TED@SXSWi
JP Rangaswami: Information is food
JP Rangaswami: 信息就是食物
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我们如何消化信息？在TED@SXSWi上，技术员JP Rangaswami探讨了我们与信息的关系。他的见解令人吃惊却十分犀利：我们应以对待食物的方式对待信息。
JP Rangaswami - Technologist
JP Rangaswami thinks deeply (and hilariously) about disruptive data. Full bio
JP Rangaswami thinks deeply (and hilariously) about disruptive data. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:16
I love my food.
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我热爱食品
00:18
And I love information.
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我也热爱信息。
00:21
My children usually tell me
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我的孩子们常常对我说
00:24
that one of those passions is a little more apparent than the other.
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我看起来显然更像个吃货。
00:27
(Laughter)
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（笑声）
00:29
But what I want to do in the next eight minutes or so
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不过在接下来的八分钟里
00:32
is to take you through how those passions developed,
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我会向大家介绍这两个爱好是如何发展的，
00:34
the point in my life when the two passions merged,
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它们合二为一的时刻，
00:37
the journey of learning that took place from that point.
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以及此后我的学习旅程。
00:42
And one idea I want to leave you with today
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今天我想把下面这个问题留给你们：
00:45
is what would would happen differently in your life
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如果像看待食物那样看待信息
00:48
if you saw information the way you saw food?
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你的生活会有什么样的改变？
00:52
I was born in Calcutta --
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我出生在加尔各答（印度城市）
00:54
a family where my father and his father before him
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我的父亲和祖父
00:58
were journalists,
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都是记者，
01:00
and they wrote magazines in the English language.
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他们用英语为杂志写文章。
01:03
That was the family business.
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这就是我家的家族产业。
01:05
And as a result of that,
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因此，
01:07
I grew up with books everywhere around the house.
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我小时候家里全是书。
01:10
And I mean books everywhere around the house.
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真的是堆满了，就像这样。
01:13
And that's actually a shop in Calcutta,
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这其实是加尔各答的一家商店，
01:16
but it's a place where we like our books.
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不过光顾那里的都是爱书人。
01:19
In fact, I've got 38,000 of them now
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事实上，我现在一共有三万八千本书
01:23
and no Kindle in sight.
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而且没有Kindle（亚马逊出品的电子书）。
01:25
But growing up as a child with the books around everywhere,
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我成长的时候身边全是书
01:31
with people to talk to about those books,
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和喜欢讨论书的人，
01:33
this wasn't a sort of slightly learned thing.
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这对我的影响很大。
01:36
By the time I was 18, I had a deep passion for books.
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我十八岁的时候就对书籍有着深深的依恋。
01:40
It wasn't the only passion I had.
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读书不是我唯一的爱好。
01:42
I was a South Indian
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我来自印度南部
01:44
brought up in Bengal.
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在孟加拉长大。
01:46
And two of the things about Bengal:
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孟加拉人有两大爱好：
01:49
they like their savory dishes
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他们喜欢美食
01:51
and they like their sweets.
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和甜点。
01:53
So by the time I grew up,
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所以我长大之后，
01:55
again, I had a well-established passion for food.
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对美食的爱好根深蒂固。
01:59
Now I was growing up in the late '60s and early '70s,
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我成长在六十年代末七十年代初，
02:02
and there were a number of other passions I was also interested in,
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也有不少其它兴趣，
02:05
but these two were the ones that differentiated me.
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但这两个爱好让我与众不同。
02:09
(Laughter)
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（笑声）
02:10
And then life was fine, dandy.
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随后我的生活一帆风顺。
02:13
Everything was okay,
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一切都挺好的，
02:14
until I got to about the age of 26,
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直到我二十六岁那一年。
02:18
and I went to a movie called "Short Circuit."
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我看了一部名叫《雷霆五号》（Short Circuit）的电影。
02:22
Oh, some of you have seen it.
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哦，你们好多人都看过。
02:24
And apparently it's being remade right now
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现在这部电影正在被重拍
02:27
and it's going to be coming out next year.
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明年上映。
02:29
It's the story of this experimental robot
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故事的主人公是这个实验机器人
02:33
which got electrocuted and found a life.
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它触电之后通了人性。
02:36
And as it ran, this thing was saying, "Give me input. Give me input."
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在影片中，它一直说：“我要信息输入。我要信息输入。”
02:40
And I suddenly realized that for a robot
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我突然意识到，对于机器人来说
02:42
both information as well as food
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信息和食物
02:46
were the same thing.
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是一个东西。
02:48
Energy came to it in some form or shape,
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能量以某种形式或形态进入它的身体，
02:51
data came to it in some form or shape.
