数字生活——理解二阶效应

作者用三个定律说明数字技术的进步使得现行法律与现实生活已经发生了脱节。

DIGITAL LIFE

数字生活

Understanding Second-Order Effects

  

理解二阶效应

 

  

Throughout modern history, technological breakthroughs regularly surpass the people who invent them. The gap between the potential and the humanly possible, the chief by-product of the Law of Disruption, inevitably leads to dramatic change in the short term. But the real transformation comes later, as human systems—economic, social, legal-struggle to catch up. This chapter introduces the Law of Disruption and its key drivers, Moore's Law and Metcalfe's Law. Together, they have built the foundation for our new existence, our digital life. Now comes the hard part: creating a new body of laws to regulate it, to keep the peace, and to ensure its prosperity.

  

纵观整个现代史，技术突破时常超过发明技术的人类。技术的潜能与现实的可能之间的鸿沟，颠覆定律的主要副产物，将不可避免地引发巨大的短期变化。但真正的变革是滞后的，因为人类制度——不管是经济的、社会的还是法律的——只能在后面努力追赶技术的步伐。本章介绍了颠覆定律及其主要要驱动力：摩尔定律和梅特卡夫定律。它们共同构成了我们现今存在方式，即数字生活的基础。随之而来的才是真正困难的工作：为了维护和平和确保经济繁荣而创造一个新的法律体系来规范它。

 

  

Killer Apps in The Middle Ages

  

中世纪的杀手级应用

 

  

Disruptive Technologies change the world. But not in the way you might think

  

颠覆性技术能改变世界，但并不以你所能想到的方式。

 

  

In the darkest days of the Middle Ages, a Germanic king adapted the rigid metal stirrups used in Asia, making them instead from flexible leather. Now soldiers could balance themselves on horseback and still fight, making them far more effective. The stirrup saved Europe, and these new mounted cavalry were celebrated forever after as knights. But that's just the beginning of the story. To maintain the new fighting force, knights needed a source of income. Rather than pay them himself, the king granted the knights the right to collect rents and other tributes from farmers in their domain. Feudalism, landed nobles, and serfdom were born. More knights required more land, and the king began to take it from the church. Church and state, and the rise of the latter, established a long-lasting pattern of interaction.

  

在中世纪最黑暗的时期，一位日耳曼国王开始采用来自亚洲地区的坚硬金属马镫来代替柔软的皮革马蹬。从此马背上的士兵在保持平衡的同时还能继续作战，这就极大地提高了战斗力。马镫拯救了欧洲，而这些马背上的骑兵则以骑士之名被传颂至今。但这只是事情的开始。为了维持这种新型的战斗力，骑士需要新的收入来源。为了不用自己支付费用，国王特许给骑士在各自领地内向农民征收地租和其他税金的特权。封建主义、拥有封地的贵族和农奴制由此产生。而越多的骑士需要越大的土地，因而国王开始从教会取得土地。教会和国家，及后者的兴起，建立了传承久远的社会模式。

 

  

The first-order effects of the stirrup were dramatic. Medieval society was saved. The Catholic Church survived and continued to provide social, cultural, and legal continuity with the long-dead Roman Empire. The king emerged as the first leader of a new and powerful empire, the forerunner of modern Europe. On Christmas Day in the year 800, he took the crown from Pope Leo III's hands as the pontiff was about to coronate him, and placed it on his own head. His name was Charlemagne-Charles Magnus, the Great-emperor of the Romans.

  

马镫的一阶效应已是非常巨大。中世纪社会得到了挽救。天主教也得以幸存，并在社会、文化和法律方面提供与灭亡已久的罗马帝国衔接。国王则成为这个新的强大帝国即现代欧洲前身的首任领袖。在800年的圣诞节，他从为他加冕的教皇利奥三世手中夺过王冠，戴在了自己头上。他就是神圣罗马帝国皇帝查理曼大帝。

 

  

The long-term consequences of Charlemagne's simple innovation were, in some sense, even more stunning. The social, economic, and legal systems that developed to support the mounted troops persisted for nearly a thousand years, long after the actual advantage of the stirrup had been neutralized. Charlemagne's empire, in some form, lasted until the age of Napoleon. Even today, you still can't buy property in parts of central London without paying tribute to the Duke of Westminster.

  

查理曼大帝简单的创新所产生的长期影响在某种意义上甚至更加了不起。为了支撑骑兵部队而形成的社会、经济和法律体制延续了将近一千年，在马镫的优越性消失后很长时期内还一直存在。查理曼帝国以某种形式一直延续到了拿破仑时代。即使到了今天，如果不向威斯敏斯特公爵纳税还仍然不能购买伦敦中心某些地带的资产。

 

  

The stirrup is a classic example of what I described ten years ago as a killer application, or "killer app"-a technological innovation whose introduction disrupts long-standing rules of markets or even whole societies. Killer apps establish new industries and transform existing ones. They can even create new empires. Their own inventors may have little idea of the uses for them that people will ultimately discover. And the real impact is often felt long after their introduction. The stirrup, crop rotation, reading glasses, iron rope, the steam engine, railroads, the telegraph, antibiotics, automobiles, the atom bomb, the semiconductor-this is just a short list of inventions whose dramatic introductions were followed by even more dramatic changes to the civilizations that used them.

