TEDSalon 2006
Steven Johnson: How the "ghost map" helped end a killer disease
Steven Johnson obilazi Kartu duhova
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Autor Steven Johnson vodi nas u desetominutni obilazak Karte duhova, njegove knjige o pojavi kolere u Londonu 1854. i utjecaju koju je imala na znanost, gradove i moderno društvo.
Steven Johnson - Writer
Steven Berlin Johnson examines the intersection of science, technology and personal experience. Full bio
Steven Berlin Johnson examines the intersection of science, technology and personal experience. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:25
If you haven't ordered yet, I generally find the rigatoni with the spicy tomato sauce
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Ako još niste naručili, općenito mislim kako rigatoni s ljutim umakom od rajčice
00:32
goes best with diseases of the small intestine.
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idu najbolje s bolestima tankog crijeva.
00:35
(Laughter)
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(Smijeh)
00:37
So, sorry -- it just feels like I should be doing stand-up up here because of the setting.
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Pa, oprostite -- osjeća se kako bih ovdje trebao izvoditi komediju s nogu zbog dekoracije.
00:41
No, what I want to do is take you back to 1854
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Ne, ono što želim učiniti jest vratiti vas u 1854.
00:46
in London for the next few minutes, and tell the story --
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u Londonu sljedećih nekoliko minuta, i ispričati priču --
00:50
in brief -- of this outbreak,
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ukratko -- o toj pojavi,
00:53
which in many ways, I think, helped create the world that we live in today,
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koja je na puno načina, mislim, pomogla stvoriti svijet u kojem danas živimo,
00:57
and particularly the kind of city that we live in today.
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i naročito vrstu grada u kakvom danas živimo.
00:59
This period in 1854, in the middle part of the 19th century,
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Ovo razdoblje 1854., sredinom 19. stoljeća,
01:03
in London's history, is incredibly interesting for a number of reasons.
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u povijesti Londona, nevjerojatno je zanimljivo iz puno razloga.
01:07
But I think the most important one is that
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No mislim kako je najvažniji taj
01:10
London was this city of 2.5 million people,
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da je London bio grad s 2,5 milijuna stanovnika,
01:13
and it was the largest city on the face of the planet at that point.
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i bio je najveći grad na Planetu u tom trenutku.
01:18
But it was also the largest city that had ever been built.
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Ali je također bio najveći grad ikad izgrađen.
01:20
And so the Victorians were trying to live through
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I tako su se Viktorijanci trudili da prežive
01:23
and simultaneously invent a whole new scale of living:
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i istovremeno izmisle cijelo novo mjerilo življenja:
01:27
this scale of living that we, you know, now call "metropolitan living."
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mjerilo življenja koje mi, znate, danas zovemo "životom u metropoli".
01:32
And it was in many ways, at this point in the mid-1850s, a complete disaster.
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I bilo je na puno načina, u tom trenutku sredinom 1850-ih, totalna katastrofa.
01:38
They were basically a city living with a modern kind of industrial metropolis
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U biti je to bio grad koji je živio s modernom vrstom industrijskog metropolisa
01:42
with an Elizabethan public infrastructure.
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s elizabetanskom javnom infrastrukturom.
01:45
So people, for instance, just to gross you out for a second,
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Ljudi su na primjer, samo da vas užasnem na trenutak,
01:50
had cesspools of human waste in their basement. Like, a foot to two feet deep.
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imali jame s ljudskim otpadom u podrumu. Duboke 30 do 60 centimetara.
01:56
And they would just kind of throw the buckets down there
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I samo bi bacali vjedra dolje
01:59
and hope that it would somehow go away,
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i nadali se da će nekako otići,
02:01
and of course it never really would go away.
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i, naravno, nikud ne bi stvarno otišlo.
02:04
And all of this stuff, basically, had accumulated to the point
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I sve se to u osnovi gomilalo do točke
02:07
where the city was incredibly offensive to just walk around in.
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kada je gradom bilo nevjerojatno neugodno samo hodati.
02:11
It was an amazingly smelly city. Not just because of the cesspools,
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Bio je to iznenađujuće smrdljiv grad. Ne samo zbog jama,
02:15
but also the sheer number of livestock in the city would shock people.
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već također zbog samog broja stoke u gradu koji bi šokirao ljude.
02:18
Not just the horses, but people had cows in their attics that they would use for milk,
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Osim konja, ljudi su imali krave na svojim tavanima koje su muzli,
02:22
that they would hoist up there and keep them in the attic
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koje bi digli tamo i držali na tavanima
02:25
until literally their milk ran out and they died,
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sve dok doslovno ne bi prestale davati mlijeko i uginule,
02:27
and then they would drag them off to the bone boilers down the street.
