01.拇指姑娘的脑袋／THUMBELINA’S HEAD

［01］拇指姑娘的脑袋／THUMBELINA’S HEAD

雅克·德·喔拉金在他的书《金色传奇》中讲述了一个发生在卢塞亚（巴黎），饱受图密善皇帝迫害年代的奇迹故事。罗马军队逮捕了被巴黎第一批基督徒选为主教的德尼。他被囚禁在西岱岛，受尽折磨，谴入了一个山丘斩首处决。这座山丘后被命名为蒙马特。 In his bookThe Golden Legend, Jacobus de Varagine tells the story of a miracle that took place in Lutetia (Paris) during the century of persecutions decreed by the Emperor Decius. The Roman army arrested Denis, who had been elected bishop by the first Christians of Paris. Imprisoned, then tortured, in the Île de la Cité, he was condemned to be beheaded at the top of a hill that would later be named Montmartre.

但是这些懒洋洋的士兵们不想上山了，他们决定在半山腰就处决这个犯人。主教的头滚到了地上，可怕的事便发生了！被斩首的德尼竟站了起来，一把抓住了自己的头，抱在怀里继续向前爬。真是个奇迹啊！受惊的军团赶紧吓得逃跑了。故事的作者补充道，德尼停下来洗了洗自己的头颅，然后一直走到了今天的圣德尼省。后来他被封为了圣人。 The soldiers, somewhat lazily, decided not to go to the top, and instead executed the victim half way up the hill. The bishop’s head rolled to the ground. Horror! Decapitated, Denis got up, grabbed his head, nestled it in his arms, and continued to climb the slope. Miracle! Terrified, the legionnaire ran off. The author adds that Denis took a break to wash his head, and kept walking until he reached the present location of St. Denis. He was later canonized.

拇指姑娘打开了她的电脑。虽然没听过这个传说，她也在自己的手里、眼前观赏着自己的脑袋。这是个全面的头脑，因为它存储了大量的信息，同样也是个很好用的头，因为它的搜索引擎能在一瞬间提炼文本和图像，其程序处理大量数据的速度比她快多了。她手里捧着的这个身外之物，曾是她内在认知的一部分。正如圣德尼捧着自己的头颅一样。拇指姑娘也被斩首了吗？这是否也是个奇迹呢？ Thumbelina opens her computer. Even if she does not know this legend, she is nonetheless beholding her own head, in front of her and in her hands. It is a full head, because of its enormous stock of information, but it is also a well-made head, since its search engines bring up texts and images at a moment’s notice, and its programs process huge amounts of data faster than she could ever do herself. She is holding, outside of herself, a cognition that used to be inside her, just as St. Denis held his head severed from his neck. Has Thumbelina been decapitated? Miracle?

不久之前，我们都已经变成了圣人圣德尼。我们的智能脑袋已经被外化在物理的骨骼和神经元之外。我们手里的电脑包含并管理了被我们以前称之为“能力”的东西：它的记忆力比我们强上几千倍；它的想象力由数百万图标构成；它的理性，能用软件程序解决我们无法解决的数百个问题。我们的脑袋成了一个客体化的认知盒，投射在我们的眼前。 Not long ago, we all became like St. Denis. Our intelligent head has been externalized outside our skeletal and neuronal head. In our hands, the computer-box contains and manages what we used to call our “faculties”: a memory thousands of times more powerful than our own; an imagination stocked with millions of icons; and a faculty of reason as well, since software programs can solve hundreds of problems that we could never solve on our own. Our head has been projected before us in an objectified cognitive box.

身首异处后，我们肩上还有什么？——是创新和持久的直觉。学习过程已落入电脑的盒子，却给我们留下发明的的无限快乐。我们是否非要变得聪明呢？ After the beheading, what is left on our shoulders? An innovative and enduring intuition. The learning process, which has fallen into the box, has left us the incandescent joy of invention. Has this condemned us to become intelligent?

