The Power of the Marginal

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</td > June 2006 (This essay is derived from talks at Usenix 2006 and Railsconf 2006.) A couple years ago my friend Trevor and I went to look at the Apple garage.

</td> 2006 年 6 月（本文源自 Usenix 2006 和 Railsconf 2006 的演讲。）几年前，我和朋友 Trevor 去参观了 Apple 车库。

As we stood there, he said that as a kid growing up in Saskatchewan he'd been amazed at the dedication Jobs and Wozniak

当我们站在那里时，他说，作为一个在萨斯喀彻温省长大的孩子，他对乔布斯和沃兹尼亚克的奉献精神感到惊讶

must have had to work in a garage.

一定是在车库里工作。

"Those guys must have been freezing!" That's one of California's hidden advantages: the mild climate means there's lots of marginal space.

“那些家伙肯定冻坏了！”这是加州的隐藏优势之一：温和的气候意味着有大量的边际空间。

In cold places that margin gets trimmed off.

在寒冷的地方，边缘会被修剪掉。

There's a sharper line between outside and inside, and only projects that are officially sanctioned — by organizations, or parents, or wives, or at least by oneself — get proper indoor

外部和内部之间的界限更加清晰，只有经过组织、父母、妻子或至少自己正式批准的项目才能在室内进行

space.

空间。

That raises the activation energy for new ideas.

这提高了新想法的激活能量。

You can't just tinker.

你不能只是修修补补。

You have to justify.

你必须辩解。

Some of Silicon Valley's most famous companies began in garages: Hewlett-Packard in 1938, Apple in 1976, Google in 1998.

硅谷一些最著名的公司都是从车库起步的：1938 年的惠普、1976 年的苹果、1998 年的谷歌。

In Apple's case the garage story is a bit of an urban legend.

就苹果公司而言，车库故事有点像都市传奇。

Woz says all they did there was assemble some computers, and that he did all the actual design of the Apple I and Apple II in his apartment or his

沃兹说，他们在那里所做的只是组装一些电脑，Apple I 和 Apple II 的所有实际设计都是他在他的公寓或他的房间里完成的。

cube at HP.

惠普立方体。

[ 1 ] This was apparently too marginal even for Apple's PR people.

[1] 即使对于苹果公司的公关人员来说，这显然也太边缘化了。

By conventional standards, Jobs and Wozniak were marginal people too.

按照传统标准，乔布斯和沃兹尼亚克也是边缘人。

Obviously they were smart, but they can't have looked good on paper.

显然他们很聪明，但他们在纸面上看起来并不好。

They were at the time a pair of college dropouts with about three years of school between them, and hippies to boot.

当时他们是一对大学辍学生，他们之间的学校教育时间大约为三年，而且还是嬉皮士。

Their previous business experience consisted of making "blue boxes"

他们之前的商业经验包括制作“蓝盒子”

to hack into the phone system, a business with the rare distinction of being both illegal and unprofitable.

侵入电话系统，这是一项罕见的非法且无利可图的业务。

Outsiders Now a startup operating out of a garage in Silicon Valley would feel part of an exalted tradition, like the poet in his garret, or the painter who can't afford to heat his studio and thus has to wear a beret indoors.

现在，一家在硅谷车库外运营的初创公司会让人感觉自己是崇高传统的一部分，就像阁楼上的诗人，或者买不起工作室供暖费用而不得不在室内戴贝雷帽的画家一样。

But in 1976 it didn't seem so cool.

但在 1976 年，它似乎并不那么酷。

The world hadn't yet realized that starting a computer company was in

全世界还没有意识到创办一家计算机公司已经成为现实

the same category as being a writer or a painter.

与作家或画家同一类别。

It hadn't been for long.

时间不长。

Only in the preceding couple years had the dramatic fall in the cost of hardware allowed outsiders to compete.

直到前几年，硬件成本的大幅下降才让外来者参与竞争。

In 1976, everyone looked down on a company operating out of a garage, including the founders.

1976 年，每个人都看不起一家在车库里经营的公司，包括创始人。

One of the first things Jobs did when they got some money was to rent office space.

乔布斯拿到钱后做的第一件事就是租用办公空间。

He wanted Apple to seem like a real company.

他希望苹果看起来像一家真正的公司。

They already had something few real companies ever have: a fabulously well designed product.

他们已经拥有了很少有真正的公司拥有的东西：设计精良的产品。

You'd think they'd have had more confidence.

你可能认为他们会有更多的信心。

But I've talked to a lot of startup founders, and it's always this way.

但我和很多初创公司创始人交谈过，情况都是这样。

They've built something that's going to change the world, and they're worried about some nit like not having proper business cards.

他们创造了一些将改变世界的东西，但他们担心一些问题，比如没有合适的名片。

That's the paradox I want to explore: great new things often come

这就是我想探索的悖论：伟大的新事物经常出现

from the margins, and yet the people who discover them are looked down on by everyone, including themselves.

