Owing to the political needs of the moment, the scientist occupies an abnormal position, which he tends to forget.
He is subsidised by the terrified governments who need his aid, pampered and sheltered as long as he is obedient, and prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act when he has been naughty.
政府惊慌失措,把他视为救命稻草,只要他顺从,就能得到补贴和庇护,但如果不顺从,就会遭到控诉。
All this separates him from ordinary men and women and makes him unfit to enter into their feelings.
It is high time he came out of his ivory laboratory. We want him to plan for our bodies. We do not want him to plan for our minds...
他应该离开实验室,我们不需要他来规划我们的思想……
Alan Turing did come out of his ivory laboratory, and in some ways came out further than Forster did.
但图灵确实离开了他心爱的实验室,而且在某种意义上,他走得更遥远。
Nor was he the Bernal whom Forster was attacking in this passage, who believed that scientists should rule the world.
这段话是在攻击贝纳尔,不是图灵。图灵跟贝纳尔不一样,他没想过要让科学家统治世界。
But he did not offer a word on what turned out not to be an 'abnormal position' but rather the real orthodoxy of the 1950s: a dependence upon colossal machines. His work, while being as near to pacifism as military work could be, still had the effect of increasing state dependence upon machinery not only beyond the control, but even completely outside the knowledge, of those who paid for it. In this process Alan Turing remained a cipher.
然而,图灵并没有得到那种"非常的地位",这种地位属于机器,政府愈加依赖于机器,而不是机器的控制者。所以在这个过程中,图灵仍然是个无关紧要的角色。
|