  

马镫是我10年前描述过的“杀手级应用”的经典例子——这种技术创新入打破了长期存在的市场规则，甚至能打破整个社会制度。杀手级应用能创建新的产业，并改造现有的产业。它们甚至能创造一个新的帝国。发明者本人可能对这项技术的最终用途并没有多少概念。而且真正的影响经常是在发明产生以后很久才能被感受到。对某些技术而言，为采用它们对文明自身的改造要远大于它们本身产生的直接后果。马镫、轮耕技术、老花眼镜、铁索、蒸汽机、铁路、电报、抗生素、汽车、原子弹以及半导体——是这类技术中中很小的一部分。

 

  

Saying that the stirrup created medieval Europe is a stretch, but not a big one. As historian Lynn White Jr. put it, "Few inventions have been so simple as the stirrup, but few have had so catalytic an influence on history."

  

说马镫创造了中世纪欧洲可能有些言过其实，但并不算太严重。正如历史学家小林恩·怀特所说，“历史上极少有发明能如马镫这般简单，也极少能对历史起如此巨大的催化作用。”

 

  

THE THREE LAWS OF DIGITAL LIFE

  

数字生活的三大定律

 

  

Charlemagne had the stirrup. We have the computer.

  

查理曼大帝发明了马镫。而我们发明了计算机。

 

  

The information age, like the feudal age, began with a simple innovation. On November 6. 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president of the United States in a rout. Although Eisenhower was expected to defeat Adlai Stevenson, no one imagined so lopsided a victory. No one, that is, except a Census Bureau computer named Univac. Univac had been built to tally the census, but its operators programmed it instead to process election results. After only 1 percent of the vote had been counted, Univac correctly predicted an Eisenhower landslide.

  

信息时代和封建时代一样肇始于一个简单的创新。1952年11月6日，德怀特·戴维·艾森豪威尔高票当选美国总统。尽管人们已预料到艾森豪威尔能击败阿德莱·斯蒂文森，但没人料到会是这样压倒性的胜利。没有任何人，除了人口普查局的Univac电脑。Univac本来是用于处理人口普查数据的，但是操作员却输入了新程序来处理选举结果。当选票计数才不过进行了百分之一时，Univac已正确预测到了艾森豪威尔的压倒性胜利。

 

  

Univac weighed 16,000 pounds, performed about 1,000 calculations per second, and cost $750,000. It was the first commercially sold computer in the world, and the first to be used for business applications (General Electric programmed it to calculate its payroll in 1954). It was also the first to be programmed for a task it was not initially designed to perform-a trend that defines modern computing to this day. The Census Bureau's machine was the first; by 1957, forty-six had been sold.

  

Univac重约一万六千磅，每秒只能进行一千次运算，购置花费高达75万美元。这是全世界第一台商业销售的计算机，也是第一台应用于商业领域（1954年通用电气将它用于薪酬结算）的计算机。此外，它还是第一台被用于设计目的之外的计算机，而这一点已经成为现代计算机的主要特点。人口普查局的机器是售出的第一台；截止1959年共销售了46台。

 

  

Nearly sixty years after Eisenhower's election, there are now more computing devices in the world than there are people, and their numbers are doubling every few years. The semiconductor, or "chip," was first added to a calculator in 1967, to a toy in 1978, and to a toaster in 1983. A personal computer was first marketed in the early 1980s. Despite unfathomable advances in the computer's power and abilities, the price of computing has dropped steadily for thirty years. Today's PC costs 16 percent of what it did in 1981, but is nearly five hundred times more powerful. More than a billion have been sold.

  

在艾森豪威尔大选近60年后，世界上计算设备的数目已经超过了人口的数目，而且它们的数目每过几年就会翻番。半导体，或者说“芯片”，在1967年首次应用到计算器，1978年应用于玩具，1983年应用于烤箱。20世纪80年代早期，个人计算机首次出现在市场上。尽管计算机性能得到了难以想象的提高，但30年来计算价格稳步下降。现在个人电脑的价格只有1981年的16%，但性能却强了近500倍。目前销量已超过10亿台。

 

  

As chips have become cheaper and more prevalent, their impact has moved from the world of computers and high technology to every aspect of modern life. Computers are the central driver of productivity gains across industries. Software has become a key source of new consumer products and services. The average automobile now has more than one hundred microprocessors and its own operating system. Even product packaging is becoming intelligent. Soon, more than a trillion items will be able to send and receive data about their price, whereabouts. and expiration dates.

  

随着芯片价格的降低和流行，其影响范围已超出计算机和高技术领域而渗入到现代生活的方方面面。计算机是整个工业领域生产力提高的主要驱动力。软件成为新的消费类产品和服务的核心来源。现在，普通汽车上的微处理器数目已经超过了100个并拥有自己的操作系统。甚至连产品包装也智能化了。不久，超过1万亿件的商品都能发送和接收关于自身价格、去向及保质期的数据。

 

  

The ubiquity of computers in business, however, has been eclipsed by their takeover of our personal lives. As e-mail and Web browsing have given way to virtual reality games, intelligent cell phones, and social networking, we are each developing a second, parallel, existence. Human beings thrive on interaction, and computers have given us remarkable new tools to connect, collaborate, and communicate with one another. In 2008, consumer Internet usage surpassed business use for the first time, opening a gap that is expected to widen over the next decade. We have our real lives, and now we also have digital lives.

