02.硬与软／THE HARD AND THE SOFT

［02］硬与软／THE HARD AND THE SOFT

人类的这个决定性变化是怎么发生的？实际且具体地说，我们大多数人不可避免地认为，革命发生在困难的事情上。对我们来说最重要的是工具，比如锤子和镰刀。我们甚至用它们命名了不同的历史时期：如工业革命，青铜与铁器时代，新石器和旧石器时代。相比这些有形的机器（硬且实用），我们对软性符号却不闻不问很少关注。 How did this decisive change in humanity come about? Practical and concrete, most of us think, almost inevitably, that revolutions occur around hard things. What is most important to us are tools, such as hammers and sickles. We have even named various periods of history after them: the recent Industrial Revolution, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, the ages of cut stone and polished stone. Almost blind and deaf, we pay far less attention to signs (the soft) than to tangible machines (the hard and practical).

然而除了工具，正是写作与后来印刷的发明，真正革新了我们的文化和集体。刚性展现了世界的有效性;柔性则展示了人类构建中的有效性。技术导致或承担硬科学；科技预设并产出人文，公共会议，政治和社会①）。没有写作，我们会聚集在城市里，规范法律、成立国家、构思神学和历史、发明科学、建立教化吗？我们会确保他们的连续性吗？没有印刷，我们会在文艺复兴时期修改所有这些机构和议会吗？正是柔组织并联合了那些利用硬的人。 Yet far more than tools, it was the invention of writing— and, later, printing—that truly revolutionized our cultures and collectivities. The hard shows its effectiveness in the things of the world; the soft shows its effectiveness in the institutions of humans. Techniques lead to or assume the hard sciences; technologies presuppose and lead to the humanities, public meetings, politics and society.①）Without writing, would we have gathered together in cities, stipulated laws, founded states, conceived of monotheism and history, invented the sciences, and established paideia? Would we have ensured their continuity? Without printing, would we have modified, during the aptly named Renaissance, all these institutions and assemblies? The soft organizes and federates those who utilize the hard.

虽然我们几乎没有意识到，我们今天正是和书籍与写作的儿孙生活在一起。 Though we hardly realize it, we are living together, today, as the children of the book and the grandchildren of writing.