08.对无能推定的颠覆／REVERSAL OF THE PRESUMPTION OF INCOMPETENCE

［08］对无能推定的颠覆／REVERSAL OF THE PRESUMPTION OF INCOMPETENCE

通过使用无能的老推定，伟大的公共或私人权力机器——官僚机构，媒体，广告，技术，商业，政治，大学、政府，有时甚至连科学，都热衷于通过对不为网络信任的“大众”蠢蛋演讲示威。 Using the old presumption of incompetence, the great public and private machines—bureaucracies, the media, advertising, technocracy, businesses, politics, universities, government, and sometimes even the sciences—mete out their immense power by speaking to supposed imbeciles, who are dubbed the "general public," distrusted by these various networks.

但是全世界匿名的拇指姑娘们决定与那些他们认为有能力的同类联手，即使他们对自己是否能战胜机器并不确信。他们不同的声音意味着，这些越是吵越是加速灭绝的恐龙们，完全不知道这些新职能的出现。以下便是： But the anonymous Thumbelinas of the world have joined forces with others whom they presume to be competent, even if they are not so sure of themselves. Their diverse voices are a sign that these dinosaurs, which become noisier the more they are headed for extinction, are completely unaware of the emergence of these new competencies. Here's why.

林云帆：对小拇指们而言，未来是他们的，但现在还不是。现在，还是官僚机构，媒体，广告，技术，商业，政治，大学、政府等决定了什么可以看、什么值得看。小拇指们在被这些大手捂住的指缝里，看到了不一样的东西，慢慢进入反抗期，统治着他们的权力机器，暂时没有把她们当作对手，所以等到属于小拇指们的未来，既有的权力机器十有八九要栽跟头。

如果拇指姑娘（这只是某个学生、病人、工人、员工、管理员、旅行、选民、成年人或青春期少年的某个代称，又或者是某个孩子、某个消费者，总之，就是公共领域我们称为“公民”的无名者）要了解一个命题，并预先查询互联网上的一个好网站，她对所讨论的主题，要做的决定，发布的信息，乃至个人身体保养……都能懂，甚至懂得更多，绝不亚于一位老师、经理、记者、高级官员、首席执行官或总裁——这些人到达了景观社会的顶点，只对名誉感兴趣。 If she consults a good website, Thumbelina (which in fact is a code name for a student, a patient, a worker, an employee, an administrator, a traveler, a voter, a senior or an adolescent or whatever, a child, a consumer, in short, that anonymous person of the public arena that we sometimes call a "citizen") can know as much, or more, on a given subject—a decision to be made, public information, the care of oneself—as any teacher, manager, journalist, senior official, CEO, or president, all of whom have reached the pinnacle of the spectacle and are obsessed with glory.

肿瘤学家通常说，他们从读乳腺癌妇女的博客上学到的东西要比在医学院多年学到的多。 Oncologists often say they learn more from reading blogs written by women with breast cancer than from their many years in medical school.

自然史专家无法再忽略一些网络上的发言，无论是澳大利亚农民谈论着蝎子的习性还是比利牛斯山脉地区的向导关于岩羚羊迁徙的讨论。 Specialists in natural history can no longer ignore what people say online, whether they are Australian farmers talking about the habits of scorpions or guides in the Pyrepees discussing the movement of chamois.

这种共享使教育、医疗、和工作变得匀称。 This kind of sharing reintroduces symmetry into education, health care, and work.

倾听伴随着话语，信息陈旧的冰山结构被倒置了——这样的改变促进了流动。 Listening accompanies discourse, and the inversion of the old iceberg promotes circulation, in all senses of the word.

集体——在不朽的死亡之下小心隐去虚拟特征的结构，让位给了关联体——这种真正的虚拟。 Thecollective, whose virtual character was hidden, fearful, under a monumental death, gives way to theconnective, which is truly virtual.

