CHAPTER 40 Science in Our Digital Age 第40章 我们数字时代的科学

CHAPTER 40 Science in Our Digital Age 第40章 我们数字时代的科学

The next time you switch on your computer, you probably won't 'compute'. You might look up something, email your friends, or check the latest football score. But computers were originally machines that could only compute - calculate - things faster or more accurately than our brains can.

下次你打开计算机，你可能不一定去“计算”。你可能去查找什么资料，给朋友发邮件，或者去查看球赛比分。但计算机原本是只能计算的机器，比人脑计算的又快又准确。

We think of computers as cutting-edge technology, but the idea of the computer is very old. In the nineteenth century, a British mathematician, Charles Babbage (1792-1871), devised a calculating machine that could be 'programmed' to do tricks. For instance, he could set it up to count by single numbers to 1,000,000, and then when it got there, skip to 1,000,002. Anyone who had patiently watched it count to 1,000,000 would have been surprised by the missing number. Babbage's point was that his machine could do things that we wouldn't expect in the normal run of nature.

我们认为计算机是尖端技术，但计算机的想法是很古老的。19世纪时的一个英国数学家，Charles Babbage(1792-1871)，设计出了一种可以“编程”的计算机器用来计算。比如，他可以设置机器单步计数到1,000,000，然后当到达这个数值时，跳到1,000,002. 任何有耐心看它计数到1,000,000的人都会对少算了一个数感到很惊奇。Babbage的观点是机器可以做一些按照常理所不能期待的事情。

In the late 1800s, the American mathematician Herman Hollerith(1860-1929) invented an electric machine that used punched cards to analyze lots of data. If the cards were punched correctly and fed into the machine, it could 'read' them and process the information. The Hollerith Machine was very useful in analyzing the information that people put down on their census forms, gathered to help the government understand more about the population. Very quickly, it could compute basic data such as how much people earned, how many people lived in each household, and their ages and sexes. The punch card remained the way most computers worked until the Second World War.

在19世纪晚期，美国数学家Herman Hollerith(1860-1929)发明了一种电动机器，可以用打孔的卡片来分析大量数据。如果卡片的孔打的没错，然后放入机器里，那么机器就可以“读取”卡片上的数据并进行处理。Hollerith卡片分析机非常有用，人们把人口统计数据的表格做成卡片形式，收集起来用机器来帮助分析理解人口。很快，这种机器就可以计算出人们收入多少，平均每一户有多少人，他们的年龄和性别。直到二战前，大多数计算机一直都在用这种打孔卡片。

During that war, computers came into their own for military purposes. They could calculate how far shells would travel, and they served a more dramatic role in the top-secret attempts to decode enemy messages. The Germans, British and Americans all developed computers to aid wartime security. Here is a wonderful irony: the modern computer has opened up everyone's world, but it began as something that only a very few people, with the highest security clearance, had access to.

在二战中，计算机被用作军事用途。计算机可以用来计算炮弹可以打多远，并且在解密敌方信息这样的高密级活动中扮演着非常重要的角色。为了确保战时信息安全，德国，英国和美国对计算机进行了开发。这真是一个绝妙的讽刺：现代计算机打开了每个人的世界，但开始时只能为极少数有最高安全许可的人所用。

The British and Americans used computers to analyze German coded messages. The heart of the British effort to break the German codes was an old country house called BletchleyPark, in Buckinghamshire. The Germans used two code-making (cipher) machines, Enigma and Lorenz. Each day the codes were changed, which demanded great adaptability from the decoding machines. The British designed two code-breaking machines, the Bombe and the Colossus. The Colossus was well named, for these computers were enormous machines, filling entire rooms and consuming large amounts of electricity. The computers used a series of vacuum tubes to switch the electrical signals. These tubes generated a great deal of heat and were constantly failing. Wide aisles separated the rows of tubes so that the technicians could easily replace the burnt-out filaments. In those days, 'debugging' didn't mean running a software program, it meant reaching in and clearing out the bugs - moths or flies - that had flown into the hot glass tube and shorted out the system. The code-breakers shortened the duration of the war and undoubtedly helped the Allies to win it.

