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in Artificial Intelligence , Technology , Television | October 20th, 2026 Leave a Comment

人工智能、技术、电视 | 2026 年 10 月 20 日 发表评论

Cast your mind, if you will, back to the year 2020.

如果你愿意的话，请让你的思绪回到 2020 年。

It now feels like a dif­fer­ent time, what with the spread­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the heat­ed sociopo­lit­i­cal bat­tles being waged online, and indeed in the (social­ly dis­tanced) streets.

现在感觉已经是一个不同的时代了，随着新冠肺炎 (COVID-19) 大流行的蔓延，以及在网上甚至在（保持社交距离的）街道上展开的激烈社会政治斗争。

That spring, we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture an amus­ing retro-tech­no­log­i­cal diver­sion called Hyper­land .

那年春天，我们在 Open Culture 上推出了一款有趣的复古科技游戏，名为《Hyperland》。

First broad­cast on BBC2, the pro­gram stars The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy author Dou­glas Adams as him­self and Doc­tor Who ’s Tom Bak­er as his agent.

该节目首次在 BBC2 播出，由《银河系漫游指南》作者道格拉斯·亚当斯饰演他自己，《神秘博士》的汤姆·贝克饰演他的经纪人。

“You want fif­teen per­cent?” the for­mer asks the lat­ter when they first meet in a vast waste­land of flick­er­ing tele­vi­sion sets.

“你想要百分之十五吗？”前者问后者何时在电视机闪烁的广阔荒原上第一次见面。

Not at all: “I’m here to do your every slight­est bid­ding,” Bak­er explains, “to fetch and car­ry for you, to work tire­less­ly and self­less­ly on your behalf, always ready, always will­ing, no job too small or too menial.”

完全不是：“我来这里是为了听从你的每一个指令，”贝克解释道，“为你取东西和搬运，为你不知疲倦、无私地工作，时刻准备着，永远愿意，没有任何工作太小或太卑微。”

Today, we can hard­ly share in Adams’ bewil­der­ment, famil­iar as we are with the notion of what Bak­er calls a “soft­ware agent,” an “arti­fi­cial and com­plete­ly cus­tomiz­able per­son­al­i­ty” with “instant access to every piece of infor­ma­tion stored dig­i­tal­ly any­where in the world: any pic­ture or film, any sound, any book, any sta­tis­tic, any fact, any con­nec­tion between any­thing you care to think of.” We must remind our­selves that Hyper­land was pro­duced in 1990, when these lines would have struck all but the most com­put­er-savvy and for­ward-look­ing view­ers as sheer sci­ence fic­tion.

今天，我们很难体会到亚当斯的困惑，因为我们熟悉贝克所谓的“软件代理”的概念，一种“人造的、完全可定制的个性”，可以“即时访问世界上任何地方以数字方式存储的每一条信息：任何图片或电影、任何声音、任何书籍、任何统计数据、任何事实、任何你想想到的事物之间的任何联系。”我们必须提醒自己，《Hyperland》是在 1990 年制作的，当时除了最精通计算机和最有前瞻性的观众之外，这些台词对所有人来说都是纯粹的科幻小说。

Even three decades there­after, they still sound­ed more or less like an ele­vat­ed ver­sion of ordi­nary late-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry tech­no-opti­mism.

即使三十年后，它们听起来仍然或多或少像是二十世纪末普通技术乐观主义的升级版。

Here in 2026, Bak­er’s ser­vices are close to being con­sid­ered a basic neces­si­ty, at least in Sil­i­con Val­ley and its glob­al provinces.

到 2026 年，贝克的服务几乎被认为是基本必需品，至少在硅谷及其全球各省份如此。

Not so very long ago, Hyper­land looked star­tling­ly pre­scient about the rise of the World Wide Web, which would soon let its users seek out their own desired pieces of infor­ma­tion and media, active­ly mov­ing through links between them, in a man­ner unlike the pas­sive view­ing expe­ri­ence of tele­vi­sion (with which it would, as no one then knew, one day con­verge).

不久前，Hyperland 对万维网的兴起有着惊人的先见之明，万维网很快就会让用户寻找自己想要的信息和媒体，积极地通过它们之间的链接进行移动，这与电视的被动观看体验不同（当时没有人知道，有一天，它会与电视融合）。

This was an unfa­mil­iar idea to most peo­ple in 1990; hence the vari­ety of clear and enter­tain­ing ways in which the pro­gram breaks down its tech­no­log­i­cal basis, pulling up clips from its onscreen “data­base” like an inter­view with Ted Nel­son, who coined the term hyper­text .

