Steve Jobs talk at the 1983 International Design Conference in Aspen
发布时间 2024-07-19 00:43:53 来源
这段文字记录了史蒂夫·乔布斯的一次演讲，很可能是在 1983 年，他充满激情地讨论了个人电脑新兴的格局。他认为，电脑不仅仅是加强版的计算器，而是一种根本上全新的通信媒介，其影响力堪比电视、广播和书籍。
乔布斯首先用电动机的类比来构建计算机的演变。最初，电动机体积庞大，仅适用于大规模应用。20世纪60年代的分时技术，即一台大型计算机被多个用户共享，是下一个突破。真正的革命来自于“分数马力”的个人电脑，它将计算能力直接带给个人用户，就像家用小型电动机的普及一样。他认为苹果公司的存在要归功于他们早期对分数马力计算的认可和实施。他兴奋地表示，个人电脑行业正准备迎来爆炸式增长，预计未来电脑的销量将超过汽车。
他的演讲很大一部分是对更好设计的呼吁。乔布斯对当前计算机的设计状况感到惋惜，认为才华横溢的设计师都专注于汽车等行业，而即将普及的计算机，在美学上却往往令人不快。他认为，计算机作为工作、教育和家庭环境中不可或缺的存在，理应得到周到的设计。他觉得，花同样的成本就可以创造出美观、设计精良的计算机，而现在却创造出“垃圾产品”，这是一种错失的机会。
他强调，电脑不仅仅是机器，它们是一种新的通信媒介。就像以前从广播到电视的媒介转变一样，计算机的最初应用往往模仿旧的媒介。早期的计算机用途仍然局限于旧习惯，就像早期电视是带着摄像头的广播节目一样。乔布斯指出，苹果的电脑Lisa是一个突破，因为它允许人们绘制艺术图片，并提供各种编辑选项，例如更改大小、纹理和擦除图片。这展示了结合图片和文字的能力。这表明Lisa正在摆脱这些旧习惯。他强调，理解如何为社会设计这些工具以使其繁荣，对苹果来说是一个巨大的机会。
乔布斯深入探讨了计算机程序的概念，将它们描述为“原型”，与电视节目不同，计算机程序捕捉的是体验的底层原理，而不是体验本身。他以视频游戏为例，这些游戏遵循物理定律，基于同一组规则创造出无数的变化。他用游戏“汉谟拉比”进一步说明了这一点，在这个游戏中，孩子们可以与一个简化的宏观经济模型互动，以一种前所未有的方式了解因果关系。
在问答环节，乔布斯回答了各种问题。他设想计算机像人一样协同工作，既有成功的合作，也有不兼容的情况。他讨论了局域网的开发以及基于共同兴趣的通信渠道的有机增长。
他设想未来带有无线电链接的便携式电脑可以访问庞大的数据库，从而促进通信和知识共享。他谈到了图形设计，解释了如何通过比例间距的字体、多种字体选项和集成的图形来改善计算机的视觉体验。
关于数据隐私，乔布斯承认了对信息潜在滥用的担忧，但他相信应该赋予个人工具，将原始数据过滤并转化为有用的知识。他强调，重要的是让人们有能力分析信息，例如国会听证会或期刊文章，从而形成自己的观点并影响决策。这有助于将所有数据转化为可用的知识。
在回答关于公共服务的问题时，乔布斯介绍了苹果公司向学校捐赠电脑的倡议，认识到计算机素养的重要性，并旨在弥合数字鸿沟。他谈到了向信息时代转变的经济趋势，以及需要进行再培训计划，以使工人掌握新的技能。他还强调了软件开发行业，指出需要一个“软件广播站”，让人们可以在购买之前试用，并且个人有机会创建有价值的程序。
最后，他谈到了员工保留问题，强调苹果公司相对扁平的管理结构、员工持股计划以及重视创新、自主和为重要事业做出贡献的文化。他描绘了一个工作环境，人们被共同的愿景、艺术表达和真正想要有所作为的愿望所驱动。
This transcript captures a presentation by Steve Jobs, likely in 1983, where he passionately discusses the emerging landscape of personal computing. He argues that computers are not just souped-up calculators, but a fundamentally new medium of communication, comparable in impact to television, radio, and the book.
Jobs starts by framing the computer's evolution using the analogy of the electric motor. Initially, electric motors were large and only viable for massive applications. Time-sharing in the 1960s, where one large computer was shared among many users, was the next breakthrough. The true revolution came with the "fractional horsepower" personal computer, bringing computing power directly to individual users, mirroring the proliferation of small electric motors in households. He credits Apple's existence to their early recognition and implementation of fractional horsepower computing. He excitedly reports that the personal computer industry is poised for explosive growth, projecting a future where more computers are shipped than automobiles.
A significant portion of his talk serves as a plea for better design. Jobs laments the current state of computer design, arguing that talented designers are focused on industries like automobiles while computers, soon to be ubiquitous, are often aesthetically unappealing. He believes that computers, as constant presences in work, education, and home environments, deserve thoughtful design. He feels it is a missed opportunity to create "junk objects" when beautiful, well-designed computers could be created with the same costs.
He emphasizes that computers are more than just machines; they are a new medium of communication. Like previous media transitions from radio to television, the initial application of computers often mimics older mediums. Early computer uses were stuck in older habits, just like early television being radio shows with cameras. Jobs points to Lisa, Apple's computer, as a breakthrough, because it allows a person to draw artistic pictures with a variety of editing options, such as changing size, textures, and erasing the picture. This shows the ability to combine pictures and words. This highlights that Lisa is allowing for the breaking away from these older habits. He stresses that understanding how to design these tools for society to thrive is a huge opportunity for Apple.
Jobs delves into the concept of computer programs, describing them as “archetypal” and unlike television programming, computer programming captures the underlying principles of an experience rather than the experience itself. He uses the example of video games, which follow the laws of physics to create countless variations based on the same set of rules. He further illustrates this with the game "Hammurabi," where children can interact with a simplified macroeconomic model, learning about cause and effect in a way that wasn't possible before.
In the Q&A portion, Jobs addresses a variety of concerns. He envisions computers working together much like people, with both successful collaboration and instances of incompatibility. He discusses the development of local area networks and the organic growth of communication channels based on shared interests.
He envisions a future where portable computers with radio links provide access to vast databases, facilitating communication and knowledge sharing. He touches on graphic design, explaining the efforts to improve the visual experience of computers with proportionally spaced fonts, multiple font options, and integrated graphics.
Concerning data privacy, Jobs acknowledges concerns about potential abuse of information but believes in empowering individuals with tools to filter and transform raw data into useful knowledge. He emphasizes the importance of giving people the ability to analyze information, such as congressional testimony or journal articles, to form their own opinions and influence decisions. This helps turn all the data into usable knowledge.
In response to a question about public service, Jobs describes Apple's initiative to donate computers to schools, recognizing the importance of computer literacy and aiming to bridge the digital divide. He addresses the economic shift towards the information age and the need for retraining programs to equip workers with new skills. He also highlights the software development industry, noting that a need for a "software radio station" exists where people can try before buying and the opportunity for individuals to create valuable programs.
Finally, he addresses employee retention, emphasizing Apple's relatively flat management structure, employee stock ownership, and a culture that values innovation, autonomy, and the opportunity to contribute meaningfully. He portrays a work environment where people are driven by a shared vision, artistic expression, and a genuine desire to make a difference.
中英文字稿 
Good morning. Introductions are really funny. They paid me $60 so I wore a tie. How many people, how many of you are 36 years older than 36 years old? Yeah. You were born pre-computer. Computers 36 years old. And there's something sort of, I think, that there's going to be a little slice in the timeline and history as we look back. Pretty meaningful slice right there. A lot of you are products of the television generation. I'm pretty much a product of the television generation. But to some extent, starting to be a product of the computer generation and the kids growing up now are definitely products of the computer generation. And in their lifetimes, the computer will become the predominant medium of communication just as the television took over from the radio took over from even the book.
早上好。自我介绍真的很有趣。他们给了我60美元，所以我打了领带。这里有多少人比36岁还大？是的，你们是在电脑诞生之前出生的。电脑已经有36年历史了。我觉得未来在回顾历史时，这36年将成为一个相当重要的时间节点。你们中的很多人是电视一代的产物。我自己基本上也是电视一代的产物。但在某种程度上，也开始成为电脑时代的一员。而现在成长中的孩子们毫无疑问是电脑时代的产物。在他们的生活中，电脑将成为主要的交流媒介，就像电视取代了广播，而广播又取代了书籍一样。
Boy, I'll talk about anything you want to talk about today. I have about 15 or 20 minutes of stuff that I just wanted to cover really quickly. And then whatever you want to talk about, we can talk about how's that. How many of you own an Apple, Annie? Or are just any personal computer? Uh-oh. How many of you have used one or seen one? Anything like that? Good. Okay. Let's start off with what is a computer? What is a computer? It's really simple. It's just a simple machine. But it's a new type of machine. The gears, the pistons have been replaced with electrons. How many of you have seen an electron? That's the problem with computers. Is that you can't get your hands on the actual things that are moving around. You can't see them. And so they tend to be very intimidating because in a very small space there's billions of electrons running around. And we can't really get a hold on exactly what they look like.
男孩们，今天我会聊任何你们想聊的话题。我大概有15到20分钟的内容想要快速讲一下，然后就是你们想聊什么都可以。怎么样？有多少人拥有苹果电脑，Annie？或者只是任何个人电脑？呃哦。有多少人用过或者见过一台电脑？之类的东西？很好。好的，让我们从“什么是电脑”开始吧。电脑是什么？实际上很简单，只是一种简单的机器。但它是一种新型的机器。齿轮和活塞被电子取代了。你们中有多少人见过电子？这就是电脑的问题，你无法触摸到实际在移动的东西。你看不到它们。所以，电脑常常让人感到害怕，因为在一个非常小的空间里有成亿的电子在运转，而我们无法确切知道它们的样子。
Computers are very adaptive. It's a very adaptive machine. We can move the electrons around differently to different places, depending upon the current state of affairs, the results of the last time we move the electrons around. So if you were here last night and you heard about the brain and how it's very adaptive, a computer is in the same way very very adaptive. Second thing about a computer, it's very new. It was invented 36 years ago in 1947. The world's first degree in computer science offered by a university, which was the University of California at Berkeley. And it was a master's degree, was offered in 1968, which means the oldest person that has a degree in computer science is 39 years old. And the average age of professionals at Apple is under 30. So it's a field that's dominated by fairly young people.
