《機器人的崛起》的悲觀預言
Martin Ford’s The Rise of the Robots , this year’s business book of the year, is in some ways the dystopian bookend to Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat , which won the first Financial Times prize for compelling business books 10 years ago.
馬丁輠祹(Martin Ford)的《機器人的崛起》(The Rise of the Robots)榮獲英國《金融時報》和麥肯錫2015年度最佳商業圖書獎(2015 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award)。在某種意義上，這本書是與托馬斯弗裏德曼(Thomas Friedman)的《世界是平的》(The World is Flat)對立的反面烏托邦版本，後者在10年前獲得了第一屆英國《金融時報》最有影響力商業圖書獎。
Where Mr Friedman was breathlessly optimistic about the prospects for a working world connected, lubricated and energised by technology, Mr Ford, a software entrepreneur, is much more pessimistic.
弗裏德曼認爲技術將連接和潤滑我們工作的世界，並向其中注入活力，他對此極爲樂觀，而身爲軟件企業家的福特則悲觀得多。
He envisages a world of fewer jobs and relentless pressure on both manufacturing and professional workers, as machines take over an increasing range of tasks. If action is not taken, inequality will increase (a phenomenon also addressed by Thomas Piketty in last year’s award-winning book Capital in the Twenty-First Century ) and economic growth could stall.
在福特所設想的世界，由於機器負責的任務範圍越來越廣，工作機會變得更少，製造業和專業領域的勞動者處於無休無止的壓力下。如果不採取行動，不平等程度將會上升（去年獲獎的托馬斯皮凱蒂(Thomas Piketty)的《21世紀的資本》(Capital in the Twenty-First Century)也討論過這個現象），經濟增長可能停滯。
At Tuesday’s judging session for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, Shriti Vadera, board director and former UK business minister, said Mr Ford’s book pointed to “an incredibly turbulent time as we adjust to [a change] more profound than the industrial revolution”.
在週二的評審會議上，前英國商務大臣、企業董事什裏蒂瓦德拉(Shriti Vadera)表示，福特的著作指向了“一個日益動盪的時代，因爲我們要適應一個比工業革命更深刻（的改變）”。
As Mr Ford writes: “While human-machine collaboration jobs will certainly exist, they seem likely to be relatively few in number and often shortlived. In a great many cases, they may also be unrewarding and even dehumanising.”
福特寫道：“儘管必然存在人機協作的工作，這種工作似乎相對較少，通常也不長久。在許多情況下，它們還有可能無法給人以成就感，甚至使人喪失人性。”
Mr Ford warns in the book that “a fundamental restructuring of our economic rules” may be needed to mitigate the impact of the advance of robotics and automation. He proposes a guaranteed minimum basic income — or “citizen’s dividend” — as one radical remedy.
福特在其著作中警告稱，我們或許需要“從根本上重構我們的經濟規則”，以緩和機器人和自動化的進步帶來的影響。作爲一項激進的應對舉措，他建議提供有保證的最低基本收入，或者“公民紅利”。
Such solutions looked unpalatable to a number of the judges, but they agreed that, of the six strong contenders on this year’s shortlist, The Rise of the Robots was the book likely to have the greatest impact. One judge, Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, said: “I believe that basic income is a plan of near last resort. I disagree that we get there inevitably from now.” He believes there are various ways in which entrepreneurship might be able to solve the issues highlighted in the book.
有幾位評委並不認同這樣的解決方法，但他們認同，在今年入圍獎項角逐的6本商業圖書中，《機器人的崛起》可能最有影響。領英(LinkedIn)聯合創始人、評委裏德霍夫曼(Reid Hoffman)表示：“我相信，基本收入是一種接近最後手段的辦法。我不認同從現在起我們將不可避免地到達那種地步。”他相信企業家或許有多種辦法解決本書強調的問題。
But the panel agreed that the book was an important call to action. Lionel Barber, FT editor and chair of the judging panel, called The Rise of the Robots “a tightly written and deeply researched addition to the public policy debate”.
評審小組的一致意見是，這本書是一次呼籲採取行動的重要警示。英國《金融時報》總編輯以及評審委員會主席萊昂內爾巴伯(Lionel Barber)稱《機器人的崛起》“行文緊湊、研究深入，是公共政策辯論領域的又一佳作”。
Since 2005, when the 30,000 business book award was launched, successive panels of judges have tried to pick the titles that provided “the most compelling and enjoyable insights into modern business issues”. The rules were tweaked in 2014 to underline that durability of the ideas was also important. As board director and author Dambisa Moyo, new to this year’s judging panel, put it on Tuesday, the judges need to ask themselves: “Is there something in this book that we should know that we don’t?” and “What is the shelf life of these ideas?”
