[2012.11.26]Global trends for 2013:2013全球趋势Top10
[导读]：若是可以预知未来，你的第一反应是不是首先去买张彩票？准确地预言未来不可能，但是对未来发展趋势的洞察可能会让你和你的企业从中受益。
Global trends for 2013
2013全球趋势
A top ten for business leaders
商业领袖应该关注的全球趋势Top10
Nov 26th 2012, 11:01 by J.A.
Cassandra is obviously not the only forecaster, and sadly on occasion this particular modern-day soothsayer fails to match the infallibility of his classical forebear. I say this because the England cricket team, despite my dire predictions of disappointment, has today handsomely defeated India in Mumbai. So, it is in a spirit of humility that I offer these predictions for 2013 from alternative (I am loth to say rival) forecasters, Professor Thomas Malnight of the IMD business school in Lausanne and his colleague Tracey Keys of Strategy Dynamics Global.
显然，卡桑德拉（Cassandra ）【注1】并不是唯一的预言家。不过作为一位现代的“预言家”，有时候我的预言在准确程度上却比不上这位古希腊的前辈。我之所以这么说是因为我之前预言今天英格兰板球队会在孟买举行的比赛中输给印度，结果英格兰队却轻松获胜。因此，我深感羞愧，不敢再口出狂言。在这里，我给出其他一些预言家（我不愿意把他们当成我的对手）对2013年若干趋势的预测。他们是来自洛桑国际管理学院（IMD business school in Lausanne）的托马斯?麦尔耐特（Thomas Malnight）教授和他同时也兼职于Strategy Dynamics Global的同事特蕾西?克伊丝（Tracey Keys）。
Looking down their ten trends, I find myself general in agreement (though I'm not as pessimistic as they are in number 7, and we have to bear in mind that a lot of what they say is more relevant to the years well beyond 2013). And quite what they mean by the "ownerless economy" in number 2 is a bit of a mystery…Still, well worth pondering, and well worth looking at the Globaltrends website. Meanwhile, here is their potted version:
下面是他们预测的十大趋势，我的观点跟他们差不多。（不过对于第7点，我并不像他们那么悲观，但我们应该注意：这不仅是对2013年的预测，他们的观点对于之后的许多年会更有意义）。他们在第2点中说的“无主经济”很是让人费解。不过，Globaltrends website网站值得一看，上面的内容引人深思。下面就是他们观点的概述：
The great power shift
各种力量的巨大转变
10 trends business leaders need to watch in 2013
商业领袖应该关注的2013年趋势Top10
Thomas W. Malnight and Tracey S. Keys
观点作者：托马斯?麦尔耐特及特蕾西?克伊丝
The great global redistribution of economic and social power will continue over the next 12 months. Power will flow away from traditional institutions that have failed to deliver progress – especially governments and banks. It will flow towards communities and individuals, and also to businesses whose leaders understand and act on the big trends shaping our future.
2013年，全球范围内大规模的经济与社会力量再分配过程仍将继续。上述力量会从那些未能取得进展的机构（尤其是政府及银行）转移到社区、个人及那些能够洞察这些改变未来世界的趋势并采取相应措施的商业领袖们所领导的企业。
This future looks uncertain and unstable. Hurricane Sandy was a deadly reminder of shifting climate patterns, emphasizing the need for new ways to manage the world’s resources and environment. There are growing levels of social unrest over rising inequality, austerity, unemployment, political ineptitude, institutional failure and more. And companies will continue to fail because they misread the future - like Kodak, which invented the digital camera but filed for bankruptcy after focusing on its core film business instead.
未来看起来不确定、不稳定。飓风桑迪造成的人员伤亡及物质损失让人们再度关注气候变化，也使得寻求开发利用资源及保护环境新方法的需求显得越发重要。由日益凸显的不平等、财政紧缩措施、高企的失业率、政府执政无力、制度失效及其他原因导致的社会动荡不断升级。将会有更多不能洞察未来发展趋势的企业被淘汰，如柯达。这家企业发明了数字相机，却仍将业务重心放在胶卷业务上，最后不得不申请破产。
In our new Global Trends Report for 2013, we highlight 10 trends that business leaders need to focus on today. These are:
在我们发布的《2013全球趋势》这份报告中，我们挑选出当今商业领袖应该关注的十大趋势：
1.Social everything: New generations and their digital world stepping forward
1 社交技术将渗透到生活的方方面面：年轻一代将扮演更为重要的角色，而他们的数字世界将继续向前发展
社交技术无孔不入
年轻一代日益崛起
数字世界继续发展
Social technologies are now a central part of everyday life and work. The social generations are reshaping companies from the inside, helping them to build broader, more agile networks to create and deliver value to customers. Mobility and connectedness will be at the heart of the future business environment: communications and marketing are moving from a focus on one-to-one relationships, to many-to-many.
现如今，社交技术已经成为日常生活与工作的核心。与社交技术联系紧密的这一代人正从企业内部影响企业的结构模式，这有助于企业构建更广阔、更灵活的网络为客户创造、实现价
值。移动性及连通性将成为未来商业环境的核心：沟通及市场推广的焦点正在逐渐转变，从一对一转向多对多。
2.Redefining value: The consumer is winning the fight to own the new consumer
2 重新定义价值：消费者赢下了争夺新消费者【注2】的战役
The notion of value is being redefined for the 21st century. Consumers have choice. They want personalization, and to participate in value creation, shifting the mindset to “made with me.” Value will also be about “shared with me” as the ownerless economy expands. This will be driven particularly by younger generations who value experiences they can share – and that also deliver benefits to society - over possessions.
21世纪，“价值”的定义正在经历重塑的过程。现在的消费者有选择权。他们想要个性化的产品，想要参与到价值创造的过程中去，他们的观念已经逐渐转变为“我要参与创造”。随着无主经济的发展，价值的定义也会在“一起分享”的理念中得以体现。而这一切最主要的推动力便是年轻一代。相对于拥有的物质财富来说，他们更加看重能够与他人分享的经历。（社会也从中获益颇多）
3.Distributed everything: Mobility in production and consumption
3 分布式无处不在：生产和消费更变得越发分散（分布式）
Mobility is entering a new stage. Not only does consumption occur anywhere, anytime, but the tools and resources to create and capture value are more broadly distributed too. Work is becoming increasingly distributed. Small-scale manufacturing, including 3D printing, will reshape production. Renewable technologies are distributing energy production, while mass teaching platforms are revolutionizing education. Ask what can’t be distributed, not what can.