计算机非常具有适应性。它是一种极具适应性的机器。我们可以根据当前的情况以及我们上次移动电子时的结果，将电子移到不同的位置。因此，如果你昨晚听过关于大脑如何具有适应性的讲座，计算机在某种程度上也同样非常适应环境。关于计算机的第二点是，它非常新。计算机是在1947年发明的，也就是36年前。世界上第一个由加州大学伯克利分校提供的计算机科学学位是在1968年设立的，它是一个硕士学位。这意味着，拥有计算机科学学位的最年长者才39岁。而且苹果公司的专业人员的平均年龄不到30岁。所以这个领域主要是由比较年轻的人主导。
Third thing about computers, they're really dumb. They're exceptionally simple, but they're really fast. The raw instructions that we have to feed these little microprocessors, that even the raw instructions that we have to feed these giant, cray-one supercomputers are the most trivial of instructions. They're get some data from here, get a number from here, fetch a number, add two numbers together, test to see if it's bigger than zero, go put it over there. It's the most mundane thing you could ever imagine. But, a key thing about it is, is that, let's say I could move 100 times faster than anyone in here. In the blink of your eye, I could run out there and I could grab a bouquet of fresh spring flowers or something, and I could run back in here and I could snap my fingers, and you'd all think I was a magician or something.
关于计算机的第三点，它们其实很笨。它们非常简单，但是速度非常快。无论是微处理器还是巨大的超级计算机，我们给它们的原始指令都非常简单，仅仅是一些基础指令。比如从这里取数据，从那里取数字，获取一个数字，把两个数字相加，检查一下是否大于零，然后把结果放到另一处。这些都是极其普通的事情。但关键在于，假设我能比这里的任何人快100倍。在你眨眼之间，我可以跑出去拿一束新鲜的春天鲜花，然后跑回来弹一下指头，你们可能就会觉得我像个魔术师。
And yet, I was basically doing a series of really simple instructions, moving, running out there, grabbing some flowers, running back, snapping my fingers. But I could just do them so fast that you would think that there was something magical going. And it's the exact same way with the computer. You can go grab these numbers and add them together and throw them over here at the rate of about a million instructions per second. And so we tend to think there's something magical going on. When in reality, there's just a series of these simple instructions. Now, what we do is we take these very, very simple instructions and we, by building a collection of these things, build a higher level instruction. So, instead of saying, turn left foot, right foot, right foot, extend hand grab flowers, run back in here. Could you go get some flowers? Could you pour a cup of coffee?
然而，我其实是在执行一系列非常简单的指令：移动，跑出去，摘些花，跑回来，打个响指。但我可以做得非常快速，以至于让人觉得像有什么魔法在发生。电脑也是一样的道理。你可以去抓取这些数字，把它们加在一起，再以每秒大约一百万条指令的速度处理它们。所以我们往往会认为有什么神奇的事情在发生，但实际上，这只是一些简单指令的组合。现在，我们所做的是把这些非常非常简单的指令集合起来，构建出更高层次的指令。所以，我不再需要说“左脚转，右脚转，右脚转，伸手抓花，跑回来。”而是说：“你能去摘些花吗？”或者“你能倒杯咖啡吗？”
And we have started in the last 20 years to deal with computers in higher and higher levels of abstraction. But ultimately, these levels of abstraction get translated down into these stupid instructions that run really fast. Let's look at the brief history of computers. Best way to understand it's probably an analogy. Take the electric motor. The electric motor was first invented in the late 1800s. And when it was first invented, it was only possible to build a very, very large one, which meant that it could only be cost justified for very large applications. And therefore, electric motors did not proliferate very fast at all.
在过去的20年里，我们开始以越来越高的抽象层次来处理计算机。但最终，这些抽象层次都会被转化为一些运行速度非常快的简单指令。让我们来看看计算机的简史。最好的理解方式可能是类比。以电动机为例。电动机最初是在19世纪后期发明的。当时只能够制造非常大型的电动机，这意味着它们只能在非常大型的应用中才具有成本效益。因此，电动机并没有迅速普及。
But the next breakthrough was when somebody took one of these large electric motors and they ran a shaft through the middle of a factory and through a series of belts and pulleys, brought, shared the horsepower of this one large electric motor on 15 or 20 medium-sized workstations, thereby allowing one electric motor to be cost justified on some medium-scale tasks. And electric motors proliferated even further than. But the real breakthrough was the invention of the fractional horsepower electric motor. We could then bring the horsepower directly to where it was needed and cost justified on a totally individual application.
下一个突破发生在有人将一个大型电动机的轴贯穿于整个工厂，通过一系列皮带和滑轮，将这一个大型电动机的马力分配到15或20个中型工作站上。这使得一个电动机在一些中型任务上具有了经济效益。此后，电动机的普及程度进一步提高。但是，真正的突破是分数马力电动机的发明。通过这个小型电动机，我们可以将所需的马力直接应用到具体的用途上，并在单个应用中体现其成本效益。
And I think there's about 55 or so fractional horsepower motors now in every household. If we look at the development of computers, we see a real parallel. We look at the first computers called the ENIAC in 1947. It was developed particularly for ballistic military calculations. It was giant. Hardly anyone got a chance to use it. The real breakthrough, the next real breakthrough was in the 60s with the invention of what was called time-sharing. And what we did was we took one of these very large computers and we shared it. Since it could execute so many instructions so quickly, we'd run some on Fred's job over here and then we'd run some on Sally's job and we'd run some on Don's job and we'd run some on Suzy's job.
我认为如今每个家庭大约有55个左右的小功率电动机。如果我们观察计算机的发展，会发现一个相似的过程。1947年诞生的首台计算机ENIAC，最初设计用于军事的弹道计算。它非常庞大，几乎没有人有机会使用它。真正的突破是在20世纪60年代发明的“分时系统”。我们把这种巨型计算机进行共享。由于它能够非常快速地执行很多指令，我们可以同时处理多个任务，比如同时为Fred、Sally、Don和Suzy的工作提供服务。
And we'd share this thing and it was so fast that everyone would think they had the whole computer to themselves. Time-sharing was what really started to proliferate computers in the 60s and most of you if you've used computer terminals connected with some umbilical cord to some large computer somewhere else, that's time-sharing. That's what got computers on college campuses in large numbers. The reason Apple exists is because we stumbled on to fractional horsepower computing five years before anybody else. That's the reason we exist. We took these microprocessor chips which is sort of a computer on a chip and we surrounded it with all the other stuff you need to interact with a computer and we made a computer that was about 13 pounds.
我们会分享这台计算机，它运行速度非常快，以至于每个人都觉得自己拥有一整台计算机。时间共享是让计算机在60年代广泛普及的关键。如果你曾使用连接到某个远程大型计算机的终端设备，那就是时间共享。正因为如此，计算机才能大量进入大学校园。苹果公司的存在原因是我们比其他人早五年发现了"分数马力计算"的概念，这正是我们存在的理由。我们利用这些微处理器芯片（相当于一颗芯片上的计算机），并在其周围配备了与计算机交互所需的所有其他组件，制造了一台大约13磅重的计算机。
And people would look at it and they'd say, well, where's the computer? This is just a terminal. We'd say, no, that is the computer. And after about five minutes of repeating this, they'd finally a light bulb would go on in their minds. And they'd decide if they didn't like it, they could throw it out the window or run over it with their car, but that this was the entire computer. That's why we exist. Fractional horsepower computing. This fractional horsepower computing created a revolution. It was invented in 1976, the first personal computer. This year in 1983, the industry is going to ship over three million of the little buggers. Three million. By 1986, we're going to ship more computers than automobiles in this country.
人们看到它时会问：“电脑在哪里？这只是个终端。” 我们会说：“不，这就是电脑。” 经过大约五分钟的解释，他们终于恍然大悟。如果他们不喜欢，可以把它扔出窗外或者用车压过去，但这就是整个电脑。这就是我们存在的原因——小功率计算。小功率计算引发了一场革命。它于1976年被发明，是第一台个人电脑。今年，即1983年，这个行业将会出货超过三百万台这样的“家伙”。三百万台。到1986年，我们在这个国家的电脑出货量将超过汽车。
And let me digress for a minute. One of the reasons I'm here is because I need your help. If you've looked at computers, they look like garbage. All the great product designers are off designing automobiles or they're off designing buildings, but hardly any of them are designing computers. And if we take a look, we're going to sell those three million computers this year. We're going to sell those 10 million computers in 1986, whether they look like a piece of shit or they look great. It doesn't really matter because people are going to just suck this stuff up so fast that they're going to do it no matter what it looks like.
让我插一句。我之所以在这里，是因为我需要你的帮助。如果你注意过电脑的外观，你会发现它们看起来很糟糕。所有优秀的产品设计师都去设计汽车或建筑了，几乎没有人在设计电脑。即便如此，我们今年预计出售三百万台电脑，到1986年会出售一千万台。无论它们看起来像个废物还是很棒，其实都无关紧要，因为人们会如此迅速地购买这些东西，以至于他们根本不在乎它们的外观。
And it doesn't cost any more money to make it look great. They're going to be these objects, this new object that's going to be in everyone's working environment, and it's going to be in everyone's educational environment, and it's going to be in everyone's home environment. And we have a shot at putting a great object there, or if we don't, we're going to put one more piece of junk object there. By 1986, 87, pick a year, people are going to be spending more time interacting with these machines than they do interacting with their big automobile machines today. People are going to be spending two, three hours a day sometimes interacting with these machines longer than they spend in a car.
而且，不需要额外的花费就能让它看起来很棒。它们将成为一种新型物品，存在于每个人的工作环境、学习环境和家庭环境中。我们有机会将一个优秀的物品放在那里，否则，我们就只能再放一个毫无用处的物品。到1986年或者1987年，随便选个年份，人们会花更多时间与这些机器互动，比他们今天与大型汽车互动的时间还多。人们有时会每天花费两到三个小时与这些机器互动，这比他们待在车里的时间还要长。
And so the industrial design, the software design, and how people interact with these things, certainly must be given the consideration that we give automobiles today, if not a lot more. And if you take a look, what we've got is we've got a situation where most of the automobiles are not being designed in the United States, Europe, Japan. Television, audio electronics, watches, cameras, bicycles, calculators, you name it. Most of the objects of our life are not designed in America. We've blown it. We've blown it from an industrial point of view because we've lost the markets to the foreign competitors. We've also blown it in a design point of view.
工业设计、软件设计以及人们如何与这些产品进行互动，绝对必须得到如同我们今天对待汽车一样的重视，甚至要更加重视。而实际上，目前大多数汽车并不是由美国、欧洲或日本设计的。无论是电视、音响设备、手表、相机、自行车还是计算器，这些生活中的大部分物品都不是在美国设计的。从工业的角度来看，我们搞砸了，因为市场被外国竞争者占领了。从设计的角度来看，我们也搞砸了。
And I think we have a chance focusing on this new computing technology meeting people in the 80s, the fact that computers in society are out on a first date in the 80s. We have a chance to make these things beautiful and we have a chance to communicate something through the design of the objects themselves. In addition to that, we're going to spend over $100 million in the next 12 months on media advertising. Apple alone, I'll spend at least an equivalent amount. And we generate tens of millions of dollars worth of brochures, posters more than the auto industry, again, as a comparison.
