Unit 　Fifteen    The Computer and The Poet

                                 计算机与诗人  

　　The essential problem of man in a computerized age remains the same as it has always been. That problem is not solely how to be more productive, more comfortable, more content, but how to be more sensitive, more sensible, more proportionate, more alive. The computer makes possible a marvelous leap in human proficiency; it pulls down the fences around the practical and even the theoretical intelligence. But the question persists and indeed grows whether the computer will make it easier or harder for human beings to know who they really are, to identity their real problems, to respond more fully to beauty, to place adequate value on life, and to make their world safer than it now is.
　　人类在计算机化时代所面临的根本问题一如既往。这个问题不仅仅是要提高生产力，使人们更舒适、更满足，而且是怎样才能更有情感、更理智、更均衡、更有活力。计算机使人类进步发生飞跃的变化；它在实际上乃至理论上扫除制约人类智能发展的障碍。但是，涉及到人类对自身的认识，对实际存在的问题的辨别，对美的更充分的理解，对怎样给生活更充分的价值，怎样使人类世界比现在更安全等方面，计算机给人类带来的究竟是更大的便利还是更多的困难，这个问题依然存在，而且变得日益严重。
　　Electronic brains can reduce the profusion of dead ends involved in vital research. But they can't eliminate the foolishness and decay that come from the unexamined life. Nor do they connect a man to the things he has to be connected to — the reality of pain in others; the possibilities of creative growth in himself; the memory of the race; and the rights of the next generation.
　　The reason these matters are important in a computerized age is that there may he a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, and intelligence with insight. Easy and convenient access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they would lead.
　　电脑能解开重要研究中的大量解决不了的问题，但不能清除来自未经研究审视的生活的愚蠢与腐朽。电脑也不能把人和应该与人有关系的事情联系起来，例如，别人的痛苦的现实、提高自身创造力的可能性、人类的记忆、以及下一代人的权利等等。
　　在计算机化时代，上述这些问题之所以重要是因为人们可能倾向于把数据误认为智慧，正如人们总是倾向于把逻辑与价值相混淆，把智能与洞察力混为一谈一样。方便快捷地获得信息，只有在人们有愿望和能力搞清这些信息意味着什么和会把人们引向何方时，才能够给人带来无限的好处。
　　Facts are terrible things if left spreading and unexamined.They are too easily regarded as uated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic. It requires a very unusual mind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact. The computer can provide a correct number, but it may be an irrelevant number until judgment is pronounced.
　　信息如果任其泛滥，不加审核，那是可怕的事情。它们很容易被看作已有定论的可靠事实，而不是迫切需要处理使之具有逻辑条理的原始材料中最原始的材料。怀特黑德说过，对信息的分析需要非凡的头脑。计算机能够提供正确的数据，但在未加判断之前它可能只是一个无关的数据。
　　To the extent, then, that man fails to distinguish between the intermediate operations of electronic intelligence and the ultimate responsibilities of human decision, the computer could prove a digression. It could obscure man's awareness of the need to come to terms with himself. It may foster the illusion that he is asking fundamental questions when actually he is asking only functional ones. It may be regarded as a substitute for intelligence instead of an extension of it. It may promote undue confidence in concrete answers. "If we begin with certainties." Bacon said, "we shall end in doubts but if we begin with doubts, and we are patient with them, we shall end in certainties."  
　　因此，在人们不能区别电子智能的这种中间运算与人们决策最终需负的责仟的情况下，计算机可能反而是一种节外生枝。它可能使人们模糊了必须自知之明，满足自身条件的这种意识。当人们实际只提出功能性问题时，计算机可能使人造成这样的错觉：他们提出的是根本性的问题。计算机能被看成是替代智能的工具而不是扩展智能的手段。它可能促使人们对具体的答案过分相信。培根说过，“起始于确信，结果于疑惑；起始于疑惑，继之以不倦研究，则得可信之结果。”
　　The computer knows how to conquer error, but before we lose ourselves in celebrating the victory, we might reflect on the great advances in the human situation that have come about because men were challenged by error and would not stop thinking and exploring until they found better approaches for dealing with it."Give me a good fruitful error, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections," Ferris Greenslet wrote, "You can keep your sterile truth for yourself."

　　计算机知道如何战胜错误，但是在我们沉醉于庆祝这一成就前，我们也许应该深思，人类以往所取得的巨大进步都是因为人们受到错误挑战并且不断地思考与探索，直到找到对付错误的更好的办法。费里斯·格林里特曾这样写道：“请给我优良的富有成果的错误吧！错误包含自我修正的种子。把不能开花结果的真理留给你自己吧。”
　　The biggest single need in computer technology is not for increased speed, or enlarged capacity, or prolonged memory, or reduced size, but for better questions and better use of the answers. Without taking anything away from the technicians, we think it might be fruitful to effect some sort of junction between the computer technologist and the poet. A genuine purpose may be served by turning loose the wonders of the creative imagination on the kinds of problems being put to electronic technology. The company of poets may enable the men who tend the machines to see a wider range of possibilities than technology alone may inspire.
　　我们对计算机技术惟一的最大的需要不是提高速度、增大容量、延长记忆或者减少体积，而是更好地提出问题和利用其答案。我们认为，在不使技术人员丧失任何东西的情况下，计算机技术人员与诗人之间实现某种结合可能更富有成效。通过在由电了技术解决的问题上充分发挥创造性想像的神奇力量，计算机的真正目的可以实现。诗人的参与能使计算机使用者看到比技术自身所能产生更宽广的应用可能性。
　　A poet, said Aristotle, has the advantage of expressing the universal; the specialist expresses only the particular. The poet, moreover, can remind us that man's greatest energy comes not from his dynamos but from his dreams. But the quality of a man's dreams can only be a reflection of his subconscious. What he puts into his subconscious, therefore, is quite literally the most important nourishment in the world.
　　亚里士多德说过，诗人善于表达普遍性；而专家表达的只是特殊性。另外，诗人能提醒我们，人的最大能量不是来自于他充沛的精力而是来自于他的梦想。但是人的梦想的本质只是人的潜意识的反映。因此，诗人在其潜意识中倾注的确确实实是世界上最重要的营养。
　　Nothing really happens to a man except as it is registered in the subconscious. This is where event and feeling become memory and where the proof of life is stored. The poet — and we use the term to include all those who have respect for and speak to the human spirit — can help to supply the subconscious with material to enhance its sensitivity, thus safeguarding it. The poet, too, can help to keep man from making himself over in the image of his electronic wonders. For the danger is not so much that man will be controlled by the computer as that he may imitate it.
　　人除了留存在其潜意识里的东西外，其实再也没有什么东西了。在人的潜意识里，事件与情感变成记忆，生活的证据也储存在那里。诗人——我们使用诗人这个词概括一切表现了尊重人类精神并且与人类精神沟通的那些人——能给潜意识以内容，以增强人类精神的敏感性，从而维护人类的精神诗人还可以使人类不致于按照电子奇迹的形象改造自己。因为人类被计算机控制的危险固然存在，但人类若模仿计算机改造人类自身，则更可怕。
　　The poet reminds men of their uniqueness. It is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate on it is a gain.
　　诗人提醒人们注意自身的独特性。这种独特性最终如何定义无关紧要，但即使思考一下这个问题也会是得益非浅的。