TED演讲：在你最后的社交状态更新之后
经典节目
口语积累
资源下载
我们中的很多人都在网络社群上占有一席之地。各种状态更新、微博及网际关系构成了虚拟的个性储存在云端数据中。亚当·奥斯丘提出了一个值得深思的问题：在我们死后，这种个人特色将何去何从？它还会继续存在吗？
By the end of this year,there'll be nearly a billion people on this planet that actively use social networking sites.
截止今年年底，这个星球上将有接近十亿人口在很活跃地使用社交网站。
The one thing that all of them have in common is that they're going to die.
他们有一个共同点，就是他们终将死去。
While that might be a somewhat morbid thought, I think it has some really profound implications that are worth exploring.
也许这是个有点病态的想法，但是我认为它有一些深远的意义值得探究。
What first got me thinking about this was a blog post authored earlier this year by Derek K. Miller, who was a science and technology journalist who died of cancer.
第一次让我思考这个问题，是今年早些时期，戴瑞克·米勒发布的一个博客。他曾是一名科学和科技记者，死于癌症。
And what Miller did was have his family and friends write a post that went out shortly after he died.
米勒让他的家人和朋友在他去世不久后写一个通知。
Here's what he wrote in starting that out.
这是他最初写的。
He said, "Here it is. I'm dead, and this is my last post to my blog.
他说，“这个时刻还是到了。我已经死了，这是我在博客上的最后一条信息。
In advance, I asked that once my body finally shut down from the punishments of my cancer, then my family and friends publish this prepared message I wrote --the first part of the process of turning this from an active website to an archive."
在此之前，我已恳请我的家人和朋友，一旦我的身体因为癌症的折磨而停止运转，他们将发布这条我事先写好的信息－－这是把一个活跃的网站转变成一种档案的第一部分。”
Now, while as a journalist, Miller's archive may have been better written and more carefully curated than most, the fact of the matter is that all of us today are creating an archive that's something completely different than anything that's been created by any previous generation.
现在，作为一名记者，米勒的档案或许可以比其他人更好地被记录，更好地被展示，事情的真相是今天我们所有的人都在创造一种档案，一种完全不同于任何被前辈们创造出的事物。
Consider a few stats for a moment.
请大家来看看这些数据。
Right now there are 48 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every single minute. There are 200 million Tweets being posted every day. And the average Facebook user is creating 90 pieces of content each month.
此时此刻，每分钟有48个小时的视频正在被上传到Youtube上。每天，有2亿条的微博被发布。平均每个脸书用户每月产生90条的内容。
So when you think about your parents or your grandparents, at best they may have created some photos or home videos, or a diary that lives in a box somewhere.
所以，当你回想你的父母或曾父母们时，他们至多制作了一些照片或家庭视频，或者一本躺在某处箱子里的日记。
But today we're all creating this incredibly rich digital archive that's going to live in the cloud indefinitely, years after we're gone.
但是今天，我们正在创造这个丰富到不可思议的数码档案，甚至在我们离开世界的若干年之后，它们仍然可以在世界上永恒地存在。
And I think that's going to create some incredibly intriguing opportunities for technologists.
我想，那将为技术专家创造很多有趣到难以置信的机会。
Now to be clear, I'm a journalist and not a technologist, so what I'd like to do briefly is paint a picture of what the present and the future are going to look like.
我先声明，我是一个记者，而不是技术专家，所以我主要想做的是描绘一幅画面，一幅关于现在和未来将会怎样的画面。
Now we're already seeing some services that are designed to let us decide what happens to our online profile and our social media accounts after we die.
目前，我们已经看到一些服务，它们被设定好以让我们决定我们网上的个人主页和社交媒体的账户在我们去世之后会发生什么。
One of them actually, fittingly enough, found me when I checked into a deli at a restaurant in New York on foursquare.
事实上，它们中的一个，很合时宜地，当我在纽约四方区的一家餐馆买熟食的时候发现了我。
Adam Ostrow: Hello.
亚当·奥斯丘：你好。
Death: Adam?
死神：亚当？
AO: Yeah.
亚当：是。
Death: Death can catch you anywhere, anytime, even at the Organic.
死神：死神可以在任何时间，任何地点抓到你，甚至在你还是有机体的时候。
AO: Who is this?