我认为，我们有机会专注于这种新计算技术，与20世纪80年代的人们相遇。电脑在社会中的应用就像是与人类的第一次约会。我们有机会让这些技术变得更加美丽，并通过产品设计传达一些东西。此外，在接下来的12个月里，我们将在媒体广告上投入超过1亿美元。单是苹果公司，我就会投入同样多的资金。而且，我们制作的宣传册和海报的价值达到数千万美元，比汽车行业还多。
And this stuff can either be great or it can be lousy. And we need help. We really, really need your help. Okay, let's go back to this revolution. What is happening? What's happening is the personal computer is a new medium of communication, one of the media. And so what's a media? It's a technology communication, a book is a medium, telephone, radio, television. These are mediums of communication. And each medium has pitfalls to it, has shortcomings, has boundaries which you can't cross, but it also generally has some new unique opportunities.
这件事情可能会很棒，也可能会差劲。我们需要帮助，非常需要你的帮助。好吧，让我们回到这个革命。究竟发生了什么？发生的是个人计算机成为了一种新的交流媒介之一。那么，什么是媒介？它是一种交流技术，比如书籍、电话、广播、电视。这些都是交流媒介。每种媒介都有其缺陷和局限性，但通常也会带来一些新的独特机会。
The neat thing is that each medium shapes not only a communication that goes through it, but it shapes the process of communication. Perfect example. If you compare the telephone to what we're seeing now in electronic mail, where we link a bunch of computers together and we can send messages to an electronic mailbox, which people can then receive at their leisure, we see that indeed in one sense we're sending voice through these wires and in another sense we're sending ones and zeros through these wires. So the content that's traveling through the medium is certainly different.
有趣的是，每种媒介不仅影响通过它的交流内容，还影响交流的过程。一个很好的例子是：如果你比较电话和我们现在所见的电子邮件——我们将一堆电脑连接在一起，能够随时发送信息到电子邮箱，收件人可以在方便的时候查收——就会发现，在某种意义上，我们通过电话线传递的是声音，而通过电子邮件传递的是01的数字信号。所以，从媒介中传递的内容显然是不同的。
But the most interesting thing that's different is the process of communication. When I talk on a telephone with anyone, we both have to be on the phone at the same time. When I'm working or when I want to send something to somebody with a computer terminal, I want to do a drawing and zip it over and put it in their mailbox, they don't need to be there. They can retrieve it at 12 a.m. in the morning. They can retrieve it three days later. They can be in New York and retrieve it. One of these days when we have portable computers with radio links, they can be walking around Aspen and retrieve it.
但最有趣的不同之处在于交流的方式。当我与别人通过电话交流时，我们需要同时在线。但当我工作或想通过计算机终端给某人发送东西时，比如做一个图，然后迅速发送到他们的邮箱，他们不需要当时就在那里。他们可以在凌晨12点或者三天后再去查看。他们可以在纽约进行查看。将来当我们有了带无线连接的便携式电脑时，他们甚至可以在阿斯彭漫步时查看。
And so the process of communication itself changes as the mediums evolve. So what I'm claiming is that computers are a medium and that personal computers are a new and different medium from large computers. What happens when a new medium enters the scene is that we tend to fall back into old media habits. And let's look at a few transitions from one medium to another. Radio to television, television to this incredible new interactive medium of the video disk.
随着媒介的发展，交流的方式本身也在改变。我想说的是，电脑是一种媒介，而且个人电脑与大型电脑是截然不同的新型媒介。当一种新媒介出现时，我们往往会回到旧的媒体习惯。让我们来看看从一种媒介向另一种媒介的过渡：从广播到电视，从电视到这个令人惊叹的新型互动媒介——录像光盘。
If you go back and you look at the first television shows, they're basically radio shows with a television camera pointed at them. And it took us the better part of the 50s to really understand how television was going to come into its own as its own medium. And I really think the first time that a lot of people were shook into realizing the television had come of age was the JFK funeral. The nation, a lot of the world, experienced the JFK funeral in their living room at a level of intensity that wouldn't have been possible with radio.
如果你回过头去看最早的电视节目，它们基本上就是有一台摄像机对着拍的广播节目。在整个50年代，我们花了很长时间才真正理解电视如何成为一种独立的媒体。我真的认为，许多人第一次意识到电视已经成熟的时刻是肯尼迪总统的葬礼。那时，全国乃至世界很多人都在自己家中的客厅里以一种以前通过广播无法达到的强烈程度，体验了肯尼迪总统的葬礼。
I think another more upbeat example was the Apollo landing. That experience was not possible with the previous medium and yet it took us the better part of 20 years for that one to really evolve. Let's look at the next transition. We have this optical video disk which can store 55,000 images on a side or an hour of video randomly accessible. What are we using it for? Movies. We're dropping back into the old media habits.
我认为另一个更加振奋人心的例子是阿波罗登月。那种经历在之前的媒体中是无法实现的，而且我们花了将近20年的时间才真正实现了这次进步。现在让我们看看下一场变革。我们有了这种光学视频光盘，可以在一面存储55,000张图片或者随机访问一个小时的视频。可是我们在用它做什么呢？电影。我们又回到了旧的媒体习惯。
There's a few experiments that are starting to happen and you start to believe that five years, ten years from now that's going to come into its own. A neat experiment happened right here in Aspen. MIT came out to Aspen about four or five years ago. And they had this truck with this camera on it and they went down every single street, photographed every single intersection in every single street in Aspen. They photographed all the buildings and they've got this computer and this video disk hooked up together.
有一些实验已经开始进行，让人们相信在未来五到十年内它们会得到广泛应用。其中有一个有趣的实验就发生在阿斯彭。大约四五年前，麻省理工学院（MIT）的人来到阿斯彭。他们带来了一辆装有摄像机的卡车，沿着阿斯彭的每一条街道行驶，拍摄了每一个街道和路口。他们还拍摄了所有的建筑物，并将这些照片存于一个计算机和视频光盘的系统中。
And on the screen you see yourself looking down a street and you can touch the screen and there's some arrows on the screen and you can touch rock forward. And all of a sudden it's just like you're walking forward in the street and you get to an intersection and you can stop and you can look right and you can look straight and you can look left. And you can decide which way you want to go. You can even go in some of the shops. It's an electronic map that gives you the feeling you're walking through Aspen. Then there's four little buttons in the corner because they came back and they did exactly the same thing all four seasons. So you can be looking down a street, hit winner, all of a sudden you get the same street with three feet of snow on it. It's really amazing. That's not incredibly useful. But it points to some of the interactive nature of this new medium which is just starting to break out from movies and is going to take another five to ten years to evolve.
在屏幕上，你看到自己在沿着一条街走，你可以触摸屏幕，上面有一些箭头，你可以触摸“向前走”。突然间，就好像你在街道上行走一样，你到达一个路口，还可以停下来看向右边、正前方或左边。你可以选择你想走的方向，你甚至可以进入一些商店。这是一个电子地图，让你有身临其境地步行在阿斯彭小镇的感觉。在屏幕的角落里有四个小按钮，因为他们把这条街在四个季节都做了同样的处理。你可以在街道上选择“冬季”，突然间，画面就变成了满是三英尺厚雪的街道，真的非常神奇。这虽然不是特别实用，但展示了这种新媒体的一些互动特性。而这种特性才刚刚从电影中萌芽，还有可能需要五到十年才能完全发展起来。
Okay, let's go back to computers. We're in the I love Lucy stage right now in our medium development. What we did was micro computers, personal computers, first come on the scene. What do we do? We fall back into old media habits. We run these weird languages like cobalt. We do business accounting on them. That's the kind of stuff we have been doing on them historically. It took us about four years before we started breaking out of that. And we're just starting to break out of it now. When you look at Lisa, Lisa enables a person like me. I'm not an artist in the sense that many of you are. I can sit down and I can draw artistic pictures with that thing because there's a program called Lisa draw. And if I don't like what I've just drawn, I can erase it. I can move it. I can shrink it. I can grow it. I can change its texture. There's a little airbrush. The more I scrub, the darker it gets. I can put soft edges on things, hard edges on things. And so I have no talent at drawing at all. It can make neat drawings.
好的，让我们回到计算机的话题上。就像在 "I Love Lucy" 阶段一样，我们现在正处于媒介发展的初期阶段。最初，我们接触到的是微型计算机和个人电脑。我们用这些设备做了什么呢？我们又回到了旧媒介的使用习惯上。我们使用像COBOL这样的奇怪语言，在电脑上进行商业会计。这些是我们以往一直用电脑做的事情。花了大约四年的时间，我们才开始打破这种局限，而现在，我们才刚刚开始突破。以Lisa为例，这台电脑让我这样的人也能充分发挥。虽然我不是一个艺术家，但可以用它画出艺术图画，因为有个叫Lisa Draw的程序。如果我不喜欢自己的作品，我可以擦除、移动、缩小、放大以及更改其纹理。它有个小喷枪，刷得越多颜色就越深。我可以让物体有柔和的边缘或是硬边缘。即使我没有任何绘画天赋，它也可以帮助我画出漂亮的图画。
And then I can cut them out and I can paste them into my documents so that I can combine pictures and words. And then I can send it onto the electronic mailbox or somebody else that's living here in Aspen. Can dial up a phone number and get their mail and see this drawing that I made. So we're starting to break out and you can just see it now. And it's really exciting. So where we are is that the personal computer is a new medium. And that society and computers are really meeting for the first time in the 80s. In 15 years it's going to be all over in terms of this first phase, getting these tools out into society in large numbers. But during the next 15 years, if we really have an opportunity to do it great or to do it so-so. And what a lot of us at Apple are working on is trying to do it great.
然后我可以剪切它们，并将它们粘贴到我的文档中，这样就能将图片和文字结合在一起。接着，我可以将它发送到电子邮箱，或者发给住在阿斯彭的其他人。他们可以拨打一个电话号码来接收他们的邮件，并查看我制作的这个图画。所以，我们正在进入一个全新的领域，你现在就可以看到这一点，这真的让人很兴奋。我们现在所处的阶段是，个人电脑作为一种新媒介开始出现。社会和电脑在80年代的第一次相遇。在接下来的15年里，这个新阶段会逐步普及，将这些工具大规模地推向社会。但在接下来的15年，我们有机会将其做得非常出色，或者只是平平无奇。苹果公司的很多员工都在努力把事情做到最好。
We'll look at one last thing and we can talk about whatever you want to talk about. What is a computer program? Do you know what a computer program is? Anybody? No? Sort of? Sort of. It's an odd thing. It's really an odd thing. You've never seen an electron but computer programs have no physical manifestation at all. There are simply ideas expressed on paper. Computer programs are archetypal. What do I mean by that? Let's compare computer programming to television programming. Again, if you go back and you look at the tapes of the JFK funeral in 1963, I guess, you'll start to cry. You will feel a lot of the same feelings you felt when you were watching that 20 years ago. Why? Because through the art of television programming, we are very good at capturing a set of experiences and experiences, 20 experiences and being able to recreate them. We're very good at that. It takes a lot of money and is somewhat limited but we can do a pretty good job of that.