从边缘开始，然而发现它们的人却遭到所有人的鄙视，包括他们自己。

It's an old idea that new things come from the margins.

新事物来自边缘，这是一个古老的观念。

I want to examine its internal structure.

我想检查一下它的内部结构。

Why do great ideas come from the margins?

为什么伟大的想法都来自边缘？

What kind of ideas?

有什么样的想法？

And is there anything we can do to encourage the process?

我们可以做些什么来鼓励这个过程吗？

Insiders One reason so many good ideas come from the margin is simply that

业内人士 如此之多的好创意来自边缘的一个原因很简单：

there's so much of it.

有这么多。

There have to be more outsiders than insiders, if insider means anything.

如果内部人士有什么意义的话，那么外部人士一定比内部人士多。

If the number of outsiders is huge it will always seem as if a lot of ideas come from them, even if few do per capita.

如果外来者的数量很多，那么看起来似乎总是有很多想法来自他们，即使人均想法很少。

But I think there's more going on than this.

但我认为还有更多的事情发生。

There are real disadvantages to being an insider, and in some kinds of work they can outweigh the advantages.

成为内部人士确实有一些缺点，但在某些工作中，这些缺点可能超过优点。

Imagine, for example, what would happen if the government decided

例如，想象一下，如果政府决定，会发生什么

to commission someone to write an official Great American Novel.

委托某人写一本官方的伟大的美国小说。

First there'd be a huge ideological squabble over who to choose.

首先，对于选择谁，会有一场巨大的意识形态争论。

Most of the best writers would be excluded for having offended one side or the other.

大多数最好的作家都会因为冒犯了一方或另一方而被排除在外。

Of the remainder, the smart ones would refuse such a job, leaving only a few with the wrong sort of ambition.

在剩下的人中，聪明的人会拒绝这样的工作，只留下少数人怀有错误的野心。

The committee would choose one at the height of his career — that is, someone whose best work was behind him — and hand over the

委员会将在他职业生涯的巅峰时期选出一位——即在他身后做出了最好的工作的人——并移交

project with copious free advice about how the book should show in positive terms the strength and diversity of the American people, etc, etc. The unfortunate writer would then sit down to work with a huge weight of expectation on his shoulders.

然后，这位不幸的作家就会坐下来，肩上背负着巨大的期望，开始工作。

Not wanting to blow such a public commission, he'd play it safe.

他不想破坏这样一个公共委员会，所以会谨慎行事。

This book had better command respect, and the way to ensure that would be to make it a tragedy.

这本书最好赢得尊重，而确保这一点的方法就是让它成为一场悲剧。

Audiences have to be enticed to laugh, but if you kill people they feel obliged to take you seriously.

必须引诱观众发笑，但如果你杀人，他们就会觉得有义务认真对待你。

As everyone knows, America plus tragedy equals the Civil War, so that's what it would have to be about.

众所周知，美国加上悲剧就等于内战，所以这就是它的意义。

When finally completed twelve years later, the book would be a 900-page pastiche of existing popular novels — roughly Gone with the Wind plus Roots .

当十二年后最终完成时，这本书将是现有流行小说的 900 页仿制品——大致是《飘》加上《寻根》。

But its bulk and celebrity would make it a bestseller

但它的体积和知名度将使它成为畅销书

for a few months, until blown out of the water by a talk-show host's autobiography.

几个月后，直到被一位脱口秀主持人的自传惊醒。

The book would be made into a movie and thereupon forgotten, except by the more waspish sort of reviewers, among whom it would be a byword for bogusness like Milli Vanilli or Battlefield Earth .

这本书被拍成电影，然后就被遗忘了，除了那些更尖刻的评论家，在他们中间，这本书将成为像《米利·瓦尼利》或《地球战场》这样的虚假作品的代名词。

Maybe I got a little carried away with this example.

也许我对这个例子有点得意忘形了。

And yet is this not at each point the way such a project would play out?

然而，这不正是这样一个项目的实施方式吗？

The

的

government knows better than to get into the novel business, but in other fields where they have a natural monopoly, like nuclear waste dumps, aircraft carriers, and regime change, you'd find plenty of projects isomorphic to this one — and indeed, plenty that were less successful.

政府知道不应该进入这个新行业，但在他们拥有自然垄断的其他领域，比如核废料场、航空母舰和政权更迭，你会发现很多项目与这个项目同构——事实上，很多项目不太成功。

This little thought experiment suggests a few of the disadvantages of insider projects: the selection of the wrong kind of people, the

这个小小的思想实验揭示了内部项目的一些缺点：选择了错误的人、

excessive scope, the inability to take risks, the need to seem serious, the weight of expectations, the power of vested interests, the undiscerning audience, and perhaps most dangerous, the tendency of such work to become a duty rather than a pleasure.

范围过大、无法承担风险、需要显得严肃、期望的压力、既得利益的力量、不敏锐的观众，也许最危险的是，此类工作倾向于成为一种义务而不是一种乐趣。

Tests A world with outsiders and insiders implies some kind of test for distinguishing between them.

