I Grew Up in the Future 我生活在未來

在我們家，未來比其他任何地方都來得要早得多，因為我媽媽是一名新興科技產(chǎn)品顧問。知道這意味著什么嗎？這意味著：在智能手機剛推出不久，我們家的討論話題便是移動社交網(wǎng)絡(luò);在谷歌眼鏡初見端倪之前，我就試戴過一副具有類似功能的眼鏡……我仿佛坐上了一個通向未來的時間艙，有機會提前體驗未來的新科技產(chǎn)品，而這無疑要歸功于像媽媽那樣的能夠洞悉未來科技趨勢、敢為天下先的新技術(shù)產(chǎn)品創(chuàng)造者們。

When I went home for the 2007 holidays， my mom’s new favorite phrase was “mobile social networking.” It was a big thing in Asia and Africa， she told me， in the throes of1） writing a several-hundred-page market report.

What is it supposed to be？ I asked.

Well， she said， you joined a social network on your phone， and then you could express opinions about things. You could send something to your friends， and they would say if they liked it or they didn’t like it—on their phones.

That sounds really stupid， I said. But， as I don’t think I need to stress， the idea turned out to have legs2）.

The future arrived much earlier in our house than anywhere else because my mother is an emerging technologies consultant. Her career has included stints as a circus horse groom3）， a tropical agronomist4） in Mauritania and a desktop publisher. But for most of my life she has lived by her unusual ability to see beyond the glitchy5） demos of new tech to the faint outlines of another reality， just over the horizon. She takes these trembling hatchlings6） of ideas by the elbow， murmurs reassurances， and runs as fast as she can into the unknown.

When the web and I were both young， in the mid-1990s， video conferencing was my mom’s thing. We had our county’s first T1 fibre-optic line7） thanks to her， and I grew up in a house full of webcams， shuddering and starting8） with pictures of strangers in Hong Kong， New York and the Netherlands， to whom I’d have to wave when I got home from school. My mother worked with companies who wanted to develop software and hardware for video conferencing， and she wrote reports about the state of the market， which， at that point， was a slender stream of early adopters. Internet connections were so slight， and the hardware so bulky and expensive， that it was slow going—tech start-ups launched with fanfare9） and sank within months， unable to stay afloat10） on the ethereal11） promise of everyone， everywhere， seeing each other talk. The promise， too， of never having to travel for business was not as appealing as the start-ups thought it would be.

But my mom is a futurist， that peculiar subclass of optimists who believe they can see the day after tomorrow coming. In the 1990s， she ordered pens customised with her consultancy name and the slogan： “Remember when we could only hear each other？” Years later， when an unopened box of them surfaced in her office， she laughed and laughed. It would be another several years before Skype with video brought the rest of the world up to speed with her pens.

And by that point， she’d moved on.

It’s not always a particularly comfortable place to be， that knife’s edge12） between the next big thing and a truly embarrassing evolutionary dead-end. We were constantly wading through13） early models of doomed technology， and we dressed in， wrote with， and drank out of the detritus of wrecked start-ups. My dad’s favorite polo shirt memorialised a company that had not existed for at least a decade， and for toys we had stress balls and small plastic tops from telecom tradeshows.

In 2004， the year I went to college， one of Forbes’ top tech trends was that consumers were beginning to buy more laptops than desktops. I took a laptop with me， of course—we’d had one or two around the house for years—but I also took a video phone. It was a silvery chunk of plastic with a handset on a cord， a dialpad and a four-inch screen on a hinge14） on which I could see my family every week or so. It was the way of the future， and my mom wrote an article about using it to keep up family ties across long distances. The next year， when my sister went away to college， she did not take one. That fateful Skype release had occurred in the intervening 12 months， and the days of dedicated15） hardware were through16）.

Strangely enough， after the video revolution came， it no longer seemed to interest my mom. I had not fully grasped it until that point， but her interest was in premature things—full of potential， hampered by bizarre deformities， in need of her talents.

The bugs， in other words， were more than just bugs. They were opportunities. And without people who have this affinity17） for the half-formed， we might not get anywhere much at all.

I’ve never thought of my profession as being at all connected to my mother’s. It’s easy to forget that they might seem to be related.

My career as a writer about science， and sometimes technology， arose from a particular moment in a college class in cell biology. Late in the semester， we watched a silent movie of a cell dividing. The frenetic18） activity within the cell paused， and the twinned chromosomes19） assembled into a straight line. Then they began to pull apart gently， tugged by invisible threads into halves， identical， but destined for existences in separate spheres. I wanted to get closer to that ethereal beauty， to help people understand more about what was happening there. Together， my career and my upbringing have given me something important： a taste for the beautiful and the patience to wait it out， if not the desire to midwife it myself.