我们再来看最后一件事情，然后你可以谈你想谈的任何主题。什么是计算机程序？你知道计算机程序是什么吗？有人知道吗？没人吗？有点了解？可以说是的。计算机程序是一个奇怪的东西。它确实很奇怪。你从未见过电子，但计算机程序则完全没有实物表现。它们只是写在纸上的想法。计算机程序是原型化的。我的意思是什么？让我们把计算机编程和电视节目制作进行对比。再次举例，如果你回头看看1963年肯尼迪总统葬礼的录像，我猜测，你会流泪。你会感受到20年前观看时的许多相同情感。为什么会这样？因为通过电视节目制作这门艺术，我们非常擅长捕捉一系列的经历，并能够重新创造这些经历。我们在这方面非常拿手。虽花费不菲且略有局限，但我们仍能做得很好。
You can really feel the excitement of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. Computer programming does something a little different. What computer programming does is it captures the underlying principles of an experience. Not the experience itself but the underlying principles of the experience. And those principles can enable thousands of different experiences that all follow those laws, if you will. And the perfect example is the video game. What does the video game do? It follows the laws of gravity, of angular momentum, and it sets up this stupid little pong game. But the ball always follows these laws. No two pong games are ever the same. And yet every single pong game follows these underlying principles. Give you another example.
你能真正感受到尼尔·阿姆斯特朗登月时的兴奋。计算机编程则有些不同。计算机编程所做的是捕捉体验背后的基本原理，而不是体验本身。正是这些基本原理让无数不同的体验得以实现，只要遵循这些“规律”即可。最典型的例子就是电子游戏。电子游戏做了什么呢？它遵循重力、角动量等规律，并基于这些规律创建了一个简单的乒乓游戏。然而，球总是遵循这些规律。没有两个乒乓游戏是一模一样的，但每个游戏都遵循这些基本原理。让我再给你举个例子。
There's a neat program called Hammurabi. And Hammurabi, there are seven-year-old kids playing this. And it's a game and you come up on the screen and you go, your king Hammurabi. Because old king Hammurabi, you get to be king Hammurabi of the ancient kingdom of Sumeria for ten years. It comes out old king Hammurabi. This is year one. You have a thousand bushels of wheat and storage. You have a hundred people. You have a hundred acres of land. Land is trading at 24 bushels in acre. Would you like to sell any land? No. How much would you like to plant? How much would you like to plant? And it turns out that if you don't plant enough, some of your people will starve the next year. And if you plant a lot, then people will come from the surrounding villages because you got a hot village to live in and you feed them well.
有一个很有意思的程序叫做哈姆拉比。甚至有七岁的孩子在玩这个游戏。在游戏中，你会走到屏幕前，扮演古代苏美尔王国的国王哈姆拉比，因为老国王哈姆拉比现在退休了。你可以成为国王哈姆拉比，统治十年。刚开始时，老国王哈姆拉比已经在位了，这是一年级，你有一千蒲式耳的小麦作为储备，有一百个老百姓，还有一百英亩的土地。土地交易价格是每英亩24蒲式耳。你是否想要卖掉一些土地呢？如果不卖，那你想种植多少呢？如果你种植得不够，来年有些百姓可能会饿死；如果种植很多，周围的村庄的人就会被吸引过来，因为你的村庄富裕，有饭吃，你也能很好地养活他们。
So you plant a certain amount. But you need to, then it says how much? I'm sorry. So you feed your people a certain amount. Then it asks you how much would you like to plant? And you have to plant so much as well in order to get the grain in the next year. But you can't plant more acres than you have people to plant the acres. And so if you go on a land buying spree at the beginning, and you don't feed your people well because you spend all your grain buying land, then you don't have the people to plant the land. So it doesn't do any good. If you don't plant the land and you feed your people a ton, all these other people come from the surrounding villages, but they starve the next year.
当你种植一定数量的时候，你需要知道种植多少。我很抱歉。你给你的人一定的粮食，然后需要决定种植多少。为了获得明年的粮食，你也需要种植足够的作物。但是，你不能种植超过你的人力所能管理的土地面积。所以，如果你一开始就大量购买土地，而因为花光了所有粮食买地而没有很好地喂养你的人民，那么就不会有人手去种植土地，这样做是没有用的。如果你没有种植土地，而只是给你的人民大量粮食，那么其他村庄的人可能会来，但他们在第二年还是会饿肚子。
And there are these seven-year-olds, and it goes on year two, year three, and everyone wants to throw in the rat-sate, some of the grain, and you're in deep trouble. What are you going to do? Kill some people or sell some land or whatever. And it's crude. But basically, there are these seven-year-old kids playing with this macroeconomic model. And you can argue about the content of the model. But one thing you can't argue about, they will sit there for hours and play that and learn. And we've got to get our models better and better and more sophisticated, but that is an interactive way of learning that none of us ever had when we were growing up.
有一些七岁的孩子，他们从二年级、三年级开始接触这样的宏观经济模型，每个人都想投放一些粮食，摊一些老鼠肉进去，你会觉得麻烦大了。你该怎么办？是要杀一些人，还是卖一些土地？虽然听起来很粗糙，但是这些七岁的孩子就是在这样一个宏观经济模型中玩耍。你可以对模型的内容提出质疑，但有一点是不可否认的，他们会坐在那里玩上好几个小时，并从中学习。我们必须不断改进和提高我们的模型，使其更复杂更完善，但这种互动的学习方式是我们成长时所没有的。
And again, thousands of individual experiences, but all based on that one set of underlying principles. When I was going to school, I had a few great teachers and a lot of mediocre teachers. And the thing that probably kept me out of jail was books, because I could go read what Aristotle wrote or what Plato wrote. And I didn't have to have an intermediary in the way. And a book was a phenomenal thing. I got right from the source to the destination without anything in the middle. The problem was you can't ask Aristotle a question.
再一次，成千上万的个人经历，但都基于同一套基本原则。当我上学时，我遇到了一些优秀的老师，但更多的是平庸的老师。可能让我避免误入歧途的东西是书籍，因为我可以直接阅读亚里士多德或柏拉图写的内容，我不需要中间人来传递信息。书籍是一个奇妙的存在，我可以直接从源头到达目的地，中间没有任何障碍。不过，问题在于，你没法去问亚里士多德问题。
And I think as we look towards the next 50 to 100 years, if we really can come up with these machines that can capture an underlying spirit or an underlying set of principles or an underlying way of looking at the world, then when the next Aristotle comes around, maybe if he carries around one of these machines with him his whole life, and types in all this stuff, then maybe someday after the person's dead and gone, we can ask this machine, hey, what, what Aristotle have said? What about this? And maybe we won't get the right answer, but maybe we will. And that's really exciting to me. And that's one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing.
我认为，当我们展望未来的50到100年，如果我们真的能够创造出那些捕捉内在精神、原则或者看世界方式的机器，那么当下一个亚里士多德出现时，也许他一生都带着这样一台机器，并在其中输入所有想法，等他离世之后，也许我们可以问这台机器：“亚里士多德会怎么说？”关于这个问题。也许我们不会得到正确的答案，但也有可能得到。这让我感到非常兴奋，这也是我为什么从事这份工作的原因之一。
So what do you want to talk about? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a mess. Okay. Okay. How are these computers all going to work together? They're going to probably work together a lot like people. Sometimes we're going to work together really well. And other times they're not going to work together so well. What we've got now is we are putting a lot of computers out that are made to be used pretty much in what we call standalone mode, one person, one computer. But it isn't very long before you get a community of users using these things that really want to hook them all together because ultimately a computer is going to be a tool for communication.
那么，你想谈些什么呢？是的，是的，是的。这是一团乱。好吧，好吧，这些计算机将如何协同工作呢？它们可能会像人一样协同工作。有时候，我们会合作得非常好，而有时候却不那么顺利。我们现在的状况是，我们投放了许多电脑，这些电脑基本上是为单机模式设计的，一个人用一台电脑。但是很快就会有一群用户，他们希望把这些设备连接起来，因为最终计算机将成为一种交流工具。
So they want to hook them together and communicate. And over the next five years, the standards for doing this are going to evolve. They all speak different languages right now. And there's a, I mean, I heard a funny story. We've talked a lot with AT&T, American Bell, et cetera. And there's a funny story about the, this is a true story. When they, old, I talked to this old guy who was about 80 years old. And he was one of the original telephone installers. And he would go out and he'd install telephones and people in farmhouses. And they'd never seen anything like this.
所以他们想把它们连接在一起进行通信。在未来的五年中，实现这一步的标准会不断发展。现在它们都说不同的“语言”。我听过一个有趣的故事。我们和AT&T、美国贝尔公司等讨论了很多。有一个关于这个的趣事，是真实的。我曾与一个大约80岁的老人交谈过，他是最早的一批电话安装员之一。他会外出为乡下居民安装电话，而这些人从未见过这样的东西。
And it takes two wires. He'd run the two wires down and he'd hook up the phone. And he was out installing this phone for this Italian family in this farm. And he finished installing the phone and the guy asked him, well, can I speak Italian on this phone? And he said, why didn't you tell me I got to run a third wire? It'll be $50 extra. So that's where we are today.
这个故事讲的是安装电话线的趣闻。某人安装电话需要两根电线，他把两根电线铺好，然后接上电话。在一个农场里，他为一个意大利家庭安装电话。安装完成后，那家人问他能否用这个电话讲意大利语。他开玩笑地说：“你怎么不早说？要讲意大利语的话，我还得再铺第三根线，那要多收50美元。” 这就是我们现在的情况。
And what happened? There's been a few installations where people have hooked these things together. The one installation that stands out is a Xerox, did it at a place called Palo Alto Research Center or Park for Short. And they hooked about 100 computers together on what's called a local area network, which is just a cable that carries all this information back and forth.
发生了什么呢？有一些设备安装的项目，人们把这些东西连接在一起。其中一个突出的项目是施乐公司在一个叫做帕洛阿尔托研究中心（简称为Park）的地方进行的。他们在一个被称为局域网的网络上连接了大约100台计算机，局域网就是一种能够来回传输信息的电缆网络。
And an interesting thing happened when they did that. What happened was that you'd have a distribution list. So you'd want to send the memo to all the people in this group. And so you'd say, okay, you'd write a memo and you'd send it to the distribution list for all the people interested in the November forecast or a new product delta or whatever you're working on.