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i tad bi ih odvukli do kotlova za kuhanje kostiju dolje niz ulicu.
02:33
So, you would just walk around London at this point
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Dakle, samo bi hodali Londonom u to vrijeme
02:36
and just be overwhelmed with this stench.
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i smrad bi vas naprosto savladao.
02:39
And what ended up happening is that an entire emerging public health system
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Na kraju je cijeli javni zdravstveni sustav u nastajanju
02:44
became convinced that it was the smell that was killing everybody,
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postao uvjeren kako upravo smrad ubija sve,
02:48
that was creating these diseases
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uzrokuje te bolesti
02:50
that would wipe through the city every three or four years.
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koje bi ubijale po gradu svake tri do četiri godine.
02:53
And cholera was really the great killer of this period.
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A kolera je doista bila veliki ubojica tog razdoblja.
02:55
It arrived in London in 1832, and every four or five years
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Došla je u London 1832., i svake četiri do pet godina
03:00
another epidemic would take 10,000, 20,000 people in London
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druga epidemija bi uzela 10.000, 20.000 ljudi u Londonu
03:04
and throughout the U.K.
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i diljem Velike Britanije.
03:06
And so the authorities became convinced that this smell was this problem.
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I tako su vlasti postale uvjerene kako je taj smrad problem.
03:10
We had to get rid of the smell.
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Moramo se riješiti smrada.
03:12
And so, in fact, they concocted a couple of early, you know,
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I tako su, ustvari, smislili par ranih, znate,
03:15
founding public-health interventions in the system of the city,
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temeljnih javnozdravstvenih zahvata u sustav grada,
03:19
one of which was called the "Nuisances Act,"
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od kojih se jedan zvao "Uredba o javnom redu",
03:21
which they got everybody as far as they could
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kojom su prisilili sve koliko su najviše mogli
03:23
to empty out their cesspools and just pour all that waste into the river.
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da isprazne svoje jame i jednostavno izliju sav taj otpad u rijeku.
03:28
Because if we get it out of the streets, it'll smell much better,
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Zato jer će, ako ga uklonimo s ulica, mirišati puno bolje,
03:32
and -- oh right, we drink from the river.
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i jer -- oh, točno, pijemo iz rijeke.
03:36
So what ended up happening, actually,
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Ono što se na kraju dogodilo, ustvari,
03:38
is they ended up increasing the outbreaks of cholera
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jest da su pojave kolere učestale
03:40
because, as we now know, cholera is actually in the water.
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zato što je, kako sad znamo, kolera zapravo u vodi.
03:44
It's a waterborne disease, not something that's in the air.
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To je bolest koja se prenosi vodom, a ne nešto što je u zraku.
03:47
It's not something you smell or inhale; it's something you ingest.
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Nije nešto što mirišete ili inhalirate; to je nešto što gutate.
03:50
And so one of the founding moments of public health in the 19th century
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I tako je jedna od temeljnih vrijednosti javnog zdravstva 19. stoljeća
03:54
effectively poisoned the water supply of London much more effectively
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učinkovito otrovala vodnu zalihu Londona puno efikasnije
03:58
than any modern day bioterrorist could have ever dreamed of doing.
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nego bi bilo koji suvremeni bioterorist ikad mogao sanjati da može.
04:01
So this was the state of London in 1854,
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Ovo je bilo stanje Londona 1854.,
04:05
and in the middle of all this carnage and offensive conditions,
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i usred svog tog pokolja i neugodnih uvjeta,
04:11
and in the midst of all this scientific confusion
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i usred sve te znanstvene smetenosti
04:14
about what was actually killing people,
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o tome što je u stvari ubijalo ljude,
04:17
it was a very talented classic 19th century multi-disciplinarian named John Snow,
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našao se John Snow, znanstvenik vrlo talentiran u mnogim disciplinama klasičnog 19. st.,
04:23
who was a local doctor in Soho in London,
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lokalni liječnik u Sohou u Londonu,
04:26
who had been arguing for about four or five years
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koji je tvrdio oko četiri ili pet godina
04:28
that cholera was, in fact, a waterborne disease,
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kako je kolera, u biti, bolest koja se prenosi vodom,
04:31
and had basically convinced nobody of this.
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i koji ustvari nikoga nije uvjerio u to.
04:34
The public health authorities had largely ignored what he had to say.
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Organi javnog zdravstva uglavnom su ignorirali što je govorio.
04:38
And he'd made the case in a number of papers and done a number of studies,
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Bio je u pravu u brojnim radovima i napravio je brojna ispitivanja,
04:42
but nothing had really stuck.
