倪匡 科幻小说_科幻小说不断变成我们肮脏的赛博朋克现实的人

倪匡 科幻小说

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为什么我创造了这个未来 (Why I Made This Future)

Why I Made This Future is a recurring feature that invites speculative fiction authors, futurists, screenwriters, and so on to discuss how and why they built their fictional future worlds.

为什么我创造这个未来 是一个经常出现的功能，邀请投机小说作者，未来主义者，编剧等来讨论他们如何以及为什么建立虚构的未来世界。

There is nothing boring about Tim Maughan’s works of speculative fiction, which concern, for example, the total destruction of the internet as we know it, the insidious possibilities of monetized augmented realities, and the full collapse of global supply networks. He writes such dramatic devastations, he says, to better examine the digital injustices that are perpetrated on ordinary people every day, and which can look rather boring on paper: data profiling and automated trade networks and surveillance capitalism and other drab inflections of our shitty cyberpunk present.

Ť这里是关于蒂姆·莫恩的作品投机的小说，其中的关注，例如没有枯燥的，互联网的彻底毁灭，因为我们知道，货币化的增强现实的阴险的可能性，以及全球供应网络的全面崩溃。 他说，他写了这样的戏剧性著作，以更好地检查每天在普通人身上犯下的数字不公，这些不公看起来在纸上看起来很无聊：数据剖析和自动贸易网络以及监视资本主义和我们卑鄙的计算机朋克的其他单调无常的变化当下。

Maughan’s three books, the short story collection Paintwork, the novel Infinite Detail, and the newly released collection, Ghost Hardware, all take place in the same near-future world — the TMCU, as I like to call it. Therein, hyper-accelerated digital capitalism has thrust us all into a world that is perpetually and wholly online, and accessed via spex, augmented reality glasses that are as common as cellphones. Then, the internet is destroyed. It’s 15 minutes into the future, with the rug pulled out from under it. Maughan uses the conceit to investigate the consequences of having so much of our lives hosted, controlled, and in thrall to for-profit digital platforms and systems.

莫恩的三本书，短篇小说集《 绘画》 ， 小说《 无限细节》 ， 以及最新发布的Ghost硬件系列 ，都发生在同一不久的将来-我喜欢称呼它为TMCU。 其中，高度加速的数字资本主义将我们带入一个永久，完全在线的世界，并可以通过像手机一样常见的Spex，增强现实眼镜进行访问。 然后，互联网被破坏了。 距离未来15分钟，地毯从下面拉出。 莫恩(Maughan)利用这种自负来调查托管，控制我们如此多的生活，并使其陷入营利性数字平台和系统的后果。

The Guardian called Infinite Detail the best science fiction book of 2019 for a reason — it gets under the skin of the future to expose the ugly guts of the present. Maughan is, above all, a critic — he writes to expose the disturbing trajectories of the technologies, prejudices, and corporate impulses today. I’ve worked with Tim for years, editing his fiction, barging into his audiobook recordings, and lamenting the future on various corporate social media platforms. So, as prediction after prediction of his has glitched into being this year, it seemed a fine time to talk about surveillance, communication breakdown, and resistance to all of the above.

卫报称 《 无限细节 》 由于某种原因，它是2019年最佳科幻小说书 -它暴露了未来的面目，揭露了现在的丑陋胆量。 最重要的是，莫恩是一位批评家-他的写作旨在揭示当今技术，偏见和公司推动力令人不安的轨迹。 我与Tim在一起工作了多年， 编辑他的小说 ， 插入他的有声读物 ，并为各种公司社交媒体平台上的未来感叹。 因此，随着对他的预测接prediction而至的预测在今年开始出现，现在是讨论监视，通信故障以及对上述所有问题的抵抗的最佳时机。

This may be the second installment of Why I Made This Future, but it could as well be called Why I Warned Against This Present.

这可能是《 为什么我创造这个未来》的第二部分，但也可以称为《为什么我要反对这个礼物》。

The interview has been edited for length, clarity, and obscenity reduction.

采访已经过编辑，以延长篇幅，清晰度和减少淫秽感。

Brian Merchant: So, Tim Maughan—

Brian Merchant：所以，Tim Maughan-

Tim Maughan: That’s me.

蒂姆·莫恩(Tim Maughan)：是我。

Brian Merchant: Wonderful. Let’s start with the big one: Why did you feel compelled to create the future of Infinite Detail and Ghost Hardware — and what are, in your mind, its key cornerstones?

Brian Merchant：太好了。 让我们从一个大的问题开始：为什么您被迫创建无限细节和Ghost硬件的未来？在您看来，它的主要基石是什么？

Tim Maughan: For me, I’m creating a fictionalized version of the world that we live in. The three books I’ve published so far, ironically, in a very science fictional kind of way, are all set in the same world. In Paintwork, I was wanting to talk about technology and the privatization of public space — so augmented reality became this really good tool for doing that. So that spills on into another story I wrote that’s set in the same setting, and augmented reality is a key theme in Ghost Hardware.

蒂姆·莫恩(Tim Maughan)：对我来说，我正在创建一个虚构的世界版本，具有讽刺意味的是，到目前为止，我以科幻小说的方式出版的三本书都放置在同一个世界中。 在Paintwork中 ，我想谈论技术和公共空间的私有化-因此增强现实成为实现此目标的一个非常好的工具。 这样一来，我就会想到另一个故事，故事是在相同的背景下进行的，而增强现实是Ghost Hardware中的关键主题。

Brian Merchant: I appreciate your critique of pervasive digital consumerism through the spex. In both Infinite Detail and Ghost Hardware, spex are basically the new iPhones — ubiquitous AR glasses that have their own operating system — everyone’s got one, before the world collapses.

Brian Merchant：感谢您对通过Spex普及的数字消费主义的批评。 在无限细节和Ghost硬件中 ， spex基本上是新的iPhone，即无所不在的AR眼镜，具有自己的操作系统，在世界崩溃之前，每个人都有一个。

Tim Maughan: They were very fictionalized but very… I would call it generic. I’m certainly not the first person to write about these technologies. They’re AR glasses that you put on that overlay a digital network over the reality you exist in, which is not an alien concept to most people. For me, it’s a really exciting literary device because a lot of the stuff I’m interested in talking about — network culture, digital systems, social media, even supply chains — these are not things that are easy to write about in literature. They’re incredibly boring to write about. So generating a very visual metaphor for dealing with them was what I was looking for in using AR.

蒂姆·莫恩(Tim Maughan)：他们非常虚构，但是非常……我称之为通用。 我当然不是写这些技术的第一人。 它们是您戴在上面的AR眼镜，将数字网络覆盖在您所存在的现实之上，这对大多数人而言并不是一个陌生的概念。 对我来说，这是一个非常令人兴奋的文学作品，因为我感兴趣谈论的很多东西-网络文化，数字系统，社交媒体甚至供应链-这些都不是文学中容易写的东西。 他们非常无聊。 因此，在使用AR的过程中，我一直在寻找一个与他们打交道的视觉隐喻。

Brian Merchant: And spex are a useful mechanism to interrogate surveillance practices, digital commerce, and so on. There’s a memorable scene that takes place after the city updates its policy so that you need spex to get credits for recycling cans. Can you talk a little bit about that, and then what all this mass digitalization and commoditization ultimately leads to?