自2005年設立這項附帶3萬英鎊獎金的最佳商業圖書獎以來，每一年的評審小組都努力挑選出“對現代商業問題提供了最令人歎服且最有趣味的深刻見解”的圖書。2014年，評審規則發生了一些改變，強調觀點的持久性也很重要。今年新加入評審小組的作家、企業董事丹比薩莫約(Dambisa Moyo)週二提出，評委需要問自己：“這本書裏有沒有什麼是我們應該知道，但我們還不知道的？”以及“這些觀點的保質期有多久？”
Answering the second of those questions is complicated by the increasing proportion of books about the business impact of technology.
有關技術帶來的商業影響的書籍越來越多，這使得回答第二個問題變得更加複雜。
Many of the more than 200 entrants for this year’s prize had a technological theme — with a notable subset about how automation would affect humans in the workplace. Four of this year’s six finalists were books about some aspect of technological disruption: Losing the Signal , by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, who look at how BlackBerry went off course; Digital Gold , Nathaniel Popper’s examination of the rise of bitcoin, the virtual currency; How Music Got Free , Stephen Witt’s history of the way piracy and peer-to-peer sharing have disrupted the recorded music industry. The other two finalists — all of whom receive 10,000 — were Unfinished Business , about the challenge of achieving gender balance; and Misbehaving , in which Richard Thaler traces the development of behavioural economics.
今年逾200本角逐該獎項的作品中很多都圍繞技術主題——其中有相當一部分是關於自動化將如何在工作場所影響人類。今年最終入圍的6本書中有4本都是關於技術中斷的某個方面：傑基麥克尼什(Jacquie Mcnish)和肖恩纏爾科夫(Sean Silcoff)所著的《失去信號》(Losing the Signal)講述了黑莓(BlackBerry)偏離軌道的經過；納塔涅爾波佩爾(Nathaniel Popper)的《數字黃金》(Digital Gold)探尋了虛擬貨幣比特幣的崛起；斯蒂芬威特(Stephen Witt)所寫的《音樂如何變免費》講述了盜版和對等網絡共享(P2P，peer-to-peer）對唱片行業造成的破壞。其他兩本入圍作品——所有入圍作品都會獲得1萬英鎊的獎金——分別是關於實現性別平衡所面臨的挑戰的《做不完的事》(Un滻椀猀梔攀攙 Business)；以及理查德泰勒(Richard Thaler)所著、講述行爲經濟學發展軌跡的《行爲不端》(Misbehaving)。
Last year’s finalist The Second Machine Age , by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, is notably more optimistic about the jobs that will be created as a result of the technology revolution. Mr Ford’s first book, The Lights in the Tunnel, was attacked for being too gloomy. But as Edward Luce wrote, reviewing The Rise of the Robots for the FT, his latest work is “well-researched and disturbingly persuasive”.
去年的入圍作品——埃裏克布林約爾鬆(Erik Brynjolfsson)和安德魯麥卡菲(Andrew McAfee)合著的《第二個機器時代》(The Second Machine Age)要樂觀得多，認爲技術革命將創造就業。福特的第一本書《隧道中的光明》(The Lights in the Tunnel)被批評太過悲觀。但是正如愛德華戠斯(Edward Luce)在爲FT撰寫《機器人的崛起》的書評時所寫的那樣，福特的新作“研究深入、極具說服力”。
Mr Ford holds out the slim hope that, handled properly, the technological revolution could usher in an automated utopia of greater prosperity and leisure. But he warned on Tuesday, as he received the award, that his predictions “could unfold faster than we expect”, sweeping away the advantages of education and training. “Even people that do everything they are supposed to do [to get a good job] may find it difficult to get a foothold in the economy,” he told the New York audience.
福特對技術革命（假如處理得當）可能引領自動化的烏托邦時代、給人類帶來更大繁榮以及更多安逸仍抱持微弱的希望。但是，他週二獲獎時警告稱，他的預言“可能比我們想象中來得更快”，徹底否定了教育和培訓的好處。“即使人們（爲找到好工作）竭盡所能，可能也會發現很難在經濟中找到立足之地，”他在紐約的頒獎禮上對觀衆表示。
3At the same ceremony in New York, Dominic Barton, McKinsey’s global managing director, awarded the 15,000 Bracken Bower Prize for young business writers to Christopher Clearfield and András Tilcsik. Their proposed book would look at how businesses can manage the risk of catastrophic failure.
在這場頒獎儀式上，麥肯錫全球董事總經理鮑達民(Dominic Barton)爲克里斯托弗克利爾菲爾德(Christopher Clearfield)和安德拉什舠爾奇克(András Tilcsik)頒發了“布拉肯貟爾”青年商業作家獎(Bracken Bower Prize for young business writers)以及1.5萬英鎊的獎金。二人計劃出版的圖書將探索企業如何能夠管控發生災難性失敗的風險。