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数据以某种形式或形态进入它的身体。
02:53
And I began to think,
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我开始思考
02:55
I wonder what it would be like
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我在想
02:57
to start imagining myself
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既然食物和信息从某种程度上来说十分相似
02:59
as if energy and information were the two things I had as input --
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那么我们能否将能量和信息
03:04
as if food and information were similar in some form or shape.
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统一视为输入呢？
03:08
I started doing some research then, and this was the 25-year journey,
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我从那时起开始从事相关的研究，到现在已经二十五年了
03:11
and started finding out
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我最早的发现就是
03:13
that actually human beings as primates
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若以体重为标准
03:16
have far smaller stomachs
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身为灵长类动物的人类
03:19
than should be the size for our body weight
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胃很小
03:22
and far larger brains.
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大脑却很大
03:25
And as I went to research that even further,
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深入研究之后
03:29
I got to a point where I discovered something
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我发现了
03:32
called the expensive tissue hypothesis.
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一种名为昂贵组织的假说
03:36
That actually for a given body mass of a primate
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这种假说认为：对于一定体重的灵长类动物来说
03:40
the metabolic rate was static.
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新陈代谢率是一定的。
03:42
What changed was the balance of the tissues available.
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不同的是体内各种组织的平衡。
03:46
And two of the most expensive tissues in our human body
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而人体内两种最为昂贵的组织
03:50
are nervous tissue and digestive tissue.
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是神经组织和消化组织
03:53
And what transpired was that people had put forward a hypothesis
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因此人们提出了一个假设
03:57
that was apparently coming up with some fabulous results by about 1995.
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1995年的时候这个假设衍生出了不少精彩的成果。
04:02
It's a lady named Leslie Aiello.
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这些成果背后的功臣是一位名叫Leslie Aiello的女士。
04:05
And the paper then suggested that you traded one for the other.
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相关的论文显示，胃和大脑，不可兼得。
04:10
If you wanted your brain for a particular body mass to be large,
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在体重一定的情况下，如果你希望拥有更大的大脑的话，
04:13
you had to live with a smaller gut.
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就只能拥有一个比较小的胃。
04:17
That then set me off completely
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这种观点让我确信
04:19
to say, Okay, these two are connected.
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食物和信息一定有关联。
04:22
So I looked at the cultivation of information as if it were food
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因此我把信息当成食物，研究了它的生产过程
04:26
and said, So we were hunter-gathers of information.
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我的结论是，我们都是信息的捕猎者和采集者。
04:29
We moved from that to becoming farmers and cultivators of information.
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后来我们逐渐成为培育信息的农民和生产者。
04:34
Does that really explain what we're seeing
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这是否能解释
04:35
with the intellectual property battles nowadays?
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今天的知识产权斗争呢？
04:38
Because those people who were hunter-gatherers in origin
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因为信息捕猎者和采集者
04:41
wanted to be free and roam and pick up information as they wanted,
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希望能自由自在的获取他们想要的信息，
04:45
and those that were in the business of farming information
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而那些从事信息生产的人
04:48
wanted to build fences around it,
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希望用栅栏保护他们的产品
04:50
create ownership and wealth and structure and settlement.
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建立所有制，积累财富，形成体系，达成协议
04:54
So there was always going to be a tension within that.
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因此两者的关系总是有点紧张。
04:57
And everything I saw in the cultivation
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在食物生产中
04:59
said there were huge fights amongst the foodies
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生产者和捕猎者以及采集者之间
05:01
between the cultivators and the hunter-gatherers.
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一直都有诸多冲突。
05:04
And this is happening here.
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信息范畴也是如此。
05:06
When I moved to preparation, this same thing was true,
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我发现信息和食物在处理环节上也有相似之处，
05:09
expect that there were two schools.
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而且都有两种风格。
05:11
One group of people said you can distill your information,
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一些人认为可以提炼食物的精华
05:14
you can extract value, separate it and serve it up,
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将食物的价值从原料中提取和分离出来，然而呈现在餐桌上，
05:17
while another group turned around
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但是另外一部分人
05:19
and said no, no you can ferment it.
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不同意这种做法。
05:21
You bring it all together and mash it up
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他们认为要把原料混合在一起
05:24
and the value emerges that way.
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才能体现食物的价值。
05:26
The same is again true with information.
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信息也是如此。
05:28
But consumption was where it started getting really enjoyable.
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但摄入环节更加有趣
05:32
Because what I began to see then
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因为我发现
05:34
was there were so many different ways people would consume this.
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人们摄取食物和信息的方法实在很多。
05:38
They'd buy it from the shop as raw ingredients.
