正文翻譯

Futurists from the 20th century predicted that labor saving devices would make leisure abundant. According to the great economist John Maynard Keynes, the big challenge would be that…
“For the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem — how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.”
— John Maynard Keynes (1930)

20世紀的未來學(xué)家預(yù)言，節(jié)省勞力的設(shè)備將使休閑變得豐富多彩，根據(jù)偉大的經(jīng)濟學(xué)家約翰·梅納德·凱恩斯的說法，未來最大的挑戰(zhàn)將是.....
“自人類誕生以來，人類將第一次面臨一個真正的、永恒的問題——如何利用自己從緊迫的經(jīng)濟憂慮中解脫出來的自由，如何利用科學(xué)和復(fù)利為自己贏得的閑暇時間，明智地、愉快地好好生活?！薄s翰·梅納德·凱恩斯 (1930年)

Fast forward almost a century later.
Things didn’t quite go as expected. This quote from a modern researcher captures the current ethos:
“Rather than being bored to death, our actual challenge is to avoid anxiety attacks, psychotic breakdowns, heart attacks, and strokes resulting from being accelerated to death.”
— Geoffrey West
Rather than inhabiting a world of time wealth, we’re inhabiting a world of time poverty. Rather than feeling the luxury of time freedom, we’re feeling the burden of constant hurry.

快進到近一個世紀之后。
事情并沒有像預(yù)期的那樣發(fā)展，這句引自一位現(xiàn)代研究人員的話顯示了我們目前的處境：
“我們真正的挑戰(zhàn)不是無聊到死，而是要避免焦慮發(fā)作、精神崩潰、心臟病發(fā)作和加速至死的中風(fēng)。”

ー 杰弗里·韋斯特

我們生活在一個時間貧乏的世界，而不是生活在一個時間富裕的世界，我們沒有感受到時間自由的奢侈，而是感受到了持續(xù)匆忙的負擔。

In other words, evolution is a double-edged sword. On one hand, innovations increase survival. On the other hand, they also increase competition, which reduces survival.
Evolution does not rest on its laurels. It accelerates.
Enter humans.
With humans, we see a shift from competing based on biology to competing based on ideas (cultures, strategies, technologies, etc.).?

換句話說，進化是一把雙刃劍。
一方面，變化增加了生存幾率，另一方面，它們也增加了競爭，從而降低了生存率。
進化不會安于現(xiàn)狀，而是持續(xù)加速。
看回人類世界。
在人類身上，我們看到了從基于生物學(xué)的競爭到基于觀念 (文化、戰(zhàn)略、技術(shù)等) 的競爭的轉(zhuǎn)變。

We saw once-in-a-generation events in nearly every sphere of life. Each of these events rippled throughout society leading to unpredictable second-order effects which upended our long-held beliefs about media, democracy, business, and citizenship to name a few. Our emotions went from positive to negative extremes as we faced unprecedented opportunities and challenges. We had to fundamentally rethink our lives, relationships, and work.
Here’s the thing though… 2020 isn’t a temporary blip before things go back to normal. It is the kickoff to an unprecedented acceleration that few have considered, let alone prepared for.

我們在幾乎每個領(lǐng)域都看到了百年難一遇的事件，每一個事件都波及整個社會，導(dǎo)致不可預(yù)測的二階效應(yīng)，顛覆了我們長期以來對媒體、民主、商業(yè)和公民權(quán)等方面的信念。
我們面臨前所未有的機遇和挑戰(zhàn)，我們的情緒從積極走向了消極的極端，我們不得不從根本上重新思考我們的生活、關(guān)系和工作。
但問題是，2020年并不是一切恢復(fù)正常之前的一個短暫現(xiàn)象，而是一個前所未有的加速的開端，很少有人考慮到這一點，更不用說為之做準備了。

If time is like a treadmill, 2020 was running. The near-future will be an all out sprint.
How do we keep up?
To answer this question, let’s talk about…
The Coming Acceleration Shock
“If somebody describes the world of the mid-twenty-first century to you and it doesn’t sound like science fiction, it is certainly false. We cannot be sure of the specifics; change itself is the only certainty.”
— Yuval Noah Harari

如果說時間就像跑步機，那么2020年就是在跑步，近期的未來將是一場全力沖刺。
我們怎樣才能跟上？
為了回答這個問題，我們來談?wù)?...
即將到來的加速沖擊
“如果有人向你描述了二十一世紀中葉的世界，而且它聽起來不像科幻小說，那么它肯定是錯誤的，我們無法確定具體細節(jié)，變化本身是唯一確定的?！?/p>

ー赫拉利·諾亞·哈拉爾
While both biology and ideas evolve exponentially, exponential growth is fundamentally different at different stages of the curve. It starts off slowly, but when it hits the knee of the curve, it grows explosively and profoundly.
For example, one researcher charted the Gross World Product from 10,000 BCE to 2019 and came up with this chart…
We are now living in the second half of the curve. This is a big deal, because the second half feels and behaves in fundamentally different ways.