消费及制造的移动性正越发凸显。不但消费无处不在、无时不有，创造价值、获取价值的工具与资源也分布广泛。生产制造越来越分散，小规模制造（如立体打印）将给生产带来巨大变革。可再生技术也使得能源生产越来越分散，与此同时，大众教育平台也正在给教育带来一场革命。还有什么不能变为分布式的？（几乎一切都在朝着分布式方向发展）
4.The next “industrial” revolution: Robots and smart machines reshaping work 4 下一次“工业”革命：机器人及智能机器将重塑我们的工作
Smart machines and robots will redefine society. Robots are now being deployed as receptionists, banking assistants and even prison guards, while technology allows amateurs to do what professionals once did. The upside: addressing issues such as caring for ageing populations. The downside: huge job losses. Yet the next wave of smart machines will also create new kinds of jobs. The challenge will be to ensure a workforce that is ready and skilled for them.
智能机器及机器人将重新定义我们的社会。现在的机器人已经被运用到如接待员、银行助理甚至狱警等岗位，科技的发展已经让未经专业训练的人员也能够胜任之前只有专业人士才能从事的工作。不过这也有利有弊。有利的一面在于：有助于解决诸如对不断庞大的老年人群体的护理等问题。不利的一面在于：这会挤占许多工作岗位。不过智能机器的运用也会催生新型工作岗位，而社会面临的挑战则是：如何才能培养一支熟练的、能够应对上述挑战的劳
动力队伍。
5.The new space race: Pushing the frontiers of technology once again?
5 新一轮太空竞赛：再度推动科技前沿领域的发展？
Scientific advances from national space programs have had a significant impact on how we live and work, from advanced materials to global telecommunications. Now, commercial space travel and exploration is a reality, even as a new space race hots up, particularly between the US, China and Europe. New advances will surely result, as will questions over the ownership of space “assets,” and whether advances will be shared for public benefit.
国家层面的太空计划产生的科技成果对我们的生活与工作产生了巨大的影响，从先进材料到全球通信技术等方方面面。现在，商业太空旅行及太空探索已经成为现实。与此同时，新一轮的太空竞赛也不断升温，尤其是美国、中国及欧洲之间的竞争。这必然会带来新的科技进展，也必然会引发一系列问题：太空“资产”到底归谁所有？普通大众能够享受到这些科技成果吗？
6.Geopolitical wars: The fight to control the future
6 地缘政治战争：争夺未来之战
The BRICS and Beyond (other rapidly growing economies) will be where the fight to control future economic growth and social development will take place. It’s a multipolar market landscape, based on dramatically different economic, social and political systems. Politicians, along with companies, are still trying to find and control their place in the new world order, even as trust in governments falls, nationalism rises, and power shifts towards the people. The potential for radical political shifts at home and between nations is rising.
金砖五国（巴西、俄罗斯、印度、中国及南非）及其他的新兴经济体将成为控制未来经济增长及社会发展这场战争的战场。由于这些国家及地区的经济制度、社会结构及政治体制差异很大，这个大市场将具有多极化的格局。尽管民众对政府的信任度不断下降、民族主义有所抬头、权利也逐渐向人民大众转移，政客及企业仍试图在新的世界秩序下找到自己的一席之地并巩固自己的位置。国内及国家之间发生政治剧变的可能性不断提高。
7.Resource wars escalating: From a world of abundance to shortage
7 资源战争不断升级：一个从资源丰富到短缺的星球
As the world’s population moves towards 9 billion by 2050, resources are under pressure, exacerbated by climate change. By 2030 we will demand twice as many resources as the planet can supply – risking social unrest and conflicts as people and nations compete for ever scarcer resources. Scarcity is already driving resource price volatility and cross-border investments. New technologies and rethinking consumption will be critical in future – with businesses rather than governments likely to lead the way.
到2050年，全球人口将接近90亿，全球资源短缺的压力越来越大，而气候变化更加剧了这一趋势。到2030年，人类需要的资源将是地球能够提供的资源的两倍——国家和民众为了争夺日益稀缺的资源可能引发社会动荡及冲突。能源价格波动及跨国界投资都是因为资源稀缺。新技术及反思消费在将来将非常关键——引领这一趋势的将是企业而不是政府。
8.Business stepping up: From profit to purpose
8 商业不断升级：从追求利润到实现企业目标
Many businesses are stepping up to a new role, often with partners, to tackle social and economic challenges. Corporations are seeking to build legitimacy – and the license to operate – in the eyes of demanding consumers, employees and stakeholders who care about the impact and motivations of companies with whom they associate. But it’s also good business as companies realize mutual benefits with society. Look for more businesses redefining their corporate purpose in this way.
为了应对社会及经济挑战，许多企业（通常与合作伙伴一起）正在加快脚步，朝着新的角色转变。企业正试图在苛刻的消费者眼中树立“正派”的形象（这也是企业运营的基础），雇员及股东也比较在意与他们关系紧密的企业的影响及动机。但如果能够在盈利的同时也为社会做出贡献，那当然不错的行当。将会有更多的企业以此为标准，重新定义自己的目标。
https://www.doczj.com/doc/80424451.html,rmation is power: The security challenge
9 信息就是力量：安全挑战
Cyberspace is the new frontline for security. Knowledge and information is a source of competitive advantage for organizations, nations and individuals. But it’s a growing challenge to retain control as mobility and the democratization of everything (commerce, politics and societies) increases – along with cybercrime and cyber war. Look for a rising tide of litigation, policies and regulation. Digital freedom or a “big brother” society?
