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How can we develop transformative tools for thought?

现代计算机的起源神话的一部分是关于20世纪60-70年代的黄金时代的故事。在这个故事中，有远见的先驱者们追求着一个梦想，在这个梦想中，计算机能够提供强大的思维工具，即增强人类智慧的工具。其中一位先驱者艾伦-凯（Alan Kay）在写到个人电脑的潜力时，总结了这个梦想的乐观主义。"它的使用实际上将改变整个文明的思维模式"。

It’s an inspiring dream, which helped lead to modern interactive graphics, windowing interfaces, word processors, and much else. But retrospectively it’s difficult not to be disappointed, to feel that computers have not yet been nearly as transformative as far older tools for thought, such as language and writing. Today, it’s common in technology circles to pay lip service to the pioneering dreams of the past. But nostalgia aside there is little determined effort to pursue the vision of transformative new tools for thought.

这是一个令人振奋的梦想，它帮助促成了现代交互式图形、窗口化界面、文字处理机等现代交互式图形、窗口化界面、文字处理机等。但回想起来，我们很难不感到失望，觉得计算机还没有像语言和文字等更古老的思想工具那样，远不如语言和文字等更古老的思想工具的变革性。今天，在科技圈里，人们普遍对过去的先锋梦想赞不绝口。但是，除了怀旧之外，人们很少有决心去追求变革性的新思维工具的愿景。

We believe now is a good time to work hard on this vision again. In this essay we sketch out a set of ideas we believe can be used to help develop transformative new tools for thought. In the first part of the essay we describe an experimental prototype system that we’ve built, a kind of mnemonic medium intended to augment human memory. This is a snapshot of an ongoing project, detailing both encouraging progress as well as many challenges and opportunities. In the second part of the essay, we broaden the focus. We sketch several other prototype systems. And we address the question: why is it that the technology industry has made comparatively little effort developing this vision of transformative tools for thought?

我们相信，现在是再次努力实现这一愿景的好时机。在这篇文章中，我们勾勒出一套我们认为可以用来帮助开发变革性的新思维工具的想法。在文章的第一部分中，我们描述了一个实验性的原型系统，这是一个实验性的原型系统，它是一种*记忆介质，旨在增强人类的记忆力。这是一个正在进行的项目的一个缩影，详细介绍了令人鼓舞的进展以及许多挑战和机遇。在文章的第二部分，我们将扩大重点。我们勾画了其他几个原型系统。我们还探讨了一个问题：为什么技术行业在开发这种变革性的思想工具的愿景方面所做的努力相对较少？

In the opening we mentioned some visionaries of the past. To those could be added many others – Ivan Sutherland, Seymour Papert, Vannevar Bush, and more. Online there is much well-deserved veneration for these people. But such veneration can veer into an unhealthy reverence for the good old days, a belief that giants once roamed the earth, and today’s work is lesser. Yes, those pioneers did amazing things, and arguably had ways of working that modern technologists, in both industry and academia, are poorly equipped to carry on. But they also made mistakes, and were ignorant of powerful ideas that are available today. And so a theme through both parts of the essay is to identify powerful ideas that weren’t formerly known or weren’t acted upon. Out of this understanding arises a conviction that a remarkable set of opportunities is open today.

在开篇我们提到了过去的一些远见卓识。除了这些人之外，还有许多其他的人—— 伊万-萨瑟兰、西摩-帕伯特、范内瓦尔-布什等。在网上，人们对这些人有很多当之无愧的崇拜。但这种敬仰可能会让人对过去的美好时光产生不健康的敬畏，认为巨人曾经在地球上漫游，而今天的工作是次要的。是的，那些先驱者们做了令人惊奇的事情，可以说他们的工作方式是现代科技工作者，无论是工业界还是学术界，都不具备继续发展的条件。但他们也犯过错误，对今天的强大思想一无所知。因此，贯穿这两部分文章的一个主题就是找出以前不为人知或不为人知的强大思想。从这一认识中产生了一个信念，即今天有一系列非凡的机会。

A word on nomenclature: the term “tools for thought” rolls off neither the tongue nor the keyboard. What’s more, the term “tool” implies a certain narrowness. Alan Kay has argued that a more powerful aim is to develop a new medium for thought. A medium such as, say, Adobe Illustrator is essentially different from any of the individual tools Illustrator contains. Such a medium creates a powerful immersive context, a context in which the user can have new kinds of thought, thoughts that were formerly impossible for them. Speaking loosely, the range of expressive thoughts possible in such a medium is an emergent property of the elementary objects and actions in that medium. If those are well chosen, the medium expands the possible range of human thought.