英国和美国用计算机来分析德国的加密信息。英国破译德国密码的核心所在地是Buckingham的Bletchley园。德国有两组密码机，Enigma和Lorenz，每天都更换密码，这对解码机器提出了很高的要求。英国设计了两组解码机，Bombe和Colossus。Colossus（巨人）的名字取得很好，因为这些计算机都是些庞然大物，占满了许多房间，耗电量也非常大。这些计算机使用了很多真空电子管来控制电信号。这些电子管发热量很大，并且不断的有管子烧坏掉。真空电子管按行排好，并留下了很宽的走道，以方便技术人员更换烧掉的灯丝。在那时候，debug并不是运行什么软件程序，而是有一些飞蛾和苍蝇飞进了那些发热的玻璃管中，使系统短路，所以必须有人去清除那些虫子。解码的机器缩短了战争的时间，毫无疑问帮助盟军赢得了战争。

A remarkable mathematician worked at BletchleyPark: Alan Turing (1912-1954). He was educated at my old college in Cambridge, King's College, where his brilliance was recognized as a student there in the early 1930s. He was publishing important ideas on computer mathematics, and his work at BletchleyPark was outstanding. After the war he continued to push his ideas. He had great insights into the relationship between the way computers work and the way our brains work; on 'artificial intelligence' (AI); and even on developing a machine that could play chess. Chess grandmasters still usually win against a computer, but the machines are getting better at making the best move. Turing developed an early electronic computer called ACE at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, London. It had much greater computing capacity. His life had a tragic end. He was gay at a time when homosexual activity was illegal in Britain. Arrested by the police, he underwent a treatment with sex hormones, to 'cure' his sexual orientation. He almost certainly committed suicide by eating an apple laced with the poison strychnine. His life and death are reminders that outstanding scientists can be anyone of any race, gender, religion and sexual preference.

Bletchley园中有一个让人印象深刻的数学家：Alan Turing(1912-1954)。20世纪三十年代，他在剑桥大学国王学院学习的时候就才华横溢。他在计算数学方面发表了重要的论文，在Bletchley园的工作是杰出的。战后他继续自己的工作，并在计算机工作与人脑工作方式的关系上以及人工智能上有着很深的洞察力，他甚至开发出了一台可以下棋的机器。棋艺大师通常都可以下赢机器，但机器在不断改进中。在伦敦Teddington的国家物理实验室，Turing开发出了一台早期电子计算机，名叫ACE，其计算能力有了很大的进步。Turing的生活最终非常悲剧。他是一名同性恋者，但当时在伦敦，同性恋是非法的。警察逮捕了他后，对他进行了荷尔蒙治疗，来治愈他的性取向。他最后吃了一个加入strychnine的毒苹果自杀了。他的一生始终提醒人们，不管是哪个种族，哪种性别，哪种宗教取向，哪种性取向的人，都可以产生杰出的科学家。

The enormous machines built during the war were valuable, but they were limited by those overheating valves. Next came an invention that has changed the computer and much else: the transistor. Developed from late 1947 by John Bardeen (1908-91), Walter Brattain (1902-87) and William Shockley (1910-89), this device can amplify and switch electronic signals. Transistors were much smaller than vacuum tubes and generated much less heat. They have made all kinds of electrical appliances, such as transistor radios, much smaller and more efficient. The three men shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work, and Bardeen went on to win a second one for his research on 'semi-conductors', the material that makes transistors and modern circuits possible.

战时建造的巨大的机器是非常有用的，但被那些过度发热的真空管所限制。下一项发明会改变计算机和其他很多东西：晶体管。1947年下半年，John Bardeen(1908-1991)，Walter Brattain(1902-1987)和William Shockley(1910-1989)发明了晶体管，它可以放大和控制电信号。晶体管比真空管的体积小了很多，产生的热量少得多。晶体管可以制成电器，如晶体管收音机，体积很小，效率也很高。由于这个发明，这三人分享了诺贝尔物理学奖。Bardeen继续进行了半导体的研究，这种材料造就了晶体管和现代电路，从而又获了一次奖。

The military continued to develop computing during the Cold War of 1945 to 1991. The two great superpowers, the USA and the USSR, distrusted each other, despite having been allies during the Second World War. Computers were used to analyze the data each country collected about the other's activities. But increasingly powerful number-crunching computers were a great help to scientists, too. Physicists made the greatest use of these new and improving machines during the 1960s. High-energy particle accelerators created so much data that it would have been impossible for an army of people with pencils and paper to make sense of it all.