  

然而，虽然计算机在商业领域已经无处不在了，但是与全面接管我们的个人生活相比就显得相形见拙了。Email和网页浏览被虚拟现实游戏、智能手机以及社交网络所代替，每个人都获得了第二种平行的存在方式。个体间的交互是人类社会得以繁荣的奥秘，而计算机给我们提供了一种相互联系、协作及沟通的崭新手段。2008年，因特网的消费类应用首次超过了商务应用，这个差距预计在下一个十年中将进一步扩大。除了现实生活，我们现在还拥有了数字生活。

 

  

In our digital lives, we can simultaneously chat with friends in different time zones or explore alternative identities in role-playing games. We can let our computers scour the Internet looking for things that interest us, auctions for obscure collectibles, music by artists liked by people who like the same books as you do, or just random content (blogs, photo images, YouTube videos) fed into our personal home pages. And we are no longer tethered by wired connections. All of our information is now available wherever we go on a variety of devices. Nearly 20 percent of American homes had dropped landline service by 2009, relying entirely on cell phones. "Computing," as Nicholas Negroponte wrote in his 1996 classic, Being Digital, "is not about computers anymore. It is about living."

  

在数字生活中，我们可以同时和来自不同时区的朋友聊天或是在角色扮演游戏中体验另一种身份。通过计算机我们可以在互联网上搜索感兴趣的东西，竞拍少见的收藏品，收听和你喜欢同类书籍的人也喜爱的艺术家的音乐，或者只是为自己的个人主页随便添加点什么（博客、图片、YouTube视频等等）。我们不再受制于有线连接。无论走到哪里，我们都可以通过各种设备获取所有信息。截止 2009年，近20%的美国家庭已经取消了有线电话，转而依赖于手机。“计算，”正如尼古拉斯·尼葛洛庞帝在他1996年出版的经典著作《数字化生存》中写道，“不再只和计算机相关。而是关系到整个生活。”

 

  

Digital life is the unintended side effect of cheap computing power and the ubiquitous network standards known as the Internet. Initially invented in the 1970s, the Internet had the modest goal of connecting the mainframe computers of U.S. government agencies and defense contractors. As more computers joined the network, however, the Internet mutated into something far different and much more interesting. Today it connects billions of devices and billions of people. It moves information at ever-increasing speeds along a nearly infinite set of pathways, shortening distances and eliminating borders.

  

数字生活是廉价的计算能力和被称为因特网这种无所不在的网络标准的计划外副产品。因特网发明于20世纪70年代，其最初目的仅在于连接美国政府机构及其军事承包商的巨型机。然而，当越来越多的计算机加入网络后，因特网变异成了一种完全不同但又有意思得多的东西。现在，它连接着数以万亿的设备和人们。它沿着几乎无穷的路径以不停增长的速度传输着各种信息，缩短各种距离，消除各种边界。

 

  

Three related principles-Moore's Law, Metcalfe's Law, and the Law of Disruption-explain the power and promise of digital life. Taken together, they provide its natural laws-its physics-overseeing its unique forms of time, space, and gravity.

  

三条相关的原理——摩尔定律、梅特卡夫定律和颠覆定律——解释了数字生活的威力与前景。三者放到一起就造就了属于它们自己的自然定律—它们自己的物理学—创造了它们自己特有的时间、空间和万有引力。

 

  

Moore's Law: Faster, Cheaper, Smaller

  

摩尔定律：更快、更小、更廉价

 

  

In 1965, Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel, made an astonishing prediction. In a brief article titled "Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits," he claimed that the number of transistors on his chips would double every year or two without increasing their cost to users. His promise is now known as Moore's Law: every twelve to eighteen months, the processing power of computers doubles while price holds constant.

  

1965年，英特尔的创始人戈登·摩尔做了一个惊人的预言。在一篇题为“在集成电路中集成更多元件”的短文中，他声称芯片上的晶体管数目每隔一两年就会翻一番，同时还不会增加用户的成本。他的这个承诺现在被称为摩尔定律：每隔12到18个月，计算机的处理能力就会翻番，而同时价格则保持不变。

 

  

Moore's Law is the result of technological breakthroughs that reduce the size of transistors, coupled with manufacturing improvements that greatly reduce the frequency of defects. With each new generation, producers yield slightly larger chips made with slightly smaller transistors. Neither Moore nor his competitors have yet to break Moore's Law, and there is every reason to believe they will continue to deliver on it for the rest of our working lives.

  

摩尔定律是缩小晶体管尺寸的技术突破以及大大地降低了缺陷出现的频率工艺改进带来的结果。厂商在每一代新产品中都获得了由略小一点的晶体管组成的略大一点的芯片。摩尔和他的竞争者都还没能打破摩尔定律，而且我们有很充分的理由相信摩尔定律会在我们退休前一直成立。

 

  

The application of Moore's Law boils down to one remarkable fact: computers continue to get faster, cheaper, and smaller. As a result, they become more powerful by a factor of two with every succeeding generation. Computer memory, data storage, and data communications have their own rough approximations of Moore's Law. Improvements in fiber-optic cables (which transmit data at the speed of light) and the development of optical switches translate to data communication costs that are rapidly approaching zero for most uses. One fiber-optic cable can carry millions of simultaneous telephone calls.