网络正成为安全战争的新战场。对于组织、国家及个人来说，知识及信息是竞争优势的来源之一。但随着诸如商业、政治及社会的移动性及大众化的推进，随着网络犯罪及网络战争的不断增多，要想保持控制力则面临着越来越大的挑战。这将会引发更多的诉讼，也会有更多的政策及监管措施出台。最终我们会生活在一个自由的数字世界中还是会被“老大哥”时刻盯着呢？
10.Who needs banks anyway? Reshaping the financial system
10 谁还会需要银行？金融系统的重塑
The financial system is broken. Regulators want change, businesses want new means of financing and consumers want alternatives. The “banks” of the future will include state-owned entities, and firms that simply don’t use cash: think bartering and community currencies. Digital wallets and mobile banking are opening the door for telcos and software players, while trust is the entry point for retailers and crowdfunding communities. In an increasingly crowded and cashless financial system, banks may no longer be key players.
如今的金融系统已经破败不堪。监管者希望改革，企业希望有新的融资渠道而消费者也希望能有其他选择。未来的“银行”将包括一些国有机构以及根本不使用现金的公司：可能会直接进行物物交换或者某些团体发行的货币。数字钱包及移动银行为电信运营商及软件开发者打开了一扇门，而对于零售商及货币发行团体来说，相互之间的信任是最基本的要素。在一个越来越密集、现金使用频率越来越低的金融系统中，银行将可能不再是主角。
Like any big shift, the dispersion of economic power presents challenges and opportunities. Are
you and your business ready to take advantage of these 10 trends?
和其他重大的转变一样，经济力量散布到更广的范围内将同时带来挑战与机遇。你和你的企业准备好了因势而动吗？
【注1】
卡桑德拉公主是希腊神话中的第一位女预言家，她是特洛伊国王布莱姆的一个女儿。卡桑德拉公主从阿波罗那里得到了预言的能力，但由于阿波罗最后没有得到卡桑德拉公主的爱，阿波罗诅咒她：“虽然能正确的预言未来，但却没人会相信。”卡桑德拉公主经常能够看到灾难就在眼前，但没人相信她，甚至认为她是一个疯子。她预见到特洛伊的灭亡以及自己国家的人民遭到杀戮，甚至还预见了城门外巨大的木马不是希腊人送给特洛伊的礼物，而是一个诡计，特洛伊会被希腊人的木马攻陷。但人们把她的话当成了戏言。后来卡桑德拉公主被胜利者阿伽门农作为俘虏带回了阿古斯城，在那里她再一次看到了未来将要发生的事。最后，就像她预见到的那样，她成为阿伽门农的妾室后和阿伽门农一起被他的王妃杀害。
【注2】
新消费者（New Consumer）
“新消费者”这一概念，是2000年，由美国学者戴维?刘易斯和达瑞恩?布里格在其专著《新消费者理念》中首次提出。他们认为，新消费者是独立而个性化的消费态度，希望参与生产和销售的愿望以及对市场的紧密关注结合在一起的群体，对所购买产品和服务具有强烈的真实可靠要求。他们缺乏信任感、时间、注意力，与遵奉固有消费模式、受便利性驱使的旧消费者有着巨大的差异。
https://www.doczj.com/doc/80424451.html,/thread-173949-1-1.html译者：Dezazer
[2012.01.16]IN SEARCH OF SERENDIPITY 寻找偶遇
It means more than a happy coincidence. And it's under threat from the internet. Ian Leslie explains ...
伊昂·莱斯利解释：偶遇不止是一种幸运的巧合，它正受到互联网的威胁……
From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, January/February 2012
One day in 1945, a man named Percy Spencer was touring one of the laboratories he managed at Raytheon in Waltham, Massachusetts, a supplier of radar technology to the Allied forces. He was standing by a magnetron, a vacuum tube which generates microwaves, to boost the sensitivity of radar, when he felt a strange sensation. Checking his pocket, he found his candy bar had melted. Surprised and intrigued, he sent for a bag of popcorn, and held it up to the magnetron. The popcorn popped. Within a year, Raytheon made a patent application for a microwave oven.
1945年的一天，在马塞诸塞州沃尔瑟姆市雷神公司（一间为二战盟军提供雷达技术的供应商）所属的一个实验室里，一名叫培西·史宾赛的主管正在做例行检察。他当时站在一台磁控管旁边。磁控管是一种产生微波的真空管，用来提高雷达灵敏度。他突然有一种奇妙的感觉。在检查之后，他发现裤子口袋里的一块巧克力融化了。这件事让他感到很是惊奇，也激起了他的好奇心，他派人去买了一袋爆米花，把它放在磁控管旁边。结果这袋爆米花成功膨化了。一年之内，雷神公司就申请了微波炉的专利。
The history of scientific discovery is peppered with breakthroughs that came about by accident. The most momentous was Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin in 1928, prompted when he noticed how a mould that floated into his Petri dish killed off the surrounding bacteria. Spencer and Fleming didn’t just get lucky. Spencer had the nous and the knowledge to turn his observation into innovation; only an expert on bacteria would have been ready to see the significance of Fleming’s stray spore. As Louis Pasteur wrote, “In the field of observation, chance favours only the prepared mind.”
科学发现的历史充满了各种偶然的突破。其中影响最深远的要数1928年亚历山大·弗莱明发
现青霉素。当时他注意到飘入培养皿内的霉菌杀死了周围的细菌。史班赛和弗莱明并不只是运气好罢了。史班赛有把该意外观察转变为一项创新发明的知识和机敏，而只有细菌专家才能看出弗莱明那些不请自来的孢子的重要性。诚如路易斯·巴斯德说过“在观察领域内，机会只青睐有准备的头脑”。
The word that best describes this subtle blend of chance and agency is “serendipity”. It was coined by Horace Walpole, man of letters and aristocratic dilettante. Writing to a friend in 1754, Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had just made by reference to a Persian fairy tale, “The Three Princes of Serendip”. The princes, he told his correspondent, were “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of…now do you understand Serendipity?” These days, we tend to associate serendipity with luck, and we neglect the sagacity. But some conditions are more conducive to accidental discovery than others.