Brian Merchant： spex是询问监视实践，数字商务等的有用机制。 在城市更新其政策之后，发生了一个令人难忘的场面 ，因此您需要使用spex才能获得回收罐的信用。 您能否谈一谈，然后这些大规模数字化和商品化最终导致什么？

Tim Maughan: Anybody who lives in the city has seen canners. They go through recycling, both the public and the residential recycling, and take items that need recycling, go and recycle them and get micropayments for each one. You glance at them and you think they’re homeless, which, as a matter of fact, the majority of people doing this work are not homeless, it turns out. In New York, many are cab drivers struggling to compete with Uber.

蒂姆·莫恩(Tim Maughan)：住在城市的任何人都见过罐头厂。 他们进行回收，包括公共回收和住宅回收，并拿走需要回收的物品，将它们回收再利用，并为每个项目获得小额付款。 您看了一眼他们，便认为他们无家可归，事实证明，从事这项工作的大多数人并非无家可归。 在纽约，许多出租车司机都在努力与优步竞争。

And the idea in the book is that this new technology that’s being brought in where RFID tags on every bottle and some facial recognition and machine learning is going on in stores. The system, the network, which is in New York in the book, knows when a can has been bought, who it’s been bought by, and who puts it in a recycling bin. And then it gives that payment directly to that person, the idea being it streamlines recycling and it gives people more of an incentive to recycle.

书中的想法是，这种新技术被引入商店，每个瓶子上的RFID标签以及一些面部识别和机器学习都在进行。 该系统，即网络，位于书中的纽约，它知道何时购买罐头，谁被购买以及谁将其放入回收箱。 然后，它将付款直接提供给该人，其想法是简化回收，并给人们带来了更多的回收动力。

It’s a cool idea, but with these really horrible implications. I actually originally got the idea, and you’ll probably remember this — it was in the Bay Area, it was in San Francisco, maybe like 2013, 2014. There was a story about a bunch of guys, Latino guys in the neighborhood, who every Sunday would get together and play five-five soccer on these five-by-five soccer field pitches in their neighborhood. And they’d do that, it was a tradition that had been going on for decades.

这是一个很酷的主意，但带有这些真正可怕的含义。 实际上，我最初是有这个主意的，您可能会记得这一点–在湾区，在旧金山，大概是2013年，2014年。有一个关于一群人，附近有拉丁美洲人的故事，谁每个星期天都会聚在一起，在他们附近的每5个5个足球场上踢5个5足球。 他们会这样做，这是已经持续了数十年的传统。

One Sunday they turned up there, and the field was completely overrun by white guys wearing Dropbox T-shirts. And they were like, “Well, this is our field.” And the guy turned to them and said, “No, but we booked it.” And he said, “Well, what do you mean? What do you mean you booked it?” And he pointed at the sign, a flyer that had been stuck up at some point in the previous week saying, “In the future if you want to use these playing fields you have to book them. You can do it by downloading this app to your smartphone.” And the guy that was talking to him goes, “I haven’t got a smartphone. This is my culture. This is what we do.” And the guys go well, I’m sorry, but that’s how it works now. You need a smartphone.”

一个星期天，他们出现在那儿，领域完全被穿着Dropbox T恤衫的白人所占据。 他们就像，“嗯，这是我们的领域。” 然后那个家伙转向他们说：“不，但是我们订了。” 他说：“那你是什么意思？ 您预订的是什么意思？” 他指着指示牌，这是一个在上周的某个时候被卡住的传单，上面写着：“将来，如果您想使用这些运动场，就必须对其进行预订。 您可以通过将此应用程序下载到智能手机来做到这一点。” 和他聊天的那个人说：“我没有智能手机。 这是我的文化。 这就是我们的工作。” 伙计们进展顺利，很抱歉，但这就是现在的工作方式。 您需要智能手机。”

Someone had come up with a solution — that’s so often the Silicon Valley way — to find a problem, then find a solution to it so that you can then make a product that fills that solution, and think that you’re being helpful without really considering the wider implications of what you’re doing. And what you’re actually doing is building this kind of extra-stratified society. You’re limiting access to people who only have smartphones. Arguably now, smartphone penetration is much higher than it was five years ago, but at the time it was a particularly stark and infuriating example, because the people who’ve done this, honestly to God, did not think they’d done anything wrong.

有人想出了一个解决方案(通常是硅谷的方式)来找到问题，然后找到解决方案，以便您可以制造出可以满足该解决方案的产品，并认为您在没有真正的帮助下就可以了考虑您所做的工作的广泛影响。 而您实际上正在做的是建立这种更加分层的社会。 您将访问权限限制为仅拥有智能手机的用户。 现在可以说，智能手机的普及率比五年前要高得多，但是在当时，这是一个特别鲜明而令人发指的例子，因为诚实地做到这一点的人并不认为自己做错了什么。

They really only see just that they were generating solutions for stuff. And that’s the stuff I write, this technology. As you well know from your own work and your own journalism, this is the stuff that’s most scary about it, is the idea that it’s providing universal solutions to things that have been decided are problems. It just ends up making it worse.

他们真的只看到他们正在为事物生成解决方案。 这就是我写的东西，这项技术。 从您自己的工作和您的新闻业中可以知道，这是最令人恐惧的事情，是它为已确定的问题提供通用解决方案的想法。 最终只会使情况变得更糟。

Brian Merchant: In the example that you just mentioned, it’s telling that the control is being handed over to the people who have the benefit of wielding, developing, or programming the technology in the first place — owning the technology.

Brian Merchant：在您刚才提到的示例中，这表明控件已移交给那些首先拥有对技术进行使用，开发或编程的人- 拥有该技术。

Tim Maughan: The owning is the key point there because most people in this space have been sold book after book — hundreds of self-help books and courses and incubators and stuff that says, “Hey, look, you want to succeed in this industry? You need to find a problem that you can solve.” You get to the point of almost creating a problem to be solved. In order to show off your technical skills and your ability as a problem-solver, you need to find a problem. And even when that problem may not even exist, or it’s a different kind of problem, it isn’t a problem that needs a technological solution. It’s a problem that needs a political solution. It’s a problem that needs a community solution. It’s a problem that’s solved by fixing capitalism, not fixing technology. So many of our problems are byproducts of other systems. So that’s not what is of interest to people. People are interested in becoming an entrepreneur, in becoming a successful CEO, a successful founder.