雖然生物進化和思想進化都是指數(shù)方式發(fā)展，但是指數(shù)增長在曲線的不同階段有著根本的不同，它開始的時候很緩慢，當它到達曲線的拐點時，它就會爆發(fā)性地、深刻地增長。

例如，一位研究者將公元前1萬年到2019年的世界生產(chǎn)總值繪制成圖表，得出了這個圖表：

我們現(xiàn)在生活在曲線的后半部分，這是個大問題，因為后半段的感官和行為方式根本不同。

Ray Kurzweil, the director of engineering at Google and arguably the world #1 futurist, breaks down what the second half of the exponential curve better than anyone else in his book, The Singularity Is Near.
Kurzweil’s basic premise is this…
“The future will be far more surprising than most people realize.”
The reason it’ll be more surprising, he argues, is, “because few observers have truly internalized the implications of the fact that the rate of change itself is accelerating.” In other words, “an exponential curve looks like a straight line when examined for only a brief duration. As a result, even sophisticated commentators, when considering the future, typically extrapolate the current pace of change over the next ten years or one hundred years to determine their expectations.”

雷·庫茲韋爾，谷歌的工程總監(jiān)，可以說是世界第一的未來學(xué)家，在他的《奇點迫近》一書中，對指數(shù)曲線的后半部分進行了比任何人都更好的分析。
庫茲韋爾的基本前提是：
“未來將比大多數(shù)人意識到的更令人驚訝?！?br>他認為，之所以會更令人驚訝，是因為“很少有觀察家真正內(nèi)化了變化速度本身正在加快這一事實的含義?！睋Q句話說，“一條指數(shù)曲線在短時間內(nèi)看起來就像一條一條直線，因此，即使是老練的評論家，在考慮未來時，通常也只會推斷出未來十年或一百年當前的變化速度，以符合他們的預(yù)期?！?/p>

Let’s break this down. When we look at a linear and exponential curve from a zoomed out perspective of more time, it’s easy to see the difference between the two curves…
However, when we zoom into a small duration, the differences look more like this. Notice that the difference is almost impossible to see.

我們來分析一下這個問題，當我們從更長的時間區(qū)間來看線性和指數(shù)曲線時，很容易看出兩條曲線之間的差異……然而，當我們放大到一個小的持續(xù)時間段，差異看起來更像這樣：

請注意，這種差異幾乎幾乎看不出來。

For example, I was born in 1981. When I think about the pace of change, it is hard for me to compare the change I experienced in my lifetime to the change experienced during 1940–1980. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. Furthermore, when I look at the last 40 years, major events blend together. The pace changes, but then I get used to it. It is hard to feel the exponential nature either way. Sure, I can intellectually understand exponential change, but I don’t feel it.
Things get really interesting when Kurzweil shares the implications of this insight. It is the most profound, yet underappreciated idea from the book…

舉個例子，比如說，我是1981年出生的，當我思考變化的速度時，我很難將我一生中經(jīng)歷的變化與1940-1980年期間的變化進行比較，這就像把蘋果和橘子進行比較一樣。
當我回顧過去40年，重大事件交織在一起，節(jié)奏變了，但我很習(xí)慣于此，不管怎樣，我們都很難感受到這種指數(shù)增長的本質(zhì)，當然，我理智上能理解指數(shù)變化，但我感覺不到。
庫茲韋爾分享了這一觀點的含義，事情變得非常有趣，這是書中最深刻但未被充分理解的觀點。

Introducing The 10-Year Rule
“My models show that we are doubling the paradigm-shift rate every decade.”
— Ray Kurzweil
This is the most interesting line in Kurzweil’s book in my opinion. This statement is profound, because it means the following…

"十年法則"
“我的模型顯示，每十年，我們的范式轉(zhuǎn)換率就會翻一番。”—— 庫茲韋爾
在我看來，這是庫茲韋爾書中最有意思的一句話，這句話意義深遠，因為它意味著：

To put this chart in context, 20 years from now, the rate of change will be 4x what is now. Said differently, for someone who is about 40 today, when they’re 60 in 2040, the rate of paradigm change will be 4x what it is now. They will experience a year of change (by today’s standards) in three months. For someone who is 10 today, when they’re 60, they’ll experience a year of change in 11 days.
To summarize the profundity of this 10-year doubling rate, Kurzweil says…
“We won’t experience one hundred years of technological advance in the twenty-first century; we will witness on the order of twenty thousand years of progress (again, when measured by today’s rate of progress), or about one thousand times greater than what was achieved in the twentieth century.”

