Viewpoint: How to invent in an age of information overload
Source :BBC: By Maria Popova 2012年11月21日
Editor, Brain Pickings
Computers help store knowledge, but Ms Popova believes humans still need to curate it
電腦幫助知識的儲存，但波波娃女士認為，人類仍然需要組織它
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The confessions of a late adopter
採納者後來坦承
In 1945, Vannevar Bush, the then-director of the United States Office of Scientific Research and Development, penned a poignant and prescient essay titled "As We May Think."
In it, he explores the challenges of information overload in an era of rapid technological innovation.
在1945年，萬尼瓦爾·布什，當時美國科研和發展辦公室主任，寫了一篇深切先見之作 題為“當我們可以思想”
在當中，他探討了信息過載、快速的技術創新時代，所帶來的挑戰。
More than half a century before blogging, instagramming, tweeting, and the rest of today's ever-proliferating means of producing content, Bush laments the unmanageable scale of the recorded human experience.
博客，微博，instagram ，推特 及其他不斷增殖產生內容的方式已超過半個世紀前的量，布什感嘆記載人類經驗已產生難以控制的規模。
He writes: "The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record."
他寫道：“困難似乎是，我們過度發布延伸的觀點和現今有趣事務呈現的種類出版物，已經遠遠超出了我們目前的能力，實際使用的記錄沒有這麼多。”
He goes on to envision something called the "memex" - from "memory" and "index" - a kind of desk-sized personal hard drive decades before those became a common way of organising information.
“他繼續展望某種稱為”麥麥克斯（memex）“ 的東西 - 來自 ”記憶“和”索引“ - 那些成為一種普遍組織信息的方式以前的一種桌面大小尺寸的硬盤驅動器。
A user would store all of his books, photographs, film reels, and so forth in the memex.
使用者可以儲存他所有的書籍 照片 影片 等物件在 memex 裡
In making this personal library navigable and useful, Bush emphasised the importance of what we now call hyperlinks and metadata - information about the information, often based on associations.
為使這個人圖書館可駕馭和有用，布什強調，我們現在所謂的超鏈接和後設資料的信息，這些資料的訊息往往是基於連結的重要性。
He marvels at the state of technology, where microfilm compression would soon allow for the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica to fit in the volume of a matchbox.
他驚訝於縮微膠片壓縮技術，能很快的讓整個大英百科全書，儲存於如一個火柴盒量大小的狀態。
Making connections
建立連接
The Harvard scientist Sri Kosuri recently spoke about his team's groundbreaking feat of encoding the world's first book onto a DNA molecule. He said that if all the world's existing information, which amounts to an estimated 1.8 trillion hard drives, were encoded on DNA, it would be the size of a pencil.
最近哈佛科學家斯里蘭卡Kosuri談到他團隊的世界第一本DNA分子編碼的書突破性的壯舉。他說，如果世界上所有現行的資料，估計約1.8萬億硬盤驅動器的容量大小，能編碼在DNA上，將是一個鉛筆大小的尺寸。
So we've come a long way. But Bush admonished that as much as we may be able to compress the information and automate its retrieval, that's only half the equation - the other half is making connections, which can only take place in the mind of the memex user and cannot be outsourced to the machine itself.
因此，我們已經走過了很長的路。但布什告誡我們能夠壓縮的信息和自動化檢索那麼多，但這只有一半的平衡 - 另一半是使其連接，這些只能發生在麥麥克斯（memex）用戶的頭腦中，並不能外包給機器本身。
This, I believe, is as true today as it was then. And it is the defining characteristic of what we often call "creativity" - this combinatorial process that brings together existing ideas and bits of knowledge and memories and information into new combinations.
我相信，今日的真實是過去成就的。它的標誌性特徵就是我們通常所說的“創意”，這個組合的過程匯集了現有概念和豐富的知識，記憶信息的思想以組成新的組合 -。
One of the most familiar examples of this is Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press. The common tale implies a search for a solution to a problem, followed by a Eureka moment, and the transfer of technology from the wine press to the printing press.
其中一個最熟悉的例子是約翰內斯古騰堡印刷機的發明。常見的故事蘊涵著尋找一個解決問題的方法，即突然靈光一現，遂將酒榨的技術轉換成印刷機。
But Gutenberg's innovation was the result of far more sophisticated "associative indexing," to use Vannevar Bush's term.
Gutenberg invented a printing press using movable metal type which was used to create dozens of bibles
He didn't just merge the wine press with the idea of movable type. He sampled from a much wider array of technologies and fields.
但古騰堡的創新是使用萬尼瓦爾·布什的方式更為深沉複雜的“關聯索引的結果”。
古騰堡發明印刷機使用金屬活字印刷，這已用來製建數十個聖經
他不只是合併的酒榨轉為活字印刷術的想法。他採用更廣泛的陣列技術和領域來嘗試。
From chemistry, he created a new and better kind of ink that was more resilient than anything used before. From metallurgy, he built a metal type that was not just easily cast but also had a consistent look. From the concept of division of labour and service design, he enlisted an army of workers in a well-oiled machine that produced books at an unprecedented rate.