测试 一个有局外人和局内人的世界意味着需要某种测试来区分他们。

And the trouble with most tests for selecting elites is that there are two ways to pass them: to be

大多数精英选拔测试的问题在于，有两种方法可以通过：

good at what they try to measure, and to be good at hacking the test itself.

擅长他们试图测量的内容，并且擅长破解测试本身。

So the first question to ask about a field is how honest its tests are, because this tells you what it means to be an outsider.

因此，关于一个领域要问的第一个问题是它的测试有多诚实，因为这告诉你作为一个局外人意味着什么。

This tells you how much to trust your instincts when you disagree with authorities, whether it's worth going through the usual channels to become one yourself, and perhaps whether you want to work in

这会告诉你，当你不同意当局的意见时，要在多大程度上相信自己的直觉，是否值得通过通常的渠道自己成为这样的人，也许你是否想在这家公司工作。

this field at all.

这个领域根本。

Tests are least hackable when there are consistent standards for quality, and the people running the test really care about its integrity.

当有一致的质量标准时，测试最不容易被黑客攻击，并且运行测试的人真正关心其完整性。

Admissions to PhD programs in the hard sciences are fairly honest, for example.

例如，硬科学博士课程的录取相当诚实。

The professors will get whoever they admit as their own grad students, so they try hard to choose well, and they have a fair amount of data to go on.

教授们会把他们录取的任何人当作自己的研究生，所以他们会努力选择好，并且他们有相当多的数据可以继续。

Whereas undergraduate

而本科生

admissions seem to be much more hackable.

招生似乎更容易被黑客入侵。

One way to tell whether a field has consistent standards is the overlap between the leading practitioners and the people who teach the subject in universities.

判断一个领域是否具有一致标准的一种方法是主要从业者与大学教授该学科的人员之间的重叠。

At one end of the scale you have fields like math and physics, where nearly all the teachers are among the best practitioners.

另一方面，数学和物理等领域几乎所有的老师都是最好的从业者。

In the middle are medicine, law, history, architecture, and computer science, where many are.

中间是医学、法律、历史、建筑和计算机科学，这些专业很多。

At

在

the bottom are business, literature, and the visual arts, where there's almost no overlap between the teachers and the leading practitioners.

垫底的是商业、文学和视觉艺术，这些领域的教师和主要从业者之间几乎没有重叠。

It's this end that gives rise to phrases like "those who can't do, teach." Incidentally, this scale might be helpful in deciding what to study in college.

正是这个目的催生了“那些不会做的人，去教”这样的短语。顺便说一句，这个量表可能有助于决定在大学学习什么。

When I was in college the rule seemed to be that you should study whatever you were most interested in.

当我上大学时，规则似乎是你应该学习你最感兴趣的任何东西。

But in retrospect

但回想起来

you're probably better off studying something moderately interesting with someone who's good at it than something very interesting with someone who isn't.

与擅长的人一起学习一些比较有趣的东西可能比与不擅长的人一起学习非常有趣的东西更好。

You often hear people say that you shouldn't major in business in college, but this is actually an instance of a more general rule: don't learn things from teachers who are bad at them.

你经常听到人们说你不应该在大学里主修商科，但这实际上是一个更普遍规则的一个例子：不要从不擅长的老师那里学到东西。

How much you should worry about being an outsider depends on the

作为局外人你应该担心多少取决于

quality of the insiders.

内部人士的素质。

If you're an amateur mathematician and think you've solved a famous open problem, better go back and check.

如果您是一名业余数学家并且认为您已经解决了一个著名的开放问题，那么最好回去检查一下。

When I was in grad school, a friend in the math department had the job of replying to people who sent in proofs of Fermat's last theorem and so on, and it did not seem as if he saw it as a valuable source of tips — more like manning a mental health hotline.

当我在读研究生时，数学系的一位朋友的工作是回复那些发来费马大定理等证明的人，他似乎并不认为这是一个有价值的提示来源——更像是在管理心理健康热线。

Whereas if

而如果

the stuff you're writing seems different from what English professors are interested in, that's not necessarily a problem.

你写的东西似乎与英语教授感兴趣的东西不同，这不一定是问题。

Anti-Tests Where the method of selecting the elite is thoroughly corrupt, most of the good people will be outsiders.

反测试 在选拔精英的方法彻底腐败的地方，大多数优秀的人都将是局外人。

In art, for example, the image of the poor, misunderstood genius is not just one possible image of a great artist: it's the standard image.

例如，在艺术中，可怜的、被误解的天才的形象不仅仅是伟大艺术家的一种可能形象：它是标准形象。

I'm not saying it's correct, incidentally, but it is telling how well this

顺便说一句，我并不是说这是正确的，但它说明了这有多好

image has stuck.

图像卡住了。

You couldn't make a rap like that stick to math or medicine.

你不可能像数学或医学那样说唱。

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