PBS高端访问:艾萨克森讲述数字革命的故事

 　　JUDY WOODRUFF: Next: He's written books about individuals who changed the game, from Benjamin Franklin to Albert Einstein to Steve Jobs.

　　But in his latest work, "The Innovators," Walter Isaacson pulls together a story about the group of creative minds who brought us into the digital age, from an English countess to a California hippie. Isaacson weaves the tale of the inventive thinkers who programmed computers and gave us the Internet.

　　I spoke² to Walter Isaacson a few days ago.

　　Walter Isaacson, thank you for talking with us.

　　WALTER ISAACSON, Author, "The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers³, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution": It's great to be back with you, Judy.

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: So, congratulations on the book.

　　You have mainly written about one person at a time. And you have mainly focused on history, politics. Why science and technology and why everybody who was involved?

　　WALTER ISAACSON: You know, those of us who are biographers know that we distort history sometimes, and we make it sound like it's a gal⁴ or a guy in a garage or a garret with a singular lightbulb moment, and one person changes things.

　　As you know, most innovation comes from people working together, collaborating⁵ in teams. So I wanted to show how groups of people brought together to form teams that created the digital revolution. I also think it's fun to understand where our technology comes from.

　　I mean, you and I love understanding American Revolution, but let's also understand the digital revolution, because that makes us more comfortable with our technology.

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: It's a little bit surprising. You start with a woman, Ada, countess of Lovelace.

　　WALTER ISAACSON: Yes.

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: Early 19th century. She is the daughter of Lord Byron, the poet.

　　WALTER ISAACSON: You know, Ada Lovelace to me is a framing theme for this book because she's the one who connects our humanities to our sciences.

　　She was a poet because her father was Lord Byron, but she was tutored mainly in mathematics. And so she loved connecting things like poetry to math and science. And she understands how punch cards can turn a calculating machine into a general purpose computer that can make music, can make notes, can make fabrics⁶, can make designs.

　　And that's the idea of the human imagination combined with technologies that really drives the digital age.

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: You jump ahead at that point in many ways to the next century, to the 20th century, early 20th century, and there are so many figures.

　　How, Walter Isaacson, did you decide who to focus on? Because there were a lot of people.

　　WALTER ISAACSON: Oh, yes, and a lot of people had to be left out.

　　But I took the 12 or so major inventions of the digital age, including the big computer, the transition to the microchip, the personal computer, the Internet, and those types of things, and said, who made the original leaps to get us there?

　　And I know that leaves some great people out, but what it does is, it takes the word innovation, which we overuse so much, it's become kind of drained of its meaning, and say, well, let's look at very specific teams of innovators and say, how did they think out of the box, how did they think different in order to make this particular leap that got us to the personal computer or the microchip?

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: Some fascinating stories here.

　　And, of course, you do get to some of the names later in the book we're familiar with, a Bill Gates, a Steve Jobs, who, of course, you written another book about.

　　But you also write about people most of us have not heard of, Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, whose photo is…

　　WALTER ISAACSON: Yes. A lot of people hear about Alan Turing soon because there's a wonderful movie coming out called "The Imitation Game."

　　He's the one who at Bletchley Park, England, during World War II helped create computers that broke the German wartime codes. He also comes up with this notion that machines maybe can think without us. He calls it the imitation game. We also sometimes call it the Turing test.

　　And that was a test for artificial intelligence. But the theme of the book I try to portray⁷ is that people we don't know as much about, they create ways to connect us more personally to our machines. And that's actually been more successful than this notion of artificial intelligence.

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: What set these people apart, Walter?

　　WALTER ISAACSON: I think they're rebellious⁸. They think a little bit differently.

　　They also have a sense of beauty. I mean, Steve Jobs knew how to — that beauty mattered. But you see that with people JCR Licklider, somebody nobody — I had hardly ever heard of. Licklider is building an air defense⁹ system at MIT in the '60s and '70s. And he creates graphical displays so that console jockeys could understand what IS happening on the screen.

　　And he creates networks so people can share information. And you see the seeds of the computer, the graphical computer and the Internet coming together with people we don't know enough about, like JCR Licklider.

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: And you also have, again, great anecdotes¹⁰ about people who were involved, who were almost there, who almost made it, but for one reason or another took a wrong turn, made a wrong decision.

　　WALTER ISAACSON: Mainly, the reason people who didn't succeed had trouble because they had trouble forming teams. They didn't know how to collaborate¹¹.

　　For example, there's John Vincent Atanasoff, who creates a wonderful circuit board in the basement of the Iowa State physics lab, and he sort of has the rudiments¹² of a computer, but he doesn't know how to get the punch card burners working and the mechanics working.

　　A guy named John Mauchly from the University of Pennsylvania comes by, sees it, but also picks up ideas in a dozen other places. He gets engineers together, like Presper Eckert, mechanics, six great women mathematicians¹³ to program it, and they form a collaborative team.

　　So they really created the first general purpose programmable computer, ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania.