关于名词术语："思想工具 "这个词既不在口头上，也不在键盘上。更重要的是，"工具 "一词意味着某种狭义。Alan Kay认为，更有力的目的是开发一种新的思想媒介。像Adobe Illustrator这样的媒介，本质上不同于Illustrator中的任何一个单独的工具。这样的媒介可以创造出一种强大的沉浸式语境，在这种语境中，用户可以有新的思想，即以前不可能有的思想。粗略地讲，在这样的媒介中，可以表现的思想的范围是该媒介中的基本对象和动作的一种新特性。如果这些东西选得好，这个媒介就会扩大人类思想的可能范围。

With that said, the term “tools for thought” has been widely used since Iverson’s 1950s and 1960s work An account may be found in Iverson’s Turing Award lecture, Notation as a Tool of Thought (1979). Incidentally, even Iverson is really describing a medium for thought, the APL programming language, not a narrow tool. introducing the term. And so we shall use “tools for thought” as our catch all phrase, while giving ourselves license to explore a broader range, and also occasionally preferring the term “medium” when it is apt.

说到这里，"思想的工具 "这个术语自艾弗森在20世纪50年代和60年代的作品《Notation as a Tool of Thought》(1979)中的叙述可以找到。顺便说一下，即使是艾弗森也是在描述一种思想的媒介--APL编程语言，而不是狭义的工具。 在介绍这个术语时，我们应该使用 "思想的工具"。因此，我们将使用 "思想的工具 "作为我们所有的短语，同时允许自己探索更广泛的范围，当 "媒介 "这个词很贴切的时候，我们偶尔也会喜欢用 "媒介 "这个词。

Let’s come back to that phrase from the opening, about changing “the thought patterns of an entire civilization”. It sounds ludicrous, a kind of tech soothsaying. Except, of course, such changes have happened multiple times during human history: the development of language, of writing, and our other most powerful tools for thought. And, for better and worse, computers really have affected the thought patterns of our civilization over the past 60 years, and those changes seem like just the beginning. This essay is a small contribution to understanding how such changes happen, and what is still possible.

让我们再回到开篇的那句话，关于改变 "整个文明的思维模式"。这句话听起来很可笑，是一种技术上的 "神仙说"。当然，这种变化在人类历史上已经发生过多次：语言的发展，文字的发展，以及我们其他最强大的思想工具。而且，不管是好的还是坏的，在过去的60年里，计算机确实影响了我们人类文明的思维模式，而这些变化似乎只是一个开始。这篇文章是对理解这种变化是如何发生的，以及仍有可能发生的事情的一个小小的贡献。

The musician and comedian Martin Mull has observed that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. In a similar way, there’s an inherent inadequacy in writing about tools for thought. To the extent that such a tool succeeds, it expands your thinking beyond what can be achieved using existing tools, including writing. The more transformative the tool, the larger the gap that is opened. Conversely, the larger the gap, the more difficult the new tool is to evoke in writing. But what writing can do, and the reason we wrote this essay, is act as a bootstrap. It’s a way of identifying points of leverage that may help develop new tools for thought. So let’s get on with it.

音乐家、喜剧演员马丁-穆尔曾观察到，"写音乐就像写建筑的舞蹈"。同样的，写思维的工具也有其内在的不足。在这种工具成功的程度上，它拓展了你的思维，超越了包括写作在内的现有工具所能达到的效果。工具的转化性越大，打开的缺口就越大。反之，差距越大，新工具就越难在写作中唤起。但写作能做的，也是我们写这篇文章的原因，就是充当一个引导者的角色。它是一种找准借力点，可以或许帮助开发新的思惟工具。所以，让我们继续下去吧。