亚当：你是谁？
Adam Ostrow: Kind of creepy, right?
亚当·奥斯丘：有点吓人，对吧？
So what that service does, quite simply, is let you create a message or a video that can be posted to Facebook after you die.
这种服务，其实很简单，就是让你准备一条信息或一段视频，它们会在你死后被发布在脸书上。
Another service right now is called 1,000 Memories.
最近的另一种服务，叫做1000个回忆。
And what this lets you do is create an online tribute to your loved ones, complete with photos and videos and stories that they can post after you die.
这种服务可以让你创造一种在线的称赞给你的亲友们，他们可以在你去世后，发布照片、视频、和你们之间的故事。
But what I think comes next is far more interesting.
但是我认为下面的这个例子要有趣的多。
Now a lot of you are probably familiar with Deb Roy who, back in March, demonstrated how he was able to analyze more than 90,000 hours of home video.
现在，你们中的很多人可能都很熟悉戴·罗伊他在3月份的演讲中，演示了他是如何解析那长于9万小时的家庭录影。
I think as machines' ability to understand human language and process vast amounts of data continues to improve, it's going to become possible to analyze an entire life's worth of content --the Tweets, the photos, the videos, the blog posts --that we're producing in such massive numbers.
我想既然机器有能力去理解人类的语言，并处理大量的数据,如果持续地改进，很有可能，它们将可以解析一个人的一生－－微博，照片，视频，博客－－所有我们产生的，大量的信息。
And I think as that happens, it's going to become possible for our digital personas to continue to interact in the real world long after we're gone thanks to the vastness of the amount of content we're creating and technology's ability to make sense of it all.
并且我认为，如果那真的发生了，我们的数码角色就很有可能在我们离开很久之后持续地与现实世界中的我们互动。这要归功于我们创造的大量的内容和科技的力量，让它们得以付诸实践。
Now we're already starting to see some experiments here.
现在，我们已经开始着手一些实验。
One service called My Next Tweet analyzes your entire Twitter stream, everything you've posted onto Twitter, to make some predictions as to what you might say next.
其中一个服务叫做”我的下一条微博“，分析你的整个微博档案，所有你在微博上发布的信息，去预测你接下来会说什么。
Well right now, as you can see, the results can be somewhat comical.
现在，正如你看到的，结果会有点滑稽。
You can imagine what something like this might look like five, 10 or 20 years from now as our technical capabilities improve.
你可以想象这样的事物在5年、10年，或者20年后会看起来怎样，基于我们的科技能力在不断提升。
Taking it a step further, MIT's media lab is working on robots that can interact more like humans.
进一步地说，麻省理工的媒体实验室正忙于研究能更像人类那样互动的机器人。
But what if those robots were able to interact based on the unique characteristics of a specific person based on the hundreds of thousands of pieces of content that person produces in their lifetime?
但是如果这些机器人能够正常互动，基于具体个人的独特个性，基于人一生中创造的千千万万条的内容，那将会怎样？
Finally, think back to this famous scene from election night 2008 back in the United States, where CNN beamed a live hologram of hip hop artist will.i.am into their studio for an interview with Anderson Cooper.
最后，让我们的思绪回到这个著名的一幕，2008年的选举之夜，在美国，CNN发送了一张嘻哈歌手”我是威尔“的现场全息图去他们的演播室，那是为安德森·库珀的采访准备的。
What if we were able to use that same type of technology to beam a representation of our loved ones into our living rooms -- interacting in a very lifelike way based on all the content they created while they were alive?
如果我们可以用同样的科技发送一个我们亲人的重现影像到我们的客厅，非常逼真地互动，基于他们活着时候创造的内容，那将会怎样？
I think that's going to become completely possible as the amount of data we're producing and technology's ability to understand it both expand exponentially.
我认为这是完全有可能的，因为我们使用的数据流量和科技对其认知的能力，都在成倍地增长。
Now in closing, I think what we all need to be thinking about is if we want that to become our reality --and if so, what it means for a definition of life and everything that comes after it.
在结束之际，我认为我们都需要思考的是，我们是否想要此成为现实，如果是，它对生命的定义，以及随之而来的一切事物，又意味着什么？
Thank you very much.
非常感谢。
RECOMMEND
推荐阅读
《风雨哈佛路》经典回顾：你的人生，其实早就注定了（附完整视频）