蒂姆·莫恩(Tim Maughan)：这里的拥有权是关键所在，因为该领域的大多数人都是一本接一本地售出的-数百本自助书，课程和孵化器以及诸如此类的东西：“嘿，看，您想在这个行业中取得成功？ 您需要找到可以解决的问题。” 你几乎创造一个要解决的问题点。 为了炫耀您的技术技能和解决问题的能力，您需要找到问题。 即使该问题可能根本不存在，或者是另一种问题，也不是需要技术解决方案的问题。 这是一个需要政治解决的问题。 这是一个需要社区解决方案的问题。 解决固定资本主义而不是固定技术可以解决这个问题。 因此，我们的许多问题都是其他系统的副产品。 所以这不是人们感兴趣的东西。 人们对成为企业家，成为成功的首席执行官，成功的创始人感兴趣。

Before Infinite Detail came out, I was at a workshop incubator thing in Brooklyn. And there was a couple of kids there — this is before Infinite Detail — and they said, “Oh, yeah, we’re making a smart trash can.” And I had started working on the recycling bit in Intimate Detail. I had written that chapter at the time, and my heart just fell. I said, “Right, so what is that? How does it work?” And they were like, “Well, it’s got a screen on the side. And when you put a can in, it thanks you for putting it in.” And I said, “Well, what’s the point? Why?” And they said, “Well, because it would encourage kids to recycle more. It’d be like little video games they can play.” And I’m thinking, “Okay, is it really that hard to get kids to recycle? I don’t feel like it is, but, anyway, whatever.”

在“ 无限细节”问世之前，我在布鲁克林的一个车间孵化器里。 那里有几个孩子-这是在Infinite Detail之前的-他们说：“哦，是的，我们正在制造一个智能垃圾桶。” 我已经开始在《 亲密细节》中的回收位上工作。 那时我写了那章，我的心刚好落下来。 我说：“对，那是什么？ 它是如何工作的？” 他们就像，“嗯，侧面有个屏幕。 当您放入一个罐头时，它感谢您放入它。” 我说：“那是什么意思？ 为什么？” 他们说：“好吧，因为它将鼓励孩子们更多地回收利用。 就像他们可以玩的小型电子游戏一样。” 我在想：“好吧，让孩子们回收真的难吗？ 我不这么认为，但是无论如何。”

I said, “What’s your business model?” He said, “Well, hopefully, we’ll get cities invested in it.” And I said, “Yeah, but…” And I knew exactly what his answer was going to be, and I kept pushing him on it. He said, “Well, yeah, eventually we do want to monetize the data it collects. Yeah, eventually we could be monitoring who’s walking past from the IDs on the phone or the footfall.” And that’s it. People are not even interested in fixing these problems. They’re interested in finding “solutions.” They’re finding other trajectories, other vectors to get data collection, that’s it because they literally have all been told data is new oil, and they fully fucking bought into this.

我说：“您的经营模式是什么？” 他说：“好吧，希望我们能吸引城市投资。” 我说：“是的，但是。。。”我确切地知道他的答案是什么，我一直在逼着他。 他说：“好吧，是的，我们最终希望通过其收集的数据获利。 是的，最终我们可能会监视谁从电话上的ID或人行横道经过。” 就是这样。 人们甚至对解决这些问题都不感兴趣。 他们对寻找“解决方案”感兴趣。 他们正在寻找其他轨迹，其他向量来收集数据，就是这样，因为从字面上他们都被告知数据是新油，而且他们全都买了。

They don’t even know what the data is for. They’re not even interested in collecting data for specific reasons. They’ve just been told the data will have some value in the future, to grab and own and horde as much of it as you possibly fucking can. And it’s such a disruptive model. It’s literally ending with people dying. When you start looking at surveillance technology and smart technology and how they so often don’t actually work. They’re not just disrupting communities or breaking industries and being disruptive. They’re literally leading up to miscarriages of justice, this misuse of data.

他们甚至不知道数据的用途。 他们甚至出于特定原因对收集数据也不感兴趣。 他们刚刚被告知，这些数据在将来将具有一定的价值，以尽可能多的方式获取和拥有并成群结队。 这是一个破坏性的模型。 从字面上看，人们快死了。 当您开始研究监视技术和智能技术时，它们通常实际上并不起作用。 他们不仅在破坏社区或破坏行业，而且具有破坏性。 从字面上看，它们导致了错误的司法保护，即对数据的滥用。

Brian Merchant: While some mainstream criticism is finally emerging to counter some of these tendencies — which for so long got a free pass in the media — it could still serve to be much sharper. That it’s not just a whoopsie, or even a series of whoopsies. That actually, it’s a systemic pattern of impulses, including racist or misogynist ones, that ends up excluding people from crucial services and disrupting the ways that they make ends meet. That these platforms and services are actually displacing people, as you just pointed out, that they are systems of control.

Brian Merchant：尽管一些主流批评终于浮出水面，以应对其中的某些趋势-长期以来在媒体上获得了自由通过-但它仍然可以变得更加尖锐。 那不只是胡扯，甚至是一系列的胡扯。 实际上，这是一种系统性的冲动模式，包括种族主义或厌恶妇女的冲动，最终使人们无法享受至关重要的服务，并破坏了他们维持生计的方式。 正如您刚刚指出的那样，这些平台和服务实际上正在取代人们，它们是控制系统。

Tim Maughan: And it’s tricky to do in fiction as well because it’s very easy to fall into that kind of Black Mirror trap of saying, here’s an example of when surveillance went particularly bad and the wrong person was killed or the wrong person was implicated, or a stalker was following you, your nemesis or your ex-boyfriend was stalking you on social media. And these things are incredibly, incredibly serious problems, and they’re incredibly real problems. But they’re also exceptional problems and not day-to-day, longer-term systemic problems — where it’s easier for us to be upset by video of someone in Starbucks using the N-word than it is for us to be upset by systemic racism because it’s harder to identify.

蒂姆·莫恩(Tim Maughan)：在小说中也很棘手，因为很容易陷入这种“ 黑镜”的陷阱，这是一个例子，说明监视工作特别糟糕，错误的人被杀害或牵扯到错误的人，或是有追踪者追踪您，您的敌人或您的前男友在社交媒体上追踪您。 这些都是令人难以置信的，令人难以置信的严重问题，而且是难以置信的实际问题。 但是，它们也是特殊的问题，而不是日常的，长期的系统性问题-在星巴克中使用N字的某人的视频使我们不高兴，而不是系统性地让我们烦恼种族主义，因为很难识别。

Brian Merchant: It’s harder to fictionalize the more boring, more prevalent kinds of surveillance capitalism in a satisfying way.

Brian Merchant：很难用令人满意的方式将更无聊，更普遍的监视资本主义虚拟化。

Time Maughan: I talk about surveillance to people who don’t think about surveillance all the time like I do and you do…And you walk in the house and they’ve got an Alexa. And you say, “I don’t like the Alexa because it’s a surveillance machine.” And they say to you, “Well, I haven’t got anything to hide. I haven’t done anything wrong. It’s not a problem to me. It doesn’t matter if they’re listening to me. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

迈恩(Time Maughan)：我向那些像我和你那样一直不考虑监视的人谈论监视，而你走进房子，他们有了Alexa。 您会说：“我不喜欢Alexa，因为它是监视机器。” 他们对您说：“好吧，我没有什么可隐瞒的。 我没做错任何事。 对我来说这不是问题。 他们是否在听我都没关系。 我没有什么可隐瞒的。”

And it’s like, actually, the reason I dislike it isn’t the fact that I’m worried they might be listening to me now — it’s monitoring my behavior, and that’s what I’m worried about. I don’t care if it overhears what I say, or an algorithm is listening to it or even someone in an offshore call center. Even if they’re listening to it, that privacy thing isn’t what worries me. The issue that worries me is that they’re modeling my behavior, and they’re making judgments based on that, which might not be the right judgments for everybody. And they’re using that model to make decisions about people who aren’t even their users, too, or they’re using it to make decisions about their users.