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no ništa nije ostavilo traga.
04:44
And part of -- what's so interesting about this story to me
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I dijelom je to -- što mi je tako zanimljivo u ovoj priči
04:46
is that in some ways, it's a great case study in how cultural change happens,
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na neki način, sjajan primjer o tome kako su se dogodile kulturalne promjene,
04:51
how a good idea eventually comes to win out over much worse ideas.
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kako dobra ideja na kraju pobjeđuje puno gore ideje.
04:56
And Snow labored for a long time with this great insight that everybody ignored.
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I Snow je dugo radio na toj sjajnoj ideji koju su svi ignorirali.
05:00
And then on one day, August 28th of 1854,
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I onda se jednog dana, 28. kolovoza 1854.,
05:05
a young child, a five-month-old girl whose first name we don't know,
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malo dijete, petomjesečna djevojčica čije ime ne znamo,
05:09
we know her only as Baby Lewis, somehow contracted cholera,
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znamo je samo kao Beba Lewis, nekako zarazila kolerom,
05:13
came down with cholera at 40 Broad Street.
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oboljela od kolere na Broad Streetu br. 40.
05:16
You can't really see it in this map, but this is the map
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Zapravo ga ne možete vidjeti na ovoj karti, ali ovo je karta
05:19
that becomes the central focus in the second half of my book.
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koja dolazi u središte pažnje u drugoj polovici moje knjige.
05:24
It's in the middle of Soho, in this working class neighborhood,
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Nalazi se u sredini Sohoa, u ovom kvartu radničke klase,
05:26
this little girl becomes sick and it turns out that the cesspool,
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ova djevojčica postaje bolesna i pokazalo se kako jama,
05:30
that they still continue to have, despite the Nuisances Act,
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koju još uvijek imaju, usprkos Uredbi,
05:33
bordered on an extremely popular water pump,
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graniči s jako popularnom pumpom za vodu,
05:37
local watering hole that was well known for the best water in all of Soho,
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lokalnom jamom za snabdijevanje vodom dobro poznatoj po najboljoj vodi u Sohou,
05:41
that all the residents from Soho and the surrounding neighborhoods would go to.
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na koju su išli svi stanovnici Sohoa i okolnih kvartova.
05:45
And so this little girl inadvertently ended up
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I tako je ova mala djevojčica nehotice
05:48
contaminating the water in this popular pump,
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kontaminirala vodu u toj popularnoj pumpi,
05:50
and one of the most terrifying outbreaks in the history of England
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i jedna je od najužasnijih pojava kolere u povijesti Engleske
05:56
erupted about two or three days later.
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buknula dva ili tri dana kasnije.
05:58
Literally, 10 percent of the neighborhood died in seven days,
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Doslovno je 10 posto susjedstva umrlo u sedam dana,
06:02
and much more would have died if people hadn't fled
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i puno bi ih više umrlo da ljudi nisu pobjegli
06:04
after the initial outbreak kicked in.
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nakon prvobitnog izbijanja.
06:07
So it was this incredibly terrifying event.
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Dakle, to je bio taj nevjerojatno užasan događaj.
06:09
You had these scenes of entire families dying
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Imate scene cijelih obitelji koje umiru
06:12
over the course of 48 hours of cholera,
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za 48 sati od kolere,
06:14
alone in their one-room apartments, in their little flats.
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same u jednosobnim stanovima, u svojim malim garsonijerama.
06:19
Just an extraordinary, terrifying scene.
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Jednostavno vanredna, užasavajuća scena.
06:22
Snow lived near there, heard about the outbreak,
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Snow je živio blizu, čuo je za izbijanje,
06:26
and in this amazing act of courage went directly into the belly of the beast
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i u tom nevjerojatnom činu hrabrosti otišao je ravno u ralje zvijeri
06:29
because he thought an outbreak that concentrated
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zato što je mislio kako bi tako usredotočeno izbijanje
06:32
could actually potentially end up convincing people that,
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moglo zapravo uvjeriti ljude da je,
06:36
in fact, the real menace of cholera was in the water supply and not in the air.
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u stvari, prava opasnost od kolere u zalihama vode, a ne u zraku.
06:42
He suspected an outbreak that concentrated
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Pretpostavljao je da bi tako koncentrirano izbijanje
06:44
would probably involve a single point source.
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vjerojatno uključivalo jedan glavni izvor.
06:48
One single thing that everybody was going to
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Jednu jedinu stvar na koju svi idu
06:50
because it didn't have the traditional slower path
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zato što nije imala tradicionalan sporiji način ponašanja
06:53
of infections that you might expect.