正如我说的，一旦印刷机出现，蒙田更倾向全面的脑袋，而非知识的堆积；因为这种堆积已被客体化，能在他图书馆书架的书里找到了。在古腾堡之前，如果你想钻研历史，就一定要将苏维埃德斯和塔西多斯牢记于心，如果你对物理感兴趣，一定要学习亚里士多德和希腊力学;如果你想擅长于公开演讲，就要向德摩斯梯尼和昆体良学习。你需要一个完整脑袋。经济学告诉我们：记住书架的位置比记住书本全部内容的速度快：有了搜索引擎后，我们甚至不需要记住位置。 Once the printing press appeared, Montaigne, as I’ve said, preferred a well-made head to an accumulated knowledge, since this accumulation, already objectivized, could be found in the books on the shelves of his library. Before Gutenberg, you had to know Thucydides and Tacitus by heart if you practiced history; Aristotle and the Greek mechanics, if you were interested in physics; Demosthenes and Quintilian, if you wished to excel in public speaking. You needed to have a full head. Economize: remembering the location of a volume on the shelf of the library costs less in memory than retaining its entire contents. Now we have a new, more radical, economy: we no longer even need to remember the location, since a search engine does all the work.

拇指姑娘被切断的脑袋，跟她母亲一代需要被充满的脑袋不同。因为她不再需要努力就能获得知识，知识已经被放在她的面前——客观的，收集的，集体的，连接，可获得的知识，已被审查与编辑过。拇指姑娘可以把这些知识放回到她空荡荡的脖子上。在那些知识里，她能感受到空气、清风，甚至画家莱昂·邦纳特（LéonBonnat）在巴黎万神殿的墙壁上创作圣德尼的奇迹”时所发出的圣光。在那里，她会发现新的天赋，创造性的智慧与真正的认知主体性。仿佛她的独创性躲进了这种半透明的虚空中，被凉爽的微风吹拂着。知识几乎没有成本，但却难以掌握。 Thumbelina’s severed head, better made than filled, is very different from her mother’s. Since she no longer has to work hard to gain knowledge—it is already in front of her, objective, collected, collective, connected, accessible at her leisure, already reviewed and edited—she can return to the absence that hovers over the severed neck. There, she will find the air, the wind, and—even better—the light portrayed by Léon Bonnat, the academic painter, when he painted the miracle of St. Denis on the walls of the Pantheon in Paris. There, she will find the new genius, the inventive intelligence, an authentic cognitive subjectivity. It is as if her originality takes refuge in this translucent emptiness, in this cool breeze. Knowledge at almost no cost, yet difficult to grasp.

拇指女孩要庆祝知识时代的终结吗？ Is Thumbelina presiding over the end of the era of knowledge?

姜卓含：拇指女孩要庆祝知识时代的终结吗？

作者讲了个骇人听闻的故事，被斩首的德尼又重新捡起了自己的头颅！后被封为了圣人。作者认为圣德尼跟拇指姑娘有一定的相似性。拇指姑娘好像也被斩首了，她的头现在都快被计算机跟手机代替啦！机器的能力远远超出了我们脑袋原有的能力，可以替我们计算、查询、阅读……我们记不住的它现在都能帮我们记住。这样看来，我们在被砍头后似乎没啥用了，人之前做的很多工作都可以被机器代替，那我们还活着有什么用呢？

作者认为，既然省去了繁琐的学习过程，我们就可以专注于创新和发明了！但真的是这样吗？省略了寻找或记忆过程的认识能在我们的脑子里留下多少印记？它们足够支撑我们去发明吗？如果有了“机器脑袋”后，我们无需寻找、记忆知识的过程，那么大学教育为什么还要设置考试？我们的文科教育为什么依旧要求背诵大量的诗词内容与名词解释？

作者的观点很前卫、很激进。但在这里我们不妨保守一点看待，“机器脑袋”带来的问题也不少，因为省略了求知的过程，因为它所提供的信息海洋太宽广了，我们有时候难免感到手足无措！所有的知识都因过于容易或许而变得廉价甚至无用。举个例子，拿微信公众号来说吧，拇指姑娘们人人都订阅了大量的账户，每天看到了的文章少说也有几十篇，但第二天还能留下印象的却寥寥无几。以这样的态度对待发明创造，似乎就太可怕了！

作者的态度我很欣赏，但作为拇指一代，我不得不承认，有时候我们也会怀疑自己的行为方式是不是存在问题。每个人都知道多玩手机对眼睛不好，但没人会为了保护眼睛而不玩手机。我们无法让时代倒回，所以只能逆风前进，管他是好是坏。所以还是该警惕！机器脑袋我们也不一定想要！