Overview
1.Cybernetics and Society 控制论与社会
2.Rigidity and Learning: Two pattens of Communicative Behavoir 通信行为的两种模式
3.Role of the intellectual and the Scientist 智慧人格应该扮演的角色
Cybernetics and Society 控制论与社会
In giving the definition of Cybernetics in the original book, I classed communication and control together.
我给出Cybernetics-控制论定义时, 把[通信]和[控制]归为一类.When I communicate with another person, I impart a message to him, and when he communicates back with me he returns a related message which contains information primarily accessible to him and not to me.
当我和别人通信时, 我给他一个 [消息], 而他给我回信时, 他返回我一个 [相关的消息], 这个 [相关的消息] 包含的信息是他原本理解的而不是我理解的消息.When I control the actions of another person, I communicate a message to him, and although this message is in the imperative mood, the technique of communication does not differ from that of a message of fact.
当我控制一个人的行动时, 我给他发个 [消息], 尽管我给他消息时是一种[命令式]的心态, 但其这种 [命令式的通信] 本质和 [单纯发送消息] 事实上的过程并无不同.Furthermore, if my control is to be effective I must take cognizance of any messages from him which may indicate that the order is understood and has been obeyed.
更有甚者, 如果我的控制真想产生效果, 我必须审理所有来自他的 [消息], 以确保他是真懂了我的 [命令] 且确实执行了.It is the thesis of this book that society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an everincreasing part.
本书的主题是我们只能通过 [消息] 和 [承载消息的通信设备] 来研究 [社会]; 且在未来 [消息] 和 [承载消息的通信设备] 发展中, [人] 到 [机器] 之间的消息, [机器] 到 [人] 之间的消息, [人] 到 [人] 之间的消息, [机器] 到 [机器] 之间的消息在势必在社会中占据日益重要的地位.When I give an order to a machine, the situation is not essentially different from that which arises when I give an order to a person. In other words, as far as my consciousness goes I am aware of the order that has gone out and of the signal of compliance that has come back. To me, personally, the fact that the signal in its intermediate stages has gone through a machine rather than through a person is irrelevant and does not in any case greatly change my relation to the signal. Thus the theory of control in engineering, whether human or animal or mechanical, is a chapter in the theory of messages.
当我给机器发送一个命令时, 这种情形和我给人发送一个命令并无本质的不同. 换句话说, 在我的意识范围内, 我只知道我发出去的命令和收到的应答信号, 信号在中间交换阶段是通过了机器还是通过人是无关紧要的, 且通过机器和通过人都不会影响我和信号之间的关系. 因此工程上的控制理论, 无论是人、或者动物、或者机械, 都只是[消息]理论的组成部分.Information is a name for the content of what is exchanged with the outer world as we adjust to it, and make our adjustment felt upon it. The process of receiving and of using information is the process of our adjusting to the contingencies(突发事件) of the outer environment, and of our living effectively within that environment. The needs and the complexity of modern life make greater demands on this process of information than ever before, and our press, our museums, our scientific laboratories, our universities, our libraries and textbooks, are obliged to meet the needs of this process or fail in their purpose. To live effectively is to live with adequate information. Thus, communication and control belong to the essence of man’s inner life, even as they belong to his life in society.
信息的本质就是一种东西, 是我们要因要适应世界而和外界世界进行交换的东西, 且我们基于信息这种东西做出调整. 获取和使用信息的过程就是适应外界环境种种偶然性, 并且有效生存下来的过程. 现代生活中的种种需要和和现代生活中的复杂性对信息获取和使用信息过程提出了前所未有的高度的要求, 出版社、博物馆、实验室、大学、图书馆、教科书都不得不去满足该过程的种种需要, 否则就失去了它们存在的意义. **所谓有效的生活就是拥有足够信息的生活**. 因此, 通信和控制属于[人]内在生活的本质, 就像通信和控制也是在[社会]中本质一样；Rigidity and Learning: Two pattens of Communicative Behavoir
Certain kinds of machines and some living organisms -particularly the higher living organisms-can, as we have seen, modify their patterns of behavior on the basis of past experience so as to achieve specific antientropic(反熵) ends. In these higher forms of communicative organisms the environment, considered as the past experience of the individual, can modify the pattern of behavior into one which in some sense or other will deal more effectively with the future environment. In other words, the organism is not like the clockwork monad of Leibnitz with its pre-established harmony with the universe, but actually seeks a new equilibrium with the universe and its future contingencies. Its present is unlike its past and its future unlike its present. In the living organism as in the universe itself, exact repetition is absolutely impossible.