把這個圖表放在大背景下，20年后，變化率將是現(xiàn)在的4倍，換句話說，對于今天40歲左右的人來說，到2040年他們60歲時，范式改變的速度將是現(xiàn)在的4倍，以今天為標準，他們將在三個月內(nèi)經(jīng)歷一年的變化，對于一個今天10歲的人來說，當他們60歲的時候，他們將在11天內(nèi)經(jīng)歷一年的變。
為總結(jié)這10年翻番速度的深刻性，庫茲韋爾說：
"我們不會在21世紀經(jīng)歷100年的技術(shù)進步，我們將見證2萬年的進步（同樣，這也是按今天的進步速度來衡量），或者說比20世紀的進步大約1000倍。”

Let that sink in for a second.
So what exactly is a paradigm and how did Kurzweil come up with this rate?
To create the 10-Year Rule, Kurzweil plotted the largest milestones of biological and technological development on a single graph…
Kurzweil’s key events roughly mirror reference books that have compiled the most important historical events (Encyclopaedia Britannica, the American Museum of Natural History, Carl Sagan’s “cosmic calendar,” and others).

讓我們好好想一想。
那么，究竟為什么是這樣一個轉(zhuǎn)變范式，庫茲韋爾是如何得出這個速度的？
為了創(chuàng)造 "十年法則"，庫茲韋爾將生物和技術(shù)發(fā)展的最大里程碑繪制在一張圖上：

庫茲韋爾的關(guān)鍵事件大致參考、反映了人類編纂的最重要歷史事件的參考書 (《大英百科全書》、美國自然歷史博物館、卡爾·薩根《宇宙歷法》等)。

Of course, because there is a trend in the past, it doesn’t mean it will continue in the future. But, the way I see it, if a trend has existed on Earth for a billion years, it’s worth at least planning for the possibility that it will happen in the next 20 years.
And if you want to see how ridiculously predictable technological progress has been for the last 60 years, I recommend watching this video. It is awe-inspiring…
This quote captures the importance of Moore’s Law to the technology industry…
“If Silicon Valley has a heartbeat, it’s Moore’s Law,” — Rob Enderle
This all begs the question…
What would it mean to have the rate of paradigm changing events be 4x what it is now in 20 years?

當然，過去有一種趨勢，并不一定意味著未來會繼續(xù)下去，但是，在我看來，如果一個趨勢已經(jīng)在地球上存在了10億年，那么至少值得為它在未來20年內(nèi)發(fā)生的可能性做打算。
如果你想知道在過去的60年里，技術(shù)進步是多么的不可思議，我推薦你看這個視頻，令人驚嘆……

這個視頻體現(xiàn)了摩爾定律對科技行業(yè)的重要性……
"如果說硅谷有心跳，那就是摩爾定律"——羅博·恩代爾
這就引出了一個問題：
如果20年后范式改變的速度是現(xiàn)在的4倍，這意味著什么？

How To Prepare For The Coming Acceleration Shock
“When an industry is subjected to an important innovation, that industry typically feels a significant uptick in the overall clockspeed.”
— Charles Fine (MIT)
As I mentioned, the rapid evolution of human culture, ideas, strategies, and technology is a double-edged sword. On one hand, innovations increase efficiency. On the other hand, it also increases competition.

如何為即將到來的加速沖擊做好準備
“當一個行業(yè)面臨一項重大創(chuàng)新時，這個行業(yè)通常會感到自己的整體發(fā)展速度會有顯著提升?！薄闋査埂べM恩
正如我上面提到的，人類文化、思想、戰(zhàn)略、技術(shù)的快速發(fā)展是一把雙刃劍，一方面，創(chuàng)新可以提高效率，另一方面，它也增加了競爭。

This happens on three levels:
Race against people. People and companies are using their efficiency gains to double down and gain further advantage thus increasing the competition even more. For example, in Silicon Valley, the epicenter of the tech, many of the smartest and wealthiest people in the world are working 60–80 hours per week and making sacrifices in their families, health and sleep in order to do so. Large salaries are put toward nannies, drivers, cleaners, and everything such that time at work can be maximized.

這發(fā)生在三個層面：
1. 人與人之間的競爭
個人和公司都在利用他們的效率提升來加倍獲得進一步的優(yōu)勢，從而更加加劇了競爭。
例如，在科技中心硅谷，許多世界上最聰明、最富有的人每周工作60-80小時，并為此在家庭、健康和睡眠方面做出犧牲，大量的薪酬被花在了保姆、司機、清潔工和其他一切能讓工作時間最大化的事情上。

Race against machines. To compete on costs, companies are using robots and AI to eliminate jobs. In the economics literature, this is known as the race against machines. Many technologies automate old jobs and create the opportunities for new jobs. But, to take advantage of these opportunities, individuals must be able to “race” faster than machines by learning new skills. We see the harbingers of automation with cashierless stores (3.6M jobs in US) and autonomous vehicles (2M truck drivers in US) and robofactories (12M+ manufacturing jobs in US). These three job categories alone account for over 10% of the US workforce, and they’re almost guaranteed to precipitously downsize in the next 10 years.