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infekcija koji biste mogli očekivati.
06:56
And so he went right in there and started interviewing people.
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I tako je otišao direktno tamo i počeo intervjuirati ljude.
06:59
He eventually enlisted the help of this amazing other figure,
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Na kraju je dobio pomoć te nevjerojatne druge osobe,
07:03
who's kind of the other protagonist of the book --
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na neki način drugog protagonista knjige --
07:05
this guy, Henry Whitehead, who was a local minister,
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tog čovjeka, Henry Whiteheada, mjesnog svećenika,
07:08
who was not at all a man of science, but was incredibly socially connected;
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koji uopće nije bio znanstvenik, ali je bio nevjerojatno društveno povezan;
07:11
he knew everybody in the neighborhood.
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poznavao je sve u susjedstvu.
07:13
And he managed to track down, Whitehead did,
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I uspio je pronaći, Whitehead,
07:15
many of the cases of people who had drunk water from the pump,
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mnoge slučajeve ljudi koji su pili vodu iz pumpe,
07:18
or who hadn't drunk water from the pump.
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ili koji nisu pili vodu iz pumpe.
07:20
And eventually Snow made a map of the outbreak.
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I na kraju je Snow napravio kartu izbijanja.
07:25
He found increasingly that people who drank from the pump were getting sick.
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Otkrio je kako ljudi koji su pili s pumpe češće obolijevaju.
07:28
People who hadn't drunk from the pump were not getting sick.
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Ljudi koji nisu pili s pumpe nisu obolijevali.
07:31
And he thought about representing that
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I mislio je to prikazati
07:33
as a kind of a table of statistics of people living in different neighborhoods,
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kao vrstu tablice statistika ljudi koji žive u različitim susjedstvima,
07:36
people who hadn't, you know, percentages of people who hadn't,
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ljudi koji nisu imali, znate, postotke ljudi koji nisu imali,
07:38
but eventually he hit upon the idea
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ali na kraju je došao do ideje
07:40
that what he needed was something that you could see.
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da treba nešto što možemo vidjeti.
07:42
Something that would take in a sense a higher-level view
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Nešto što bi dalo pogled s više razine
07:44
of all this activity that had been happening in the neighborhood.
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na sve te aktivnosti u susjedstvu.
07:47
And so he created this map,
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I tako je napravio kartu,
07:50
which basically ended up representing all the deaths in the neighborhoods
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koja je u osnovi prikazivala sve smrti u susjedstvima
07:54
as black bars at each address.
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kao crne crte na svakoj adresi.
07:57
And you can see in this map, the pump right at the center of it
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I možete vidjeti na ovoj karti, pumpu točno u centru
08:00
and you can see that one of the residences down the way
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i možete vidjeti kako jedna od zgrada niže
08:02
had about 15 people dead.
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ima oko 15 umrlih.
08:04
And the map is actually a little bit bigger.
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I karta je zapravo malo veća.
08:06
As you get further and further away from the pump,
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I kako se sve više i više udaljavate od pumpe,
08:08
the deaths begin to grow less and less frequent.
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smrti je sve manje i manje.
08:11
And so you can see this something poisonous
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Možete vidjeti da nešto otrovno
08:14
emanating out of this pump that you could see in a glance.
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izlazi iz te pumpe, što ste mogli vidjeti odmah.
08:18
And so, with the help of this map,
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I tako, pomoću ove karte,
08:20
and with the help of more evangelizing
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i pomoću više uvjeravanja
08:22
that he did over the next few years
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sljedećih nekoliko godina
08:24
and that Whitehead did, eventually, actually,
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i što je radio Whitehead, na kraju, zapravo,
08:26
the authorities slowly started to come around.
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vlasti su polako počele mijenjati mišljenje.
08:28
It took much longer than sometimes we like to think in this story,
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Trajalo je duže no što ponekad volimo misliti u ovoj priči,
08:31
but by 1866, when the next big cholera outbreak came to London,
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ali 1886., kad se sljedeći put kolera pojavila u Londonu,
08:36
the authorities had been convinced -- in part because of this story,
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vlasti su bile uvjerene -- djelomično zbog ove priče,
08:40
in part because of this map -- that in fact the water was the problem.
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djelomično zbog ove karte -- da je de facto problem voda.
08:44
And they had already started building the sewers in London,
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I već su bili počeli graditi kanalizacije u Londonu,
08:46
and they immediately went to this outbreak
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i odmah su otišli tamo
08:48
and they told everybody to start boiling their water.
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i rekli svima da počnu prokuhavati vodu.
08:50
And that was the last time that London has seen a cholera outbreak since.
