed city­scapes, to a display of “agriculturally printed” farmland in which algorithms had calculated the optimum planting pattern and ratio of crops to bug-resistant grasses.

今年的裝置作品佔據了林茨的購物中心、學校甚至當地主教的居所，包括一個用激光演奏的大教堂，就像一件巨大的樂器，還有在3D打印的城市高樓微型複製品的壓力下四散奔逃的寄居蟹，以及“經過農業印刷”的農田，利用算法計算出最優種植模式和農作物與防蟲害青草的比率。

“Ars Electronica is an early warning system,” says Hiroshi Ishii, the associate director of MIT’s Media Lab, who was visiting the festival. “It shows we are living in an era when the connectivity of people and machines can contribute to solving societal problems.”

“電子藝術節是一個預警系統，”參加此次電子藝術節的麻省理工(MIT)媒體實驗室(Media Lab)副主任石井裕(Hiroshi Ishii)表示，“它顯示出在我們生活的這個時代，人和機器的互聯互通有助於解決社會問題。”

Where a typical start-up preaches the values of disruption and convenience, these alternative futurists point to the social or environmental impact. Instead of swooning over the latest high-profile product launch, they find playful ways to ask who controls and benefits from that technology. And with each new proprietary device, they question whether “open source” strategies might be better at empowering individuals to direct their own destinies and create incentives for innovation other than the profit motive.

一般的初創企業宣揚顛覆和便利的價值，而這些另類未來主義者指向社會或環境影響。他們沒有爲最新發布的高調產品尖叫，而是找到好玩的方式提問：誰控制並受益於這種技術。每當有新的專有技術設備問世，他們會提問，“開放源”戰略會不會更有利於讓個人得以執掌自己的命運，並給創新提供利潤動機以外的激勵？

Their initiatives include “repair cafés” that encourage people to avoid waste by sharing skills to fix defunct electronic objects, and “open source gardens”, where crates full of soil, flowers and plants are left in public spaces to see who takes care of them. Those projects were kicked off by Martin Hollinetz, my host for the festival. Mr Hollinetz, who trained as an engineer and a psychotherapist, runs a chain of so-called “open technology labs” or “Otelos” in rural Austria, which act as a cross between community groups and high-tech research laboratories.

他們發起的計劃包括“修理咖啡館”，鼓勵人們通過分享修理壞了的電子產品技能來減少垃圾，還有“開放源花園”，在公共場所放置裝滿土壤、花和植物的大盒，看看誰能照看它們。這些計劃是由我在此次電子藝術節的東道主馬丁•霍林耐茨(Martin Hollinetz)推出的。他是科班出身的工程師和心理治療師，他在奧地利鄉村地區運行着一個所謂的“開放技術實驗室”（被稱爲Otelos）連鎖，它們兼具社區組織和高科技研究實驗室的特點。

Mr Hollinetz, who lives in a yellow house he and his wife built from reclaimed freight containers previously used to transport refrigerators, took his cues for Otelos from the “maker” movement, a collection of digital do-it-yourselfers who gather in clubs to tinker with high-tech devices such as 3D printers. But he wanted Otelos to be more inclusive than the traditional hacker crowd.

霍林耐茨居住在他和他妻子用回收的貨運集裝箱建造的黃色屋子裏，這個集裝箱以前用來運輸冰箱。他是從“maker”運動中獲得建立Otelos的靈感的。這個運動是一個由數字DIY愛好者組成的羣體，他們會聚集在俱樂部，擺弄3D打印機等高科技設備。但他希望Otelos成爲更具包容性的組織，不僅包括傳統的黑客人羣。

“We wanted to create something like the ‘hackerspaces’ you see in Berlin and Barcelona, but to do it in a way that was more welcoming to people of all ages, to stop the brain drain to cities,” he explains. “We wanted to help show people that they had valuable knowledge to share.”

“我們希望創造一些類似於你在柏林和巴塞羅那看到的‘黑客空間’那種組織，但更歡迎各種年齡的階層，以阻止人才向城市流失，”他解釋道，“我們希望幫助展示給人們：他們有寶貴的知識可以分享。”

With around 500 active members, Otelo projects to date include the design and fabrication of a plug-and-play microchip for broadcasting community radio, and a special soil-tilling machine to help farmers revive a traditional organic agricultural technique.

