技術(shù)治國(guó)運(yùn)動(dòng)的啟示

One of history’s recurring themes is that technology sometimes outruns society, leaving politicians gasping to catch up with the consequences. So it was with the impact of the printing press, the steam engine and the computer. Arguably, so it is again today with gene editing, social media and artificial intelligence. 歷史上反復(fù)出現(xiàn)的一個(gè)主題是，科技發(fā)展有時(shí)會(huì)超前于社會(huì)，讓政治人士滿頭大汗地跟在后面處理隨之而來(lái)的后果。印刷機(jī)、蒸汽機(jī)和電腦的出現(xiàn)就是如此。如今，基因編輯、社交媒體和人工智能的出現(xiàn)可以說(shuō)同樣如此。

While technologists often rail that politicians just do not “get” technology, politicians counter that technologists all too rarely grasp politics. 技術(shù)專(zhuān)家經(jīng)常抱怨政治人士不“懂”技術(shù)，政治人士則反擊道，技術(shù)專(zhuān)家大多數(shù)時(shí)候也不懂政治。

One fascinating example of both sides of the debate was the history of the technocracy movement that briefly flourished in North America in the 1930s. The “revolt of the engineers”, as it was called, holds some interesting lessons for today. 對(duì)辯論雙方都適用的一個(gè)有趣例子是上世紀(jì)30年代在北美短暫興盛的技術(shù)治國(guó)(technocracy)運(yùn)動(dòng)。這場(chǎng)當(dāng)時(shí)被稱(chēng)為“工程師起義”(revolt of the engineers)的運(yùn)動(dòng)，有不少地方值得今天的人們思考。

It was understandable that radical movements emerged in the US in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression, just as communism and fascism proliferated in Europe. The technocracy movement argued that the best way out of the crisis was to reject the messiness of the market and old-fashioned politics and adopt a “modern scientific point of view”. 可以理解的是，上世紀(jì)30年代，各種回應(yīng)“大蕭條”(Great Depression)的激進(jìn)運(yùn)動(dòng)在美國(guó)興起，正如共產(chǎn)主義和法西斯主義當(dāng)時(shí)在歐洲興起。技術(shù)治國(guó)運(yùn)動(dòng)提出，擺脫危機(jī)的最佳方法是拒絕亂糟糟的市場(chǎng)體系以及老式的政治，采用一種“現(xiàn)代、科學(xué)的觀點(diǎn)”。

In their Introduction to Technocracy 在1933年出版的《技術(shù)治國(guó)序言》(Introduction to Technocracy)中，這項(xiàng)運(yùn)動(dòng)的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人宣布，過(guò)時(shí)的社會(huì)體制“糟粕”阻礙了進(jìn)步，應(yīng)該讓政治人士靠邊站，就像煉金術(shù)士和占星家以前為科學(xué)讓路一樣。傳統(tǒng)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)一味關(guān)注主觀的定價(jià)機(jī)制、而不是理性的生產(chǎn)，無(wú)異于一套“債務(wù)病理學(xué)”。

, published in 1933, the movement’s leaders declared that the “riff-raff” of outdated social institutions was blocking progress and politicians should be swept aside, just as alchemists and astrologers had previously given way to science. Traditional economics, obsessed with arbitrary pricing mechanisms rather than rational production, was nothing more than the “pathology of debt”. “與政治的爾虞我詐、金融和經(jīng)商的胡亂摸索不同……我們有運(yùn)用于科學(xué)和技術(shù)中的方法。”這項(xiàng)運(yùn)動(dòng)的宣言稱(chēng)，“如今，現(xiàn)代常識(shí)在呼吁自然科學(xué)和技術(shù)擴(kuò)大它們領(lǐng)域的邊界。”

“In contrast to the devious ways of politics, the fumbling methods of finance and business . . . we have the methods of science and technology,” the movement’s manifesto declared. “Modern common sense is now calling upon physical science and technology to extend the frontiers of their domain.” 歷史學(xué)家威廉•E•埃金(William E Akin)指出了新興的技術(shù)治國(guó)論的3個(gè)源泉：進(jìn)步改革者對(duì)中央規(guī)劃的日益重視;認(rèn)為工程師能夠拯救美國(guó)社會(huì)的大眾迷思;以及費(fèi)雷德里克•W•泰勒(Frederick W Taylor)的科學(xué)管理理論。

The historian William E Akin identified three wellsprings for budding technocrats: a growing fashion for centralised planning among progressive reformers; the popular mythology of the engineer as the saviour of American society; and the scientific management theories of Frederick W Taylor. 取消價(jià)格機(jī)制和生產(chǎn)最大化與當(dāng)時(shí)蘇聯(lián)正在發(fā)生的事情有明顯的可比性。在閃爍著思想光芒的反烏托邦小說(shuō)《我們》(We)中，俄羅斯作家葉甫蓋尼•扎米亞京(Yevgeny Zamyatin)痛斥了這種技術(shù)治國(guó)思維，在他預(yù)見(jiàn)的社會(huì)里，人們沒(méi)有名字，只有數(shù)字代號(hào)，就像一臺(tái)大型工業(yè)機(jī)器中的齒輪一樣活著。不過(guò)，北美的技術(shù)治國(guó)運(yùn)動(dòng)強(qiáng)烈反對(duì)共產(chǎn)主義和法西斯主義，并自稱(chēng)有人情味得多。