实际上，这是我不喜欢它的原因，并不是我担心他们现在正在听我讲话–这是监视我的行为，这就是我担心的问题。 我不在乎它是否会偷听我说的话，或者是否有算法正在监听它，甚至是在离岸呼叫中心的某个人。 即使他们在听，隐私也不是让我担心的事情。 让我担心的问题是他们正在模仿我的行为，并且他们正在基于此做出判断，这可能并不是每个人的正确判断。 他们正在使用该模型对甚至不是他们的用户的人进行决策，或者正在使用它来对用户进行决策。

It becomes a thing about like, well, okay, what information can we collect from Alexas about a neighborhood or just their Amazon use? What decisions can Amazon make geographically in physical spaces? This neighborhood in South Brooklyn, I used to live in, East Flatbush, it’s gentrified. And I’m sure Amazon can pull up a map of where all the Alexas are, where all their Amazon Prime accounts are and go, “Well, this is a neighborhood which is increasingly likely to be gentrified” — aka, more whites.

事情变得如此，好吧，好吧，我们可以从Alexas那里收集关于邻居或仅在亚马逊使用的哪些信息？ 亚马逊可以在物理空间中做出哪些决策？ 我曾经住在南布鲁克林的这个街区，这里已经高档化。 而且我敢肯定，亚马逊可以绘制一张有关所有Alexas所在位置，所有Amazon Prime帐户所在位置以及去往的地图，“嗯，这是一个越来越有可能被绅士化的社区”(又名白人)。

Tech workers are moving into the neighborhood. What can we do in that neighborhood for them? And suddenly you’re changing the nature of the neighborhood. I lived in East Flatbush, and my neighbors, everybody would get on the train and go to Trader Joe’s, which was five or 10 stops away on the train because the local grocery stores weren’t great. But then Amazon put a Whole Foods there. It wasn’t worth putting a Whole Foods there two years ago when there was “only” a Black and Latino population, but now that there’s white tech worker population moving in, oh, well, they’ll like a Whole Foods.

科技工作者正在搬到附近。 我们在那附近能为他们做什么？ 突然间，您正在改变社区的性质。 我住在东弗拉特布什(East Flatbush)，和我的邻居们一样，每个人都会上火车去贸易商乔(Trader Joe's)，因为当地的杂货店不太好，所以在火车上相距五到十站。 但是后来亚马逊在这里放了全食食品。 当两年前只有“黑人”和“拉丁美洲人”的人口时，把“全食超市”放在那儿是不值得的，但是现在有白人技术工人移民进来，哦，他们会喜欢“全食超市”。

And that kind of decision-making is really dangerous to me. And then these datasets have been collected, not necessarily by Amazon, but datasets have been collected from Facebook about behavior, about demographics. They’re getting sold to development companies. They’re getting sold to real estate agents. They’re getting sold to architectural companies who are looking at these neighborhoods and going, “Oh, I can build a condo there. Let’s fuck this neighborhood even more. Let’s increase their rents by 50% by building a condo block there.”

这种决策对我来说真的很危险。 然后，这些数据集不一定是由亚马逊收集的，而是从Facebook收集有关行为，人口统计的数据集。 他们被卖给了开发公司。 他们被卖给房地产经纪人。 他们被卖给了正在看这些街区的建筑公司，然后说：“哦，我可以在那建造公寓。 让我们他妈的附近。 让我们在那里建造一个公寓楼，将租金提高50％。”

You don’t want to fall into that thing of writing a thriller about someone that gets stalked through their Alexa. I’m unfortunately taking on the task of trying to write fiction about the real implications of technology like that. It’s an incredibly stupid, foolhardy thing to do.

您不想陷入为通过Alexa缠身的某人写惊悚片的事情。 不幸的是，我正在承担尝试写关于这种技术真正含义的小说的任务。 这是一件非常愚蠢的事情。

Brian Merchant: It can also be hard to write speculative fiction about the mundane trends that are already in motion. Most of us aren’t actually going to interact with, say, an asteroid mining colony. We are going to have to deal with the fact that our data profiles are proliferating in ways that we don’t fully even understand, that we can’t understand because they are hidden from us. We need fiction writers and speculators to try to give us some tools for helping us to kind of decipher these situations, which is what it seems like Infinite Detail aims to do.

Brian Merchant：很难写关于已经发生的平凡趋势的投机小说。 我们大多数人实际上都不会与小行星采矿殖民地进行互动。 我们将不得不面对这样一个事实，即我们的数据资料正在以我们甚至不完全了解的方式激增，我们无法理解，因为它们对我们而言是隐藏的。 我们需要小说作家和投机者尝试为我们提供一些工具，以帮助我们破译这些情况，这似乎是Infinite Detail的目标。

Tim Maughan: The book primarily is centered around what might happen if the internet was destroyed or disappeared, or stopped working in some way — if it just went away. But it came to me around about the time of, I guess, it was like 2012, 2013 and the Anonymous stuff is going on. Wikileaks stuff was going on. And there was a real sense sometimes you’d wake up and perhaps the internet wouldn’t be working. It’s jarring to not have Google Docs or to not have Gmail. It felt like the first time it was jarring to not have internet services, and that stuck in my head. And then a bit later on I went on a trip to China, and saw how the supply chain is intrinsically linked to the internet. I spent some time on a container ship. Do you want me to tell the container ship story?

蒂姆·莫恩(Tim Maughan)：这本书的主要内容是，如果互联网被破坏或消失，或者以某种方式停止工作(如果它只是消失了)，将会发生什么。 但是大约在2012年，2013年左右，这件事就传到我这里了，匿名事件还在继续。 维基解密的事情还在继续。 有一种真正的感觉，有时您会醒来，也许互联网无法正常工作。 没有Google Docs或没有Gmail真是令人讨厌。 感觉像是第一次没有互联网服务的感觉很震撼，而这一直困扰着我。 然后过了一会儿，我去了中国，看到了供应链与互联网的内在联系。 我花了一些时间在集装箱船上。 您要我讲集装箱船的故事吗？

Brian Merchant: You know I do.

Brian Merchant：你知道我愿意。

Tim Maughan: I did this trip to China. I did some reporting for the BBC where we did this reverse supply chain trip. We started in South Korea and we got on a container ship and went to China, stopped at a bunch of ports, then traveled overland in China. It’s a huge Maersk container ship, about 10,000 containers on this one ship. A crew of about 20 people. And I was sitting on the bridge with the captain one afternoon chatting to him, and there’s a beeping sound. He said, “Excuse me,” and he walks over to the computer. Looks at the computer, types on this computer, just a standard gray box PC, beige PC. It doesn’t have anything interesting to it. Walks back, starts talking to me.