英语中这种描述偶然机遇和人为因素的微妙混合被叫做西林迪普（serendipity）。这是作家兼贵族业余艺术家的霍雷斯·瓦尔波尔取的名字。在1754年的给友人的一封信内，瓦尔波尔为了解释他刚刚的一个意外发现，引用了一个波斯童话《西林迪普的三王子》。他在信中这么提到，那三位王子“总是有新的发现，不管是无意的还是有意的，而发现的事物又不是他们本来所寻找的……现在你明白西林迪普的意思了吧？”今天，我们常把其和运气联系起来，而忽略了其中人为的因素。但是满足某些条件会更易于产生意外发现。
Today’s world wide web has developed to organise, and make sense of, the exponential increase in information made available to everyone by the digital revolution, and it is amazingly good at doing so. If you are searching for something, you can find it online, and quickly. But a side-effect of this awesome efficiency may be a shrinking, rather than an expansion, of our horizons, because we are less likely to come across things we are not in quest of.
万维网经历了逐渐的发展，现在已将数字革命带给所有人的那些成级数增加的大量信息组织起来，并让人们可以理解这些信息，令人惊讶的是，万维网很擅长这个工作。如果你要搜索什么事物，那你可以在网上很快地找到。但是这种惊人的效率的一个副作用就是我们的视界不但没有扩大，反而缩小了，因为我们和自己并没有在找的事物偶遇的机会变小了。
When the internet was new, its early enthusiasts hoped it would emulate the greatest serendipity machine ever invented: the city. The modern metropolis, as it arose in the 19th century, was also an attempt to organise an exponential increase, this one in population. Artists and writers saw it as a giant playground of discovery, teeming with surprise encounters. The flaneur was born: one who wanders the streets with purpose, but without a map.
早在互联网还是一个新鲜玩意儿的时候，其早期拥护者希望它能仿效世界上曾发明过的最好的制造偶遇的机器：城市。现代大都市在19世纪兴起也是对人口级数增长进行组织的结果。艺术家和作家把都市看成一个巨大的发现场地，充满了意外的偶遇。漫游者开始出现了，这些人在街道上有目的地散步，却没有明确方向。
Most city-dwellers aren’t flaneurs, however. In 1952 a French sociologist called Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe asked a student to keep a journal of her daily movements. When he mapped
her paths onto a map of Paris he saw the emergence of a triangle, with vertices at her apartment, her university and the home of her piano teacher. Her movements, he said, illustrated “the narrowness of the real Paris in which each individual lives”.
不过，大多数城市居民都不是漫游者。1952年法国一位叫保罗·亨利·雄巴德劳维的社会学家要求一位学生每天都记录下她当天的行踪。当雄巴德劳维把这位学生的路程图放在巴黎地图上时他看到的只是一个三角形，三个顶点分别为她的公寓，学校以及她钢琴老师的家。雄巴德劳维提出，她的移动表明了“个人实际生活中的巴黎是多么狭窄”。
To some degree, the hopes of the internet’s pioneers have been fulfilled. You type “squid” into a search engine, you land on the Wikipedia page about squid, and in no time you are reading about Jules Verne and Pliny. But most of us use the web in the manner of that Parisian student. We have our paths, our bookmarks and our feeds, and we stick closely to them. We no longer “surf” the information superhighway, as it has become too vast to cruise without a map. And as it has evolved, it has become better and better at ensuring we need never stray from our virtual triangles.
从某种程度上来说，互联网先锋们的希望已经满足了。你在搜索引擎上打入“乌贼”，马上就会被带入维基百科讲述乌贼的页面，没过多久你已经在阅读关于儒勒·凡尔纳和普林尼的文章了。但是我们中的大多数人使用互联网的方式类似于那位巴黎学生。我们有自己的路径，自己的收藏，自己的馈送，我们和它们亲密无间。我们不再在信息高速公路上“漫游”了，它已经过于巨大，无法不借助导向而自行游览。而且随着它逐渐进化，它越来越擅长保证我们不会偏离自己的虚拟三角。
Google can answer almost anything you ask it, but it can’t tell you what you ought to be asking. Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Centre for Civic Media at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a long-time evangelist for the internet, points out that it doesn’t match the ability of the printed media to bring you information you didn’t know you wanted to know. He calls the front page of a newspaper a “discovery engine”: the lead story tells you something you’re almost certain to be interested in—the imminent collapse of the global economy, or Lady Gaga’s latest choice of outfit—and elsewhere on the page you learn that revolution has broken out in a country of whose existence you were barely aware. Editors with an eye for such things, what Zuckerman calls “curators”, are being superseded by “friends”—people like you, who probably already share your interests and world view—delivered by Facebook. Twitter is better at leading us to the interests of people beyond our social circle, but our tendency to associate with others who think in similar ways—what sociologists call our “value homophily”—means most of us end up with a feed that feels like an extended dinner party.
谷歌可以回答你问的几乎一切问题，但是它不会告诉你你应该问什么。伊桑·祖克曼是麻省理工学院的公民媒体中心的主管，也是长期以来的互联网支持者，他指出传统印刷媒体能带给你那些你不知道自己想知道的信息，而互联网还没有做到这一点。他把报纸的头版称为一个“发现引擎”，头条报道告诉你一些你几乎一定会感兴趣的新闻，像是全球经济之将倾，或是女神卡卡的最近衣着等等，而头版上的其它新闻可以告诉你在一些你都不知道存在的国家里发生的革命。祖克曼认为有这种慧眼的编辑（他称其为“图书馆馆长”），现在正在被脸谱网提供的“好友”取代，这是一个像是你我这样的群体，其兴趣，世界观可能本已差别不大。
推特微博可以更好地让我们接触到自己社交圈子以外的人的兴趣，但是我们还是有倾向于和自己想法相似的人相互结交的天性。社会学家称其为人类的“价值类聚”，这意味着我们中大多数获得的信息流就好像是一个延长的晚餐聚会一样。
One reason why television viewing has held up relatively well, defying predictions of its demise, is that, compared with the internet, it is good at serendipity. Danny Cohen is in charge of BBC1, Britain’s most-viewed channel. He told me that a new programme on a difficult or obscure subject can still inherit a substantial audience from a popular show. This is, in some ways, a mysterious phenomenon. “I could understand it when changing the channel meant getting off the sofa,” says Cohen. “But now?” Despite remote controls and far more channels, we still willingly succumb to the choices of the broadcasting curators.