2. 與機器賽跑
為了在成本上競爭，企業(yè)利用機器人和人工智能來消除工作崗位，在經(jīng)濟學(xué)上，這被稱為與機器的競賽。
技術(shù)使舊的工作自動化，并為新的工作創(chuàng)造機會，但是，為了利用這些機會，個人必須能夠通過學(xué)習(xí)新技能，比機器更快地 "競賽"。
我們從無人商店（ 美國有360萬個收銀工作崗位）和自主汽車（美國有200萬個卡車司機）以及機器人工廠（美國有1200多萬個制造業(yè)工作崗位）看到了自動化的先兆，這三類工作崗位就占了美國勞動力的10%以上，而且?guī)缀蹩梢钥隙〞谖磥?0年內(nèi)會斷崖式地縮減。

Race against the world. Digitization has taken extreme competition to a whole other level. Rather than competing against the best in your local area, you’re competing against the best in the world. In other words, rather than competing against a small number of people, you’re competing against 1,000x the number of people. The result of global competition is that competition is exponentially more fierce and winner-take-all.

3. 與世界賽跑
數(shù)字化將極端競爭提升到了另一個層面，與其說是與當?shù)氐馁吒偁?，不如說是與世界上的佼佼者競爭。
換句話說，與其說你在和一小部分人競爭，不如說你在和1000倍的人競爭，全球競爭的結(jié)果是，競爭成倍地激烈，贏家通吃。

What does the extreme competition mean?
On the positive side, this increasing competition creates incredible innovation. As consumers, we have people racing to serve needs we didn’t even realize we had faster, cheaper, and better.
On the negative side, as workers, we are the ones racing to serve customers. It feels like we’re on a treadmill and that if we get off that treadmill to smell the roses of life for too long, we may fall irreparably behind. If there isn’t always a direct threat we can see, there is always the implied threat. For example, there is now a large literature of megacompanies who were disrupted by garage startups because their innovation rate slowed and their hubris swelled.

極端競爭意味著什么?
從積極的方面來看，日益激烈的競爭創(chuàng)造了令人難以置信的創(chuàng)新，作為消費者，人們競相滿足我們的需求，而我們甚至沒有意識到我們擁有更快、更便宜、更好的服務(wù)。
消極的一面是，作為勞動者，我們要爭先恐后地為顧客服務(wù)，這感覺就像我們在跑步機上，如果我們離開跑步機上去享受美好生活的時間太久，我們可能會無可挽回地落在后面，即使我們不能看到直接的威脅，那其中也一定有隱含的威脅，例如，現(xiàn)在有大量關(guān)于大型公司被車庫創(chuàng)業(yè)公司顛覆的案例，為他們的創(chuàng)新速度變慢，自大情緒膨脹。

Matt Ridley sums up the situation in this quote…
“One of the peculiar features of history is that time always erodes advantage. Every invention sooner or later leads to a counterinvention. Every success contains the seeds of its own overthrow. Every hegemony comes to an end. Evolutionary history is no different. Progress and success are always relative… In history and in evolution, progress is always a futile, Sisyphean struggle to stay in the same relative place by getting ever better at things.”
— Matt Ridley

馬特瑞德用這句話總結(jié)了這種情況：
" 歷史的一個特點是，時間總是侵蝕優(yōu)勢，每一項發(fā)明遲早都會導(dǎo)致相反的發(fā)明，每一次成功都包含著其自身被推翻的種子，每一個霸權(quán)都會走向終結(jié)，這便是進化，進步和成功總是相對的...... 在歷史和進化中，進步，即通過在某件事情上做得越來越好而停留在一個相對位置上，永遠是徒勞的、掙扎的。"

評論翻譯

Rob Wiest
The one book you should add to your reading list is Ishmael. Then you would see that the exponential growth and competition model is our big mistake. We are not competing with the Earth, we live on it. We can't win a war against the animals we co-evolved with. We are not the gods we conceive ourselves as.

你應(yīng)該把《以實瑪利》這本書加到你的書單上，那么你就會發(fā)現(xiàn)，指數(shù)增長和競爭模式是我們的一大錯誤。
我們并不是在與地球競爭，我們生活在地球上，我們無法戰(zhàn)勝與我們共同進化的動物，我們并不是自己想象中的神。

Wonsuk Choi
Absolutely incredible piece. This article informed me of how important it is to start learning now to keep up with the pace in the future. Thank you!

非常的令人難以置信，這篇文章告訴我，現(xiàn)在就開始學(xué)習(xí)，跟上未來的步伐是多么重要，謝謝 ！