  

应用一下摩尔定律就会导致一个惊人的事实：计算机将会变得越来越快、越来越便宜、越来越小。结果是每一代新产品的处理能力都会增强一到两倍。计算机内存、数据存储设备和数据通讯设备也有着它们自己的类似定律。光纤（能以光速传递数据）以及光学交换技术的进步导致数据传输成本对普通用户而言迅速趋近于零。一根光纤可以同时传输数百万路语音通话。

 

  

Total data storage has also expanded exponentially. In 1980, IBM sold refrigerator-sized disks for its mainframe computers that stored about 1.2 gigabytes of data at a cost of $200,000. Today, Wal-Mart sells 4-gigabyte drives-enough to store about 3,000 books-that are the size of a paper clip and cost only $5.00. GE announced in early 2009 a breakthrough that will increase the storage capacity of CDs by 100,000 percent. IBM is working on technology that will store data in individual atoms and build circuits out of a single molecule.

  

数据存储设备获得了同样的指数增长。在1980年，IBM出售的巨型机用磁盘，尺寸接近于冰箱，只能存储约1.2GB数据，购置成本是20万美元。到了今天，沃尔玛里出售的4GB U盘（已足能存下3000本书）只要花费5美元。通用电气在2009年早期宣布了一项突破，宣称能将CD的容量扩充1000倍。而IBM正在研究如何将数据存储到单个原子上，以及如何用单个分子来建造电路。

 

  

Because chips are the raw material in the construction of digital life, the implications of the faster-cheaper-smaller principle are profound. Consider a few examples:

  

因为芯片是构建数字生活的原材料，更快-更廉价-更小这一原理所隐含的意义非常深远。想象一下如下例子：

 

  

1. Deflation. Basic commodities like oil, electricity, or cotton tend to become more expensive over time, with cost increases working their way through the rest of the system. Computer prices. on the other hand, have stayed the same, or gone down. Miniaturization leads to computers in more and more products, increasing economies of scale and pushing costs down even faster.

1.通货紧缩。石油、电力或者棉花等基本商品会随着加工深度的增加而变得更加昂贵，因为加工的每一步都会增加成本。另一方面，计算机的价格则会保持原有水平或者有所降低。小型化会使得计算机出现在越来越多的产品中，这就增强了规模经济从而使成本下降得更快。

 

2. Abundant resources. Oil, natural gas, coal, and many of the sources of electricity are nonrenewable-as they are used, they are also used up, raising prices and limiting further increases in productivity. But the major ingredient of semiconductors is silicon, the second most abundant element on earth.

2.资源丰富。石油、天然气、煤炭和和许多电力资源都是不可再生的——一旦被使用了，就被用掉了，从而会引起价格上涨并限制生产力的进一步提高。但是半导体的主要成分是硅，一种地球上含量第二丰富的元素。

 

作者用三个定律说明数字技术的进步使得现行法律与现实生活已经发生了脱节。

3.Zero marginal cost. For most manufactured goods, such as automobiles, price is based on the sum of the cost of developing the goods (research and development as well as marketing), the marginal cost of producing each item (including materials, distribution, and customer service), and a profit margin. Software-the programming that tells computers what to do-can be marketed, manufactured, and distributed electronically, giving it a marginal cost that is close to zero.

3.零边际成本。对于汽车等绝大多数产品而言，其价格为产品的开发成本（研发及营销费用）、生产该产品的边际成本（包括原材料、物流与售后服务成本），以及边际利润之和。软件——告诉计算机做些什么的程序——可以用完全电子化方式来营销、制造和分发，这使得其边际成本趋近于零。

 

Perhaps the most compelling example of Moorc's Law in action is not in business at all, but in the world of toys. From the moment in early 1999 when Sony announced its second-generation home video game console, the PlayStation 2, it was clear this would be no mere plaything. PS2 games provide three-dimensional animations that are convincing enough to give many adults motion sickness. Because the games are networked, PS2 users around the world can play them against each other, building powerful communities of users who, in many cases, are coauthors of new game modules or other new uses for the software. Sony sold more than 1 million PS2s in Japan on the first day they were available. To date, Sony has sold more than 150 million PS2s.

也许摩尔定律发挥作用最有说服力的例子不是在商业领域而是在玩具领域。1999年早期，索尼发布了它的第二代游戏机PlayStation2，PS2显然不仅仅是个玩具。它提供了炫目的三维动画效果，使得许多成年人都玩得头晕脑胀。因为里面的游戏可以联网，全世界的PS2玩家都可以相互PK，从而形成了庞大的社区，社区里的成员共同创作了许多游戏模块，发现了许多软件的新用法。在发布的第一天，索尼仅在日本就售出了超过一百万台PS2。迄今为止，PS2已累计销售了超过一亿五千万台。

 

Built fifty years after the Univac, the custom processor in the PS2 can execute more than six billion instructions per second. Roughly speaking, that makes the PS2 the equivalent of 22 million Univacs. That many Univacs would fill an area larger than the city of Seattle, and in 1952 would have cost more than $16 trillion, considerably more than the current gross domestic product of the Uniled States. The PS2, on the other hand, is the size of a small laptop computer. It sells for $99.