和很多预测不符，看电视这一行为并没有消亡，其仍然很受欢迎的一个原因在于和互联网相比，电视更善于创造偶遇。英国最多人观看的电视台，BBC一台的负责人丹尼·柯亨告诉我一个受欢迎的节目结束后接上一个主题较为艰涩难懂或是不为人知的新节目之后，还是有想当数量的观众会不转台继续观看。这在某种角度来看是一个神秘现象。柯亨说过：“在必须从沙发上站起来换台的时代我还能理解这一趋势，但是现在呢？”尽管我们有遥控器和多得多的频道，我们仍然心甘情愿地让电视台决定我们观看的节目。
Cohen worries that even as the volume of media has grown exponentially, “our propensity to explore it is diminishing”. Driven by the needs of advertisers keen to hit ever more tightly delineated targets, today’s internet plies us with “relevant” information and screens out the rest. Two different people will receive subtly different results from Google, adjusted for what Google knows about their interests. Newspaper websites are starting to make stories more prominent to you if your friends have liked them on Facebook. We spend our online lives inside what the writer Eli Pariser calls “the filter bubble”.
柯亨担心即使随着媒体内容级数增长，“我们探索这些内容的倾向在逐渐减弱”。随着广告商需要对准描述越来越精确的个人，今天的互联网强制灌输大量“相关”信息，把所有其它信息都屏蔽掉了。两个不同的人在谷歌上搜索同样的内容会得到有着微妙差异的结果，谷歌根据其兴趣对搜索结果已经进行了调整。如果你的好友在脸谱网上标出喜欢某新闻，新闻网站会把它们放在更显眼的位置吸引你。我们在线的时间现在都生活在作家艾利·普雷舍所谓的“过滤泡泡”的内部。
To escape it, we can leave our screens and walk outside. But some of our most serendipitous spaces are under threat from the internet. Wander into a bookshop in search of something to read: the book jackets shimmer on the table, the spines flirt with you from the shelves. You can pick them up and allow their pages to caress your hands. You may not find the book you wanted, but you will walk out with three you didn’t. Amazon will have your book too, but its recommendation engine doesn’t even come close to delivering the same stimuli. Similarly, a librarian isn’t as efficient as a search engine, his memory isn’t nearly as capacious, but he may still be better at making suggestions to a reader in search of—well, something.
要想逃离它，我们必须离开电脑屏幕，走到外面去。但是即使现实生活中一些最充满偶遇的空间也受到互联网的侵袭。漫步进入书店寻找读物：书套在桌子上闪着亮光，书脊在架子上
挑逗着你。你可以拾起书，轻抚其页面。你可能找不到你想要的书，但你离开时会带走三本原来不想要的书。亚马逊也会有你要的书，但是它的推荐引擎完全不能提供类似的刺激。同样的，图书管理员效率不如搜索引擎，他的记忆力更是远远不如，但是对于那些想要找什么书刊翻一翻的读者来说他提出的建议可能仍然要比搜索引擎好很多。
But there is a reason why Amazon is successful and bookshops are closing: in a world of infinite choice, efficiency is hard to resist. The pleasures of the bookshop or the library are easily outgunned by the knowledge that we can order or download a book instantly, or find the information we’re looking for within seconds. Serendipity, on the other hand, is, as Zuckerman says, “necessarily inefficient”. It is a fragile quality, vulnerable to our desire for convenience and speed. It also requires a kind of planned vagueness. Digital systems don’t do vagueness very well, and our patience with it seems to be fading.
但是亚马逊这么成功，而书店正在关闭是有原因的：在有无限选择的一个世界里，效率的魅力是很难抵抗的。书店或图书馆给予的愉悦很容易就会被我们可以即时购买下载一本书，或是在几秒内找到想要的信息这些知识所掩盖。另一方面，如祖克曼所说，偶遇“必然是低效率”的。它是一种脆弱的事物，在我们对方便和速度的渴望面前不堪一击。它也需要一种故意的模糊感。数字系统可不太擅长模糊，我们对其的耐心似乎也在消减。
Google’s aim is to organise the world’s information and democratise access to it. But when everyone can get the same information in more or less the same way, it becomes harder to be original; innovation thrives on the serendipitous collision of ideas. Zuckerman told me about a speech on serendipity he recently gave to an audience of investment managers. As he started on his theme he feared he might lose their attention, but he was pleasantly surprised to find that they hung on every word. It soon became clear why. “In finance, everyone reads Bloomberg, so everyone sees the same information.” Zuckerman said. “What they’re looking for are strategies for finding inspiration from outside the information orbit.”
谷歌的目标是组织全世界的信息，将信息的获取权民主化。但是当每个人或多或少都是以同样方式获取信息时，要拥有创意就越来越难了，创新要借助思想的偶然碰撞才能繁荣。祖克曼告诉我他最近给一群投资经理人进行了一次关于偶遇的讲话。他一开始讲述主题时还担心无法抓住观众的注意力，但是他很高兴地发现他们对每个词都听得很投入，这让他很惊讶。很快，他明白了背后的原因。祖克曼说：“在金融界，人人都读彭博网，所以所有人获得的信息都是一样的。他们真正寻找的是在固定信息轨道之外发现灵感的战略”。
The internet has become so good at meeting our desires that we spend less time discovering new ones. To update the Rolling Stones, you can always get what you want. But you may not get what you need.
互联网在满足我们的渴望上表现得如此好，以至于我们在发现新渴望上所花的时间越来越少了。滚石的一句歌词可能需要改一改，你可以一直拥有你想要的，但是你想要的可能不是你需要的。
Ian Leslie works in advertising, is the author of "Born Liars" and tweets as @mrianleslie Illustration by Brett Ryder
https://www.doczj.com/doc/80424451.html,/thread-62556-1-1.html译者：nayilus
an the scientists keep up?
科学家跟得上吗？
Drugs and sport: The twists and turns of the long-running race between drug-taking athletes and boffins trying to catch them
禁药和体育：服用禁药的运动员和试图抓住他们的科学家之间迂回曲折的持久赛
Mar 3rd 2012 | from the print edition
THE idea of stimulating the body’s performance with all manner of concoctions is as old as mankind. The Inca chewed coca leaves to pep them up when doing strenuous work. Nordic warriors munched mushrooms before going into battle to dull the inevitable pain. Ancient Olympians chomped opium, among other things, to give them a competitive edge. It wasn’t until the 1950s that such practices became frowned upon.