蒂姆·莫恩(Tim Maughan)：我是这次中国之行。 我为BBC做过一些报告，我们做了反向供应链之旅。 我们从韩国开始，坐上集装箱船去了中国，在许多港口停了下来，然后在中国陆路旅行。 这是一艘巨大的马士基集装箱船，这艘船上约有10,000个集装箱。 大约20人的船员。 那天下午，我和船长坐在桥上与他聊天，并且发出哔哔声。 他说：“对不起，”他走到电脑前。 查看计算机，此计算机上的类型，仅是标准的灰盒PC，米色PC。 它没有任何有趣的东西。 往回走，开始和我说话。

I said, “Hang on. I meant to be understanding what’s happening on this ship. What just happened?” And he was like, “Uh, oh, well, I had an email from Maersk in Copenhagen saying to slow the ship down.” He got off the thing and he got on the phone and he called the engine room and told them to slow the ship down. And I said, “Wait, what?” And he said, “Yeah, they emailed me and told me to slow the ship down.” And I said, “Why?” And he said, “I don’t know. They don’t tell me.” He said, “It’s an automated email that the supply chain algorithms are sending me,” something like that.

我说：“等等。 我的意思是要了解这艘船上正在发生的事情。 刚才发生了什么？” 他说，“嗯，哦，好吧，我在哥本哈根收到马士基的一封电子邮件，说要减慢船速。” 他下了车，打了电话，给机房打了个电话，告诉他们减慢船速。 我说：“等等，什么？” 他说：“是的，他们给我发了电子邮件，告诉我放慢船速。” 我说：“为什么？” 他说：“我不知道。 他们不告诉我。” 他说：“这是供应链算法向我发送的一封自动电子邮件，”类似的意思。

He said it probably means that they know that there’s a choke point further up the supply chain, either at the port, meaning we can’t get into a berth, or even like a traffic jam or something it could be, perhaps, which means that everything is going to be slowed down. So, if we get there on time now it’s inefficient. We’re just wasting fuel. We might as well slow down and get in there an hour or two later when the port will be ready for us. He said, “But they don’t tell me that. They just send me an email.” And I just had this weird moment. I’m like, “Oh, hang on. This is just a node in the network, this whole ship is just a node in the network.”

他说，这可能意味着他们知道在港口的供应链上还有一个瓶颈，这意味着我们无法进入泊位，甚至像是交通拥堵之类的东西，也许这意味着一切都会变慢。 因此，如果我们现在准时到达那里，那是低效率的。 我们只是在浪费燃料。 我们不妨放慢脚步，等一两个小时之后，港口将为我们准备就绪。 他说：“但他们没有告诉我。 他们只是给我发送电子邮件。” 而我只是有这个奇怪的时刻。 我就像，“哦，等等。 这只是网络中的一个节点，整个船只不过是网络中的一个节点。”

A lot of the containers on the ship are called reefers, which are these refrigerated containers. And they are climate-controlled. They’re amazing pieces of technology. Load unripe bananas into them in the Caribbean somewhere, and by the time they end up in a supermarket in Berlin or something, the reefers have taken them from plucking to the supermarket, and they gradually over a period of time, knowing where it is by GPS, gradually alter the temperature in the box so that the bananas are perfectly ripe by the time they arrive on the grocery store shelf.

船上的许多集装箱都称为冷藏箱，是这些冷藏集装箱。 而且它们是受气候控制的。 它们是惊人的技术。 在加勒比地区的某个地方将未成熟的香蕉装入它们中，当它们最终在柏林的一家超级市场之类的地方时，冷藏室将它们从采摘的超市中带走，逐渐地，他们逐渐了解了它的位置。 GPS，逐渐改变盒子中的温度，以便香蕉到达杂货店货架时就已经完全成熟。

So, we had internet on the ship. It was very slow. It was almost unusable at times. It was satellite uplink. And the captain said, “It’s not really for us. It’s for the reefers.” And I was like, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, most of the staff on the ship, actually, their responsibility is to make sure the reefers are running, make sure they never break down. If there’s a problem with them, then they have to fix them.” He said, “When one breaks down it emails Copenhagen, then Copenhagen emails me. And then I tell a member of my crew to go and fix this.” And he said, “Really, we’ve got a little bit of bandwidth we’re allowed for emails and stuff, but we’re piggybacking on the satellite network that’s been built just for these reefers to communicate with the network.”

因此，我们在船上有了互联网。 非常慢。 有时几乎无法使用。 这是卫星上行链路。 机长说：“这不是真的给我们。 这是给冷藏室的。” 我当时想，“你是什么意思？” 他说：“好吧，实际上，船上大多数工作人员的责任是确保冷藏箱在运行，并确保它们永不破裂。 如果他们有问题，那么他们必须修复它们。” 他说：“一旦发生故障，它会通过电子邮件向哥本哈根发送电子邮件，然后哥本哈根通过电子邮件向我发送电子邮件。 然后我告诉机组人员去解决这个问题。” 他说：“确实，我们有一些带宽可用于收发电子邮件和其他东西，但我们却在为这些冷藏库与网络进行通信而构建的卫​​星网络上进行搭载。”

I had already started working on Infinite Detail at that point. I had already started thinking about writing a book about a post-internet book because it just seemed really interesting to take that premise and blow it apart, the idea that the internet was permanent, that it’d always be there, but what if it isn’t? And this just was like a bomb going off. It’s like, “Well, hang on, this whole system, none of the humans I’ve met know how this system works, but the internet, this networked algorithmic system that lives on the internet apparently does, and that’s what’s getting us everything from iPhones and plastic crap to really important medicines and food. That’s what is making sure it turns up to the right port.” Really scary, it’s really scary.

那时我已经开始研究无限细节 。 我已经开始考虑写一本关于后互联网书籍的书，因为把这个前提并加以分解似乎真的很有趣，认为互联网是永久的，永远存在，但是如果可以的话不是吗 这就像炸弹爆炸一样。 就像，“好吧，等等，整个系统，我见过的人都不知道这个系统是如何工作的，但是互联网，这个生活在互联网上的网络算法系统显然可以运行，这就是让我们从中得到一切的原因。 iPhone和塑料废话对真正重要的药物和食物。 这就是确保将其调到正确的端口的原因。” 真的很恐怖，真的很恐怖。

Just as I was selling the book, me and my agent were taking it out to publishers, the WannaCry thing happened. It was this awful malware that was hijacking people’s computers, wiping them, threatening that if you didn’t pay them some bitcoin it would wipe it. And it was physically wiping hard drives, writing zeros over hard drives. And this hit the shipping industry really hard. I didn’t know until after the book came out after someone at Maersk read it and talked to me about it. That day that WannaCry hit the Maersk offices, it was apparently one of the scariest things that’s happened to people in that company. Because if they lost that, they didn’t have any backup, they would have no idea where their containers were, no idea where their ships were, anything.