当他们这样做时，发生了一件有趣的事情。事情是这样的，你会有一个通讯名单。因此，你希望把备忘录发送给这个小组的所有成员。于是，你就会写一份备忘录，然后把它发送给那些对11月的预测、新产品Delta或其他你正在处理的事情感兴趣的人。
But then an interesting thing happened. There were 20 people and they were interested in volleyball. So a volleyball distribution list evolved. And when there was a volleyball game next week was changed. You'd write a quick memo and send it to the volleyball distribution list. Then there was a Chinese food cooking list.
后来发生了一件有趣的事。有20个人对排球感兴趣，于是就形成了一个排球通讯名单。当下周的排球赛有变动时，你可以快速写个便条，然后发到排球通讯名单上。接着，还成立了一个中国菜烹饪通讯名单。
And before long, there were more lists than people. And it was a very, very interesting phenomenon because I think that that's exactly what's going to happen. Is that as we start to tie these things together, they're going to facilitate communication and facilitate bringing people together in the special interests that they have.
不久之后，清单的数量比人还多。这是一个非常非常有趣的现象，因为我认为这正是将要发生的事情。我们开始把这些东西联系在一起时，它们会促进交流，并在特殊兴趣方面把人们聚集在一起。
We're about five years away from really solving the problems of hooking these computers together in the office. And we're about 10 to 15 years away of solving the problems of hooking them together in the home. And a lot of people working on it, but it's a pretty fierce problem.
我们大约还需要五年时间，才能真正解决办公室中这些计算机互联的问题。而在家庭中实现计算机互联，大概需要10到15年。虽然有很多人在努力解决这个问题，但它确实非常棘手。
Now, Apple strategy is really simple. What we want to do is we want to put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you that you can learn how to use in 20 minutes. That's what we want to do. We want to do it this decade. And we really want to do it with a radio link in it.
苹果的战略其实非常简单：我们希望将一台超棒的电脑放进一本可以随身携带的书里，而且你只需用20分钟就能学会使用。这是我们的目标，我们希望在这个十年内实现。同时，我们希望这台电脑能够具备无线连接功能。
So you don't have to hook up to anything. You're in communication with all these larger databases and other computers. We don't know how to do that now. It's impossible technically. So we had three options. One was to do nothing. And as I mentioned, we're all pretty young and impatient. So that was not a good option.
所以你不需要连接任何东西。你可以与所有这些大型数据库和其他电脑交流。我们现在不知道怎么做到这一点。从技术上讲，这是不可能的。所以我们有三个选项。一个是啥也不做。但正如我提到的，我们都还很年轻且没有耐心，所以这不是一个好选择。
The second one was to put a piece of garbage computer in a book. And we can do that. But our competitors are doing that. And so we don't need to do that. The third option was to design the computer that we want to put into the book eventually, even though we can't put it into the book now.
第二个选项是把低劣的计算机放进一本书里。我们能够做到这一点，但我们的竞争对手也在这样做，所以我们没必要这样做。第三个选项是设计出一种我们最终希望能放进书里的计算机，尽管我们现在还无法实现。
And right now, it fits in a bread box and it's $10,000 and it's called Lisa. And it just so turns out that fortunately, there is a giant office market out there that is buying these things a lot faster than we can make them. We're sold out for the next year. And we'll sell over $100 million of those things to the first year.
目前，它的体积和面包箱差不多，售价为1万美元，名字叫做Lisa。幸运的是，现在有一个庞大的办公市场对这种产品需求很大，它们的销售速度比我们生产的速度还快。我们接下来一年的库存已经全部售罄，预计第一年的销售额将超过1亿美元。
And so fortunately, there was an office marketplace where enhancing personal productivity is absolutely worth $10,000 a person. And they're gobbling these things up. And they will pay for the development of this new technology. The next thing we will do is we will find a way to put it in a shoe box and sell it for like $2,500.
幸运的是，有一个办公市场，其中提升个人生产力的价值绝对可以达到每人1万美元。他们对此需求十分强烈，并愿意为这项新技术的开发买单。接下来我们要做的是找到一种方法，把这项技术装入一个鞋盒里，以类似2500美元的价格出售。
And that'll be the next step. And finally, we'll find a way to get it in a book and sell it for $100,000. And we will be there within five to seven years. And that's what we're working pretty singularly on. Yeah. Yeah, it is a little crude.
那将是下一步。最后，我们将找到一种方法，把它写成书并以10万美元的价格出售。我们将在五到七年内实现这一目标。这是我们目前专注于做的事情。是的，确实有点粗糙。
Right. Okay. Let me tell you that what we're planning to do to sort of be able to provide tools for graphic design. That'll never be our fort. Our fort is going to be peaked just people and relative to nothing. What we can give them in the next five years is a lot.
好的。让我告诉你，我们计划做些什么来为平面设计提供工具。不过，这不会是我们的强项。我们的强项将是专注于人，而不是其他事情。在接下来的五年里，我们可以为他们提供很多东西。
And eventually we'll get to the point where people can create images that are as good as they could create any other way. But it's going to take the better part of this decade to be able to get it down to a price level that people can afford. But we're doing some things now.
最终，我们将达到一个阶段，人们可以创作出效果媲美其他任何方式的图像。但要实现这一点，并使得价格降到大众可以承受的水平，大概还需要这十年中大部分时间。不过，我们现在已经在采取一些措施。
Every computer to date has used a weird type on the screen, as you know. The eyes are just as wide as the W's. They're non proportionally spaced fonts. We call them. You call them. And it's really been impossible to use multiple fonts on the screen at any given time.
截至目前，每台计算机的屏幕上都使用了一种奇怪的字体。你知道，这些字体的字符宽度是固定的，比如"W"字母的宽度和其他字母一样。我们称这些为非比例间距字体。你可能也这样称呼它们。在任何给定时间内，在屏幕上同时使用多种字体都是不太可能的。
Matter of fact, the fonts have been just garbage. And it's really been impossible to embed any kind of graphics with text. If you take a look at Lisa, it is totally proportionally spaced text. We have 30, 40 fonts on the screen that come out at approximately 80 dots prints in resolution on the screen.
事实上，这些字体一直很糟糕。而且在文本中嵌入任何形式的图形几乎是不可能的。如果你看看Lisa，它的文本是完全按比例间隔的。我们在屏幕上有30到40种字体，以大约80个像素的分辨率显示出来。
Approximately up to 300 dots prints in resolution on a laser printer. And that's where we are today. And what you're saying is we really want to go to six, seven, 800 dots per inch on a laser film printer. We're not there yet. But we're solving the problems of injecting some liberal arts into these computers. That's what we're trying to do right now. Let's get proportionally spaced fonts in there. Let's get multiple fonts in there. Let's get graphics in there so that we can deal in pictures. And let's get to the point where three years from now, when somebody, there is going to be no college student three or four years from now. That's ever going to think of writing a paper without one of these things. Just like they will not think of going to a science class without a calculator today.
大约目前激光打印机的分辨率是300点每英寸。这就是我们现在的水平。而你所说的是，我们希望将分辨率提升到每英寸600、700甚至800点。虽然我们还没有达到这个水平，但我们正努力解决问题，把一些人文艺术融入这些计算机中。我们现在正在尝试做到这一点。让我们把比例间隔的字体引入进去；把多种字体引入进去；把图形加入进去，这样我们可以通过图像来交流。三年后，任何一个大学生都不会考虑在没有这些东西的情况下写论文，就像今天不会有人上科学课不用计算器一样。
And where we've got to get to is where people three, four years from now are using these things and they go, wasn't this the way it always was. That's where we're trying to get to now. Once we get to there, then we can look at some of the other stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I only heard part of which part you're talking about the people having these big databases about your life or the privacy issue. Okay. I guess what I see now is an incredible amount of information, but not a very great ability to distill any sort of knowledge or wisdom out of that information.
我们的目标是，希望在三、四年后，人们使用这些技术时，会觉得这就是生活本来的样子。我们现在正朝着这个目标努力。一旦达到了这个阶段，我们就可以开始关注其他事情了。至于您提到的信息隐私问题，我只能说我注意到现在有海量的信息，却缺乏从中提取知识或智慧的能力。
We are all bombarded with information every day. And there is so much information in data banks, in congressional budgets, in testimony, in books, journal articles being published every day. And our ability to turn all that information to filter it to what we're interested in and to turn it into something useful to us and to some knowledge is very low. So I think if we're really interested in a distributed society where the ability to understand things and the ability to distill information, knowledge from information is possessable by everyone that the first thing we've got to do is give tools to people to help them do that.
我们每天都被大量信息轰炸。数据银行、国会预算、证词、书籍、期刊文章每天都在产生大量的信息。而我们将这些信息过滤成我们感兴趣内容并转化为对我们有用的知识的能力却很低。因此，我认为，如果我们真正希望建立一个让每个人都具备理解事物能力和从信息中提取知识能力的分布式社会，那么首要任务是为人们提供帮助他们实现这一目标的工具。
Because right now those tools are centralized. You see what I'm saying? So I think the first step towards ensuring that we don't get a concentration of something that you don't want is to distribute that intelligence, if you will, to turn all this information into some sort of knowledge for us. So that we can get on and we can look at congressional to any congressional testimony that has to do with gun control, any journal articles published, any newspaper articles published, so that I can come home and on a weekend, peruse the weekly outpouring of information, but put a filter on it because I'm only interested in gun control.
因为现在那些工具是集中化的。你明白我的意思吗？所以，我认为确保我们不让某件你不想要的事情集中化的第一步是分散那种智能，把所有的信息转化为某种对我们的知识。这样我们就可以继续，并查看任何与枪支管制相关的国会证词、发表的学术文章以及新闻报道，我可以周末回家时浏览每周的信息，但加上一层过滤，因为我只对枪支管制感兴趣。
And I can find out that my congressman gave some testimony last week about gun control that I didn't agree with so I can get on and write him a pretty nasty letter and sing it on the email system and make sure that at least one of his aides will read it tomorrow. And I think that that probably is a lot more important than worrying about these global databases. I don't think that you're going to find we're moving rapidly into an era of electronic funds transfer. And I think that's probably the thing that people are most concerned about right now because you could keep a history of our whereabouts and things like that just based on financial transactions.
我发现上周我的国会议员就枪支管制发表了一些我不赞同的证词，所以我可以写一封相当严厉的信给他，通过电子邮件系统发送，并确保至少他的一名助手会在明天读到。我认为这可能比担心全球数据库更重要。我不认为我们很快会进入电子资金转账的时代。我觉得现在人们最担心的可能就是这个了，因为仅凭金融交易就可以追踪我们的行踪和类似的事情。
And I think that's the thing people are most concerned about right now. But I haven't heard a ton of issues concerning these giant databases knowing everything about us that had much substance to them. The thing I'm most concerned with is the ability to turn all this stuff into something we can do something about. Does that make any sense? I didn't get much sleep last night so I'm a little lazy.