自古以来，人们用各种药物来促进身体技能。印加帝国的人在进行重体力劳动时靠咀嚼古柯树叶来增强体力。北欧勇士在作战之前会嚼食蘑菇来减弱战斗中不可避免的疼痛感。古代奥运会选手吞食各种药物，包括鸦片让自己在比赛中占上风。一直到20世纪50年代人们才开始抵制这种风气。
The shift in attitudes was spurred by the emergence of modern competitive sport. Sports authorities, athletes appalled at ungentlemanly behaviour or, more cynically, those who lacked access to stimulants, cried foul. Any artificial enhancement was “unfair”, they complained, and must be eradicated. At the same time, rewards for the boost that drugs can provide ballooned. Sportsmen were increasingly prepared to go to any length to outdo their competitors, and devised novel ways to foil the scientists tasked with catching cheats. An arms race began, and has continued apace ever since, with many twists and turns along the way.
现代竞技体育的出现促成了这种态度的转变。体育当局和运动员们对于这种有违绅士风度的行为表示震惊。更为讽刺的是，那些自己无法获得兴奋剂的相关人员对这一行为表示强烈的抗议。他们抱怨任何人为的强化都是“不公正的”，且需要被禁止。同一时间，用药物强
化身体机能可以带来的回报大幅增加了。运动员愿意不惜一切代价超过对手的决心越来越强，他们想出各种新颖的方式来挫败那些试图抓住作弊者的科学家们。于是一场军备竞赛开始了。从那时起，这场迂回曲折的竞赛一直持续至今，双方不分上下。
And they’re off
他们起跑了
The contest between athletes and scientists was sparked in 1959 when Gene Smith and Henry Beecher, at Harvard University, showed that short-distance swimmers who were given amphetamines did indeed swim faster than those who received a placebo. It was the first study to show that drugs had any real physiological effect. Others reached similar conclusions.
1959年，当时哈佛大学的吉因?史密斯和亨利?比切尔通过实验证明了服用安非他明的短距离游泳选手确实比那些服用了安慰剂的选手游得更快，从而触发了运动员和科学家之间的这场竞赛。这是第一份关于药物会产生实际生理效应的研究。其它研究项目之后得出了类似的结论。
The performance enhancement was small: just 2%. But this was enough to tip the scales, especially in highly competitive events where a photo finish decides the winner. So in 1964 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned the use of performance-enhancing drugs in the Olympics and introduced testing to keep athletes in line. And where the IOC leads, other sports bodies follow. The Olympic games therefore provide a microcosm of the race between dopers and judges.
服用安非他明促进运动员表现的做法效果不大：只有2%。但是这已经足以让天平倾斜了，尤其是在那些谁胜谁负需要靠照片来判断的高水平竞技赛事上。因此1964年国际奥委会（IOC）禁止了奥运会运动员使用能够强化竞技表现的药物，并为了保证他们遵守禁令而引入了药检。国际奥委会带头作出表率之后，其它体育组织也开始跟进。因此，奥运会可以被看成是服药者和审查者之间竞赛的一个缩影。
At the Mexico City games in 1968 the first athlete was nabbed for doping. His drug of choice
was ethanol, found in alcoholic drinks and easily picked up in a urine sample. Of precious little use to swimmers or sprinters, it can help a pentathlete who needs, among other things, to aim a rifle accurately. Like other so-called depressants, ethanol slows down the pulse rate and reduces muscle tremors that can make a shot go off target. Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall, a Swede who tried to take advantage of this, was disqualified.
1968年墨西哥城奥运会第一次发生运动员被查出服用禁药。当时该运动员服用的是酒精饮品中所含的乙醇，这是很容易在尿样中检测出来的。乙醇对游泳或短跑选手几乎毫无用处，但是它对现代五项的选手有所帮助，服用的好处之一在于它可以让选手在射击时更为准确地瞄准。和其它统称为镇静剂的药物一样，乙醇可以放慢脉搏，减少干扰射击的肌肉颤动。试图利用乙醇的瑞典人汉斯冈纳?利廷威尔被取消竞赛资格。
Various heart-control drugs have a similar calming effect, a boon to archers and shooters. But they are often not as easy to detect as ethanol. At the Munich Olympics in 1972, therefore, the IOC introduced some newfangled chemical tools: gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy. Gas chromatography works by vaporising extracts of urine and passing them through a long tube, along which some constituent compounds move more quickly than others. The mass spectroscope at the end of the tube then ionises the emerging substances and measures their characteristic mass-charge ratio. The result is a chemical signature that can be compared with signatures derived from urine samples spiked with known performance-enhancing drugs to see if an athlete has taken anything untoward.
各种可以控制心脏的药物有类似的镇定作用，对于射击和射箭选手来说很有用。但是这些药物没有乙醇那么容易检测出来。因此，在1972年的慕尼黑奥运会上，国际奥委会引入了一些崭新的化学工具：气相色谱法和质谱法联用。气体色谱法先将提炼后的尿液样本气化，再将气体通过一个长管，在长管里尿液中的某些化合物会比其它的移动更快。在长管尽头的质谱仪将冒出管子的物质离子化，并测量出其特征质荷比。这样一来就可以得到一份该尿液样本的化学签名，这可以和其它含有已知药物的尿液样本的化学签名作比较，判断运动员是否服用了什么禁药。
This method enabled the IOC to catch seven athletes who had taken banned substances.
Some had taken amphetamine, or one of two similar substances called phenmetrazine and ephedrine. Two cyclists were nicked for using nikethamide, which the IOC had banned, but which the International Cycling Union had not.
国际奥委会利用该方法逮住了七名服用禁药的运动员。其中有的服用了安非他明，或是两种相似物质－苯甲恶啉和麻黃素之一。两名自行车选手被逮到使用国际奥委会禁用，但国际自行车联盟尚未禁用的尼可刹米。
Gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy are powerful tools. But altogether different methods are required to detect anabolic androgenic steroids, which mimic the effects of testosterone and other hormones in the body. In the 1950s doctors started using them to treat patients with wasting diseases, because they help strengthen bones and rebuild tissues. The IOC realised that they also offered cheats a way to build up more muscle than was possible through training. Unlike stimulants, which must be taken in high doses to be effective, making them easier to spot, the chromatography-spectroscopy combo was blind to the tiny doses which were enough to make steroids count.