某些机器和某些有机体, 尤其是高级生命体, 都能在过去经验的基础上改变自己的行为模式, 从而达到反熵的目的. 在这些具备高级通信形式的有机体中. 环境, 被作为个体过去的经验, 能够更改其行为模式到一种更有效应对未来环境的行为模式. 换句话说, 有机体并不像莱布尼兹钟式机的单子那样同宇宙做预定的和谐, 而是和宇宙和宇宙的未来的突发事件找寻新的均衡. 它的现在不同于它的过去, 而它的未来又不同于它的现在. 在宇宙中的生命体, 分毫不差的重复是绝对不可能的.The work of Dr. W. Ross Ashby is probably the greatest modern contribution to this subject insofar as it concerns the analogies between living organisms and machines. Learning, like more primitive forms of feedback, is a process which reads differently forward and backward in time. The whole conception of the apparently purposive organism, whether it is mechanical, biological, or social, is that of an arrow with a particular direction in the stream of time rather than that of a line segment facing both ways which we may regard as going in either direction. The creature that learns is not the mythical amphisbaena of the ancients, with a head at each end and no concern with where it is going. It moves ahead from a known past into an unknown future and this future is not interchangeable with that past.
就生命体和机器之间的类比而言, Dr. W. Ross Ashby的工作可能是我们对于目前这个问题最伟大的贡献. 学习, 像更初级的反馈形式一样, 是一种在时间维度上, 从前往后读懂不同和从后往前读懂不同的过程. 有显著目的性的有机体, 无论是机械的、生物的、社会的, 都是时间之流上具备特定方向的飞箭, 而不是两端都有箭头的可以向着任意一方向前进的线段. 能学习的生物不是古代神话中的两头蛇, 两边都有头不考虑去哪个方向. 能学习的生物从已知的过去走向未知的未来, 且未来和过去是不能互换的.Let me give still another example of feedback which will clarify its function with respect to learning. When the great control rooms at the locks of the Panama Canal are in use, they are two-way message centers. Not only do messages go out controlling the motion of the tow locomotives, the opening and closing of the sluices, and the opening and closing of the gates; but the control room is full of telltales which indicate not merely that the locomotives, the sluices, and the gates have received their orders, but that they have in fact effectively carried out these orders. If this were not the case, the lock master might very easily assume that a towing locomotive had stopped and might rush the huge mass of a battleship into the gates, or might cause any one of a number of similar catastrophes to take place.
让我再给出另外一个关于反馈的例子来解释反馈关于学习的作用. 当巴拿马运河上各水闸上巨大的控制室工作的时候, 它们都是双向的消息中心. 控制室不仅仅要发出信号以控制牵引机车的运转, 控制闸口的开关、控制水门的开关；而且控制室内摆满了各种仪表, 这些仪表除了指示机车、闸口和水门收到控制室的命令之外, 还要表示它们实际上已经有效地执行了这些命令. 如果不这样的话, 管理人可能很快想到也许有一部牵引机车停下来了, 可能是一艘巨吨级军舰冲进了水门, 或者造成类似的灾难.This principle in control applies not merely to the Panama locks, but to states, armies, and individual human beings. When in the American Revolution, orders already drawn up had failed, through carelessness, to go from England commanding a British army to march down from Canada to meet another British army marching up from New York at Saratoga, Burgoyne’s forces met a catastrophic defeat which a well conceived program of two-way communications would have avoided. It follows that administrative officials, whether of a government or a university or a corporation, should take part in a two-way stream of communication, and not merely in one descending from the top. Otherwise, the top officials may find that they have based their policy on a complete misconception of the facts that their underlings possess. Again, there is no task harder for a lecturer than to speak to a dead-pan audience. The purpose of applause in the theater-and it is essential-is to establish in the performer’s mind some modicum of two-way communication.