就在我卖书的时候，我和我的经纪人都把书拿给出版商，WannaCry发生了。 正是这种可怕的恶意软件劫持了人们的计算机，将其清除，并威胁说，如果您不付钱给他们一些比特币，它将彻底清除它。 它实际上是在擦拭硬盘驱动器，并在硬盘驱动器上写入零。 这对航运业造成了沉重打击。 我不知道，直到这本书问世后，马士基(Maersk)的某人读了这本书并与我交谈。 WannaCry来到马士基办公室的那一天，这显然是该公司员工发生的最可怕的事情之一。 因为如果他们丢失了这些东西，他们将没有任何备份，他们将不知道集装箱在哪里，也不知道船在哪里。

It goes to show that from the moment the banana comes off the tree and goes into one of these containers to the moment you scan it through the automatic checkout thing when you’re leaving the grocery store, that banana is being monitored through this global information system that no human understands. There’s no single human or even a team of humans who can comprehend the complexity of these flows. I was on this container ship that had 10,000 containers on it, and I looked out the window, and I could see another one at any point in the day with a pair of binoculars. With the naked eye, I could see another container ship of the same size on the horizon. With a pair of binoculars, I could see another five.

它表明从香蕉从树上掉下来并进入其中一个容器的那一刻起，到您离开杂货店时通过自动结帐设备对其进行扫描的那一刻，该香蕉正在通过此全局信息进行监视人类无法理解的系统。 没有一个人甚至一个人的团队可以理解这些流程的复杂性。 我当时在这艘载有10,000个集装箱的集装箱船上，我看着窗外，一天中的任何时候我都可以用一副双筒望远镜看到另一个。 用肉眼可以看到地平线上另一艘同样大小的集装箱船。 我用一副双筒望远镜可以看到另外五副。

And the scale of what’s happening, we’ve bought into this system. It’s not only incredibly fragile because of how it’s linked with technology it also only exists to exploit labor on the other side of the world. The reason we don’t make our own iPhones is because it’s much cheaper to get poor people in the different countries to do it for us. So we’ve built this whole, incredible, sophisticated, partly A.I., partly machine learning, complicated network just to exploit our neighbors.

而发生的规模，我们已经购买了该系统。 它不仅非常脆弱，因为它与技术如何联系在一起，而且还仅仅存在于剥削世界另一端的劳动力方面。 我们不生产自己的iPhone的原因是，让不同国家的穷人为我们做这件事要便宜得多。 因此，我们建立了整个，令人难以置信的，复杂的，部分AI，部分机器学习以及复杂的网络，以利用我们的邻居。

Brian Merchant: It’s a good point, and it carves out this interesting and necessary contrast with the kind of discourse around A.I. that gets most of the attention these days. There’s this cottage industry in Silicon Valley of people warning about the dangers of A.I., of omniscient AGI — A.I. that will become sentient and make all these terrible decisions. That kicks the threat onto the horizon, and it obscures the fact that we, basically, have a crude patchwork form of automated systems that are already serving as this neanderthal A.I. that could go offline, and sometimes does, and cause disruptions that we never think much about.

Brian Merchant：这是一个很好的观点，它与围绕AI的话语形成了有趣且必要的对比，这种话语如今引起了大多数关注。 硅谷有一家手工业，人们在警告人工智能，无所不知的AGI的危险-AI将变得有见识并做出所有这些可怕的决定。 这使威胁浮出水面，并且掩盖了这样一个事实，即我们基本上具有粗略的拼凑形式的自动化系统，这些系统已经充当了这种尼安德特人的AI，它可能会脱机，有时甚至会脱机，并造成我们从未想过的中断关于。

It’s kind of miraculous that more disasters haven’t happened at-scale yet, given the fragility that you’re describing. It’s this automated, slapdash global and internet-linked supply chain that could go off the rails, as you described.

鉴于您所描述的脆弱性，更多灾难还没有大规模发生是一种奇迹。 正如您所描述的，这是一条自动化的，敏捷的全球性和互联网链接的供应链。

Tim Maughan: And the supply chain is a scary one because it impacts us really directly. But you start looking around, and it’s everywhere — it’s nothing compared to high-frequency trading on the stock markets. These things that literally people do, and they do not understand. They laugh and put their hands up. And I talk about this in Infinite Detail a little bit.

蒂姆·莫恩(Tim Maughan)：供应链非常可怕，因为它确实直接影响到我们。 但是您开始环顾四周，无处不在-与股票市场上的高频交易相比，这没什么。 人们从字面上做这些事情，而他们却不理解。 他们笑着举起手来。 我在“ 无限细节”中稍作讨论。

I talked to these people like, “LOL, yeah, I get it, but I made half a million this morning. I lost a quarter of a million, and then I made another million on top of it, so I’m actually up. In 20 minutes this morning, which was the only trading I bothered doing today because the algorithms that I bought from a company where the salesman comes in, and they’ve all got names like Vector and Phoenix and Hunter. And I buy these algorithms, and I don’t really understand what they do, but they go off and make value for me.”

我对这些人说，“大声笑，是的，我明白了，但是今天早上我赚了半百万。 我损失了25万美元的四分之一，然后我又赚了100万美元，所以我实际上起来了。 今天早上20分钟，这是我今天唯一不愿意做的交易，因为我从推销员所在的公司购买了算法，而且它们都具有Vector，Phoenix和Hunter之类的名称。 我购买了这些算法，但我并不真正理解它们的作用，但是它们为我创造了价值。”

It’s terrifying. What, how many more, like 20 million people, whatever it is, lose their job in the last few weeks because the stock market tanked? Those places closed because they had to close, but it’s like you’re looking at the stock market, which controls itself. And I stare at it, and I’ve been doing this for like 20 years. This isn’t a new thing. I’ve been staring at it for 20 years because I don’t understand it. Why is this being allowed to make all the decisions for me? Before I even started to understand how automated it was and how weird it was. And looking at it, going, “Why?” We don’t have control over this.

太恐怖了 在过去的几周中，有多少人像2000万人那样失业，因为股市下跌而失业了？ 这些地方因为必须关闭而关闭，但这就像您正在查看控制自身的股票市场一样。 我盯着它看，而且我已经做了20多年了。 这不是新事物。 我一直盯着它看二十年了，因为我听不懂。 为什么允许我为我做所有决定？ 在我甚至开始了解它是多么自动化和多么古怪之前。 看着它，说：“为什么？” 我们对此没有控制权。

This is apparently the most important thing in the world, this defines whether you’re rich or poor, whether you get a job, whether you can afford to go to college, whether you own your house, whether you can afford to buy a house, whether you get to keep your house, whether countries are invaded, whether the price of oil. All these things have been calculated and decided by this system, but nobody understands. Nobody seems to have any control over it. Why?

这显然是世界上最重要的事情，它定义了您是否富裕，是否工作，是否有能力上大学，是否拥有房屋，是否有能力购买房屋，您是否保留自己的房屋，是否有人入侵，是否油价上涨。 所有这些事情都是由该系统计算和确定的，但没人能理解。 似乎没有人对此有任何控制。 为什么？

Why are we allowing this system that we’ve seceded control to so that it’s some wild animal? It’s like they’re literally bringing a bull into a china shop and going, “Well, I hope it doesn’t break most of the things, but we’ll see which things it doesn’t break. And then when we’re done with those, maybe we can sell more of those.” You wouldn’t bring a bull into a china shop. And you wouldn’t allow something as complicated and as important, or we’ve decided as important, to just run itself.