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I to je bio zadnji put da se kolera pojavila u Londonu.
08:55
So, part of this story, I think -- well, it's a terrifying story,
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Dakle, dio ove priče, mislim -- dobro, priča je užasna,
08:58
it's a very dark story and it's a story
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to je vrlo mračna priča i ovo je priča
09:00
that continues on in many of the developing cities of the world.
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koja se nastavlja u mnogim svjetskim gradovima u razvoju.
09:04
It's also a story really that is fundamentally optimistic,
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Ovo je također priča koja je u osnovi optimistična
09:07
which is to say that it's possible to solve these problems
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što znači da je moguće riješiti te probleme
09:10
if we listen to reason, if we listen to the kind of wisdom of these kinds of maps,
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ako slušamo razum, ako slušamo vrstu razuma ovih vrsta mapa,
09:14
if we listen to people like Snow and Whitehead,
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ako slušamo ljude poput Snowa i Whiteheada,
09:16
if we listen to the locals who understand
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ako slušamo lokalne stanovnike koji razumiju
09:18
what's going on in these kinds of situations.
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što se događa u ovakvim vrstama situacija.
09:21
And what it ended up doing is making the idea
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I na kraju je došao do ideje
09:24
of large-scale metropolitan living a sustainable one.
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života u metropoli kao održivog.
09:28
When people were looking at 10 percent of their neighborhoods dying
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Kad su ljudi vidjeli umiranje 10 posto njihova susjedstva
09:31
in the space of seven days,
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u razdoblju od sedam dana,
09:33
there was a widespread consensus that this couldn't go on,
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široko je rasprostranjen konsenzus da se tako više ne može nastaviti,
09:36
that people weren't meant to live in cities of 2.5 million people.
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da ljudima nije bilo suđeno živjeti u gradovima od 2,5 milijuna stanovnika.
09:40
But because of what Snow did, because of this map,
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No zbog toga što je učinio Snow, zbog ove karte,
09:42
because of the whole series of reforms
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zbog cijelih serija reformi
09:44
that happened in the wake of this map,
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koje je potaknula pojava ove karte,
09:46
we now take for granted that cities have 10 million people,
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sada prihvaćamo kao gotovu činjenicu da gradovi imaju 10 milijuna ljudi,
09:50
cities like this one are in fact sustainable things.
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da su gradovi poput ovih zapravo održivi.
09:52
We don't worry that New York City is going to collapse in on itself
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Ne brinemo se da će New York City kolapsirati sam od sebe,
09:55
quite the way that, you know, Rome did,
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na način na koji je, znate, Rim kolapsirao,
09:57
and be 10 percent of its size in 100 years or 200 years.
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i biti 10 posto od vlastite veličine za 100 ili 200 godina.
10:00
And so that in a way is the ultimate legacy of this map.
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I to je na neki način konačna ostavština ove karte.
10:03
It's a map of deaths that ended up creating a whole new way of life,
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To je karta smrti koja je na kraju stvorila cijeli novi način života,
10:08
the life that we're enjoying here today. Thank you very much.
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života u kojem uživamo danas. Puno vam hvala.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Steven Johnson - WriterSteven Berlin Johnson examines the intersection of science, technology and personal experience.
Why you should listen
Steven Johnson is a leading light of today's interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to innovation. His writings have influenced everything from cutting-edge ideas in urban planning to the battle against 21st-century terrorism. Johnson was chosen by Prospect magazine as one of the top ten brains of the digital future, and The Wall Street Journal calls him "one of the most persuasive advocates for the role of collaboration in innovation."
Johnson's work on the history of innovation inspired the Emmy-nominated six-part series on PBS, "How We Got To Now with Steven Johnson," which aired in the fall of 2014. The book version of How We Got To Now was a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His new book, Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World, revolves around the creative power of play and delight: ideas and innovations that set into motion many momentous changes in science, technology, politics and society.
Johnson is also the author of the bestselling Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, one of his many books celebrating progress and innovation. Others include The Invention of Air and The Ghost Map. Everything Bad Is Good For You, one of the most discussed books of 2005, argued that the increasing complexity of modern media is training us to think in more complex ways. Emergence and Future Perfect explore the power of bottom-up intelligence in both nature and contemporary society.
An innovator himself, Johnson has co-created three influential sites: the pioneering online magazine FEED, the Webby-Award-winning community site, Plastic.com, and the hyperlocal media site outside.in, which was acquired by AOL in 2011.
Johnson is a regular contributor to WIRED magazine, as well as the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and many other periodicals. He has appeared on many high-profile television programs, including "The Charlie Rose Show," "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."
Steven Johnson | Speaker | TED.com