我认为这是人们目前最关心的问题。但我没有听到太多关于这些大型数据库了解我们的一切的实质性问题。我最关心的是如何将这些信息转化为我们可以采取行动的东西。这样说有道理吗？我昨晚没怎么睡好，所以有点懒散。
Yeah. Yeah. Public service. We don't do things because we think they're public services. We do them because we think they ought to be done. I guess we do them because we want to do them. We're doing a few things. The first thing we're doing is there's a situation that's occurring in schools right now in that this all started a governor, the former governor of California Governor Brown started this thing called the California Commission on Industrial Innovation in 1980.
好的。公共服务。我们不因为认为某件事情是公共服务而去做，而是因为我们觉得应该去做。我想，我们之所以去做这些事情，是因为我们愿意做。我们正在做一些事情。其中一件就是目前在学校里正在发生的一些状况。这个事情源于加州的前州长布朗，他在1980年启动了一个叫做“加州工业创新委员会”的项目。
It turns out we'll do about a billion dollars this year. And we have a business plan that looks out five years. It's not always accurate but it shows us the trends, shows us the general directions, shows us some of the pitfalls. California is 22, I think $300 billion economy. G&P basically is associated with California. California doesn't have anything. There isn't one scrap of paper. There isn't used to be one scrap of paper written down.
今年我们将实现大约十亿美元的收入。我们有一个为期五年的商业计划。虽然它并不总是准确的，但它为我们展示了趋势、整体方向以及一些潜在的陷阱。加州是一个大约3000亿美元的经济体，我认为它在全国排第22位。G&P基本上与加州有关。加州没有任何书面规划或记录，这曾是事实。
So Governor Brown got all these people to get it and said we got to figure out where we're going because we don't want to have a planned economy but we need the infrastructure to support it. And infrastructure takes time to build. So we have to at least understand the trends. If you want to be turning out more engineers next year, you can't start this year. You have to have started five years ago. You have to train the teachers, etc. So what infrastructure are we going to need to support the growth?
因此，布朗州长召集了所有人来讨论这个问题，并表示我们需要弄清楚发展方向。因为我们不想要计划经济，但是我们需要建设能够支持经济发展的基础设施。而基础设施的建设需要时间。所以我们至少要了解未来的发展趋势。如果你想在明年培养出更多的工程师，那么你不能等到今年才开始行动。你必须在五年前就开始准备，比如培训教师等等。那么，我们需要什么样的基础设施来支持这样的增长呢？
Well the first thing we looked at was employment, jobs. And what we found was that about 44% of the new jobs in California in the 1980s come directly and indirectly from high technology. And we looked at that and we said shit. And what are we going to do to further that and what's going to hinder that? And there were three things that came up with the biggest one was education by a long shot. We looked at the education systems and we are turning out almost as many welders in California as we are computer scientists.
我们首先关注的是就业问题，特别是工作机会。我们发现，在20世纪80年代，加州大约44%的新工作直接或间接与高科技行业有关。看到这个数据时，我们感到很震惊，并开始思考如何促进这一趋势，以及可能阻碍这一趋势的因素。我们发现教育问题是其中最关键的因素。研究了一下教育系统后，我们发现加州培养出来的焊工数量几乎和计算机科学家一样多。
And these welders are coming out of school and there ain't any jobs for them. And this is just a minute example of the problem. And so one of the things that Apple decided to do, this is not going to make a giant difference but it could be a catalyst to get something started. We decided we wanted to give a computer to every school in America. And there's 100,000 schools in America. And we figured if there was just one there at least the kids that were interested would somehow find a way to get to it.
这些焊接工人刚从学校毕业，但却没有工作。这只是问题的一个小小例子。因此，苹果公司决定采取一些行动。虽然这不会产生巨大的变化，但可能成为启动某些事情的催化剂。我们决定向美国的每一所学校捐赠一台电脑。美国有10万所学校。我们想，即使每所学校只有一台电脑，至少对计算机感兴趣的孩子们会找到方法来使用它。
And possibly they would start to understand a little bit about what computers were, maybe integrate them into one or two classes. And so we figured that that would cost approximately $50 million and we'd go broke. So we went to Congress and we said look we'll pay 10 of this if you pay 40 of it. That's 10 right out of our bank account. And just to give you a perspective on it, in 1981 Apple made $40 million total after working our butts off for a year. And so we were willing to spend 25% of our 81 profits to do that.
可能他们会开始稍微了解一点计算机是什么，或许可以将计算机纳入一两门课程。因此，我们估算这大约需要花费5000万美元，并且我们会破产。所以我们去找国会，并提出这样的建议：如果你们支付其中的4000万美元，我们愿意支付剩下的1000万美元。这1000万美元将直接从我们的银行账户中拿出。为了让你明白我们的处境，1981年苹果公司辛苦工作了一整年，总共赚了4000万美元。所以，我们愿意拿出我们1981年利润的25%来实现这个计划。
And we got very close to getting this pass but Bob Dole and the Senate killed it because he didn't really understand it. But California being the bell weather state it was passed the same law because we pay California tax. And so we call the program the kids can't wait. The kids can't wait for educational bureaucracy to get around to it. The kids can't wait for their parents to understand about it and buy them one.
我们本来很接近通过这项法案，但鲍勃·多尔和参议院否决了，因为他并不真正理解它。不过，由于加利福尼亚是个风向标州，他们通过了同样的法律，因为我们要交加州的税。所以我们把这个项目称为"孩子们不能等待"。孩子们不能等待教育官僚机构去处理这件事，也不能等待父母去了解并为他们购买。
So we're just going to get one in there right now. And we are the law got passed in California. We've got there are 10,000 schools in California. The program was announced 60 days ago and starting next month we roll out 10,000 computers, one free to every school in California. And I guess the important thing though to restate this isn't going to fundamentally change the problem. But at least it's going to get one computer in there so that if there is a student especially in one of the schools that can't afford these things, which is another thing that concerns us this computer have computer have not split at least I'll get exposure to one.
所以我们现在就要马上安排一个进入。我们在加利福尼亚的法律已经通过。加利福尼亚有10,000所学校。该计划在60天前宣布，并从下个月开始，我们将向加利福尼亚的每所学校免费提供一台电脑，总共10,000台。我想重要的是，需要重申的是，这不会从根本上改变问题。但至少这样能够确保有一台电脑在那里，以便那些特别是在无力负担这些东西的学校中的学生，至少能接触到一台电脑。这个 "有电脑" 和 "没有电脑" 的差距也是我们关注的问题之一。
Yeah. Well over half of the gross national product is contributed by companies and people that are already in the information business today. And that's true. Most of the people that got laid off from general motors are never going to go back to work at general motors ever, ever, ever. And unless we retrain them and give them skills they're going to burn the cities down. And that's one of the biggest problems facing us right now.
是的，如今的信息行业中的公司和个人贡献了超过一半的国民生产总值。这是事实。大部分被通用汽车解雇的人恐怕再也不会回去工作了。除非我们对这些人进行再培训，并为他们提供新技能，否则他们可能会烧毁城市。这是我们目前面临的最大问题之一。
It's really easy to talk high tech. It's real hard to take all these guys that have been putting fenders on for 15 years, you know servicing computers. It's going to be really hard and we're not paying enough attention to it right now. But we're already in the information age. We're ready there now. We're going to give us manipulate information for living.
谈论高科技真的很简单。但要让那些已经装了15年挡泥板的人，比如修理电脑的人，转型就很难。我们现在没有足够重视这个问题。然而，我们已经进入了信息时代，我们现在已经在这里。我们将通过操控信息来谋生。
Yeah. All right. Here's a challenge for you. You want to just make a great contribution, have fun, make zillions of dollars all at the same time. There is there are about 20,000 programs for the Apple too. There's for the IBM PC, which is the second most popular one now. There's about maybe 2,000 programs. That's a lot. And you go to buy one of these things and you don't know what to buy.
好的。我给你提出一个挑战。你想要同时做出巨大贡献、享受乐趣、赚取大量财富。苹果II电脑上有大约2万个程序，而现在第二受欢迎的IBM PC上大约有2000个程序。这是不少的程序。当你去购买这些程序时，你可能不知道该买哪一个。
So you go ask the computer dealer which one should I buy? And that person doesn't know. They're out selling computers. They're not looking at software. And so they give you a bullshit answer and you buy it and maybe you're happy and maybe you're not. Now compare that to records. Most people walking into a record store know exactly what record they want to buy. They don't go up and say what record should I buy? They know exactly what record they want to buy because there is the phenomenon of the radio station. A free sampling.
所以你去找电脑销售商，问他们应该买哪一台电脑。而销售人员可能并不了解软件，他们的工作是推销电脑。所以他们可能会给你一个不靠谱的回答，你就按他们说的买了。也许你会满意，也许不会。比起买电脑，买唱片就不太一样了。大多数走进唱片店的人都知道自己要买哪张唱片。他们不会问哪张唱片好，因为广播电台的存在让他们提前试听了这些音乐。
So that we make our decisions before we go in to the distribution center for the records. We need the equivalent in the software business. We need a software radio station. Quote unquote. And what's going to happen is is that I think right now we software is information. And the information is expressed with a bunch of ones and zeros. And what we do now is we take those ones and zeros and we encode them magnetically on this piece of mylar with a bunch of gook on the surface of it that remembers the ones and zeros. We take it and we put it in a package with a manual. We take that. We put it on a truck. We ship it to a dealer. They take it out of the truck. They put it on the shelf. It sits there for a while. Costing the money. A customer comes in, peruses them and picks one out, takes it home, shoves it in their computer and it translates it back to electrical impulses of ones and zeros.
为了让我们在进入数据分发中心前做好决策，我们需要在软件行业中找到相应的方法。我们需要一个“软件电台”。我的意思是，目前软件就是信息，而这些信息是通过一串零和一来表达的。目前，我们的做法是将这些零和一进行磁编码，记录在一个覆有胶质材料的聚酯膜片上。接下来，我们把它和一本说明书放进一个包装盒中，再把这个包装放上卡车运送给经销商。经销商从卡车上卸下来，放在货架上，这段时间它还会产生成本。然后顾客过来浏览，挑选一个带回家，把它插入他们的电脑中，电脑再将其转换回零和一的电信号。
Now I mean that's a pretty long path. Where we'll be going is transmitting this stuff electronically over the phone lines. To where when you want to buy a piece of software, we take our ones and zeros and you never push a touchtone phone or you're, right, we'll send tones over the phone that the computers will understand and go directly from computer to computer. That's what we'll be doing. Once we do that, maybe it's possible to say, well, we'll give you 30 seconds of this program for free or we'll give you five screenshots. We'll let you play with it for a day. If you want to buy it, just type in your visa number and you got it. I don't know how we're going to do it, but we need a radio station.
