The Computer and The Poet
The essential problem of man in a computerized age remains the same as it has always been. That problem is not solely how to be more productive, more comfortable, more content, but how to be more sensitive, more sensible, more proportionate, more alive. The computer makes possible a marvellous leap in human proficiency; it pulls down the fences around the practical and even the theoretical intelligence.
But the question persists and indeed grows whether the computer will make it easier or harder for human beings to know who they really are, to identify their real problems, to respond more fully to beauty, to place adequate value on life, and to make their world safer than it now is.
Electronic brains can reduce the profusion of dead ends involved in vital research. But they can't eliminate the foolish ness and decay that come form the unexamined life. Nor do they connect a man to the things he has to be connected to - the reality of pain in others; the possibilities of creative growth in himself; the memory of the race; and the rights of the next generation.
The reason these matters are important in a computerized age is that there may be a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, and intelligence with insight. Easy and convenient access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they would lead.
Facts are terrible things if left spreading and unexamined. They are too easily regarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic. It requires a very unusual mind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact. The computer can provide a correct number, but it may be an irrelevant number until judgment is pronounced.
To the extent, then, that man fails to distinguish between the intermediate operations of electronic intelligence and the ultimate responsibilities of human decision, the computer could prove a digression. It could obscure man's awareness of the need to come to terms with himself. It may foster the illusion that he is asking fundamental questions when actually he is asking only functional ones.
It may be regarded as a substitute for intelligence instead of an extension of it. It may promote undue confidence in concrete answers. "If we begin with certainties," Bacon said, "we shall end in doubts but if we begin with doubts, and we are patient with them, we shall end in certainties."
The computer knows how to conquer error, but before we lose ourselves in celebrating the victory, we might reflect on the great advances in the human situation that have come about because men were challenged by error and would not stop thinking and exploring until they found better approaches for dealing with it. "Give me a good fruitful error, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections," Ferris Greenslet wrote, "You can keep your sterile truth for yourself."
The biggest single need in computer technology is not for increased speed, or enlarged capacity, or prolonged memory, or reduced size, but for better questions and better use of the answers. Without taking anything away from the technicians, we think it might be fruitful to effect some sort of junction between the computer technologist wonders of the creative imagination on the kinds of problems being put to electronic technology. The company of poets may enable the men who tend the machines to see a wider range of possibilities than technology alone may inspire.
A poet, said Aristotle, has the advantage of expressing the universal; the specialist expresses only the particular. The poet, moreover, can remind us that man's greatest energy comes not from his dynamos but from his dreams. But the quality of man's dreams can only be a reflection of his subconscious. What he puts into his subconscious, therefore, is quite literally the most important nourishment in the world.
Nothing really happens to a man except as it is registered in the subconscious. This is where event and feeling become memory and where the proof of life is stored. The poet - and we use the term to include all those who have respect for and speak to the human spirit - can help to supply the subconscious with material to enhance its sensitivity, thus safeguarding it. The poet, too, can help to keep man from making himself over in the image of his electronic wonders. For the danger is not so much that man will be controlled by the computer as that he may imitate it.
The poet reminds men of their uniqueness. It is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate on it is gain.
計算機與詩人
在計算機時代，人類的基本問題依然是過去一直存在的問題。這個問題不僅僅是如何更多產、更舒適、更愜意，而是如何更敏感、更明智、更均衡、更有生機。計算機使人類能力上的巨大飛躍成為可能；它打破了束縛實踐智能和理論智能的藩籬。但是計算機是使人類更容易還是更難以理解自己究竟是什么，是否有助于識別真正的問題，有助于對美作出更全面的反應，對生活作出更充分的評價？是否能使世界變得比現在更安全？這個問題一直存在而且越來越突出。
電腦能夠減少許多生命研究中的死胡同。但它們不能消除因為生活未經反省產生的愚蠢和腐朽；它們也不能把一個人同之相關的事物--別人的痛苦現實、自我創造性發展的可能性、種族的印記以及下一代的權利聯系起來。
這些事情在計算機時代之所以重要是因為可能有一種錯把數據當智慧的趨勢，就像一直存在的把邏輯與價值、智力，以及見解混為一談的趨勢一樣。獲取事實的便捷手段只有與弄清這些事實的意義與導向的愿望和能力一致時才能使人們受益無窮。
如果任其事實流傳而不加檢驗，這樣的事實是可怕的，因為它們極容易被認為是已獲定評的事實，而不是迫切需要處理使之具有邏輯條理的原始材料中最原始的部分。懷特里德說，對事實進行分析需要非凡的頭腦。計算機能夠提供正確的數字，但如果不作判斷，這個數字可能毫無意義。
因而，在人類不能區分電子智力的中間運算與人的決定的最終責任的情況下，計算機可能被證明是一種節外生枝。它可能模糊人類滿足自身條件的意識。它可能使人產生錯覺，當他實際上只是在問功能的問題時，卻認為他在問基本的問題。它可能被認為是智力的替代物，而不是智力的延伸。它可能使人過分相信具體答案。培根說："如果我們肯定開始，就會以疑惑結束；如果我們以疑惑開始，并且耐心處之，我們就會以肯定結束。"
計算機懂得如何克服錯誤，但在我們得意忘形地為此歡呼之前，我們不妨思考一下人類的處境之所以出現巨大的進步是因為人類受到錯誤的挑戰而且總是不停的思考、探索，直到找到的更好的處理方法。"給我一個內容豐富的錯誤，充滿希望的種子，包含自我更正，"費里斯·格林里特道，"你可以把貧瘠的真理留給自己。"
對計算機技術最大的、唯一的要求不是提高速度、擴大容量、延長記憶或減小體積，而是要提出更好的問題，更好地利用其答案。我們認為，在計算機技術專家和詩人之間衽某種結合可能會卓有成效，而且對技術人員不損秋毫。通過充分發揮由電子技術處理的問題的創造性想象的神奇力量，計算機起到真正的作用。與詩人為伍可能使使用計算機的人能看到比技術自身激發出的更大范圍的可能性。
亞里士多德說，詩人的優勢是表達共性，而專家表現的僅僅是某個特性。而且詩人能夠提醒我們，人最大的能量并不來自精力，而是來自他的夢想。但是人的夢想的特征僅僅是他的下意識的反映。因而，他存在下意識的東西實質上是世界上最好的營養。
并沒有什么事會真的發生在一個人的身上，除非這件事已在他的潛意識里烙下了印記。正是在潛意識里，事件和感情變成記憶，生活的證據儲存于此。詩人--我們用這個詞指所有新生人類精神，訴說人類精神的人--能夠幫助為潛意識提供材料，增強其敏感度，從而保護它。詩人也能使人們不至于按照電子奇跡的形象改變自己，因為危險不在于人被計算機控制而在于人可能會模仿計算機的思維。
詩人提醒人們記住自己的獨特性。沒有必要弄清這種獨特性的終極定義，但即是這種獨特性進行思考也是一種收獲。 |