林云帆：这一段是我最喜欢的一段。舍赫，对小拇指是很有信心的，在华师大中译本后面附录访谈中，他也提到了，知识的客体化彻底颠覆了传授空间。学生可以直接进入知识:手机和手提电脑跟着他们到处走。每个人的体验，都将被纳入知识体系，重要的是给予小拇指不同视角的合理解答。这就使得，对维基解密的猎捕也许只是当权者的一厢情愿，一个好的词条相当于试卷的一道名词解释，并且没有标答。我们大胆预测，小拇指时代的来临，将是维基解密的全盛期。

在我20岁结束学习的时候，我成了一个“认识论专家”——这是一个用来形容学习方法和科学理论，并偶尔试图判断它们的粗暴的词语。 At the end of my studies, when I was twenty years old, I became an "epistemologist," which is a big word to say that I studied the methods and results of the sciences, and occasionally tried to judge them.

那时，我们这样的人很少，所以我们只是相互交流。 There were, at that time, very few of us, so we corresponded with each other.

但半个世纪后，街上的每一个孩子都可以对核能、代孕母亲、转基因生物、化学和生态评论的头头是道。 A half century later, every Tom Thumb on the street can make judgments about nuclear power, surrogate mothers, GMOs, chemistry, and ecology.

我本人是不再标榜自己从事这一学科，因为今天每个人都成为一个认识论专家。这种说法中就包含了对能力的推定。 Though I myself no longer claim to work in the discipline, today everyone has become an epistemologist. There is apresumption of competence.

快别笑了！拇指姑娘叫道。当民主赋予每个人投票权时，它也站在了一些人的对立面——认为让聪明人和蠢蛋、无知者和受过教育的人平等投票的行为是丑闻的人的对立面。现在，同样的论调又出现了。 Don't laugh, says Thumbeliua. When democracy gave everyone the right to vote, it did so in opposition to those who considered it a scandal to give an equal vote to both wise men and fools, ignorant and educated. The same argument applies here.

林云帆：现代人，不了解AR/VR/MR就要被世界淘汰了！小拇指不得不点开本来不感兴趣的推送，读一读。她们怕的不是你自己读了也不懂，而是怕没有话题可以和别人说——今天每个人都成为一个认识论专家，不是基于生存或学习之需，只是太多的交流机会，我不想沉默。这种主观能动带来客观结果，即知识不断被分享，达成了新的民主。

我刚才提到的伟大机构，仍然建构我们称之为“社会”的全部布景，尽管社会已沦为一个每天都失去可信度的舞台。 The great institutions I have just mentioned still constitute the entire decor of what we continue to call our "society," even though society has been reduced to a stage that, every day, is losing more of its plausibility.

它甚至没有试图振兴这一景象，只是以越来越平庸的平庸镇压日益敏感的民众。 It hardly even attempts to rejuvenate the spectacle, crushing an increasingly perceptive populace with an ever greater mediocrity.

我必须重复，这些伟大的机构，就像我们眼睛所看到的那些恒星的图景——若是以天体物理学计算，已经死了很长时间了。 These great institutions, I repeat, resemble those stars whose light we receive, but which astrophysics calculates have been dead a long time.

这是历史上第一次，毫无疑问，“公共”——那些我们过去称之为“平民”的人，简而言之，拇指姑娘们——可以并将会拥有尽可能多的智慧、科学、信息、能力和决策力——绝不亚于现有机构体系下那些笨重的恐龙，他们对能源有着无尽欲望却又毫无生产力的贪婪，迫使我们像奴隶一样工作。 For the first time in history, no doubt, the "public"—those individuals and persons we used to call "commoners," in short, Thumbelinas—can and will be able to possess as much wisdom, science, information, and capacity for decision-making as these institutional dinosaurs, whose voraciousness for energy and avarice in production we still serve as subjected slaves.

就像打沙拉酱，这些孤立的单子会组织起来——慢慢地，一个接一个，形成不再与这些庄严而毫无前途的机构有关的新机体。 Like mayonnaise, these solitary monads will organize, slowly, one by one, to form a new body, with no relation to these solemn and lost institutions.