这种控制原理不仅仅用于巴拿马运河的水闸, 也可以用于国家、军队和个人. 美国独立战争时期, 英国因为不慎导致下达的命令未能有效传达, 使得一支从英国本土指挥的从加拿大开来的英国军队和另一支从纽约开出的英国军队在沙拉托加会师, 导致英国Buergone部队遭到惨败, 其实一个周密考虑好的双向通讯程序就能避免这种情况. 由此可知, 行政机构无论是政府、大学还是公司, 应该建立双向通信流, 而不仅仅构建从下而上的单项通信. 不然的话, 上级官员就会发现他们的政策是建立在他们下属对种种事实的全盘误解上面的. 再有就是, 对于一个演讲家来说, 没有比面对一个毫无表情的听众演讲更难的事情了, 剧院中热烈鼓掌的目的究其本质而言就是在演员的心中建立双向通信.This matter of social feedback is of very great sociological and anthropological interest. The patterns of communication in human societies vary widely. There are communities like the Eskimos, among whom there seems to be no chieftainship and very little subordination, so that the basis of the social community is simply the common desire to survive against enormous odds of climate and food supply. There are socially stratified communities such as are found in India, in which the means of communication between two individuals are closely restricted and modified by their ancestry and position. There are communities ruled by despots, in which every relation between two subjects becomes secondary to the relation between the subject and his king. There are the hierarchical feudal communities of lord and vassal, and the very special techniques of social commumcation which they involve.
社会反馈对于社会学和人类学具有非常大的意义. 人类通信的模式多种多样, 有些社会, 例如爱斯基摩人那样的社会, 看起来是没有领袖制度的, 社会成员的关系也是很不显著的. 所以这个社会团队的基础只不过是在气候和食物供应非常特殊的条件下谋求生存的共同愿望而已. 有些社会分成很多阶层例如印度, 两个人的通信受到自家门第和社会地位的严格限制. 有些社会是由专治君主统治着, 两个臣民之间的关系都要从属于君臣之间的关系. 还有由领主和农奴构成的等级制度的封建社会, 他们具有非常特殊的通讯过程.Most of us in the United States prefer to live in a moderately loose social community, in which the blocks to communication among individuals and classes are not too great. I will not say that this ideal of communication is attained in the United States. Until white supremacy ceases to belong to the creed of a large part of the country it will be an ideal from which we fall short. Yet even this modified formless democracy is too anarchic for many of those who make efficiency their first ideal. These worshipers of efficiency would like to have each man move in a social orbit meted out to him from his childhood, and perform a function to which he is bound as the serf was bound to the clod.
我们大多数美国人都喜欢生活在适度松散结构的社会团体中, 在这样的社会里面, 个体之间和阶级之间的沟通障碍是不太大的. 我的意思并不是说美国社会在通信方面已经达到了理想的状态. 在白人至上还是全国大部分地区的信念的情况下, 理想化的社会通信总是缺失的. 然而即使我们放低要求的民主, 对某些想要以(政府)效率作为第一理想的人们说来, 甚至还是认为太无政府主义了. 这些崇拜效率的人们喜欢让每个人从孩子时代就在指定给他的社会轨道上活动, 执行着束缚着[就像奴隶被束缚在泥土上一样]的社会职能.Within the American social picture, it is shameful to have these yearnings, and this denial of opportunities implied by an uncertain future. Accordingly, many of those who are most attached to this orderly state of permanently allotted functions would be confounded if they were forced to admit this publicly. They are only in a position to display their clear preferences through their actions. Yet these actions stand out distinctly enough. The businessman who separates himself from his employees by a shield of yes-men, or the head of a big laboratory who assigns each subordinate a particular problem, and begrudges him the privilege of thinking for himself so that he can move beyond his immediate problem and perceive its general relevance, show that the democracy to which they pay their respects is not really the order in which they would prefer to live. The regularly ordered state of pre-assigned functions toward which they gravitate is suggestive of the Leibnitzian automata and does not suggest the irreversible movement into a contingent future which is the true condition of human life.