PS2比Univac晚了50年诞生，它的处理器每秒钟能执行超过六十亿条指令。粗略地讲，PS2的处理能力相当于两千两百万台Univac。这么多的Univac放到一起的话，其占地面积将超过西雅图市，而在1952年制造这么多Univac的花费将超过十六万亿美元，大大超过了美国目前的国内生产总值。另一方面，PS2的大小仅仅相当于一台小小的笔记本电脑，而每台仅售99美元。

 

Seven years later, in 2006, Sony launched the PlayStation 3. The PS3 features even more lifelike graphics, full networking capability, and the ability to download and play high-definition movies. Thanks to Moore's Law, PS3 is thirty times more powerful than PS2. That translates to about 660 million Univacs, enough to fill the entire state of Washington. And their cost, in 1952 dollars, would exceed the total money supply of the world.

七年后的2006年，索尼又发布了PlayStation3。PS3拥有更逼真的图形效果，全面的联网功能，还能下载和播放高清电影。受惠于摩尔定律，PS3的处理能力是PS2的三十倍。换成Univac的话则相当于六亿六千万台，放到一起能填满整个华盛顿州。而建造它们的花费按照1952年的美元价值计算将超过全世界的货币供应量。

 

Metcalfe's Law: Value Expands Exponentially

梅特卡夫定律：价值呈指数增长

While those numbers are settling in, consider the second defining principle of digital life. Metcalfe's Law, formulated by networking pioneer Robert Metcalfe, explains a phenomenon anyone with a telephone already understands. The more people you can reach, the more reasons you find to reach them. One telephone is useless. A few phones have limited value. A billion phones create a vast network. As the number of connected devices in any network increases. the number of possible connections between them grows exponentially. Each new connection, therefore, adds far more value than the one that preceded it. To paraphrase Metcalfe's findings, the usefulness of a network is the square of the number of users connected to it.

在花时间去适应这些数目时，不妨再考虑一下定义了数字生活的第二条原理。网络先驱罗伯特·梅特卡夫表述的梅特卡夫定律，它解释了电话用户早已了解的一个现象。如果你可以联系到越多的人，你就会有越多的理由去联系他们。单独一部电话是毫无用处的。少数几部电话价值也很有限。而10亿部电话则能建立起一个庞大的网络。随着连接到网络中设备数目的增加，它们之间可能的连接数则以指数方式增长。因此，每个新连接带来的价值都远远超出它之前的连接所带来的。换个说法的话，梅特卡夫这个发现的意思是，网络的用处按连接到其中用户数目的平方增长。

 

The key to Metcalfe's law is the knee in its curve, the point at which there are enough users so that each new node adds not a few but a few million new connections. Here's how it works. If you have a network of two telephones, the total number of possible connections is two (I call you, you call me). Add a third phone and we add not two but four additional links, still not very exciting. The millionth new phone, however, adds not two or even two hundred but two million new potential calls, making the network even more attractive for the next million users, and the millions after that. Add three-way and conference-calling features, and the number of possible connections explodes.

梅特卡夫定律的关键在于曲线的拐点，在拐点上用户数目已经多到每增加一个新节点将产生不是几个而是几百万个新连接。它的工作原理是这样的。如果你拥有一个只含两部电话的网络，那么总共可能的连接数是2（我打给你，你打给我）。如果增加第三部电话，那么增加的不是2个，而是4个额外的连接，这也许仍然不是那么激动人心。但是如果增加的是第一百万部电话，那么增加的将不是2个甚或200个，而是200万个新的潜在电话，这使得网络对下个一百万用户更有吸引力，依此类推。如果再加上三方通话和电话会议等功能，那么可能连接的数目将再有一个爆炸性的增长。

 

Networks-railroads, computers, or individuals speaking a particular language-exert a kind of magnetic pull. The more users, the stronger the pull. Reaching the inflection point gives the network increasing momentum, or what is sometimes called "the tipping point." Eventually absent any economic or technical constraints, networks grow to the point where every possible connection is made. At that point they become so much a part of our lives that they are almost invisible. To reach the tipping point, however, networks must attract as many users as quickly as possible, drawing in the next, bigger, wave. The best way to do that is to keep the cost of entry low, perhaps by subsidizing or giving away equipment the user needs to connect and then charging little for access and use.

网络——不管是铁路网、计算机网络还是说某种特定语言的人群-会产生一种磁力。用户越多，则磁力越强。用户数量达到拐点时，网络将获得越来越强的发展动力，这个点有时也被称作“转折点”。最后，由于没有了经济或技术上的任何约束，网络规模将大到包含所有可能的连接。达到这个点后，它们就成了生活中不可或缺的一部分，我们会几乎感觉不到它的存在。然而，为了达到转折点，网络必须尽快吸引尽可能多的用户，吸引下一个更大的浪潮。达成这个目标的最优方法是尽量降低接入门槛，比如可以补贴甚至免费赠送网络接入设备，然后再收取很少的接入和使用费用。

 

For information technology, Moore's Law makes it relatively easy to keep the costs of connection low. Digital networks are built on hardware that gets cheaper all the time, allowing new applications to take full advantage of Metcalfe's law. That's one important reason digital networks have developed so much faster than earlier networks like, say, the railroad or the telephone, where giving away free service wasn't an option. These early technologies also didn't benefit from the additive value of standardization. Railroads in the United States did not settle on a uniform gauge until the 1880s, making interconnections between lines in the North and South complicated, slow, and expensive. Telephones added dials only in 1931, though the need for human operators had constrained growth for some time. Without selfdialing, today's phone system would require more operators than there are human beings to work it.

