科技现实主义

在这个技术迅猛发展的激荡时代，我们每个人都在努力保持方向感。通信和计算领域每天涌现的新发展，既令人兴奋，也让人迷失。一种可以理解的反应是：这些变化到底是好是坏？我们应该欢迎它们，还是害怕它们？

答案是：两者皆有。技术确实让生活更加便利愉快，也使我们许多人变得更健康、更富有、更聪明。但它同时也以不可预测的方式影响着我们的工作、家庭和经济，带来新的紧张感与注意力分散的问题，并对现实社区的凝聚力构成新的威胁。

尽管技术的影响复杂而矛盾，主流观点却往往过于简单。评论员、政客和自封的“未来学家”试图将这些复杂现象归结为高科技灾难或网络乌托邦的惊悚故事，这对我们理解文化毫无帮助。这种非黑即白的思维只会带来幻灭和焦虑，妨碍我们对当代生活的真正理解。

过去几年中，尽管关于技术的辩论仍被极端声音主导，一种更平衡的新共识却悄然形成。本文旨在阐明这种共识背后的共同信念，我们称之为技术现实主义（Technorealism）。

技术现实主义要求我们批判性地思考工具与界面在人类进化与日常生活中的作用。这一视角强调：当前的技术变革浪潮虽重要而强大，但其实是历史上多次变革的延续。看看汽车、电视或电话的发展历史——不仅是这些设备本身，更包括它们所催生的制度与结构——我们可以看到深远的好处，也有不小的代价。同样地，我们对当今新兴技术的期待也是双重的，既充满希望，也需警惕其带来的意外后果，而这些后果需要通过有意识的设计与恰当的使用来加以应对。

作为技术现实主义者，我们希望扩展技术乌托邦主义与新卢德主义之间那块丰饶的中间地带。我们对技术的批评，正如人们对美食、艺术或文学的批评一样：出于热爱，也出于责任。我们可以热情乐观地看待某些技术，对另一些则保持怀疑甚至批评。但我们的目标既不是全盘拥护，也不是全盘否定技术，而是努力理解它，并以更加符合基本人类价值的方式使用它。

技术现实主义的基本原则如下：

1. 技术不是中立的。
一个常见的误解是认为技术完全没有偏见，因其是无生命的工具。但实际上，技术往往蕴含着有意或无意的社会、政治和经济倾向。每一种工具都带来了特定的世界观和人际互动方式。我们每个人都应关注技术所内含的偏向，并选择那些符合我们价值观与愿景的技术。

2. 互联网具有革命性，但并非乌托邦。
网络是一个非凡的交流工具，为个人、社区、企业和政府带来了全新机会。但随着网络空间日益拥挤，它越来越像现实社会，包含着复杂性。每一个赋权或启发的网络面向背后，也伴随着恶意、变态或平庸的一面。

3. 政府在电子前沿中扮演重要角色。
网络并非独立于地球之外的“虚拟国度”。政府应该尊重网络形成的规则与文化，同时避免以低效监管或审查扼杀网络活力。但说公众对网络行为无主权，是荒谬的。作为民主价值的代表，政府有责任将网络社会与现实社会加以整合。比如，技术标准与隐私保护过于重要，不能完全交由市场决定。市场虽鼓励创新，却不必然保障公共利益。

4. 信息不等于知识。
信息流通的速度越来越快，获取成本也越来越低，这是一个好处。但这种泛滥同时也是一种挑战，需要我们具备更强的自律与批判意识。不要把快速获得或传播信息的快感，误当作知识或智慧的积累。再先进的计算机也不能替代我们的基本认知能力：意识、感知、推理与判断。

5. 给学校联网并不能拯救教育。
美国公立教育的问题（如经费不均、低标准晋级、班级过大、基础设施老化、缺乏规范）并不是技术能解决的。因此，再多技术投入，也无法带来某些领导人所预言的“教育革命”。教学是一门艺术，无法靠电脑、网络或远程学习复制。技术当然可以辅助高质量的教育，但若把它当万能药方，则将付出沉重代价。

6. 信息需要被保护。
网络与新媒介确实对现有版权制度构成挑战。但解决方法不是废除旧法，而是更新与修订法律解释，让信息在新环境下仍能获得相当于传统媒体时代的保护。目标始终如一：给予作者合理控制权以激励创作，同时保障公众的合理使用权。在任何语境中，信息都不是“想要自由”，它需要保护。

7. 公众拥有无线频谱，应从其使用中受益。
最近政府将数字频谱“白送”给广播公司，凸显出技术资源使用中的腐败与低效。无线频谱是公共资源，公民应从中获益，且应保留一部分用于教育、文化和公众访问。我们应当为私营机构使用公共财产索取更多公共回报。

8. 理解技术应成为全球公民的重要素养。
在一个信息流动驱动世界中，那些显示信息的界面与背后代码正在成为强大的社会力量。了解它们的优劣，乃至参与创造更好的工具，应当成为每一个公民的责任。这些工具对我们生活的影响，丝毫不亚于法律，我们也应以类似民主机制去监督它们。

English

In this heady age of rapid technological change, we all struggle to maintain our bearings. The developments that unfold each day in communications and computing can be thrilling and disorienting. One understandable reaction is to wonder: Are these changes good or bad? Should we welcome or fear them?