现在，我的意思是，这是一条相当漫长的道路。我们将要做的是通过电话线来传输这些信息。这样当你想购买一款软件时，我们就可以通过传输“0”和“1”的信号，不需要你按拨号电话，只需发送计算机能理解的音调，从而实现计算机直接对接计算机。这就是我们将要做的事情。一旦我们实现了这一点，也许可以这样说，我们可以免费提供这个程序的30秒试用，或者提供五张截图。我们可以让你试用一天。如果你想购买，只需输入你的信用卡号码就可以获得。我不知道我们具体怎么做，但我们需要一个电台。
Yeah. Right. Okay. There are two things to do to get people and computers together. One thing is to make computers easier to use and the other thing is for people to get more and more familiar with the concepts. How many people here own a HULA Packer calculator? Yeah. Not a lot. How many people know about them? Do you know the difference between reverse polish notation and the way the TI ones work? Have the HP ones sort of work backwards? Right. Do you know about that? No. Some of you do, though. Right. Probably maybe a quarter of you, maybe. If you had tried to explain that to somebody 10 years ago, it would have been just like computers are now.
好的。那么，有两件事情能让人们和电脑更好地结合在一起。一是让电脑更容易使用，二是让人们对相关概念越来越熟悉。这里有多少人拥有惠普的计算器？嗯，不多。那么有多少人听说过它？你知道逆波兰表示法和德州仪器计算器的区别吗？惠普的计算器好像是反着工作的？对这个有了解吗？不知道？不过有些人知道。大概四分之一的人，对吧？如果你在十年前向人们解释这些，就会像现在解释电脑一样复杂。
And yet in 10 years, the HP 35 was first introduced in 1972. In 10 years, people gradually understand some of these concepts. If you had given one of these Casio watches, which has got 18 alarms and plays music for you and everything else to somebody 10 years ago, and tried to explain to him how to set the alarm and stuff like that. It wouldn't have been possible. Automatic bank telling machines, et cetera, et cetera. So gradually, the level of technical literacy is rising. The problem is we're educating people on these garbage devices, you know, setting a Casio watch is really a pain still. So even though we have products like Lisa, we are still going to need to educate people about what computers are and what they do.
尽管如此，10年前（在1972年），HP 35首次推出。在这十年间，人们逐渐理解其中的一些概念。如果你在十年前给某人一个卡西欧手表，这种手表有18个闹钟，还能为你播放音乐等等，然后试图向他们解释如何设置闹钟等，几乎是不可能的。而自动银行取款机等等也都是类似的发展。所以，技术素养的水平逐渐提高。然而，我们却在用这些垃圾设备教育人们，比如设置卡西欧手表仍然很麻烦。所以，即使我们有像Lisa这样的产品，我们仍然需要教育人们了解计算机是什么以及它们的作用。
But where we're trying to get is we're trying to get away from programming. We've got to get away from programming because people don't want to program computers. People want to use computers. And so our strategy right now is let's write some programs that are generic that sort of will write 90% of the program and you feel in the last 10% of the blanks. And a perfect example, that's a word processor. Word processor can be used to write a business letter or a report for college exam. It can be used to write a correspondence letter to your friend. Same word processor. We write it once, millions of people use it.
我们现在的目标是摆脱编程，因为人们不想再去编写电脑程序，而是想使用电脑。因此，我们目前的策略是编写一些通用程序，让它们可以完成大约90%的工作，而用户只需填写剩下的10%。一个很好的例子就是文字处理器。文字处理器可以用来写商业信函、大学报告，或者给朋友的信件。我们只需编写一次，数百万人都可以使用同一个文字处理器。
Another program, you know, there's a lot of database programs. There's some spreadsheet modeling programs where we do 90% of the work you do the other 10. Where we're moving in the future though is programming with graphics, connecting the dots, if you will. And that's what you'll be seeing more over the next five years. What's really exciting though, let me give you a little. Some of the finest people are going into software right now. And, matter of fact, about a year ago, I met this little kid in Chicago who had started this company called Aristotle Software. And he was 13 and he started it with his more mature 14 year old friend.
另一个程序，你知道，有很多数据库程序。还有一些电子表格建模程序，我们完成90%的工作，你完成另外10%。不过，我们未来的发展方向是图形化编程，就像是“连接点滴”。接下来的五年里，你会看到更多这样的事情。真正令人激动的是，现在有一些非常优秀的人正在进入软件领域。事实上，大约一年前，我在芝加哥遇到了一个小孩，他创办了一家公司，叫做Aristotle软件。他只有13岁，他和他那位更成熟的14岁朋友一起创办了这家公司。
And a year ago, they were making about $4,000 a week of selling three game programs. Now, let me give you an example of how this can work. We have a million Apple twos out there, a million. And people have paid about $2,000 for them. So if they can buy a new program, one of these new discats for $100 that lets their computer do something totally new that it never could do before. That's a good deal.
一年前，他们通过出售三个游戏程序，每周能赚大约4000美元。现在，让我给你举个例子说明这怎么运作。市面上有一百万台苹果二代电脑，一百万台。而且人们为这些电脑支付了大约2000美元。所以，如果他们能花100美元买一个新的光盘程序，让他们的电脑实现以前无法做到的新功能，这就是个划算的交易。
So let's say your girlfriend is in the real estate business. You know a little about computers. And she comes home and she's filling out all these crazy forms and going through all these calculations trying to do some creative finance. You know, I can write a program for that and you write a program. It's not that hard to use. And over the next few months, she goes, well, can you do this? Oh, sure, that's easy. Can you do this? No, that's hard. You refine this program. To where it's really great.
假设你的女朋友在房地产行业工作。你对计算机有一些了解。有一天，她回到家，正忙着填写各种复杂的表格，还要做各种计算来进行一些创意金融操作。你对她说：“我可以为这个写个程序。”于是你编写了一个程序。这个程序使用起来并不难。在接下来的几个月中，她会问你：“这个功能可以实现吗？”你说：“哦，当然，这很简单。”她又问：“这个功能呢？”你说：“这个就有点难了。”通过一次次的改进，你最终将这个程序完善得非常出色。
And all of a sudden, she shows it to all the other people she works with. She brings it into the office or she brings them over one day. And they go, they just go, wow, I got to have this. This is worth $2,000 to me right there. Just for that one application. Okay, let's say that you put that program on the market and sell it for $100. Well, the dealer is going to take $50 of it. So you'll see $50 per copy. And let's say it costs $25 to make it.
突然之间，她把它展示给她的所有同事看。她要么带到办公室，要么有一天把他们叫过来看。然后他们就惊叹道：“哇，我一定要拥有这个。这个对我来说光这个应用程序就值2000美元。”好吧，假如你把这个程序推向市场，售价100美元。经销商会抽走50美元，所以每卖一套你能得到50美元。假设制作成本是25美元。
You're going to make $25 profit per copy. If you can sell that to just 10% of the Apple 2 owners the first year, not including any new Apple 2 owners, because we're shipping almost a million computers a year. So it'll double the next year. But forget about that. Even the previous owners of a million. You'll sell 100,000 copies, times $25 profit per copy or $2.5 million profit. The first year, selling to just 10% of the people.
你每卖出一份就能赚25美元。如果第一年你能卖给10%的Apple 2现有用户，并且不考虑新用户，因为我们每年几乎出货一百万台电脑。那么第二年这个数字会翻倍。但先不管这一点，仅仅考虑已有的一百万用户。你将卖出10万份，每份赚25美元，总利润达到250万美元。第一年，仅卖给10%的用户就能达到这个利润。
And you can write that program with $10,000 worth of computer equipment. That's what's happening. That's why their Aristotle software. And so you're seeing a flurry of activity there right now. Yeah. Okay. The actual turnover at Apple has been very, very low since inception. It's been under 5% since inception, actually. Okay.
你可以用价值一万美元的电脑设备编写那个程序。这就是正在发生的事情。这就是他们的Aristotle软件的原因。因此你会看到那里现在活动非常活跃。是的，好吧。自成立以来，苹果公司的员工流动率一直很低，自成立以来实际上不到5%。好的。
We do it in a few ways. First thing we do is what's happening is the definition of an American corporations evolving. And it's evolving in a almost semi-socialistic dimension, which is very interesting. 100% of the professionals at Apple own stock in the company. 100%. Everybody own stock in the company. And what that means is these traditional barriers. I've never heard the word labor or management mentioned at Apple ever, ever in my life.
我们通过几种方式来做到这一点。首先，美国企业的定义正在演变，这是一个非常有趣的趋势，甚至有点像半社会主义的方向。在苹果公司，所有的专业员工都持有公司的股票。100%的专业员工都持有股票。这意味着传统的界限被打破。在苹果公司，我从来没有听到过有人提到“劳动”或“管理”这两个词。
We have no unions or anything. People say, God, the electronics industry doesn't have any unions. And that's true in one way. But in the other way, we've got one of the best unions of everybody going towards the same exact goals and objectives that I've ever seen in my life. It's on sort of an economic scale for sure, because it's in everybody's best interest to see the stock go up. But more importantly, we feel that for some crazy reason we're in the right place at the right time to put something back.
我们没有工会或其他类似的组织。人们常说，电子行业没有工会。这从某种角度来说没错。但从另一个角度看，我们实际上拥有一个最好的“工会”，因为每个人都朝着同样的目标和方向努力。我从未见过如此一致的目标。确实，这种“工会”在某种程度上是基于经济利益，因为每个人都希望看到公司股票的上涨。但更重要的是，我们都觉得，出于某种奇妙的原因，我们在合适的时间和地点，可以做出一些回馈。
And what I mean by that is, most of us didn't make the clothes we're wearing. And we didn't cook or grow the food that we eat. And we're speaking a language that was developed by other people. We use mathematics that was developed by other people. We are constantly taking. And the ability to put something back into that pool of human experience is extremely neat.
我的意思是，我们大多数人并没有自己制作所穿的衣服，也没有亲手烹饪或种植我们吃的食物。我们使用的是别人开发的语言和数学。我们不断地从他人那里获取。而能够向人类经验的这个集合中回馈一些东西，是一件非常棒的事情。
And I think that everyone knows that in the next 10 years, we have the chance to really do that. And we can look back, or, or, and while we're doing it, it's pretty fun too. But we can look back and say, God, we were a part of that. And so everyone is working 18 hours a day right now. Now, on the people side, we believe in the phenomenon of great people.