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you want people to take away from this? You want them to be more excited, I know, about — we're all swimming in this digital revolution that we live in.

　　WALTER ISAACSON: You know, we're swimming in this digital revolution, but we don't how we got here. We don't know who invented the computer. We don't know who invented the Internet.

　　You know, those — if you want to be a great American, you have got to understand Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, how the American Revolution happened. I think if you want to be a good citizen of the digital age, it helps to feel comfortable with both the people and the ways of thinking that created the digital revolution.

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: And, finally, if you look at where we are in this digital revolution, are we near the end of it, based on your research? Are we just at the beginning?

　　WALTER ISAACSON: I think we're totally at the beginning.

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: Is something completely different right around the corner?

　　WALTER ISAACSON: Oh, I think there's always things right around the corner.

　　I think America is really well-positioned, because we do train people to be creative and sometimes resist authority, which helps in being an innovator¹. I think you're going to see for the next phase of the revolution all sorts of wonderful ways of connecting art and literature and journalism¹⁴ into new forms of digital expression, because the whole theme of my book is how the digital age keeps making things that are personal and that help connect us as humans.

　　So I think we're about to see that next wave occur.

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, I have a couple of more questions I want to ask you for online.

　　But, for right now, Walter Isaacson, the book is "The Innovators."

　　WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Judy.

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: We thank you.

　　WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you.

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: And there is more of our conversation online, including Isaacson's take on how balancing security and privacy is a key issue in the digital age. That's on the Rundown.

1 innovator   

n.改革者；创新者

参考例句：

• The young technical innovator didn't lose heart though the new system was not yet brought into a workable condition. 尽管这种新方法尚未达到切实可行的状况，这位青年技术革新者也没有泄气。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Caesar planned vast projects and emerged as a great innovator. 恺撒制定了庞大的革新计划。 来自英汉非文学 - 文明史

2 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

3 hackers   

n.计算机迷( hacker的名词复数 )；私自存取或篡改电脑资料者，电脑“黑客”

参考例句：

• They think of viruses that infect an organization from the outside.They envision hackers breaking into their information vaults. 他们考虑来自外部的感染公司的病毒，他们设想黑客侵入到信息宝库中。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Arranging a meeting with the hackers took weeks againoff-again email exchanges. 通过几星期电子邮件往来安排见面，他们最终同意了。 来自互联网

4 gal   

n.姑娘，少女

参考例句：

• We decided to go with the gal from Merrill.我们决定和那个从梅里尔来的女孩合作。
• What's the name of the gal? 这个妞叫什么？

5 collaborating   

合作( collaborate的现在分词 )； 勾结叛国

参考例句：

• Joe is collaborating on the work with a friend. 乔正与一位朋友合作做那件工作。
• He was not only learning from but also collaborating with Joseph Thomson. 他不仅是在跟约瑟福？汤姆逊学习，而且也是在和他合作。

6 fabrics   

织物( fabric的名词复数 )； 布； 构造； （建筑物的）结构（如墙、地面、屋顶）：质地

参考例句：

• cotton fabrics and synthetics 棉织物与合成织物
• The fabrics are merchandised through a network of dealers. 通过经销网点销售纺织品。

7 portray   

v.描写，描述；画(人物、景象等)

参考例句：

• It is difficult to portray feelings in words.感情很难用言语来描写。
• Can you portray the best and worst aspects of this job?您能描述一下这份工作最好与最坏的方面吗？

8 rebellious   

adj.造反的，反抗的，难控制的

参考例句：

• They will be in danger if they are rebellious.如果他们造反，他们就要发生危险。
• Her reply was mild enough,but her thoughts were rebellious.她的回答虽然很温和，但她的心里十分反感。

9 defense   

n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩

参考例句：

• The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
• The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。

10 anecdotes   

n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• amusing anecdotes about his brief career as an actor 关于他短暂演员生涯的趣闻逸事
• He related several anecdotes about his first years as a congressman. 他讲述自己初任议员那几年的几则轶事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 collaborate   

vi.协作，合作；协调

参考例句：

• The work gets done more quickly when we collaborate.我们一旦合作，工作做起来就更快了。
• I would ask you to collaborate with us in this work.我们愿意请你们在这项工作中和我们合作。

12 rudiments   

n.基础知识，入门

参考例句：

• He has just learned the rudiments of Chinese. 他学汉语刚刚入门。
• You do not seem to know the first rudiments of agriculture. 你似乎连农业上的一点最起码的常识也没有。

13 mathematicians   

数学家( mathematician的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? 你以为我们的数学家做不到这一点吗？ 来自英汉文学
• Mathematicians can solve problems with two variables. 数学家们可以用两个变数来解决问题。 来自哲学部分

14 journalism   

n.新闻工作，报业

参考例句：

• He's a teacher but he does some journalism on the side.他是教师，可还兼职做一些新闻工作。
• He had an aptitude for journalism.他有从事新闻工作的才能。