军方在冷战期间1945-1991继续开发计算能力。两大世界巨头，美国和苏联，尽管在二战时是盟友，但战后互不信任。他们互相收集对方国家的行动数据，并用计算机进行分析。但计算能力迅速提升的计算机对科学家帮助也非常大。物理学家在60年代充分使用了这些最新改进的机器，高能粒子加速器产生了大量的数据，如果是靠人力用纸和笔来计算，将不可能得到有意义的结果。

More and more, computer scientists became members of a range of scientific teams, and research budgets included their salaries and equipment. So it made a lot of sense if one team could speak to another not just person to person, but computer to computer. After all, the telephone had been around for a century, and sending messages by telegraph wires was even older. Then, in the early 1960s, 'packet switching' was invented. Digital messages could be broken up into smaller units, and each unit would travel by the easiest route, and then be reassembled at its destination, the receiving computer screen. When you are talking on a landline, you're in 'real time', and no one else can call you. But you can send or receive a message on a computer - an email or a post on a website - and it will be available whenever someone wants to read it.

越来越多的计算机科学家成为一些列科学小组的成员，这些小组的研究预算包括工资和仪器设备。所以小组间的对话以机器对话进行比人与人之间的对话更为有意义，毕竟，电话已经发明了一个世纪，电报传送信息更为古老。所以，60年代早期，“包交换”技术发明了出来。数字信息被分解成更小的单元，每个单元通过最容易的路径传递，然后在目的地，即接收的计算机，重新组装起来。当你通过一个通信线路进行通话时，你是“实时”的，别人没办法呼叫你。但在计算机上，你可以同时收到和发送信息 – 邮件或者网站上的帖子 – 当有别人想阅读这些信息时，它是随时可用的。

Packet switching was developed simultaneously in the USA and the UK. As a feature of national security, it allowed military or political leaders to communicate with each other, and would work even if some of the communication facilities had been destroyed. Packet switching made it easier to connect groups of computers: networking them. Again, the earliest non-military groups to network were the scientists. So much modern science benefits from collaboration. Academic communities were the main beneficiaries of the ever-smaller and ever-faster computers of the 1960s. They were extremely large, extremely slow and extremely expensive, compared with what we use today. But you will be relieved to know it was possible to play computer games even then, so the fun started early. The pace of change in computing accelerated in the 1970s. Computers - or microcomputers, as they were called - with a screen and keyboard became small enough to fit onto a desk. As the microprocessor chips they contained became more powerful, the personal computer revolution began. Much of the research was done in Silicon Valley in California in the USA.

美国和英国同时开发出了包交换技术。军队和国家领导们可以互相通信，在部分通信设施被摧毁后甚至也可以，这就使其成为国家安全的一部分。包交换技术使连接一群电脑容易起来：组网。最早又是这些非军方的科学家成功的进行了组网。很多现代科学在这种合作之中受益匪浅。60年代，学术团体是这种最小和最快的计算机的主要获益者。但与现在使用的计算机相比，仍然是极其巨大，极其慢速，极其昂贵的。但在那时候就可以玩计算机游戏了，这种娱乐在早期就已经开始了。70年代，计算能力变化的脚步开始加快。计算机，也就是我们现在所称的微型计算机，带一个显示器和键盘，已经小到可以放到办公桌上了。随着微处理器芯片越来越强大，个人计算机革命开始了，大部分的研究工作是再美国California的硅谷完成的。