对信息技术而言，摩尔定律使得它能相对容易地保持低廉的接入成本。数字网络建立在越来越廉价的硬件之上，这使得新应用能充分利用梅特卡夫定律带来的优势。这是数字网络能发展得比铁路网或电话网等更迅速的重要原因，因为之前的网络无法提供免费的服务。此外，这些早期技术还不能得益于标准化产生的附加价值。美国铁路直到十九世纪八十年代才采用统一的轨幅，这就使得南北方铁路间的互连不但非常复杂而且缓慢、昂贵。而电话直到1931年才有了拨号盘，但是对接线员的需求将它的发展耽误了一段时间。如果不能直接拨号，现在的电话系统将需要比全世界人口还多的接线员。

 

The protocols for exchanging infomation over the Internet are both standardized and more robust. New applications simply grow their user bases on top of the existing network infrastructure. The more users there are, the more appealing the application becomes, a phenomenon that economists refer to as "network effects." As demonstrated by applications such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, network effects in digital life are easier to establish than in the physical world. YouTube and Facebook, for example, reached the top ten most visited Web sites in 2008, only three years after being launched. With the cost of the network paid for by its customers, Internet phone company Skype signed up 400 million users in its first five years. Its software actually improves as each new user downloads it.

在因特网上交换信息所用的协议不但是标准化的而且更加鲁棒。新的应用只需简单地在现有网络基础设施之上培育用户群。用户越多，则应用更吸引人，这个现象被经济学家称之为网络效应。Youtube、Facebook和Twitter等应用已经证明，在数字世界中比在物理世界中更容易产生网络效应。例如，Youtube和Facebook在2008年成为访问量排名前10的网站，但这时网站开通才不过三年。由于网络成本有消费者来承担，网络电话公司Skype的注册用户数在五年就达到了4亿。新用户不停地下载，事实上相当于软件在不停地获得改进。

 

The Law of Disruption:

颠覆定律：

The Distribution of Change Is Uneven

变革的分布是不均匀的

As Moore's Law continues its relentless journey into the realm of smaller, cheaper, and faster, new applications arrive more quickly. As they do, Metcalfe's Law is there to spread them around Together, Moore's Law and Metcalfe's Law have created a new environment-the world of digital life. It goes beyond the creation of a first- and now second-generation of Web-based products, services, and devices. Digital life is a virtual location where relationships are formed, business is conducted, and new products and services made entirely of information are designed, launched, and consumed.

当摩尔定律继续马不停蹄地朝更小、更快、更便宜方向前进时，新的应用也在更快地推出。梅特卡夫定律则负责传播它们。摩尔定律和梅特卡夫定律共同创造了一个全新的环境-数字世界。它将超越第一代以及当今第二代基于Web的产品、服务和设备。数字世界是一个虚拟的场所，在那里可以建立人际关系，进行商业活动，并可以设计、发布和消费完全由信息构成的新产品和新服务。

 

As with other great innovations, however, human beings and social institutions need time to adjust to this new reality. The stirrup quickly transformed military strategy, but its success led to conflicts between church and state, between kings and their subjects, and between new landowners and subsistence-level farmers. The huge social changes wrought by the stirrup took centuries to play out. The same is true of later inventions. The steam engine ushered in the industrial age, but also generated a century of wars over the ownership of raw materials and access to new markets. The invention of nuclear weapons dramatically ended World War II, but left the world in perpetual anxiety about the potential for total annihilation.

然而，和其他的重大创新一样，人类和社会机构需要时间来适应这个新的现实。马镫迅速改变了军事战略，但是它的成功导致了教会和政府、国王和臣民以及新兴地主和勉强糊口的农民之间的冲突。马镫引起的巨大社会变革花了几个世纪才完成。之后的发明也同样如此。蒸汽机不仅开启了工业时代，还引发了延续近一个世纪的争夺原材料和新市场的战争。核武器的发明虽然戏剧性地结束了第二次世界大战，但是使得世界永远坠入人类大灭绝的忧虑之中。

 

In the gap between the speed with which people respond to change and the much greater potential of the technologies we invent, the greatest conflicts in human history occur. This unavoidable struggle between old and new is explained by the third law of digital life: the Law of Disruption. According to the Law of Disruption, technology changes exponentially, but social, economic, and legal systems change incrementally. As the new world runs increasingly ahead of the old, social systems invariably break down, only to be dramatically reinvented to better suit the new environment to which human beings have already relocated. Periodic upheavals are unavoidable; unexpected and unintended phenomena are natural by-products.

人类历史上最激烈的冲突总是出现在人类对变革的反应速度与我们发明的技术拥有的巨大潜能之间的鸿沟中。新旧之间这场不可避免的斗争可以通过数字生活的第三条定律-颠覆定律进行解释。根据颠覆定律，技术呈指数增长，而社会、经济和法律体制则只能逐步变化。由于新世界日渐领先于旧世界，社会体制终归会失灵，这时只能大刀阔斧地重新确立一个新制度，以更好地适应人类早已身处其中的新环境。周期性的动荡是不可避免的；无法预料的和计划外的现象是自然的副产物。

 

In some sense, the Law of Disruption codifies what we have already learned from a thousand years of killer apps. Their initial impact can be dramatic-even revolutionary. But the real change may come years later. In the long run, as human beings reorder their lives to adjust to the new realities, the second-order effects of innovation are both more dramatic and more systemic.

