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Credit for first conceiving of the Earth as
a spaceship usually goes to the inventor and
philosopher Buckminister Fuller, a tireless and
enthusiastic proponent of what is now called “alternate
technology,” who began using the paradigm in
speeches at least as early as 1964. ”I wish to point
out vigorously to you that we are indeed aboard an
8,000-mile-diameter spherical space vehicle,” Fuller
remarked to a Senate subcommittee in 1969.
第一个把地球想象成一艘太空船的荣誉要归于发明家和哲学家Buckminister Fuller. 他也是这个概念的不知疲倦的热切倡议者，这个概念被现在的人们称呼为“替换技术”。他至少早在1964年就开始在自己的演讲中使用这个把地球比作太空船的范例，“我希望自己能够为你们有力地指出如下事实：我们实际上是登上了一艘直径8000英里的球形太空交通工具”Fuller在1969年向一个参议院附属委员会发表了如上看法。
The spaceship image is powerful. It suggests
at once vulnerability, interdependence, and closure.
Spaceships are small and fragile in the depths of
space, prey to meteorites and radiation and able to
support life only so long as they remain intact. And
they are also thoroughly and completely closed
systems. There is no running down to the corner store
for something that has been forgotten: all
you have is what you have carried with you from the
launching pad. Every thing must be either used over or
used up. Crew members of a spacecraft do not
recycle because it is politically correct to do so; they
recycle because if they do not they will die.
All these qualities make the spaceship paradigm
far better than other proposed paradigms for modeling
a dynamic society on a finite planet. It is, nonetheless,
not entirely satisfactory. The primary problem lies in
its technological, human-constructed nature, which
suggests that technology is the answer to
environmental problems as well. Worse: it suggests
that when things begin to go wrong, the proper course
of action is to tinker with them. Both
of these assumptions are correct for machines but
dangerously misleading for the planet. Life is an
evolved system, not a designed one, and it cannot be
treated as though a quick look at the blueprints and a
couple of nails can cobble it up and make it run again.
这一太空船的形象是生动有力的. 它立刻就给人如下暗示：易受攻击，船上乘员必须互相依赖，封闭性。 太空船在无边无际的太空中真是又小又脆弱，易于受到陨石和放射线的攻击，并且只有在持续地不受损害的情况下才能够支持生命。太空船还都是彻底地完全地封闭的系统。因而，可没有忘记带什么东西就跑到便利店去买这种事发生，你所拥有的一切就是你离开发射台升往太空的时候携带的物品。每件东西一定是要么被用旧，要么被用尽。一艘太空船的乘员们进行废物循环利用，不是因为这样做在政治上正确，而是因为如果不进行废物循环利用他们自己就会死。所有这些品质使得太空船范例比任何其他被提议的反映一个动态社会的范例要好，别忘了，我们这个动态社会就正是处在一个资源有限的星球上。虽然如此，这个范例也还不是完全令人满意。它的主要问题在于它的技术的，人工构造的本性。从这一本性出发可以提出如下观点：科技技术也是所有环境问题的答案。更糟的是，这个范例还建议，当事情开始变糟糕的时候，合适的行动方针就是胡乱对它们进行修补。上面这两个引伸出来的观点和建议对机器而言是正确的，但是，对我们这个星球而言则会把人们危险地导入歧途。生命是一个发展进化的系统，而不是一个被设计出来的系统，并且，它不能被如此对待，就好像是随便瞄一眼设计图然后几颗钉子就能粗劣地修好并让它重新运转。
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发表于 2005-8-30 12:21:00
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