BOOK 4 Unit 4

“无所不能”的互联网，让我们变得越来越傻

在信息爆炸的互联网时代，是谁偷走了我们的“专注力”和“深度思考力”？为什么我们越来越依赖网络，什么都“百度一下”，这样的我们，用最近流行的词来说就是“脑残”！不信？请看看下面的这篇文章吧。 

Is Google Making Us Stupid?（ Google把我们变傻了？） 

互联网似无边无际的宇宙，包含了人类几千年的文明成果，并逐渐取代传统书籍，成为记载人类文明和智慧的新载体。而网络搜索引擎就如通向这个宇宙的“时空机器”——简单的关键字，轻轻的点击，便可载着你的思维到达任何你想去的地方。然而，并非所有人都欣然接受这一切，一些专家对网络的巨大影响力与搜索引擎的日益智能化表示出担忧，他们认为网络“偷”走了我们深度阅读和思考能力，进而会改变我们的思维方式，并最终让我们从拥有智慧的人类变为拥有智能的机器。那么这到底是杞人忧天？还是正在发生的事实？ 

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going, but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. 

过去的几年里，我总有一种让我坐立不安的感觉，觉得好像什么人或什么东西正在修理我的大脑，重新布局我的神经回路，然后重新安排了我的记忆。我的思想没有消失，但却在发生变化。我不再像过去那样思考。这种感觉在我读书时尤为强烈。在过去，埋头于一本书或一篇长文章是轻而易举的事。我的思维会为文章的叙事描写与论证的峰回路转所吸引，常常花几个小时在一篇篇长篇大论的散文间流连忘返。然而，这样的经历已经越来越少了。如今，刚翻过两三页书，我就开始心不在焉。我变得烦躁不安，找不到头绪，总是想做其他的事儿。我感觉自己好像总是得把不听话的大脑强行拉回到书本中。以往自然而然地静心潜读已然变成了一场斗争。 

Who Stole My Concentration? 

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. 

谁“偷”走了我的专注力？ 

我想我知道这是怎么回事。在过去十多年中，我一直花很多时间在网上，搜索、冲浪，有时也会为互联网庞大的数据库贡献点一己之力。对我这个作家而言，网络简直是天赐之物。过去需要在图书馆的书堆或期刊室里花上数天做的研究，如今只要几分钟便可搞定。只需试几个Google搜索，点击几个超级链接，我想要的八卦新闻或经典格言便唾手可得。 

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many. But they come at a price. Media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski. 

对我来说(对其他人也一样)，网络正在成为一个全球性的媒体，它就像是运送绝大多数信息的一个管道，这些信息经由我的眼睛和耳朵，最后进入我的大脑。在转瞬间获得难以置信的海量信息，其优势不胜枚举，但也是要付出代价的。媒体不只是被动的信息渠道。它们提供思想内容，但同时也塑造思维模式。网络就似乎正在削弱我的专注力和思维能力。现在，我的大脑在获取信息时，正在按照网络传播信息的方式来进行的：快速移动，像粒子流一样。过去我像个潜水者一样，在文字的海洋里潜游；而现在我就像一个骑着摩托艇的家伙，在海面上呼啸着前进。 

We Are How We Read 

Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, we may well be reading more today than we did in the past. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged. 

怎样阅读塑造了我们 

得益于网络上无处不在的文字，我们今天的阅读量与过去不可同日而语。但这是不一样的阅读，而隐藏在这种阅读之后的又是不一样的思维——或许是对自我的一种新认识。“不是阅读的内容塑造了我们，”塔夫斯大学的发展心理学家玛丽安娜·沃尔夫说，“而是阅读的方式塑造了我们。”沃尔夫担心，网络所推崇的将“效率”和“直观”置于一切之上的阅读方式可能会削弱我们深度阅读的能力，这种能力是 

随着印刷这种早期技术的产生而形成的，正是早期技术将长篇、复杂的作品变得日渐普及。她说，当我们在网上阅读时，我们更像是“纯粹的信息解码者”。我们理解文字的能力，那种潜心深读时思如泉涌的能力，大部分都没派上用场。 

Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains. 

沃尔夫解释说，阅读不是人类与生俱来的一种技能。它不像说话一样是天生就融进我们的基因里的。我们必须教我们的大脑如何将我们看到的符号转化为可以理解的语言。而我们平时用来学习和练习阅读技巧的媒体和其他技术，对于我们塑造我们大脑里的神经回路，发挥着重要作用。 

The Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition. In a paper published in 1936, the British mathematician Alan Turing proved that a digital computer could be programmed to perform the function of any other information-processing device. And that’s what we’re seeing today. The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV. 

因特网承诺说将对我们的认知能力产生意义深远的影响。1936年，英国数学家艾伦·图林在他发表的论文中证明，只要编程得当，数字电脑可以发挥其他任何信息处理设备所具备的功能。而这正是我们今天所看到的。因特网，一个无比强大的计算系统，正将我们这个时代其他大部分的智能工具吸纳进来，与自身融为一体。它正成为我们的地图和时钟，我们的印刷术和打字机，我们的计算器和电话，我们的收音机和电视机。 

Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us. 

从没有一个通信系统像网络一样在我们的生活中扮演着如此众多的角色——或对我们的思想施加着如此广泛的影响。然而，正如之前所说，很少有人会想到因特网到底会怎样改变我们。 

The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of programmers are intent on finding the “one best method” to carry out every mental movement of what we’ve come to describe as “knowledge work.” 