Abolishing the price mechanism and maximising production had some obvious parallels with what was happening in the Soviet Union. In his brilliant dystopian novel We 盡管媒體給予高度關(guān)注，但技術(shù)治國(guó)運(yùn)動(dòng)在美國(guó)始終沒(méi)有成功，這主要是因?yàn)槠漕I(lǐng)導(dǎo)人對(duì)政治一竅不通。拯救了資本主義的是美國(guó)總統(tǒng)富蘭克林•D•羅斯福(Franklin D Roosevelt)的“羅斯福新政”(New Deal)?；蛟S，這項(xiàng)運(yùn)動(dòng)的最大失敗在于它始終未提出一套普通選民能夠理解的切合實(shí)際的解決方案。對(duì)于純理性未能所向披靡感到失望的技術(shù)治國(guó)運(yùn)動(dòng)最終分崩離析，這項(xiàng)運(yùn)動(dòng)的一個(gè)分支最終變成一個(gè)準(zhǔn)法西斯粉絲俱樂(lè)部。

, the Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin savaged such technocratic thinking, foreseeing a society in which people had numbers, not names, and operated like cogs in a vast industrial machine. The North American technocracy movement, though, argued fiercely against both communism and fascism and claimed to be much more humane. 在北邊的加拿大，技術(shù)治國(guó)運(yùn)動(dòng)備受重視，以至于遭到了當(dāng)局的禁止——因?yàn)閾?dān)心該運(yùn)動(dòng)計(jì)劃推翻政府。該黨心灰意冷的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人、冒險(xiǎn)家喬書(shū)亞•霍爾德曼(Joshua Haldeman)后來(lái)拋棄了加拿大，搬到了南非。

In spite of the media interest, the technocracy movement never succeeded in the US, largely because its leaders were hopeless politicians. President Franklin D Roosevelt was the one to salvage capitalism through his New Deal. Perhaps the movement’s greatest failing was that it never spelt out practical solutions that ordinary voters could understand. Disappointed that pure reason had not swept all before it, the movement eventually split, with one splinter group ending up as a quasi-fascist fan club. 該運(yùn)動(dòng)的核心是這樣一種理念：人類(lèi)行為是可計(jì)量的，最終也是可預(yù)測(cè)的。其宣言聲稱(chēng)：“技術(shù)治國(guó)做出了一個(gè)基本假設(shè)：一種社會(huì)機(jī)制的正常運(yùn)行所包含的現(xiàn)象是可以測(cè)量的。”

North of the border, the technocracy movement was taken so seriously that it was banned by the Canadian authorities, fearing it planned to overthrow the government. The party’s disillusioned leader, the adventurer Joshua Haldeman, later abandoned Canada and moved to South Africa. 這種思想的余暉如今似乎在美國(guó)的西海岸再次閃現(xiàn)，體現(xiàn)為作家葉夫根尼•莫羅佐夫(Evgeny Morozov)所稱(chēng)的技術(shù)“解決主義”(solutionism)。根據(jù)這種世界觀，技術(shù)可以解決幾乎所有問(wèn)題，分析人類(lèi)的最好辦法是將其視為數(shù)據(jù)點(diǎn)的集合。

At the heart of the movement was the belief that human action was measurable and, ultimately, predictable. “Technocracy makes one basic postulate: that the phenomena involved in the functional operation of a social mechanism are metrical,” its manifesto claimed. 政治人士的回應(yīng)是，人類(lèi)行為無(wú)法計(jì)算。無(wú)論個(gè)人還是人類(lèi)集體的行為，都變著花樣地不理性。我們很難超越伊曼努爾•康德(Immanuel Kant)的名言：“人性這根曲木，決然造不出任何筆直的東西。”

Flashes of that mentality appear to have resurfaced on the West Coast of the US today in what the writer Evgeny Morozov has called technological “solutionism”. According to this worldview, technology has the answer to almost every problem and humans can best be analysed as collections of data points. 不過(guò)，技術(shù)治國(guó)運(yùn)動(dòng)這段歷史留下了一個(gè)微小但頗為有趣的腳注，在今天可能格外有意義。霍爾德曼有一個(gè)外孫叫埃隆•馬斯克(Elon Musk)，這位航天企業(yè)家計(jì)劃把我們變成一個(gè)穿梭于星際的物種。

The politicians’ response is that human behaviour is not computable. Both individually and collectively we act in refreshingly irrational ways. It is hard to improve on Immanuel Kant’s famous dictum: “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” 或許，技術(shù)治國(guó)最終將在火星上大放異彩——這倒是挺搭的。

One small, but intriguing, footnote in the history of the technocracy movement, though, may have particular resonance today. One of Haldeman’s grandsons is Elon Musk, the space entrepreneur who aims to turn us into an interplanetary species.