从某种意义上说，颠覆定律是对我们从上千年历史上的杀手级应用中汲取的教训所做的归纳。它们产生的最初影响可能是巨大的-甚或是具有革命性的。但是真正的变革可能在多年之后才发生。从长远来看，当人类重新安排他们的生活来适应新的社会现实时，创新的二阶效应不但会更巨大而且更系统。

 

Ten years into the Internet revolution. we're only just starting to see the impact of the Law of Disruption. Newspapers, which originally shrugged off digital technology as a novelty, are fighting for their lives. Manufacturers now routinely source their materials and even their processes from a global market of suppliers. Even leading high-tech companies-including those whose products started the chain reaction-sometimes find themselves outpaced by entrepreneurs with little more than a good idea.

因特网革命已经过了十年，而我们才刚开始考虑颠覆定律的影响。报纸最初只把数字技术看作一种新奇事物而不予理会，而现今它们正为自身的生存而挣扎。制造业目前例行地从全球供应市场获取原材料，甚至加工过程。即使是领头的高科技公司-正是它们其中的某些产品催生了链式反应-有时也发现自己被一些可以说仅有一个好想法的企业家所超越。

 

Still, the most difficult change has only begun. As digital life evolves a culture and an economy that fit its new reality, it is increasingly clear that the legal system of the old world doesn't work anymore. Our current laws were forged during the Industrial Revolution, the last great technological leap. They are built on assumptions about ownership, citizenship, and limits of time and distance that don't apply in digital life.

然而，最艰巨的变革才刚刚开始。当数字生活使得文化和经济逐渐演变至一个能适应新世界的形态时，旧法律体系就日益显得无法适应形势了。当今的法律体系成型于工业革命，也就是上一个巨大的技术跃变时期。它们建立在并不适用于数字生活的所有权、公民权以及时空距离的观念之上。

 

Just as the Industrial Revolution replaced the feudal law of medieval Europe with a new law of merchants and markets, the information age is forging its own legal principles, ones better suited to regulate the new activities, relationships, and transactions it supports. In the past ten years, conflicts over digital citizenship, global electronic commerce, and rights to new information products and services have strained an already fragile legal system. Digital life brings with it profound opportunities, but the systems in place to oversee it have reached the breaking point, Our social, economic, and legal institutions now face a wrenching transformation.

正如工业革命用商业和市场的新法律代替了中世纪欧洲的封建法律，信息时代也逐步建立起自己的法律准则，它将更适合用来规范新的活动、关系以及事务。在过去十年中，关于数字公民权、全球电子商务以及新的信息产品和服务的权利的冲突使早已脆弱的法律体系更为紧张。数字生活为我们带来了巨大的机遇，但是现有的监管体系已经到了崩溃的极限。社会、经济和法律机构正面临着一场痛苦的变革。

 

AT THE ACCIDENT-PRONE INTERSECTION OF INNOVATION AND LAW

在创新与法律间事故高发的交汇点

Business and economics have already been remade by digital technology Innovation is now reinventing law. The Law of Disruption is running head-on into the statutes, regulations, judicial opinions, and treaties that today regulate businesses and consumers in their digital lives. So far, law has shaped (and sometimes distorted) the key features of digital life. Now the process is going the other way.

商业与经济早已被数字技术重新改造。现在创新正在重新发明法律。颠覆定律正在与规范当今商业活动与消费者数字生活的各种法规、规章、司法解释和条约发生正面碰撞。到目前为止，法律决定（在某些情况下是扭曲）了数字生活的关键特征。现在，相反的过程正在发生。

 

Dramatic change is unavoidable. The processes and institutions that create laws are slow and methodical, replete with redundant checks and balances. The authority of regional and national governments is generally limited, with some rights reserved for local institutions. In most jurisdictions, legislation requires passage in both an upper and a lower body. Party politics and the influence of lobbyists and other nongovernmental organizations often stalemate each other, keeping real reform at bay. These controls reduce the risk of tyranny but they also create a system that is ill-fitted to respond to the rapidly evolving needs of citizens living a digital life.

剧烈的变革是不可避免的。制定法律的过程与制度是缓慢而有条不紊的，具有充分的检验与权衡。地方与国家政府的权威通常是受限制的，某些权利只属于地方机构。在多数司法系统中，立法需要在一个上级以及下级实体中全部获得通过。政党政治与游说集团以及其他非政府机构势力的影响经常相持不下，使得真正的改革被搁浅。这些控制降低了独裁统治的风险，但是同时，它创造的体系无法适应数字时代公民快速变化的需求。

 

Courts and judges are even less well suited than legislators to bring the law up to date. The job of the judiciary is to interpret the law, not to improve it. Judges in most courts are generalists, trained only in a process of conflict resolution applicable to a wide range of problems. Few understand modern technology. When forced to weigh in on problems at the border of physical and digital life, courts have limited access to outside expertise. Even in the best of circumstances, judges can solve only the particular conflicts of the parties standing before them. They cannot reach out to answer or even raise the larger questions.