Otelos項目大約有500名活躍會員，迄今的成果包括設計和製造一種用於播放社區廣播的即插即用芯片，以及一種特殊的田地耕作機，幫助農民恢復傳統的有機農業方法。

Artists and entrepreneurs like Mr Hollinetz are weighing in to a big debate about how technological development should happen. Because making technology can be expensive, innovation tends to come from companies that can generate returns on capital by convincing consumers to buy their products. “There is a real tension in the altruistic or utopian conception of the development of technology on the one hand, and market forces on the other,” says Roland Lamb, the founder and chief executive of London-based music start-up Roli.

藝術家和霍林耐茨等企業家正加入一場大規模辯論，焦點是科技發展應如何實現。由於研發技術明可能成本高昂，因此創新往往來自那些通過說服消費者購買其產品而獲得資本回報的公司。倫敦音樂初創企業Roli創始人和首席執行官羅蘭•萊姆(Roland Lamb)表示：“確實存在緊張，一方面是科技發展的利他或烏托邦概念，另一方面是市場力量。”

Mr Lamb, who has a degree in comparative philosophy from Harvard, credits eastern thinking with helping him challenge western ideas about identity and discreteness in designing his company’s flagship Seaboard product, a piano that uses soft digital sensors in place of keys to allow a continuum of pressure from the player’s fingers to create changes in sound.

萊姆擁有哈佛大學(Harvard)比較哲學學位，他認爲，在設計他公司的旗艦產品Seaboard的過程中，東方思維幫助他挑戰了西方有關身份以及分離性的觀點，該產品是一臺鋼琴，用軟性數字傳感器取代鋼琴鍵，利用來自演奏者手指的連續壓力，實現聲音的變化。

There is a certain irony, Mr Lamb notes, in corporations that have encouraged consumers to be reliant on their devices now having to tread more carefully as a result.

萊姆指出，具有某種諷刺意味的是，那些一直鼓勵消費者依賴它們設備的企業，現在不得不更爲謹慎地行事。

“Phones in particular are beginning to cross a line from being understood as an external object, separate from oneself, to an internal object,” Mr Lamb adds, pointing to the recent outrage over Apple automatically downloading U2’s album Songs of Innocence on to unsuspecting iPhone users. “The very intimacy and closeness of these devices means people want to forget that they have been developed by a company that can push things on to them.”

“尤其是，手機正開始從一種被視爲與人們脫離的外部產品變成一種內部產品，”萊姆補充稱，他談到，最近人們對蘋果(Apple)自動向不知情的iPhone用戶下載U2專輯Songs of Innocence感到憤怒，“這些設備與人們的親密性意味着，人們希望忘記，這些設備是由那些能夠將內容強行推給它們的公司開發的。”

But do these experimental interventions produce lasting benefits? Tech businesses such as Apple and Google have shown a willingness to use bottom-up approaches to turn themselves into “platforms”, sharing some of the secrets of their technology in exchange for a share of the revenues that developers get from building on top of it.

但這些實驗性干預會產生持久效益嗎？蘋果和谷歌(Google)等科技企業顯示出願意利用自下而上的方法把自己變成“平臺”，共享一些技術祕密，並從開發者基於這些祕密創造的收入中得到分成。

“There’s still the question of who has control, in the end,” says Erkki Huhtamo, a media historian at UCLA. “It’s quite clear that the corporate world is not interested in releasing control for anybody; rather it’s a strategy or lesson they’ve learnt – that it’s wiser to give people leeway in moulding the technology in certain ways.”

“最終，仍是一個誰擁有控制權的問題，”加州大學洛杉磯分校(UCLA)媒體歷史學家埃爾基•胡塔莫(Erkki Huhtamo)表示，“很明顯，企業界對於拱手讓出控制權不感興趣；它們學到了一項戰略或者說吸取了一個教訓：以某些方式在技術形成方面給人們留出餘地是更爲明智的做法。”

Still, Professor Huhtamo thinks artists and alternative futurists serve a valuable role in helping society adjust to massive technological shifts. He notes that Victorian-era fairground rides helped people come to terms with the mechanical culture of the industrial revolution at a time when many were still terrified of the escalators on the new London Underground. “Artists can help prepare the public for new technological paradigms.”

然而，胡塔莫教授認爲，在幫助社會適應大規模技術變革方面，藝術家和另類未來主義者發揮着重要作用。他指出，維多利亞時代的露天遊樂場幫助人們接受了工業革命的機械文化，當時很多人仍害怕新建倫敦地鐵(London Underground)的自動扶梯。“藝術家能夠幫助讓公衆爲新的科技範式做好準備。”