Computers continued to change the way academic communities worked and communicated with each other. One of the largest collections of physicists in the world worked at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which houses the Large Hadron Collider, the world's fastest particle accelerator(Chapter 39). Computer specialists at CERN took networking and data analysis to new heights in the 1980s and 1990s. One expert was Tim Berners-Lee (b. 1955). Berners-Lee was always fascinated by computers. He grew up with them, as both his parents were early computer pioneers. Berners-Lee studied physics at Oxford and then went to work at CERN. In 1989, he asked for some research funds for ‘Information Management’. His bosses at CERN gave him some help, but he persisted with his idea of making the increasing amounts of information available on the Internet easily accessible to anyone with a computer and a telephone line. Along with his colleague Robert Cailliau (b. 1947), he invented the World Wide Web. At first it was used just at CERN and one or two other physics laboratories. Then, in 1993 it went public. This coincided with the massive growth of personal computers not just at work but in the home. People who led the personal computer revolution, like Microsoft's Bill Gates (b. 1955) and Apple's Steve Jobs (1955-2011) are modern scientific heroes (and became very rich). So 1955 turned out to be a good year for computers: Berners-Lee, Gates and Jobs were all born then.

计算机不断的改变科学团体工作和交流的方式。最大的一个物理学团体在CERN（欧洲核子研究组织）工作，他们拥有世界上最快的粒子加速器，即大型强子对撞机（见第39章）。CERN的计算机专家在80年代和90年代将组网和数据分析带到了新高度。其中一个专家是Tim Berners-Lee(b. 1955)，Berners-Lee对计算机很痴迷，他的父母都是早期计算机先驱者，他伴随着计算机成长。Berners-Lee在Oxford学习物理学并到CERN工作。1989年，他为“信息管理”这个研究项目申请经费。他在CERN的老板给了他帮助，但他仍然坚持他自己的观点，把越来越多的信息都放在互联网上，任何人只要有一台电脑和一根电话线，都可以轻松访问的到这些信息。和他的同事Robert Cailliau(b.1947)一道，他们发明了World Wide Web。最初这只是在CERN内部和其他一两个物理实验室之间使用，接着，在1993年WWW公开化了。这与工作和家庭中大量增加的个人计算机潮流不谋而合。引领个人计算机革命的人，像微软的Bill Gates(b.1955)，苹果的Steve Jobs(1955-2011)就是现代科学英雄（也变得非常富有）。所以1955年是计算机的幸运年：Berners-Lee, Gates和Jobs都在这一年出生。

The speed of computer development from the 1970s matched the rate of invention of methods for sequencing the genome. It's no coincidence that the two events happened at the same time. Modern science is unthinkable without the modern computer. Many fundamental scientific problems, from designing new drugs to modeling climate change, depend on these machines. At home, we use them for doing homework, booking holiday tickets, playing computer games. Embedded computer systems fly our aeroplanes, assist medical imaging, and wash our clothes. Like modern science, modern life is computer-based.

70年代以来计算机的发展速度与发明的基因组排序方法相匹配。两个事件同时发生不是偶然。没有现代计算机，现代科学是不可想象的。很多基础科学问题，从设计新药品，到对气候变化建模，都依赖这些机器。在家里，我们用计算机做家务，订假日车票、机票，玩电脑游戏。嵌入式计算机系统帮助人类驾驶飞机，医学成像，洗衣服。就像现代科学一样，现代生活也是建立在计算机之上的。

We shouldn't be surprised at this. One of the things I have tried to show in this little book is that at any moment of history, the science has been a product of that particular moment. Hippocrates' moment was different from Galileo's, or Lavoisier's. They dressed, ate and thought like other people at the time. The people in this book thought more sharply than most of their contemporaries, and were able to communicate their ideas. That is why what they thought and wrote is worth remembering.

对此我们不应惊讶。在这本小书里，我想说明的一点是，在历史上任何时刻，科学是某个特殊时刻的产物。Hippocrates时刻和Galileo时刻是不同的，和Lavoisier时刻也是不同的。他们的衣着、饮食和思想和同时代的人是差不多的。这本书中的人物的思想比同时代的人更加锐利，并可以交流他们的思想。这就是为什么他们的想法和著作值得铭记。

Yet the science of our day is more powerful than ever before. Computers are good for criminals and hackers as well as scientists and students. Science and technology can be abused as easily as they can be used for our common good. We need good scientists, but we also need good citizens who will ensure that our science will make the world a better place for us all to live in.

但我们这个时代的科学比以前更加强大。计算机对科学家和学生有益，对罪犯和黑客同样有益。科学与技术可以用在我们的共同福祉中，也可以同样被滥用。我们需要好的科学家，但我们同样需要好的公民，以确保我们的科学让这个世界更加美好。