这对于 1990 年的大多数人来说还是一个陌生的想法；因此，该节目以各种清晰而有趣的方式打破了其技术基础，从屏幕上的“数据库”中提取剪辑，就像对创造了超文本一词的特德·尼尔森的采访一样。

Like mul­ti­me­dia , that word may car­ry a whiff of antiq­ui­ty today, but it was once on the lips of prac­ti­cal­ly every tech­nol­o­gist in pop­u­lar cul­ture — in a man­ner rem­i­nis­cent of the lex­i­con that has sprung from new devel­op­ments in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence over the past few years.

就像多媒体一样，这个词在今天可能带有一丝古老的味道，但它曾经出现在流行文化中几乎每一位技术专家的嘴边——某种程度上让人想起过去几年人工智能新发展所产生的词汇。

At times, Bak­er’s char­ac­ter now looks almost real­is­tic, as when Adams asks him to knock off the obse­quious­ness, or when he pulls up Kurt Von­negut’s the­o­ry of sto­ry form before Adams ful­ly gets the ques­tion out.

有时，贝克的角色现在看起来几乎是现实的，比如当亚当斯要求他停止谄媚时，或者当他在亚当斯完全解决问题之前拿出库尔特·冯内古特的故事形式理论时。

Yet Hyper­land devotes lit­tle time to AI per se.

然而，Hyperland 在人工智能本身上投入的时间很少。

The pro­gram appeared in the wake of the eight­ies’ AI boom, when “expert sys­tems” promised to solve prob­lems in indus­try, med­i­cine, and oth­er sec­tors, but many of the field­’s larg­er ambi­tions went unre­al­ized.

该计划出现在八十年代人工智能热潮之后，当时“专家系统”承诺解决工业、医学和其他领域的问题，但该领域的许多更大的抱负都没有实现。

There fol­lowed a long “AI win­ter” in research and devel­op­ment, in whose cli­mate Baker-as-“agent” would have been a means of human­iz­ing an abstract-seem­ing con­cept of orga­niz­ing and nav­i­gat­ing infor­ma­tion.

接下来是研究和开发领域漫长的“人工智能寒冬”，在这种气候下，贝克作为“代理人”将成为一种将看似抽象的信息组织和导航概念人性化的手段。

Not that all his enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly prof­fered ser­vices draw unqual­i­fied enthu­si­asm from Adams, who pos­sessed a rare com­bi­na­tion of Cal­i­forn­ian technophil­ia and British skep­ti­cism.

并不是说亚当斯热情地提供的所有服务都引起了他无条件的热情，他罕见地结合了加州的技术狂热和英国的怀疑主义。

His fas­ci­na­tion with human­i­ty’s dig­i­tal future is ours — and so is his wari­ness.

他对人类数字未来的迷恋也是我们的——他的警惕也是如此。

Play The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Video Game Free Online, Designed by Dou­glas Adams in 1984

免费在线玩《银河系漫游指南》视频游戏，由道格拉斯·亚当斯于 1984 年设计

Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C.

科幻作家 Arthur C.

Clarke Pre­dict­ed the Rise of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence & the Exis­ten­tial Ques­tions We Would Need to Answer (1978)

克拉克预测人工智能的兴起以及我们需要回答的存在问题 (1978)

In 1999, David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good and Bad of the Inter­net: “We’re on the Cusp of Some­thing Exhil­a­rat­ing and Ter­ri­fy­ing”

1999 年，大卫·鲍伊 (David Bowie) 预测了互联网的好与坏：“我们正处于令人兴奋和可怕的事情的风口浪尖”

John Tur­tur­ro Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to the World Wide Web in 1999: Watch A Beginner’s Guide To The Inter­net

约翰·特托罗 (John Turturro) 于 1999 年向美国介绍了万维网：观看互联网初学者指南

Pio­neer­ing Sci-Fi Author William Gib­son Pre­dicts in 1997 How the Inter­net Will Change Our World

科幻小说先驱作家威廉·吉布森 (William Gibson) 在 1997 年预测互联网将如何改变我们的世界

Sci-Fi Author J.G.

科幻作家 J.G.

Bal­lard Pre­dicts the Rise of Social Media (1977)

巴拉德预测社交媒体的崛起 (1977)

Based in Seoul, Col­in M a rshall writes and broad­cas ts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture.

科林·马歇尔居住在首尔，撰写和广播有关城市、语言和文化的文章。

He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro .

他是时事通讯《城市书籍》以及《한국 요약 금지》（无总结韩国）和《韩国新歌》等书的作者。

Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinm a rshall .

在以前称为 Twitter 的社交网络上关注他：@colinm a rshall。

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Comments (0) |

作者：科林·马歇尔 |永久链接 |评论 (0) |

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