我们为什么要让这个已脱离控制的系统成为某种野生动物？ 就像他们是从字面上将一头公牛带到一家中国商店，然后走了，“好吧，我希望它不会破坏大多数事情，但是我们会看看它不会破坏哪些事情。 然后，当我们处理完这些东西后，也许我们可以出售更多这些东西。” 您不会把公牛带到中国商店。 而且，您将不允许运行本身如此复杂而又重要的事情，或者我们已经决定同样重要的事情。

We’re talking about big structural change. Obviously, I’m not talking about something that we can all change or we can make quick adjustments to. But I’m just horrified by this idea that something so important we don’t understand, and we’re told not to understand it. We’re told just to have faith in it. It’s a cliché to call it a religion, but it’s starting to feel even more like it.

我们正在谈论重大的结构性变化。 显然，我并不是在谈论我们都可以更改或可以快速调整的内容。 但是我对这个想法感到震惊，因为有些重要的事情我们不了解，我们被告知不了解。 有人告诉我们要相信它。 称其为宗教是陈词滥调，但它开始变得越来越像它。

Brian Merchant: So, in the book the bull in the china shop, it kicks everything down. In the aftermath, what happens to society?

Brian Merchant：因此，在这本书中，中国商店的牛市使一切都败了。 后果是，社会将发生什么？

Tim Maughan: In the U.K., there is, basically, a military coup. There is a central government, but they’re very slowed down. The land army has regional centers and stuff like that and camps and work camps. The British army has staged a soft coup by stepping in. You’re looking at a government failing to deal with a crisis. At some point, the generals go, “Well, fuck this. We can do a better job of this.” And that’s, basically, what’s happened. Whatever government was in place after the collapse in Infinite Detail has failed, quite understandably failed to deal with this crisis, so that the military has said, “Well, time to stop pussyfooting around. Let’s roll the tanks into cities and start rounding people up to go out to the farms and grow stuff.”

蒂姆·莫恩(Tim Maughan)：在英国，基本上有军事政变。 有一个中央政府，但是他们放慢了速度。 陆军有地区中心和类似的东西，还有营地和工作营。 英国军队介入了一场软政变。您正在寻找一个未能应对危机的政府。 在某个时候，将军们说：“好吧，他妈的。 我们可以做得更好。” 基本上，这就是发生了什么。 在Infinite Detail崩溃后失败的任何政府任职者 ，都无法应对这场危机，因此，军方说：“好了，该停下脚步了。 让我们将坦克推入城市，开始围捕人们去农场和种东西。”

The thing that was terrifying to me was we were two weeks into lockdown, and there were stories in the U.K. They’ve got Twitter called U.K. land army. And it’s a volunteer army asking for people, because of the lockdown migrant workers that the U.K. farming economy is fucking completely dependent on, which, again, is why Brexit and restrictive immigration policies in the U.K. are so fucking terrifying. But they didn’t have this migrant force. Food was dying on the vine. Strawberries were rotting on the plants. The strawberry industry is a big industry. So they were like, “Well, the land army, sign up here. Join the land army. Go out and pick vegetables and stuff.”

令我感到震惊的是，我们已经被封锁了两个星期，而且在英国有故事。他们的推特被称为英国陆军。 这是一支志愿军招募人员，因为锁定的农民工完全依赖英国农业经济，这也是英国退欧和限制性移民政策如此令人恐惧的原因。 但是他们没有这种移民力量。 食物在藤蔓上垂死了。 草莓在植物上腐烂。 草莓产业是一大产业。 所以他们就像，“好吧，陆军，在这里注册。 加入陆军。 出去采摘蔬菜和东西。”

In the book, it’s this experimental space before the collapse, which is just an art experiment, really, where they’ve blocked the internet for a few blocks, so it’s impossible to use the internet, and replaced it with this decentralized peer-to-peer network instead. I know people have done projects like this, and people in New York have done smaller-scale projects like this. And I said, “Well, what if you did a neighborhood-wide project?” And that’s all it’s meant to be.

在这本书中，这是倒塌前的实验空间，这实际上是一次艺术实验，实际上，他们已经将互联网封锁了几个街区，因此无法使用互联网，而将其替换为分散的对等网络-peer网络。 我知道人们已经做过这样的项目，纽约的人们也做过这样的较小规模的项目。 我说：“好吧，如果您进行社区范围的项目该怎么办？” 这就是它的全部意图。

After the collapse, people have plugged into this area, and then the cops come, and there’s scenes that are very similar to the stuff we’ve seen on TV in the last few weeks of running battles with the cops. And so this faction locked itself off and barricades against riot police have gone up.

崩溃之后，人们进入该区域，然后警察来了，那里的场面与我们在过去数周与警察进行的战斗中在电视上看到的场面非常相似。 因此，这个派系封锁了自己，防暴警察的路障也增加了。

Brian Merchant: And you go further.

Brian Merchant：然后您走得更远。

Tim Maughan: Yes. There’s a drone strike. My real-world dystopian obsession is when will we see the first drone strike on civilian territory in the West. Do you know what I mean? It’s going to happen at some point.

蒂姆·莫恩(Tim Maughan)：是的。 有一次无人机罢工。 我对现实世界的反乌托邦痴迷是什么时候我们才能看到西方平民第一次袭击无人机。 你懂我的意思吗？ 它会在某个时候发生。

Brian Merchant: There is an actual Black Lives Matter protest in New York in a key scene in Infinite Detail.

Brian Merchant：在Infinite Detail的一个关键场景中，纽约发生了一次真正的Black Lives Matter抗议。

Tim Maughan: There’s an actual Black Lives Matter protest in New York, and the most unrealistic thing, it turns out, about my depressing dystopian novel is that the police manage to fucking control themselves. It’s peaceful. There is some suggestion of brutality at the end of that chapter. There’s the suggestion of panic and chaos right at the end of that chapter. It’s about Black Lives Matter marches that I went on when I lived in New York.

蒂姆·莫恩(Tim Maughan)：纽约发生了一场真正的“黑死病”抗议，事实证明，最令人不切实际的事情是，关于我令人沮丧的反乌托邦小说，是警察设法控制自己。 和平 在本章末尾有一些野蛮的暗示。 在本章结尾处有恐慌和混乱的提示。 这是我在纽约生活时继续进行的“ Black Lives Matter”游行。

Brian Merchant: In the book, those scenes happened pretty close to the great crash. It feels like one of the moments that, like today, like we’re coiling everything up — both the expressions of power and our resistance to it. So that moment, when they’re marching in the Black Lives Matter protest and the world’s lights are about to go off — was that intentional that all these lines are drawn up?

Brian Merchant：在书中，那些场景发生在大崩盘的附近。 就像今天一样，感觉就像是我们正在盘绕一切的时刻之一—权力的表达和对权力的抵抗。 所以那一刻，当他们在“ Black Lives Matter”抗议中游行时，世界的灯火都熄灭了–是否故意将所有这些线条都画好了？

Tim Maughan: Yeah. The idea is that we’re the frog in the boiling water, kind of. I know that’s usually used as a climate example, but I feel like it’s a really good example for data stuff. This oppression and all these things we’ve talked about, about this lack of access and this stratification of society and then the very violent and very direct, lethal misuse of data in policing and stuff, particularly policing and stuff.

