电脑与诗人

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 marvellous 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 identify 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.

在计算机时代，人类的基本问题和过去是一样的。这个问题不仅仅是如何产量更高、如何更舒适、如何更令人满意，而是如何更敏感、更理智、更均衡、更富有生机。计算机使人类知识的飞跃成为可能;它打破了人的实践智力、甚至理论智力的藩篱。但计算机是否有助于人类了解人到底是什么呢?是否有助于人识别他们真正的问题呢?是否有利于人类对美好事物作出更为充分的反应呢?是否有助于使我们世界的未来比今天更为安全呢?这问题持续存在并呈增长势头。

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.

电脑能减少生命研究中的许多死胡同。但它不能消除生活中的愚蠢与堕落，也不能把一个人和他不得不与之相联系的事物联系起来，如别人的痛苦状况、自身创造性的机会，种族的印记以及下一代人的权利。

The reason these matters are important in a computerized age is that there may be 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.

这些事情在计算机时代之所以重要是因为有一种把数据误认为是智慧的趋势，正如一直存在着混淆逻辑和价值观、智力和洞察力的趋势一样。只有对事实材料的便捷获取与发现这些材料的意义和这些材料可能悟出的结果的那种渴望与能力相结合，这种获取或发现才是有意义的。

Facts are terrible things if left spreading and unexamined. They are too easily regarded as evaluated 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.

任其传播而没有经过审查的事实是可怕的。它们太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。怀特埃德说，需要一个非凡的头脑来分析事实。电脑可以提供一个正确的数据，但数据只有在作出决定时才是有用的。

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."

因而，在人不能区分电子智力的中间运算与人的决定的最终责任的情况下，计算机可能被证明是一种节外生枝。它可能模糊了人还要满足于自身条件的这种意识。人以为是在探究基础性问题，而事实上是在探究实用性问题，计算机可能逐渐养成人们的这种错觉。人们会认为它是智力的替身而不是智力的结果。它会促使人们在具体问题上产生不适当的自信。培根说：“如果我们以肯定开始，我们就会以疑问结束;但如果我们以疑问开始，而且耐心处之，那么我们将会以肯定结束。”

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 Greenslei wrote, “You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.”

计算机知道如何纠错，但在我们沉迷于叫好之前，我们应该回顾一下人类的重大进步，因为这种进步是在人类的错误、思考、探索、较好的解决办法的过程中才取得的。费里斯?格林斯里写道“给我一个硕果累累的错误吧，满足萌牙，却富有纠错功能。把那贫瘠的真理留给你吧。”

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.

计算机技术的最大的，惟一的问题并不是提高速度、扩大内存、增强记忆功能或减小体积，而是提出较好的问题和更好地使用答案。在无碍于技术人员的情况下，我们认为，在计算机老师和诗人之间实现某种结合可能会有所收获。通过充分发挥由电子技术处理的问题的创造性想象的神奇力量，计算机可能起到真正的作用。与诗人为伍可能使用计算机的人能够看到比技术自身激发出的更大范围的可能性。

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.

亚里斯多德说过，诗人长于表达共性;而老师只能表述某一特性。而且诗人能够提醒我们：人的最大能量不是来自精力而是来自于他的梦想。但一个人梦想的质量只能是他的下意识的折射。因此，他存入下意识的东西是人世间最重要的营养。

Nothing rally 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.

什么事情也不会发生，除非人的下意识中留有印迹。下意识就是事件和感觉变成记忆的地方，也是生活证明储存的地方。诗人――我们用这个词包括所有尊重人类精神、为人类精神辩护的人，可以帮助向下意识提供素材以增加其灵敏度并维护它。诗人还可以使人不至于按照电子奇迹的形象来改造自己。因为危险不在于人被计算机控制，而在于人模仿它。

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.

诗人还提醒人们：人是独一无二的。对其独一性下一个终级定义是没有必要的，但对这种独一性进行思考却是一种收获。

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