These days， the devices strewn20） around my parents’ apartment are augmented-reality21） glasses and headsets. The dinner table talk has been about waypoints and layers and standards for content. Mom’s latest projects include turning a city’s publicly available data into an app that lets people see the transit system or sewer pipes projected over the reality before them. And years before Google Glass was even on the horizon22）， my mom had me try out a pair of glasses that were to provide an immersive23） movie theatre experience.

Sometimes I think I could sell my services to these people with the tagline： “I come from the future.” I don’t have all the hallmarks of a standard techie： My cell phone lives peacefully unconnected to the Internet， and I belong to relatively few social networks， but I am from a bubble in time， a place where these things have always existed. I can tell you what users are going to want， because I have seen， over the course of my short life， so many things fail， and so many unlikely things succeed.

That said24）， I would never want to be too far away from those who live and work perpetually in the vanguard25）， who have chosen that risky， Schr?dinger’s Cat26）-like existence. Even after growing up with my mother and the remains of a hundred half-baked ideas， such people’s willingness to ride the wave， their foolhardiness and their bravery， still provokes awe in me. It’s not a thing I can profess to understand beyond a basic respect for their guts and their kind of crazy hope that the future will be weird. But that’s something I can get behind.

2007年我放假回家時，媽媽最喜歡說的一個新詞是“移動社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)”。她在忙于撰寫長達數(shù)百頁的市場報告的間隙告訴我，對亞洲和非洲來說，這是一件大事。

那到底是個什么東西？我問。

這個嘛，她說，你在手機上加入一個社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)，然后就可以對各種事情發(fā)表自己的看法。你可以給朋友發(fā)消息，他們會告訴你他們是否喜歡你發(fā)的消息——全都通過手機。

那聽上去真夠傻的，我說。不過，我想無需我在此強調(diào)，事實證明這個想法后來被發(fā)揚光大。

在我們家，未來比其他任何地方都來得要早得多，因為我媽媽是一名新興科技產(chǎn)品顧問。她做過好幾份工作，其中包括在馬戲團照料馬匹，在毛里塔尼亞當熱帶農(nóng)藝師以及擔(dān)任桌面出版商。但是在我人生中的大部分時間里，她都是靠自己的一項非凡能力為生的，那就是透過帶著瑕疵的新技術(shù)樣品洞悉初現(xiàn)端倪的另一個世界的隱約輪廓。由創(chuàng)意孵化出的這些新生命還在顫抖，媽媽就拽著它們的臂肘，輕聲說著安慰的話，然后以自己最快的速度沖向未知世界。

20世紀90年代中期，當網(wǎng)絡(luò)和我都還年幼的時候，視頻會議就已經(jīng)是媽媽關(guān)注的焦點。因為她，我們家安裝了全縣第一條T1光纖線路。我在布滿網(wǎng)絡(luò)攝像頭的家中長大，常常被那些遠在香港、紐約和荷蘭的陌生人圖像嚇得直哆嗦，放學(xué)回家時，我還得向他們揮手打招呼。媽媽與幾家有意開發(fā)視頻會議軟硬件設(shè)備的公司合作，就市場狀況撰寫報告，在那個時候早期用戶的規(guī)模非常小。當時網(wǎng)絡(luò)連接極少，硬件設(shè)備既笨重又昂貴，進展非常緩慢—科技創(chuàng)業(yè)公司大張旗鼓地成立，數(shù)月之后便偃旗息鼓，經(jīng)濟上周轉(zhuǎn)不開，無法實現(xiàn)讓任何人在任何地方都能看著對方說話的承諾。而不必再因公務(wù)出差這個承諾本身也并不像那些創(chuàng)業(yè)公司設(shè)想的那么有吸引力。

不過，我媽媽是一個未來主義者，那是樂觀主義者中的一個分支，他們相信自己能夠看到即將發(fā)生的未來。20世紀90年代，她定制了一批鋼筆，筆身印著她的咨詢公司的名字和一句口號：“還記得我們只能聽到彼此聲音的年代嗎？”幾年后，當一盒未開封的這種鋼筆在她的辦公室里冒出來的時候，她笑了又笑。又過了幾年，具有視頻功能的Skype軟件帶領(lǐng)世人跟上了她那些鋼筆的步伐。

而那時，她已踏上了新的征途。

要么是下一個熱門產(chǎn)品，要么是發(fā)展過程中那實在令人難堪的發(fā)展死胡同—這種勝負難料的處境并不總是令人感到特別舒適。我們不斷地艱難探索那些注定失敗的技術(shù)的早期模型，我們身上穿的、寫字用的和喝水使的都是那些失敗的創(chuàng)業(yè)公司留下的殘余物。爸爸最喜歡的一件polo衫是一家已經(jīng)消失了至少十年的公司的紀念品，我們的玩具則是從電信展銷會上帶回來的減壓球和小塑料陀螺。