气体色谱法和质谱法是很强大的工具。但是要测出模仿体内的睾酮和其它激素效果的同化类固醇就需要完全不同的方式了。20世纪50年代医生们开始使用同化类固醇来治疗患有消瘦性疾病的病人，因为这种物质可以强化骨骼，重建组织。国际奥委会意识到服用这些物质可以比普通训练产生更多的肌肉，从而让选手可以用其作弊。兴奋剂必须要大剂量服用才能有效，这也意味着它很容易被检测出来。但是类固醇不一样，只要一丁点就可以起作用，色谱－质谱组合法无法检测出这么少量的物质。
A breakthrough came in 1972, too late for the Munich Olympics. Raymond Brooks and others at St Thomas’s Hospital in London developed the immunoassay test. David Cowan, head of the Drug Control Centre at King’s College London and director of the anti-doping laboratory for this year’s London Olympics, likens it to a lock-and-key mechanism: the steroids in urine were the keys, and the locks were specific compounds known to bind with them, which were added to the sample. Even minuscule quantities of steroids were enough to trigger a reaction which could then be detected.
突破性的进展来自于1972年，没赶上慕尼黑奥运会。雷蒙?布鲁克斯和伦敦圣汤姆斯医院的其他人员开发出免疫测定法。伦敦国王学院药监局负责人大卫?科文（也是今年伦敦奥运会药物检测实验室的负责人）把这种新的测定法形容为一种钥匙和锁的机制：尿液中的类固醇就是钥匙，能和它们连接起来的特定化合物就是锁。在样本中加入这些“锁”，即使最微量的类固醇也能触发可以被检测到的连锁反应。
At the Montreal games in 1976 a total of 1,786 urine samples were analysed and 11 people were found guilty of doping. Eight were weightlifters using anabolic steroids. Three had won medals, which they were subsequently forced to return. Four years later in Moscow none of the 1,645 samples collected was found to contain steroids. But by the time of the Los Angeles games in 1984 it had become clear that the reason was not new-found abstemiousness. The old, detectable steroids had simply been replaced by new, undetectable ones. Rather than using artificial testosterone-like substances that could be spotted using the immunoassay test, athletes had switched to using natural testosterone instead. Because testosterone levels vary widely from one person to another, it was impossible to say whether an athlete was cheating or was simply blessed with naturally high levels of the hormone.
1976年的蒙特利尔奥运会收集了共1786份尿样进行分析，共有11人被发现服用禁药。其中有八人是举重选手，被发现服用同化类固醇。其中有三人已经获得奖牌，这些奖牌之后被取消。四年之后的莫斯科奥运会上共收集了1645份尿样，其中没有发现任何样本含有类固醇。但是到1984年的洛杉矶奥运会上真相开始暴露出来。运动员们并没有变得更为节制，相反，他们只是用能逃过检测的新型物质取代了之前使用的会被检测出来的类固醇。运动员舍弃了能被免疫测定法检测出来的类似睾醇的人造物质，代之以天然睾醇。因为睾醇水平在不同人体内会有巨大差异，要检测出一名运动员是否服用睾醇作弊，还是天生就有较高的睾醇水平当时是不可能的。
This changed when a research group led by Manfred Donike at the German Sport University in Cologne discovered that there is a natural ratio between testosterone and another, related hormone, called epitestosterone, in normal, healthy humans. When samples of urine stashed away after the Moscow Olympics were brought in for epitestosterone-ratio testing, it was clear that
doping had taken place. No action could be taken because the stored samples were anonymous. But at the 1984 Olympics 11 athletes were found to be using testosterone or testosterone-like drugs that would not have been detected prior to Dr Donike’s findings. They were not all weightlifters. Suspicious ratios were also found in volleyball players, runners, wrestlers and discus throwers.
位于科隆的德国体育大学的曼弗莱德?多尼克带领一支研究小组最终克服了这一问题。他们发现正常健康的人体内睾酮水平和另一种名为表睾醇的相关激素水平有一个自然比例。对莫斯科奥运会上收集的尿液样本进行这个表睾醇比例测试之后，他们发现很明显有运动员曾经服用药物。因为这些保存下来的样本是匿名的，所以无法进行任何追朔行动。但是1984年奥运会上有11名运动员被发现服用类似睾醇的药物，如果不是多尼克博士的新发现，这些人本来是不会被逮到的。这11人并不都是举重选手。在排球、赛跑、摔跤和铁饼选手中也发现一些人尿液中的激素比例较为可疑。
By 1988, though, athletes had found a way to sabotage the older techniques, which were still effective against users of drugs other than testosterone. Diuretics, which increase the amount of water bodies release through urine, dilute the sample and make substances in it harder to detect. This time, however, the IOC was ahead of the game. It warned athletes in Seoul that year that diuretics were out of bounds, and also figured out how to identify the most common diuretics. Four athletes were caught with such compounds in their urine. Whether actual performance-enhancing drugs were present could not be determined, but since diuretics were banned, disqualification followed.
1988年奥运会之前，运动员已经发现了一种可以破坏更早检测手段的方法，当时这些手段在检测睾醇之外的药物时还是很有效的。这种方法就是服用利尿剂，它可以增加身体通过尿液排放的水分，稀释尿液样本使其中的物质更难检测到。但是这一次，国际奥委会抢先出招了。它警告汉城奥运会选手利尿剂是禁止使用的，同时也找出了一些可以检测几种最常见利尿剂的手段。共有四名运动员的尿液中检测出含有利尿剂。他们是否服用了增强竞技表现的药物无法确定，但是因为利尿剂也被列为禁药之一，这些人的竞赛资格都被褫夺了。
By the 1990s anti-doping sleuths could detect depressants, diuretics, steroids and hormones.
But when the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was founded in 1999 to thwart drug users in all sports, these were no longer the biggest worry. In the 1980s pharmaceutical laboratories figured out a way to manufacture erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone involved in the production of red blood cells. It can be used to boost the number of these cells in anaemic patients to healthy levels. But WADA officials knew that because red blood cells carry oxygen to muscles, having more of them increases endurance. The side-effect of thicker blood, though, is increased risk of cells clogging blood vessels, which can cause a stroke or heart failure—a chance many dopers would be willing to take in return for superior performance.