The answer is both. Technology is making life more convenient and enjoyable, and many of us healthier, wealthier, and wiser. But it is also affecting work, family, and the economy in unpredictable ways, introducing new forms of tension and distraction, and posing new threats to the cohesion of our physical communities.

Despite the complicated and often contradictory implications of technology, the conventional wisdom is woefully simplistic. Pundits, politicians, and self-appointed visionaries do us a disservice when they try to reduce these complexities to breathless tales of either high-tech doom or cyber-elation. Such polarized thinking leads to dashed hopes and unnecessary anxiety, and prevents us from understanding our own culture.

Over the past few years, even as the debate over technology has been dominated by the louder voices at the extremes, a new, more balanced consensus has quietly taken shape. This document seeks to articulate some of the shared beliefs behind that consensus, which we have come to call technorealism.

Technorealism demands that we think critically about the role that tools and interfaces play in human evolution and everyday life. Integral to this perspective is our understanding that the current tide of technological transformation, while important and powerful, is actually a continuation of waves of change that have taken place throughout history. Looking, for example, at the history of the automobile, television, or the telephone – not just the devices but the institutions they became – we see profound benefits as well as substantial costs. Similarly, we anticipate mixed blessings from today's emerging technologies, and expect to forever be on guard for unexpected consequences – which must be addressed by thoughtful design and appropriate use.

As technorealists, we seek to expand the fertile middle ground between techno-utopianism and neo-Luddism. We are technology "critics" in the same way, and for the same reasons, that others are food critics, art critics, or literary critics. We can be passionately optimistic about some technologies, skeptical and disdainful of others. Still, our goal is neither to champion nor dismiss technology, but rather to understand it and apply it in a manner more consistent with basic human values.

Below are some evolving basic principles that help explain technorealism.

PRINCIPLES OF TECHNOREALISM

1. Technologies are not neutral.
A great misconception of our time is the idea that technologies are completely free of bias – that because they are inanimate artifacts, they don't promote certain kinds of behaviors over others. In truth, technologies come loaded with both intended and unintended social, political, and economic leanings. Every tool provides its users with a particular manner of seeing the world and specific ways of interacting with others. It is important for each of us to consider the biases of various technologies and to seek out those that reflect our values and aspirations.

2. The Internet is revolutionary, but not Utopian.
The Net is an extraordinary communications tool that provides a range of new opportunities for people, communities, businesses, and government. Yet as cyberspace becomes more populated, it increasingly resembles society at large, in all its complexity. For every empowering or enlightening aspect of the wired life, there will also be dimensions that are malicious, perverse, or rather ordinary.

 3. Government has an important role to play on the electronic frontier.
Contrary to some claims, cyberspace is not formally a place or jurisdiction separate from Earth. While governments should respect the rules and customs that have arisen in cyberspace, and should not stifle this new world with inefficient regulation or censorship, it is foolish to say that the public has no sovereignty over what an errant citizen or fraudulent corporation does online. As the representative of the people and the guardian of democratic values, the state has the right and responsibility to help integrate cyberspace and conventional society.

Technology standards and privacy issues, for example, are too important to be entrusted to the marketplace alone. Competing software firms have little interest in preserving the open standards that are essential to a fully functioning interactive network. Markets encourage innovation, but they do not necessarily insure the public interest.

 4. Information is not knowledge.
All around us, information is moving faster and becoming cheaper to acquire, and the benefits are manifest. That said, the proliferation of data is also a serious challenge, requiring new measures of human discipline and skepticism. We must not confuse the thrill of acquiring or distributing information quickly with the more daunting task of converting it into knowledge and wisdom. Regardless of how advanced our computers become, we should never use them as a substitute for our own basic cognitive skills of awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.

 5. Wiring the schools will not save them.
The problems with America's public schools -- disparate funding, social promotion, bloated class size, crumbling infrastructure, lack of standards -- have almost nothing to do with technology. Consequently, no amount of technology will lead to the educational revolution prophesied by President Clinton and others. The art of teaching cannot be replicated by computers, the Net, or by "distance learning." These tools can, of course, augment an already high-quality educational experience. But to rely on them as any sort of panacea would be a costly mistake.

 6. Information wants to be protected.
It's true that cyberspace and other recent developments are challenging our copyright laws and frameworks for protecting intellectual property. The answer, though, is not to scrap existing statutes and principles. Instead, we must update old laws and interpretations so that information receives roughly the same protection it did in the context of old media. The goal is the same: to give authors sufficient control over their work so that they have an incentive to create, while maintaining the right of the public to make fair use of that information. In neither context does information want "to be free." Rather, it needs to be protected.

 7. The public owns the airwaves; the public should benefit from their use.
The recent digital spectrum giveaway to broadcasters underscores the corrupt and inefficient misuse of public resources in the arena of technology. The citizenry should benefit and profit from the use of public frequencies, and should retain a portion of the spectrum for educational, cultural, and public access uses. We should demand more for private use of public property.

 8. Understanding technology should be an essential component of global citizenship.
In a world driven by the flow of information, the interfaces – and the underlying code – that make information visible are becoming enormously powerful social forces. Understanding their strengths and limitations, and even participating in the creation of better tools, should be an important part of being an involved citizen. These tools affect our lives as much as laws do, and we should subject them to a similar democratic scrutiny.