2004年，也就是我開始上大學(xué)的那一年，《福布斯》雜志評出的幾大科技流行趨勢之一便是消費者購買筆記本電腦的數(shù)量開始超過臺式電腦。我?guī)Я伺_筆記本電腦去學(xué)校，這是自然的—因為幾年前我家就已經(jīng)有一兩臺了—但我同時還帶了一部可視電話。那是一個銀白色的塑料材質(zhì)的大家伙，有一個用電線連接的電話聽筒、一個撥號盤和一個可開合的四英寸顯示屏，藉此我差不多每個星期都可以看到我的家人。那是未來發(fā)展的方向。媽媽曾經(jīng)寫過一篇文章，就是講如何用它來維系身處異地的家人間的感情。第二年，我妹妹離家上大學(xué)時，她沒有帶可視電話。因為就在那中間的12個月里，具有重大影響力的Skype發(fā)布問世了，需要專門硬件設(shè)備視頻的時代結(jié)束了。

奇怪的是，自從視頻革命發(fā)生之后，媽媽似乎不再對它感興趣了。直到那時，我才完全認識到她感興趣的是那些不成熟的產(chǎn)品——充滿潛力，因詭異的缺陷發(fā)展受阻，正需要她施展才能。

換句話說，那些缺陷并不只是缺陷。它們是機會。而如果沒有那些對半成形產(chǎn)品滿懷熱情的人們，我們或許根本無法取得任何大的進步。

我從來沒覺得自己從事的職業(yè)會與媽媽的職業(yè)有什么關(guān)系。很容易忘記它們之間似乎是有關(guān)聯(lián)的。

我是一名科普作家，時而也會寫技術(shù)方面的文章，這一職業(yè)選擇源自大學(xué)時細胞生物學(xué)課上的一個特別時刻。那時正值學(xué)期末，我們觀看了一部細胞分裂的無聲電影。細胞內(nèi)部的劇烈活動暫時停下來，成對的染色體聚集成一條直線。然后它們開始緩緩地分裂，被看不見的線牽引著分成了兩半，這兩半完全相同，卻注定要生存在不同的細胞內(nèi)。我想要更近距離地欣賞那種超凡脫俗的美，想要幫助人們更多地了解其中發(fā)生的一切。我的工作和父母對我的養(yǎng)育使我具備了一些重要素質(zhì)：對美的鑒賞力和等待它綻放的耐心，甚至是親自促成它的欲望。

近些日子，在我爸媽的公寓里到處都是增強現(xiàn)實眼鏡和頭戴式設(shè)備。餐桌上的話題也是關(guān)于路點、圖層和內(nèi)容標準的。媽媽手頭上最新的項目包括將城市里對公眾開放的數(shù)據(jù)制作成一個應(yīng)用軟件，讓人們在面前的現(xiàn)實環(huán)境之上看到顯示出來的公交系統(tǒng)或下水管線。早在谷歌眼鏡初見端倪的幾年前，媽媽就曾讓我試戴過一副眼鏡，它能夠為佩戴者提供沉浸式影院的體驗。

有時，我覺得我可以向別人兜售服務(wù)，就用這句口號：“我來自未來世界。”我并不具備一個標準技術(shù)控的全部特點：我的手機很安靜，并沒有聯(lián)網(wǎng)，我加入的社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)也相對較少。然而，我來自一個時間艙，在那里這些東西一直都存在著。我能告訴你用戶們有何需求，因為在我不算長的人生里，我目睹了很多事物歸于失敗，而許多不可能成功的事物卻成功了。

盡管如此，我決不愿意遠離那些永遠生活和工作在科技最前沿的人們，他們選擇的是一種充滿風(fēng)險、像薛定諤的貓般永遠不確定的生活狀態(tài)。即使我在媽媽的身邊伴隨著許多不成熟創(chuàng)意的遺跡長大，這些人甘當弄潮兒的精神、他們的蠻干以及他們的勇敢仍然讓我肅然起敬。他們充滿勇氣，對“奇異的未來世界”懷有某種狂熱的期待，對此我除了表示基本的尊重之外，說不上有什么更深的理解，但我能予以支持。

1. in the throes of：處于……的困境中

2. have legs：經(jīng)久不衰的;持續(xù)時間久且成功的

3. groom [ɡru?m] n. 馬夫

4. agronomist [??ɡr?n?mist] n. 農(nóng)學(xué)家;農(nóng)藝師

5. glitchy [?ɡl?t??] adj. 小毛病的，易出故障的

6. hatchling [h?t?l??] n. 人工孵化的小鳥（或魚苗）

7. fibre-optic line：光纖線

8. start [stɑ?（r）t] vi. 驚起;嚇一跳

9. fanfare [?f?nfe?（r）] n. （與某事件相關(guān)的）喧鬧，熱議

10. afloat [??fl??t] n. 有償債能力的;經(jīng)濟上周轉(zhuǎn)得開的

11. ethereal [??θ??ri?l] adj. 飄渺的

12. knife’s edge：勝負難料的形勢，結(jié)果未定的情況

13. wade through：艱難地通過;費力地做完