運用化學，他創造了一個新的更好的一種油墨，比之前使用的任何東西更有彈性。從冶金技術，他建立了一個金屬型，不只能輕鬆地投擲，也有一致的外觀。從分工的勞動和服務的設計理念，他如同徵募了一群如軍隊般的工人使用一個運轉良好的機器，書以前所未有的速度出產。
It was the convergence of all these domains of knowledge that made the printing press efficient enough to be a success.
Fast-forward half a millennium and, the computer is a near-identical tale, combining a number of existing technologies, all of which were in place by 1918, but which weren't combined together into the first working computer until nearly three decades later.
A great curator, to me, is someone who takes... bits of information and transmutes them into useful knowledge. ”
它是所有這些領域知識的聚合，使印刷機的效率足以成功。
經過五百年快速進展，電腦是另個近乎相同的故事，結合一些現有的技術，所有這些都是在1918年設置，但還沒有結合起來，第一部可運轉的電腦直到將近三十年後才被組合好。
一個偉大的管理者，對我來說，是能夠... 將區塊信息蛻變成有用的知識。“
Knowledge curators
知識策展人
The point of all this is that it is not the existence of knowledge but the convergence and cross-pollination of knowledge that drives progress.
Now, the challenge with the internet is that it's a medium increasingly well-tailored for helping us find more of what we know we're looking for, but increasingly poorly suited to helping us discover what we don't yet know exists and thus don't yet care to be interested in.
這一切問題的關鍵是，它不是存在的知識，而是聚合知識並藉異花授粉似的知識驅動進步。
現在，互聯網的挑戰是，媒體日益完善的幫助我們找到更多我們想知道的，但卻不適於幫助我們發現尚未知道尚未引起興趣的關心
This creates a kind of "filter bubble" - to use internet activist Eli Pariser's term - that only deepens our existing interests rather than broadening our intellectual horizons and filling our mental libraries with precisely the kind of diverse pieces that we can then combine into new ideas.
So how do we discover what we don't yet know we're interested in and take an interest in what doesn't appear to be "useful"?
這創造一種“過濾器泡沫” - 使用互聯網行動主義者 Eli Pariser 的方式 - 只有加深我們現有的益趣，而不是擴大我們的智能產權視野和準確清楚我們可以不同的作品結合成新的思路以補充我們心理智庫。
那麼，如何才能發現我們尚不知道感興趣的而將其未出現的轉為“有用的”呢？
Because it's been applied so indiscriminately to such a large spectrum of activities, "curation" is terrible term. But terrible as it may be, "curation" is a buzzword placeholder for a very real and tangible service of investing creative and intellectual labour in sifting the signal from the noise in an age of actual information overload.
因為它已經不分青紅皂白地應用到這樣一個大範圍的光譜活動，“策展”是可怕的術語。因為它可能成為可怕的，“策展”是一個嘰喳傳播展覽地擁有者對非常真實的，投資製造實質的服務 以及從信息過載的時代噪聲信號中有智能的勞動篩選。
It brings to the forefront that which is interesting, meaningful, and stimulating and memorable.
它帶來有趣的，有意義的，刺激和令人難忘的前景。
Ms Popova believes computer programs cannot replace humans' role in creativity
I recently saw designer Simon Collision speak at the Creative Mornings breakfast lecture series, and he captured the present challenge wonderfully. He said, "I collect articles in Readability and Instapaper like pennies - and, like pennies, I do nothing with them."
波波娃女士認為，電腦計算機程序不能代替人類創造力的角色，
我最近看到設計師Simon Collision創意早餐系列講座論談發言，他很棒的捕捉了現今的挑戰。他說：“我收集可讀性的文章和Instapaperru就像收集便士 - 也和硬幣一樣，我什麼也沒做。”
PS: Instapaper 是十分流行的閱讀程式。用戶在電腦或電話看到喜歡的網上文章，但想之後有時間才看，便可以儲存到 Instapaper。之後在電腦登上 Instapape
A great curator, to me, is someone who takes such bits of information and transmutes them into useful knowledge.
It's someone who shines a spotlight on the timeless corners of the "common record", the ones that are perhaps obscured from view, or forgotten, or poorly understood, making them timely again by contextualising them and linking them to ideas and issues of present urgency, correlating and interpreting.
一個偉大的策展人，對我來說，是一個需要將一部部的信息，蛻變成有用的知識。
這是一個在永恆角落閃耀的聚光燈的“共同記錄”，一個可能是從視圖，或許掩蓋，或者被遺忘，或者知之甚少的朦朧發想，使他們及時再次脈絡連接他們的想法和目前迫切問題，關聯和解釋。
It's this transmutation of information into practical wisdom about how the world works, and moral wisdom about how the world ought to work that sets the human apart from the algorithm - and from the computer.
It offers, I believe, the only real hope of making use and making sense of humanity's collective knowledge.
這是如何將信息蛻變轉化為現實的智慧的運作，道德睿智應如何運作以設置讓人從規則系統分開 - 從計算機嬗變。
它提供了，我相信，人類集體知識的利用和理解的唯一希望。
Maria Popova is editor of the essay website Brain Pickings, which she describes as "a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness".
This article is an edited version of a talk she delivered for
這篇文章是她發表言論經過編輯的版本
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