在革新法律以适应时代这一点上，法院和法官甚至比立法机构还要差。法官的任务是解释法律而非改善法律。在绝大多数法庭上，法官都是多面手，受训调节适用于很大范围问题的冲突调解。几乎没有懂现代技术的。当被迫权衡介于现实生活与数字生活之间的问题时，法院只有很少的外部专家资源可用。即使在最好的情形下，法官只能调解他们直接面对的当事人之间的特定冲突。他们不能延伸出去解答更大范围内的问题，甚至连提出问题都做不到。

 

Faced with the daunting task of reconciling existing law with the law of Disruption, judges are understandably frustrated. In the famous 1984 Betamax case, movie studios sued Sony, the maker of the first home videocassette recorder, claiming that its very existence violated their right to control the use of entertainment content. The Supreme Court disagreed. "One may search the Copyright Act in vain for any sign that the elected representatives of the millions of people who watch television every day have made it unlawful to copy a program for later viewing at home," the Court wrote, "or have enacted a flat prohibition against the sale of machines that make such copying possible." Rejecting the movie studios' demand that the Court ban the VCR, the justices directed the studios to look elsewhere for relief. "It may well be that Congress will take a fresh look at this new technology, just as it so often has examined other innovations in the past. But it is not our job to apply laws that have not yet been written."

法官面对调和现行法律与颠覆定律这一艰巨的任务会感到相当沮丧，这是可以理解的。在1984年著名的Betamax案件中，电影制片厂控诉第一个生产家庭录像设备的厂商索尼公司，声称这类设备的存在侵犯了他们对娱乐内容使用的控制权。然而最高法院并不赞同。“人们可以在版权法案中徒劳地搜寻，但是数百万每天都看电视的的人选出来的代表是不可能让在家里录制节目供以后观看的行为成为是非法的，”法庭写道，“也没有制定针对具备录制功能的设备的禁销令。”因而驳回了电影制片厂禁止VCR的请求，法官建议电影制片厂寻求其他的解决方法。“国会很有可能会对这种新技术有全新的看法，因为它过去经常审查其他创新。但是，应用还没有诞生的法律则不是我们所应该做的。”

 

Faced with disruptive technology, as Betamax demonstrates, eoonomic forces of thc old world always resist the transformation to a new legal paradigm, pitting innovation against the dusty laws of the past. Digital technology is hardly the first innovation to force policymakers to choose between the two. In the United States, the creation of national railroads and the concentration of capital they made possible inspired the Progressive movement, which fought to reclaim government, at least in part, from a few powerful corporations. President Theodore Roosevelt embraced the Progressive agenda and broke up the monopolies, not because he was a liberal but because he believed it was a necessary safety valve to avoid revolution. His fear was well founded. In Russia, a very different kind of uprising replaced the aristocracy of the czars with that of the Soviet Politburo. One transformation was largely nonviolent. The other was not.

正如Betamax案件所显示的那样，当面对颠覆性的技术时，旧世界的经济力量总是会抵制法律系统做出变革，而让创新与陈旧的法律进行较量。数字技术不是第一个迫使政策制定者在两者之间做出选择的创新。在美国，国家铁路网的建立使得资本的集中成为可能，这引发了进步运动，这个运动的目的是至少部分地从几个巨型公司手里收回控制权。总统西奥多·罗斯福接受了进步运动的议程，打破了垄断，这不仅因为他是自由派人士，还因为他相信这是避免革命必不可少的安全阀。他的这种担忧有充分的理由的。在俄国，一场截然不同的革命使得沙皇的贵族统治被苏维埃政权所替代。美国的变革在很大程度上是非暴力的。但俄国的却并非如此。

 

We stand today at a similar crossroads. At the accident-prone intersection of innovation and law, clashes between business and consumers, business and government, and governments and their citizens are growing in frequency and in volume. Fights have broken out over information ownership, network neutrality, privace, spam, wiretapping, pornography, and gambling. These and hundreds of other struggles pit laws written during the industrial age against the Law of Disruption. As in every earlier conflict of its kind, the outcome is certain. A new body of law, one better suited to our digital lives, will ultimately emerge. Only the timing and the path we'll take to get there are in doubt.

今天我们又站在了相似的十字路口。在创新与法律这个事故高发的交汇点，企业与消费者、企业与政府、政府与公民之间的冲突日益频繁，数目也日渐增多。斗争发生在信息所有权、网络中立、隐私、垃圾信息、窃听、色情和赌博等各个方面。这些以及许多其他斗争使得制定于工业时代的法律与颠覆定律进行了较量。类似于所有早期的这类冲突，结果是肯定的。一套更适合数字生活的新法典终将问世。只有时机及路径的选择是不确定的。

 

Business leaders can no longer separate innovation from the laws that circumscribe it. The design of new products and services, increasingly launched on a worldwide basis, must follow the rules of hundreds of potential regulators, including local tax authorities, price-setting boards, advertising overseers,

商业领袖已不能再把创新本身和对它进行限制的法律分开。由于新产品和新服务的发布日益被置于世界性平台之上，这使得在设计时就必须考虑到需要遵循许多潜在监管部门制定的规则，比如当地税务部门、定价部门、广告监管部门、……