我认为每个人都知道，在未来的十年里，我们有机会真正实现这一目标。我们可以回过头来看，或者在过程中，我们会发现这其实也很有趣。我们可以回忆说，天啊，我们曾是其中的一部分。因此，现在每个人每天都在工作18个小时。在人方面，我们相信优秀人才的力量。
And what I mean by that is, we think there are people that are so good that they can run circles around five pretty good people. And those are the kind of people that we wanted Apple. They're hard to, I mean, they're all idiosyncratic, but they're the fun people of the world. They're the artists of the world. And so what we have is sort of a very small company in terms of people for our revenue.
我的意思是，我们认为有些人非常优秀，他们能轻松胜过五个还不错的人。这类人才是我们希望在苹果拥有的。他们很难找到，因为他们都有各自的特点，但他们也是这个世界上有趣的人，是艺术家。因此，虽然我们的收入很高，但从员工数量来看，我们其实算是一家小公司。
We are going to cross a billion in sales very shortly with under 5,000 people worldwide. And that, that's phenomenal. And I think our feeling has been that what we want to do is keep the number of people down so that we can spend time with. Right. No, not very many are under 2000 are. I just wrote that, that's the man's that wrote.
我们即将实现销售额突破十亿，而我们在全球的员工人数不到5,000人。这实在是了不起。我认为我们的想法一直是尽量保持较少的员工数量，这样我们就能有更多的时间专注于他们。对，不是很多，实际上不到2,000人。我刚写的，就是那个人写的。
We know people, because new people are some stuff. They're all buddy buddies. They're all the sudden that they see the vision by seeing what it was. Right. We do a few things. We. They'll be the same job as the speaker's. Right. It's exactly right. The first thing we do is we've always tried to hire people that were much better than we needed for the current job.
我们了解人，因为新来的人也是团队的一部分。他们都相处得很好。突然之间，他们看到了事情的本质。对，我们做了一些事情。他们的工作会和说话者的一样。对，完全正确。我们首先做的就是总是努力招聘那些比当前职位需求更优秀的人。
Because within six months they'd be fighting to keep up with it. The second thing though, as we've always tried to hire people, the reason we hire people is to tell us what to do. And so at Apple when you get hired, some people survive and some don't. But in general, it's, hey, this is the general thing we think we need done. Go figure out what we need. Come back and tell us and tell us how much it's going to cost and go do it. And so we've got an incredible group of entrepreneurs. And we're always arguing with each other and things like that, but that's just fine. And so the 5,000 people we've got, most of those people are very independent thinkers. And what they really want is they know what to do. What they want is the environment where they don't have to convince 30 other people that it's the right thing to do. Does that make any sense?
因为在六个月内，他们就会努力跟上进度。其次，我们招聘员工的原因一直是让他们来告诉我们该做什么。在苹果，当你被聘用时，有些人能适应，而有些人则不能。但总体上，我们会说，这是我们认为需要完成的大致方向。去了解一下需要做什么，回来告诉我们，并告诉我们需要多少成本，然后去实现它。因此，我们拥有一群非常出色的企业家。我们总是在互相争论之类的，但这没什么问题。我们有5000名员工，其中大多数都是非常独立的思考者。他们真正想要的是知道该做什么，而他们想要的是一个不需要说服其他30个人认为这是正确事情的环境。这样说有道理吗？
And it's harder as we get older. It's harder to spend time with everyone and to pull everyone together. But we really make an attempt to do that. And I guess our feeling is that the day that somebody working in Apple decides that they can't make a difference anymore is the day we've lost. And we have the standard stuff. I mean, anyone can come see myself or John Scala or anyone else. Any time they want, I mean, might take a day or two to schedule it. But we've got people at all levels floating around coming to see us. The other thing we've observed, of course, is that the oldest and largest organization in the world has only four layers of management. And that's a Catholic church. And five, if you can't, the highest order I suppose.
随着年龄的增长，大家聚在一起变得更难了，花时间与每个人相处、把大家聚在一起变得更困难。但我们真的在努力做到这一点。我想，我们的感觉是，如果有一天苹果公司的人觉得他们无法再带来变化，那就是我们失败的一天。我们也有一些基本规章制度，比如，任何人都可以来找我、John Scala或其他任何人。虽然可能需要一两天来安排，但我们欢迎各个级别的人来找我们。
另外，我们注意到的是，世界上最古老和最大的组织只有四层管理架构，那就是天主教会。如果算上最高阶层，也许是五层。
And so we see no reason why we need over four layers of management. And indeed, we have usually about three. And that's, you know, the president, we maybe have a division manager and then maybe under that a marketing or engineering manager. And that's really about it. So that's what we're trying to do. And well, what's really interesting is that people, a lot of times, I mean, what's, we have good people. And what they've been able to do over the last five years is pretty awesome. But what's even neater is that what we can do in the next five years. I mean, we are going to, we're in a position now where we're selling a billion dollars of stuff a year. And where we've got one of the most recognized consumer brand names in the country. And so if we get it together, we can turn out these incredibly great products with incredibly great advertising, with incredibly great software.
因此，我们不认为需要超过四层的管理结构。通常，我们大概有三层管理：首先是总裁，然后可能是分部经理，再往下可能是市场经理或工程经理，就是这样。所以这就是我们的努力方向。而有趣的是，我们有很多优秀的人才，在过去五年里他们的表现非常出色。更让人期待的是，我们在接下来的五年里能够取得的成就。现在我们每年销售价值十亿美元的产品，并且拥有全国最知名的消费品牌之一。如果我们能够整合一切，我们就能推出极其优质的产品，配以极其出色的广告和软件。
And so what we want to do is just get great people to come help us do that because that's a pretty giant thing to try to do. But that's what we're going for. We started with nothing. So whenever you start with nothing, you always can shoot for the moon. You have nothing to lose. And the thing that happens is when you, when you, when you sort of get something, it's very easy to go and to cover your ass mode and then you become conservative and vote for Ronnie. So what we're trying to do is, is to realize the, the very amazing time that we're in and not go into, into that mode. And I think Lisa's a reflection of that. I mean, we gambled the company on Lisa. If Lisa had bond, Apple would be just one more computer company.
我们想做的就是吸引优秀的人来帮助我们实现这个目标，因为这是一项相当巨大的任务，而这正是我们的追求。我们从无到有开始，所以当你从零开始时，总是可以有远大的目标，因为你没有什么可以失去的。而一旦有了些进展后，人们很容易变得保守，开始只想保护自己。因此，我们努力做到的是充分利用我们所处的这个令人惊叹的时代，而不陷入那种保守的模式。我想，Lisa 项目就反映了这一点。我们将公司的命运赌在了 Lisa 上。如果 Lisa 项目失败，苹果可能就只是另一个普通的电脑公司。
And we gambled everything on it. We had no backup to it. Everything went into that for three and a half years, the best and the brightest that Apple worked on on this product. Now, how come they came to Apple to work on this? We hired these people from other companies. And the reason they came to Apple was because they knew what to do. But the companies they were working for wouldn't take the risk and do it. And we said, come to Apple and build this. And they said, well, who do I have to convince to do that? Nobody just go do it. And we got a collection of the, I think some of the finest computer scientists in the world that just went and did it. And it is, that's why I go to work in the morning is to hang around these type of people.
我们把所有赌注都压在这上面了。我们没有备份方案。一切都投在这个项目上，持续了三年半，苹果公司最优秀的人才都在为这个产品努力。那么，他们为什么来到苹果工作呢？我们从其他公司招聘了这些人。他们来到苹果的原因是他们知道该做什么，但他们之前工作的公司不愿冒险去做这些事情。而我们说，来苹果，打造这个产品吧。他们问，需要说服谁才能做到这点？我们说，不需要说服任何人，直接去做就行。我们汇聚了一批世界上最优秀的计算机科学家，他们就是这样直接去做了。这也是我每天早上来上班的原因，因为我想与这些类型的人共事。
They're fun. They plan punk rock bands and the weekends and all sorts of stuff. Computer people aren't, you read all this computer nerd stuff. It's not really true anymore. They're really a lot closer to artists than they are to anything else. They come into work at about, I don't know, anytime they want, but usually about 11 in the morning. 12 in the morning. Play a few rounds of ping pong. Work really hard. They work really hard. But they'll work. And generally about four, we go out and maybe play a game of volleyball somewhere or something like that. And then in the evening we work and then they'll have dinner and we go out to Japanese restaurant for dinner or something and come back. And they'll work till about two or three in the morning. And they go home and wake up at 11 in the next morning.
他们很有趣。他们计划着朋克摇滚乐队、周末活动和各种各样的事情。而不是大家常说的那种电脑迷。其实，现在的他们更接近艺术家。上班时间也很随性，通常是在早上11点或者中午12点左右到公司。打几局乒乓球，然后开始努力工作。他们工作很拼命。不过通常到下午四点左右，我们会出去，可能找个地方打排球或者做其他类似的活动。到了晚上，他们会继续工作，然后一起出去吃晚饭，比如去日本餐馆。回来后，他们会工作到凌晨两三点，再回家睡觉，第二天早上十一点左右起床。
Come into work. Yeah. Yeah, you sure? Why not? I don't know what we need to do. I'm going to scale type stuff. Actually, people work once that bullshitting rate really comes in fame. That's the reason that you, for those who have invested in that, some already is the keyboard.
来上班吧。是的。确定吗？为什么不呢？我不知道我们需要做什么。我打算做一些规模化的事情。其实，一旦那些吹牛的人真的出名了，人们就会来工作。对于那些已经投入的人来说，原因就是键盘。
Uh-oh. Can you teach skiing? Voice recognition is about, it's going to be the better part of the decade away. We can do toy voice recognition now. The problem is it isn't just recognizing the voice. When you talk to somebody, it's understanding language is much harder than understanding voice. We can sort of sort out the words, but what do they all mean?
哦哦。你会教滑雪吗？语音识别技术大约还需要差不多十年才能成熟。我们现在可以实现简单的语音识别，但问题不仅仅是识别声音。当你和某人交谈时，理解语言比理解声音要难得多。我们可以大致分辨出单词，但它们都是什么意思呢？
And most language is exceptionally contextually driven. And there was one word mean something in this context. It means something entirely different in another context. And when you're talking to somebody, people interact. It's not a one way communication is going, yep, yep, yep, yep, and they gracefully interact. They go in and out of levels of detail.
大多数语言在很大程度上依赖于语境。同一个词在这个语境下可能意味着一种意思，但在另一个语境下则可能完全不同。而且，当你与某人交流时，人们是互动的。这并不是单向的交流，而是双方都会优雅地进行互动，并在细节的层次间切换。
And boy, this stuff's hard. So I think you're really looking at the better part of a decade before we get close, even close to that. I don't know how much time we have. I think I'm about to. Thank you very much. I've enjoyed it. Thank you.
这东西可真难啊。所以我觉得要花差不多十年的时间才能接近那个目标。我不知道我们还有多少时间。我想我快说完了。非常感谢。我很享受这次交流。谢谢你。