在美国社会图景中, 存在着这些倾向, 存在着对这种未知未来所蕴含的种种机会之否定, 这是可耻的. 由于这个缘故许多人虽然一心一意依恋着这种永远派定人们社会职能的秩序井然的国家, 但若迫使他们公开承认这一点, 那么他们就会感到困惑了, 他们只会以行动来展现他们[对永久分配社会职能下的社会秩序]偏爱, 这些行动也够明确突出了. 商人们用一批唯命是从的人围绕在自己的周围, 从而使自己和他的雇员们隔离开来; 一个打的研究所的领导人给每个所属下属制定一个研究课题, 不给他们独立思考的权利, 以防他超出这个专题的范围并看透研究工作的全部要领; 这些都表明了他们所尊重的民主并非真蔗农使他们愿意生活其中的秩序. 他们所向往预先安排各个人的社会职能的国家, 令人想起了莱布尼兹的自动机, 它在通向具有偶然性的未来时, 不会提供不可逆转的活动, 而这种活动却是人类活动的真正条件.In the ant community, each worker performs its proper functions. There may be a separate caste of soldiers. Certain highly specialized individuals perform the functions of king and queen. If man were to adopt this community as a pattern, he would live in a fascist state, in which ideally each individual is conditioned from birth for his proper occupation: in which rulers are perpetually rulers, soldiers perpetually soldiers, the peasant is never more than a peasant, and the worker is doomed to be a worker. It is a thesis of this chapter that this aspiration of the fascist for a human state based on the model of the ant results from a profound misapprehension both of the nature of the ant and of the nature of man. I wish to point out that the very physical development of the insect conditions it to be an essentially stupid and unlearning individual, cast in a mold which cannot be modified to any great extent. I also wish to show how these physiological conditions make it into a cheap mass-produced article, of no more individual value than a paper pie plate to be thrown away after it is once used.
在蚂蚁社会中, 每个成员都执行着各自特定的职能. 其中也许还存在着专职的士兵阶级.某些高度特殊化的个体执行着皇帝或者皇后的职能. 如果采用这种社会作为人类社会的模式. 如果我们适应这种通信模式, 那么我们就生活在法西斯国家中, 其中每一个生命生来就命中注定了有着自己的职业: 统治者永远是统治者, 士兵永远是士兵, 工人则注定称为工人. 本书的主题之一就是指出: 法西斯主义者之所以渴望用蚂蚁作为模型来建立国家, 本质是对蚂蚁和人二者的不能存在严重误解. 我希望指出昆虫的生理发展注定了不能有任何较大程度的改变. 我也希望指出这些生理条件如何使得昆虫成为一种廉价的、可以大量生产的东西, 不必一只纸制的、用过一次就要扔掉的馅饼盘子具备更多的个体价值.On the other hand, I wish to show that the human individual, capable of vast learning and study, which may occupy almost half of his life, is physically equipped, as the ant is not, for this capacity. Variety and possibility are inherent in the human sensoriumand are indeed the key to man’s most noble flights-because variety and possibility belong to the very structure of the human organism.
另一方面, 我想要表明人之所以能够进行大量的学习和工作(差不多占据他半生的时间)是生理性地装备了这种能力的, 而蚂蚁则缺乏这种能力. 多样性和可能性是人的感官所固有的特性, 而且它们确实是理解人的壮丽飞跃的关键所在, 因为多样性和可能性是人的结构本身所特有的东西.While it is possible to throw away this enormous advantage that we have over the ants, and to organize the fascist ant-state with human material, I certainly believe that this is a degradation of man’s very nature, and economically a waste of the great human values which man possesses. I am afraid that I am convinced that a community of human beings is a far more useful thing than a community of ants; and that if the human being is condemned and restricted to perform the same functions over and over again, he will not even be a good ant, not to mention a good human being. Those who would organize us according to permanent individual functions and permanent individual restrictions condemn the human race to move at much less than half-steam. They throw away nearly all our human possibilities and by limiting the modes in which we may adapt ourselves to future contingencies, they reduce our chances for a reasonably long existence on this earth.
我们即使可以把人远远超过蚂蚁的优越性弃之不顾, 用人来做材料组织一个蚂蚁式的法西斯国家, 但我确信这种做法乃是对人性的贬值, 从经济学上说, 也是人所具有的巨大价值的浪费. 我相信人类社会远比蚂蚁社会有用的多的；要是把人判定并限制在永远重复执行同一职能的话, 我担心他甚至不会成为一只好的蚂蚁, 更不用说是个好的人类了. 那些想把我们按照恒定不变的个体职能组织起来的人, 就是宣判了人类只应该拿出远低于一半的动力前进. 他们抛弃掉几乎全部我们人类的可能性, 由于限制了我们可以适应未来偶然时间的种种方式, 他们也就毁掉了我们在这个地球上可以相当长期生存下去的机会.Reference
[1]. The human use of human beings: Cybernetics And Society. Norbert Winner.
转载请注明来源 goldandrabbit.github.io