到20世纪90年代药检人员已经可以检测出镇静剂、利尿剂、类固醇和激素。但是到1999年为了打击一切体育运动内的禁药使用而成立了世界反兴奋剂组织（WADA）时，这些物质已经不是检测者最担心的了。80年代期间一些药物实验室找到了生产促红细胞生成素（EPO）的方法。这种激素参与生产红血球，可以用来把贫血患者体内的红血球数目增加到健康的水准。但是世界反兴奋剂组织的官员知道因为红血球负责向肌肉输送氧气，增加红血球数目可以增强耐力。不过浓度过稠的血液会产生副作用，让红血球堵塞血管的风险增大。这可能会引起中风或心脏衰竭。很多服药者为了强化他们的竞技表现而甘愿冒这种风险。
The plot thickens
一波三折
During the 1990s no tests existed that could differentiate natural erythropoietin from the artificial kind. Looking at red blood cells was no use, because their level varies from person to person. Most people’s blood contains 40-45% red blood cells. But in some people the figure can reach 50% without any manipulation. A blood test revealing a 51% red-blood-cell count would be considered flimsy evidence; the suspect could be a lucky athlete endowed with thicker blood.
20世纪90年代间还没有一种检测手段可以区分天然和人造的促红细胞生成素。检测红血球数目是没有用的，因为不同人的红血球数目不同。大多数人血液中含有40-45%的红血球。但是有些人的红血球水平在没有外界干涉下可以高达50%。验血检测出51%的红血球水平一般被看成是很靠不住的证据，疑犯可能仅仅是个幸运的运动员，天生血液就比较浓稠。
A year before the Sydney games in 2000, however, the IOC got a helping hand from the French national anti-doping laboratory and scientists from the Australian Sport Institute. The French researchers had developed a test that examined the molecular composition of various forms of the hormone. All EPO molecules are made up of the same protein backbone, but the French lab noticed that some side-chains differed between natural and artificial forms. The Australians, meanwhile, had devised a test that looked for changes in blood characteristics, in particular a raised number of young blood cells (reticulocytes) released as a result of EPO use.
不过，国际奥委会在2000年悉尼奥运会之后得到了来自法国国家反兴奋剂实验室和澳大利亚体育学院的科学家的帮助。法国科研者们开发了一种检测手段，可以测量各种形式激素的分子结构。所有的促红细胞生成素都具有同样的蛋白质主干，但是该法国实验室发现该激素的自然和人造形式之间存在枝链上存在一些差异。同时，澳大利亚方面发明了一种可以检查血液特征变化的检测手段。使用促红细胞生成素后年轻的红血球（网织红细胞）的数量会上升。
In 2003 WADA discovered that a new version of EPO, known as CERA-Mircera, was being developed. Unlike earlier varieties, which needed to be taken three times a week and could be detected in urine, the new drug could be taken once a month and rarely made it into urine at all. “It was probably the greatest challenge the anti-doping research community had ever faced,” says Olivier Rabin, director of science at WADA. The agency therefore enlisted the help of Roche, the Swiss pharmaceuticals company that had developed CERA-Mircera for medical use. It took three years to work out how to detect it.
2003年，世界反兴奋剂组织发现一种新的促红细胞生成素被开发出来了。这是一种叫作Mircera的红血球生成素接受体持续活化剂，和以前那些需要一周服用三次，且能从尿液中检测出来的品种不同，这种新药一个月只要服用一次，且几乎不会出现在尿液中。世界反兴奋剂组织的科学部主任奥利维尔?拉宾说：“这可能是有史以来对反兴奋剂研究圈最大的挑战。”因此该组织向开发了该药物的瑞士罗氏公司求助。他们一起花了整整三年才找到检测该药物的方法。
The solution was a screening procedure in which serum samples were mixed with antibodies
that were biochemically programmed to latch onto anything that looked like EPO. These antibodies were bound with another substance which glowed green on contact with EPO. To make doubly sure that the glow was due to the presence of the drug and not some other effect, a modified version of the French side-chain test was used, though this took longer and was more cumbersome. “We knew athletes would challenge accusations and needed to be sure to make our findings robust enough to face legal challenges,” says Dr Rabin
该方法是在血清样本内混入某些抗体，这些抗体经过生物化学调试，会附着在任何看上去类似促红细胞生成素的分子上。抗体本身还连接有另一种和促红细胞生成素接触就会发出绿光的物质。为了确保绿光来自于药物，而不是其它原因，法国的枝链检测方法经过改良来进行检测。这种新的检测方法费时更长，进行起来也更费事。拉宾博士提到：“我们知道运动员会对药检检测结果提出质疑，我们要很确保检测结果非常稳固，可以应付这样的法律诉讼。”
The hard work paid off. At the Beijing Olympics of 2008, five athletes were caught and disqualified for using drugs that tinkered with EPO receptors. This was a turning-point. “It showed that by collaborating with the drug companies we could bring the days of playing catch-up with the cheaters to an end,” says Dr Rabin.
辛苦的工作是由收获的。2008年北京奥运会上共有五名运动员被发现使用了会干扰促红细胞生成素感受器的药物，而被褫夺参赛资格。这也是一个巨大的转折点。拉宾博士说：“这一成果显示了如果能和药物公司合作，我们在后面追赶作弊者的日子可能就要结束了。”
Even this, though, is not the end of the story. Working with drugs companies is no help against doping ruses which do not involve the use of drugs. Key among these is blood transfusion. An extra dose of red blood cells, providing extra endurance, is similar to what can be achieved with EPO—except that it is faster and less risky. Athletes can take blood from people with the same blood type, or from those with a compatible blood type.
但是就算这样，这也不是故事的结尾。和药物公司合作并不能应付那些不使用药物的作弊方式。这些方法中最主要的是输血。通过输血获得额外红血球，借此提高耐力，其效果和促红细胞生成素是类似的，唯一的不同是输血的速度更快，而且风险更低。运动员可以接受那些血型相同或相容的人的血液。