蒂姆·莫恩(Tim Maughan)：是的。 这个想法是，我们是沸水里的青蛙。 我知道通常将其用作气候示例，但我觉得这是一个很好的数据示例。 这种压迫感和我们谈论过的所有这些事情，都涉及到缺乏访问和社会分层，然后是警务和人员特别是警务和人员中非常暴力，非常直接，致命的数据滥用。

That Black Lives Matter protest in the book is in… it feels horribly ironic to be saying this. It’s in response to a fictional, accidental killing of an elderly woman in Queens or the Bronx who’s been killed by accident because predictive policing has failed. Some fucking roided-up cop ended up in the wrong stairwell with a gun drawn at the wrong time of day and shot an old lady because predictive policing has suggested that a violent crime might be taking place in that building. It’s just a horrible fucking mess. And this march has been in direct reaction to that. But the idea being that this stuff is going on all over, right?

书中关于“黑人生活至关重要”的抗议……这么说真是令人讽刺。 这是对在皇后区或布朗克斯区一名虚构的意外杀死一名老妇的React，该妇女因预测性警务工作失败而被意外杀害。 Some fucking roided-up cop ended up in the wrong stairwell with a gun drawn at the wrong time of day and shot an old lady because predictive policing has suggested that a violent crime might be taking place in that building. It's just a horrible fucking mess. And this march has been in direct reaction to that. But the idea being that this stuff is going on all over, right?

People are getting to their wits’ end about how technology is creating a stratification. Again, the canner story and even the stories in Limited Edition.

People are getting to their wits' end about how technology is creating a stratification. Again, the canner story and even the stories in Limited Edition .

Brian Merchant: Let’s talk about Limited Edition, which is a great story.

Brian Merchant: Let's talk about Limited Edition , which is a great story.

Tim Maughan: It was sparked by police brutality, which was sparked by the street execution of a Black man [named Mark Duggan] in London by cops. He was killed in his car by armed police, which is a very, thankfully, still relatively rare thing to happen in the U.K. But it was enough to spark riots in London, which then spread to other major cities in the U.K.

Tim Maughan: It was sparked by police brutality, which was sparked by the street execution of a Black man [named Mark Duggan] in London by cops. He was killed in his car by armed police, which is a very, thankfully, still relatively rare thing to happen in the UK But it was enough to spark riots in London, which then spread to other major cities in the UK

But what was interesting about that, where the story comes from, is how the media, and social media in particular, reacted to this. Some looting started, and as soon as that happened, the narrative stopped being about police brutality and started being about looting and about how these kids were spoiled and entitled and aggressive and thugs and this stuff. And these are all the discussions that were going on in the media at the time that I really wanted to unpick in that story, and it seemed like a cool thing to try and do that using science fiction, as opposed to just an article or something. And you heard it this time, mate, “Why are these people setting fire to their own community? Why are they burning this Target when they’ve got jobs in the Target?”

But what was interesting about that, where the story comes from, is how the media, and social media in particular, reacted to this. Some looting started, and as soon as that happened, the narrative stopped being about police brutality and started being about looting and about how these kids were spoiled and entitled and aggressive and thugs and this stuff. And these are all the discussions that were going on in the media at the time that I really wanted to unpick in that story, and it seemed like a cool thing to try and do that using science fiction, as opposed to just an article or something. And you heard it this time, mate, “Why are these people setting fire to their own community? Why are they burning this Target when they've got jobs in the Target?”

And my point is these aren’t the community. The community is not built out of Targets. A community is not built from fucking shops and stores and shopping malls. And the character is even, he’s working through this in the book. And he talks about how he sees products come into the community be sold, and then the money from that goes straight out. Him and his friends are all still broke. They can’t afford to buy stuff in those shops. Even the guys that work in those shops hate it and aren’t making enough money to survive on, right?

And my point is these aren't the community. The community is not built out of Targets. A community is not built from fucking shops and stores and shopping malls. And the character is even, he's working through this in the book. And he talks about how he sees products come into the community be sold, and then the money from that goes straight out. Him and his friends are all still broke. They can't afford to buy stuff in those shops. Even the guys that work in those shops hate it and aren't making enough money to survive on, right?

So there’s no community if the money is going to large, multinational corporations. That’s not how a community works.

So there's no community if the money is going to large, multinational corporations. That's not how a community works.

Brian Merchant: And I like the vessel — that there’s this online community that you can get credit for, basically, livestreaming a raid on a shop.

Brian Merchant: And I like the vessel — that there's this online community that you can get credit for, basically, livestreaming a raid on a shop.

Tim Maughan: I wrote this before Twitch was a thing, man.

Tim Maughan: I wrote this before Twitch was a thing, man.

Brian Merchant: It demonstrates the fact that there is an audience, there’s a solidarity. It complicates this act of “looting,” and demonstrates that there’s a whole audience of people who both support this, who cheer it on–

Brian Merchant: It demonstrates the fact that there is an audience, there's a solidarity. It complicates this act of “looting,” and demonstrates that there's a whole audience of people who both support this, who cheer it on–

Tim Maughan: And also who hate it.

Tim Maughan: And also who hate it.

Brian Merchant: The hate-streamers.

Brian Merchant: The hate-streamers.

Tim Maughan: They’re watching because they’re racists. They want to see evidence that Black people are destroying their own communities. They’re excited to see that. And there’s an opportunity to sell advertising to them, and to sell advertising to the people that support the riots.

Tim Maughan: They're watching because they're racists. They want to see evidence that Black people are destroying their own communities. They're excited to see that. And there's an opportunity to sell advertising to them, and to sell advertising to the people that support the riots.

Obviously, it was very jarring to literally be watching a livestream from Unicorn Riot and people like that on Periscope and on Twitch and other platforms of actual riots taking place. This interface with these custom candy hearts floating everywhere with people’s names and icons and things. And that was almost exactly how I pictured this shit. And ridiculously, I wanted to do it in the most ridiculously dystopian over-the-top Running Man, Robocop kind of way.

Obviously, it was very jarring to literally be watching a livestream from Unicorn Riot and people like that on Periscope and on Twitch and other platforms of actual riots taking place. This interface with these custom candy hearts floating everywhere with people's names and icons and things. And that was almost exactly how I pictured this shit. And ridiculously, I wanted to do it in the most ridiculously dystopian over-the-top Running Man , Robocop kind of way.

And now, it’s like I’m sitting there two weeks ago watching it fucking happen. And my livestream is being interrupted by advertising for some shit.

And now, it's like I'm sitting there two weeks ago watching it fucking happen. And my livestream is being interrupted by advertising for some shit.

Brian Merchant: That seems to be a recurring theme here.

Brian Merchant: That seems to be a recurring theme here.

Tim Maughan: All this shit is actually happening.

Tim Maughan: All this shit is actually happening.

翻译自: https://onezero.medium.com/the-man-whose-science-fiction-keeps-turning-into-our-shitty-cyberpunk-reality-72108dccaaff

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