因特网是一个为迅速、自动地收集、传输和处理信息而设计的机器。它的众多编程人员专注于寻找“一种最好的方式”来执行每一件脑力劳动，也就是我们所形容的“智力工作”。 

Google Mission Vs Our Choice 

Google has declared that its mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It seeks to develop “the perfect search engine,” which it defines as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” In Google’s view, information is a kind of commodity, a utilitarian resource that can be mined and processed with industrial efficiency. The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers. 

Google的使命Vs我们的选择 

Google曾宣布说它的使命是“组织全世界的信息，并使其成为人人都能获得的、有用的信息。”它致力于打造一个“完美的搜索引擎”，用它自己的话说，就是“准确领会你的意图，精确地反馈你想要的信息”。在Google看来，信息也是一种商品，是一种可以以工业效率的方式进行采掘和加工的有用资源。我们获得的信息越多，提取其精华的速度越快，就会成为越高产的思想者。 

Where does it end? Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the gifted young men who founded Google speak frequently of their desire to turn their search engine into an artificial intelligence, a machine that might be connected directly to our brains. In a 2004 interview with Newsweek, Brin said, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.” 

那何处是尽头？Google的创始人，谢尔盖·布林和拉里·佩奇，两个天资聪颖的年轻人，畅谈他们将把他们的搜索引擎打造成人工智能的引擎，一个可以直接和大脑相联接的机器。2004年，在接受《新闻周刊》采访时，布林说：“当然，如果你能让世界上所有的信息和你的大脑相联接，或拥有一个比你的大脑还聪明的人工大脑的话，你就会变得更加富有。” 

Still, their easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive. 

然而，这样的轻易假设——如果我们的大脑得到人工智能的补充，甚至被人工智能所取代，我们就会“更加富有”——很是令人不安。这种想法反映了一种思维，即智力是机械过程的产物，这一过程由一系列可分割、可测量和可最优化的单独步骤组成。在Google的世界里——我们上网时所进入的世界——基本没有给难以捉摸的深入思考留什么空间。模棱两可不是通向敏锐心智的大门，而是需要修补的补丁。人类大脑只是一个过时的电脑，需要一个更快的处理器和一个更大的硬盘。 

The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction. 

人脑应当像高速运转的数据处理机一样运转——这种想法不仅仅根植在因特网工作方式中，而且在整个网络商业模式中也占有统治地位。我们在网上冲浪的速度越快——点击的链接和浏览的网页越多——Google和其他公司收集我们资料并塞给我们广告的机会就越多。绝大多数商业网站的经营者都会通过收集我们快速浏览页面后留下的零碎数据“痕迹”获得金融利益——我们留下的数据“痕迹”越多越好。这些公司最不鼓励的就是休闲阅读或缓慢、凝神的思考。让我们注意力分散恰符合他们的经济利益。 

Human Intelligence—What We Can’t Sacrifice 

Maybe I’m just a worrywart. Just as there’s a tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Socrates wasn’t wrong, but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom). 

深度阅读与深度思考弥足珍贵 

或许我只是庸人自扰。就像是有拥护者为科技进步歌功颂德一样，也必然会有一种反对者预期着每一件新工具或新机器所带来的最坏结果。在柏拉图的作品《对话篇·菲德洛斯》中，苏格拉底为写作的新发展哀叹不已。他担心当人们依赖于书面文字并以此取代他们过去常储存于大脑中的知识时，人们将——用对话中一位人物的话说——“不再使用记忆力，从而变得健忘”。而且，由于他们“在没有适当指导的情况下接受大量信息”，他们会“被误以为知识渊博，虽然通常情况下一无所知”。他们会“自以为聪明无比，尽管实际上毫无智慧”。苏格拉底说得没错，但他实在缺乏远见。他没有预见到写和读能以如此众多的方式推动信息传播，启发新的思想，扩展人类知识(如果不是智慧的话)。 

So, yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism. Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom. But the Net isn’t the alphabet, and although it may replace the printing press, it produces something altogether different. The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking. 

所以，是的，你应该对我的疑虑持怀疑态度。或许那些将批判网络的人斥为反工业主义或怀旧主义者的人是正确的，或许从我们极度活跃、靠数据汲取营养的大脑中会爆发出知识大发现和全人类智慧大发展的黄金时代。然而，网络不是字母表，尽管它可能会取代印刷机，但它生产出的毕竟是完全不同的产品。印刷产品所推动的深度阅读弥足珍贵，不仅是因为我们从作者的文字中获取了知识，还因为那些文字在我们头脑中激起了智慧的共鸣。因此，在一个由持续、不被打扰的阅读或其他思考活动所打开的安静空间里，我们将建立起我们自己的联系，进行我们自己的推论和比较，酝酿我们自己的想法。深度阅读，正如玛丽安娜·沃尔夫所说，与深度思考密不可分。 

If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in ourselves but in our culture. And as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence. 

如果我们丧失了这些安静的空间，或在其中填满所谓的“内容”，我们将为此牺牲掉一些东西。这些东西不仅对我们自己重要，而且对我们的文化也极为重要。当我们依赖电脑来塑造我们对世界的理解时，退化为人工智能的，将是我们自身的智慧。