当这种政体逐渐瓦解，变得徒有其表而内在中空，冰山形的整体就开始倾斜直至倾覆——我们还要假装自己对此完全没有察觉，显示无辜。 When this slow constitution suddenly turns over, like the aforementioned iceberg, we will pretend we had no clue it was about to happen.

林云帆：伟大机构们甚至没有试图改变可信度的流失，只是以越来越平庸的平庸镇压日益敏感的民众。在宣布禁止VPN的那一刻，想必有些老一辈的追随和忠诚，已经死在了中国小拇指们的心中。我们今天看见的许多星星，其实在光年以外已死；曾经的光晕只剩余光。活在数码时代的我们，先是被禁止了谷歌，后来被禁止了脸书、推特，后来是instagram，甚至连图片网站pinterest都要被禁。但这些还是能说是一个传输节点，还有别的捷径。不过，今天终于，连捷径也被堵塞了。未来我猜测，每个小拇指都是IT高手，能轻易地把自己的Ip地址设在国外服务器了。

这种逆转将影响到性别，因为近几十年来妇女的成功有目共睹，她们在学校、医院和商业中更加勤奋和认真，但这些机构仍以傲慢而软弱的男性为主导。 This reversal affects the sexes, since recent decades have witnessed the victory of women, who are more assiduous and serious at school, in the hospital, and in business, which are nonetheless dominated by males, arrogant and weak.

这就是为什么这本书的题目是拇指姑娘。 That is why this book is entitledThumbelina.

这种逆转也影响文化，因为网络促进了大量的表达，也许马上要出现自动翻译，即使我们刚刚走出的世纪还是被一种语言大一统话术和思想，以至于消灭了创新。 It also affects cultures, since the web promotes a multitude of expressions and, soon, automatic translation, even though we have barely emerged from an era where the massive domination of a single language had unified speech and thought in mediocrity, sterilizing innovation.

简言之，它影响所有高度集中的结构——无论是生产性的、工业性的、语言性的，甚至是文化性的——最终受益的是传播、变得更宽广、多样、奇特。 In short, it affects all concentrations—whether productive and industrial, linguistic, or even cultural-to the benefit of large, multiple, and singular distributions.

林云帆：舍赫高度赞赏拇指一代，女性的成就与突破。如今，为女性发声成为了政治正确，这本身也可以视作女性运动的某种胜利。但是女性运动对整个社会的影响还是有限的。关于自动翻译，舍赫一点都没有说错，“晓依翻译机”的出现，宣告了同传人工的死亡。未来的确是属于自动翻译的。现实中的巴比塔，能否建成，每个人心里都没底。

这就是被泛化的评分形式。是为普遍民主设立的全民投票。 Here, finally, is a generalized form of grading. Here is a generalized vote for a generalized democracy.

西方世界之春的条件已经成熟，尽管现在反对的掌权者诉诸迷药而不是武力。 The conditions are ripe for a Western spring, although the opposing powers-that-be have now resorted to drugs instead of force.

比如：事物失去了普遍的名字，取而代之的是品牌的专有名称。 An example from everyday life: things have lost their common names and instead are known by the proper names of brands.

一切都是如此，包括政治，政治家们只会在大开照明灯的竞技场与不存在的影子搏斗。 This has happened with every form of information, including politics, which is staged in well-lit arenas where politicians fight shadows unrelated to any reality.

景观社会改变了曾经（在其他地方）艰难的战斗，把路障和尸体变成了大义凛然的解毒药——它洗净了我们身体中被嗜睡症供应商提供的麻醉剂。 The society of the spectacle transforms the struggle-which was once(and is elsewhere) hard, with barricades and corpses-into a heroic detoxification that would cleanse us of the sedatives distributed to us by the many providers of lethargy…

林云帆：阿拉伯之春，似乎是一场失败，但这不妨碍其他信仰、其他民族的小拇指们获得胜利。政治洗脑不再容易，个人标签策略再也行不通。从这个维度说，也许符号化、去个性化，这些总是被批判的趋势、词汇，也有其必要性。