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我们可以在商店里购买原材料。
05:40
Do you cook it? Do you have it served to you?
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自己做饭；吃现成的；
05:43
Do you go to a restaurant?
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或者下馆子。
05:44
The same is true every time as I started thinking about information.
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信息也是这样
05:48
The analogies were getting crazy --
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这个类比真是贴切无比——
05:51
that information had sell-by dates,
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信息也有保质期，
05:53
that people had misused information that wasn't dated properly
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误用过时新闻
05:57
and could really make an effect on the stock market,
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可能对股票市场和企业市值等
05:59
on corporate values, etc.
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造成影响。
06:02
And by this time I was hooked.
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至此我已经彻底沉迷其中不可自拔了。
06:04
And this is about 23 years into this process.
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这差不多是在我进行了二十三年的研究之后发生的事情。
06:07
And I began to start thinking of myself
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这时我开始想
06:10
as we start having mash-ups of fact and fiction,
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我们逐渐开始将现实和虚构混合在一起，
06:13
docu-dramas, mockumentaries, whatever you call it.
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发展出了纪录剧情片，伪纪录片，名字并不重要。
06:17
Are we going to reach the stage
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在未来的某个阶段
06:18
where information has a percentage for fact associated with it?
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我们会不会给信息标上一个事实比例呢？
06:23
We start labeling information for the fact percentage?
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用事实比例来标记不同的信息？
06:26
Are we going to start looking at what happens
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如果信息的源头被阻断
06:29
when your information source is turned off, as a famine?
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在信息饥荒中，又会发生什么呢？
06:32
Which brings me to the final element of this.
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这也是我最后想探讨的一个问题。
06:35
Clay Shirky once stated that there is no such animal as information overload,
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Clay Shirky曾经说过世界上不存在信息过载，
06:38
there is only filter failure.
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只有过滤失败。
06:41
I put it to you that information,
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我认为，
06:44
if viewed from the point of food,
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如果从食物的角度思考，
06:46
is never a production issue; you never speak of food overload.
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信息的问题不在于生产；没有人会说食物过剩。
06:50
Fundamentally it's a consumption issue.
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从根本上说，这是一个摄入的问题。
06:52
And we have to start thinking
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我们必须开始思考
06:54
about how we create diets within ourselves, exercise within ourselves,
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我们如何用合理的饮食习惯和身体锻炼
07:00
to have the faculties to be able to deal with information,
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帮助身体处理消化各类信息，
07:02
to have the labeling to be able to do it responsibly.
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确保信息得到准确有效的标记。
07:06
In fact, when I saw "Supersize Me," I starting thinking of saying,
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事实上，我看《大号的我》(Supersize Me)的时候就在想，
07:10
What would happen
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如果一个人
07:12
if an individual had 31 days nonstop Fox News?
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连续看三十一天不眠不休的看福克斯新闻会怎么样？
07:16
(Laughter)
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（笑声）
07:17
Would there be time to be able to work with it?
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他会有时间消化这些信息吗？
07:20
So you start really understanding
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这样你就会明白
07:23
that you can have diseases, toxins, a need to balance your diet,
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你可能会得病、中毒，你需要平衡你的饮食，
07:29
and once you start looking, and from that point on,
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一旦开始这样想，从那个时刻开始，
07:32
everything I have done in terms of the consumption of information,
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与信息有关的事情：信息的摄入、
07:36
the production of information, the preparation of information,
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信息的生产、信息的处理，
07:39
I've looked at from the viewpoint of food.
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我都从食物的角度去思考。
07:43
It has probably not helped my waistline any
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这可能让我的腰围愈发可观
07:45
because I like practicing on both sides.
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因为无论是信息还是食物我都喜欢亲身实验。
07:48
But I'd like to leave you with just that question:
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最后，我还是希望将这样一个问题留给你们：
07:52
If you began to think of all the information that you consume
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如果从食物的角度
07:55
the way you think of food,
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看待你接受的所有信息
07:56
what would you do differently?
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你会做出怎样的改变？
07:58
Thank you very much for your time.
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谢谢大家。
08:00
(Applause)
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（掌声）
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
JP Rangaswami - TechnologistJP Rangaswami thinks deeply (and hilariously) about disruptive data.
Why you should listen
With a background in economics and journalism, JP Rangaswami has been a technology innovator and chief information officer for many leading financial firms. As an advocate for open source and disruptive technologies, Rangaswami has been a leading force in the success of multiple startups, including School of Everything, Salesforce.com and Ribbit. He blogs (unmissably) at Confused of Calcutta.
JP Rangaswami | Speaker | TED.com