科幻設(shè)備的前世今生

From tanks to the internet to videophones, science-fiction stories have had a long record of successfully anticipating future technology developments. There are many devices, though, that regularly pop up in movies and books about the future - but show no sign of working in reality.Or will they? Bilingual Time takes a look at past fantasies about the future, and whether they might ever be real.

從坦克到因特網(wǎng)再到視頻電話，科幻故事成功預(yù)見未來科技發(fā)展的記錄繁多。有些科技設(shè)備雖然經(jīng)常會(huì)在關(guān)于未來的電影或書籍中突然出現(xiàn)，但在現(xiàn)實(shí)中卻沒有存在的跡象。或者以后會(huì)嗎？《雙語時(shí)代》回顧過去人們對(duì)將來的一些幻想，看看它們有沒有成為現(xiàn)實(shí)。

1) Raygun 射線槍

Science-fiction heroes are always zapping their phasers or their blasters at the bad guys. In the real world, however, hurtling bigger and bigger pieces of metal at high velocity remains the best way to hurt someone. Lasers big enough to do damage remain huge, bulky, immoveable things, needing power far beyond any handheld weapon. Still, the US and other armies have energy-based weapons in development, including non-lethal (but extremely painful) microwave weapons, as well as missile defence systems using lasers.

科幻故事中的男主人公總是持相位槍（又名光炮，是一種聯(lián)邦艦隊(duì)與其他帝國(guó)所使用的指向性能量武器，是科幻創(chuàng)作《星艦奇航記》中出現(xiàn)的武器之一）迅速地朝敵人射出能量射線。然而在現(xiàn)實(shí)中，猛烈地甩出大塊金屬片依然是擊傷對(duì)方最有效的方法。足以造成破壞的大型激光器依然是龐大笨重難以搬移的設(shè)備，搬動(dòng)起來比任何手持武器都費(fèi)力。不過美國(guó)和其它國(guó)家軍隊(duì)正在研發(fā)以能源為基礎(chǔ)的武器，包括非致命（但會(huì)造成極度的痛苦）微波武器，以及導(dǎo)彈防御系統(tǒng)使用的激光器。

2) Jetpacks 噴氣推進(jìn)器

Zooming about in the sky has been a staple of fantasies of the future since the 1930s, but, although real jetpacks exist, they're highly unstable and consume far too much fuel to be useful.Astronauts use them during space walks sometimes, but otherwise their use is limited to stunts and showtime performances. A typical jetpack only gives you about 30 seconds of flight - and extremely dangerous flight at that!

自20世紀(jì)30年代起，在空中快速飛旋就已經(jīng)是未來世界的幻想主題之一。但是，雖然現(xiàn)實(shí)中噴氣推進(jìn)器已經(jīng)存在，但它們太不穩(wěn)定而且耗能高不實(shí)用。宇航員有時(shí)會(huì)將它們用于太空行走，除此之外它就只能用于雜技和一些節(jié)目表演中。一個(gè)標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的噴氣推進(jìn)器只能讓你飛30秒，而且這種飛行還非常危險(xiǎn)。

3) Translation Devices翻譯器

Worried about meeting an alien race for the first time and having to communicate through hand gestures and grunts like an American in a Beijing Mcdonalds? Instant translators, which turn one language into another, have been an excuse to have everyone seem like they're talking English in many a science-fiction show. Real life mechanical translation, though, is long, painful, inaccurate, and can only be done with text. The next ten years will see much better mechanical translation, say experts, but still probably only with written languages - voices remain exceptionally hard for computers to process.

曾經(jīng)會(huì)為這個(gè)擔(dān)心嗎？與老外第一次見面因?yàn)檎Z言不通而不得不一邊打著手勢(shì)一邊咕噥著說話來進(jìn)行交流，就像北京麥當(dāng)勞里的美國(guó)佬一樣。將一種語言轉(zhuǎn)譯為另一種語言的即時(shí)翻譯器已經(jīng)使得科幻節(jié)目中的每個(gè)人似乎都會(huì)說英語。現(xiàn)實(shí)生活中的機(jī)器翻譯冗長(zhǎng)，讓人費(fèi)解還不準(zhǔn)確，并且只能在有上下文的情況下才能進(jìn)行翻譯。專家說再過十年將會(huì)出現(xiàn)更好很多的機(jī)器翻譯，不過可能還是局限于書面語言，計(jì)算機(jī)還是很難處理語音翻譯。

4) Robots 機(jī)器人

Robots exist, of course, but they're nothing like the androids of movies like Star Wars - they're just very specialised machinery, mostly used in automation lines. One of the niftiest recent uses for robots has been for remote surgery, using a robot hand and a computer link to let surgeons thousands of miles away perform operations by proxy. Intelligent humanoid robots seem extremely unlikely, though there are steps forward - Sony's ASIMO robot, which looks like a little spaceman, can hold hands, recognize faces, and walk without falling over too much.

機(jī)器人當(dāng)然存在，但是它們絕不像電影《星球大戰(zhàn)》中的機(jī)器人，它們只是一些非常專業(yè)化的機(jī)器，絕大部分都用于自動(dòng)線。最近機(jī)器人運(yùn)用得最為成功的例子是用于遠(yuǎn)程外科手術(shù)，外科醫(yī)生在千里之外通過一個(gè)機(jī)器人手臂和與之連接的計(jì)算機(jī)進(jìn)行手術(shù)操作。智能人形機(jī)器人似乎極不可能做到這點(diǎn)，雖然它們改進(jìn)了很多，比如索尼的ASIMO機(jī)器人看上去像一個(gè)小型宇航員，它會(huì)握手，識(shí)別人臉，行走穩(wěn)定不會(huì)摔太多跤。

5) Artificial Intelligence 人工智力

Sentient computers have often been presented as figures of menace, like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey or Skynet in the Terminator movies. It looks like this is one threat we don't have to worry about, though; the predictions of AI enthusiasts have been spectacularly off. While computers can excel in very specialized and number-crunching skills, nobody has yet managed to create any kind of general reasoning ability, or even taken more than the baby-steps to theorize how it could be created.

智能電腦總是以構(gòu)成威脅的形象出現(xiàn)，如《2001：太空奧德賽》中的HAL和《終結(jié)者》中的Skynet。這種威脅在我們看來似乎不必?fù)?dān)憂，但人工智能愛好者所預(yù)見的景象卻十分壯觀。雖然計(jì)算機(jī)在特別專業(yè)與超大數(shù)字計(jì)算等技術(shù)領(lǐng)域勝過人類，但目前還沒有誰能夠制造出具有正常推理能力的計(jì)算機(jī)，甚至連制造這種計(jì)算機(jī)進(jìn)一步的理論都沒有。

6) World Government世界政府

OK, this isn't a gadget, but it's such a staple of science-fiction that we had to include it. Sci-fi stories and movies often posit a single world government, with all the people of Earth united in relative harmony. As a quick glance at the TV news shows, this one ain't happening. Right-wing paranoids, particularly in the United States, fantasize that the UN is moving towards this, but the UN can barely agree on what colour paper to use, yet alone on how the world should be run.

是的，這不算科技玩意兒，但是這也屬于科幻類的東西，所以我們還是將它納入科技酷品?？苹霉适潞碗娪敖?jīng)常設(shè)想一個(gè)獨(dú)一無二的世界政府，全世界人們相對(duì)和諧地聯(lián)合為一個(gè)整體。當(dāng)快速地看一眼電視新聞便知道這個(gè)設(shè)想不可能會(huì)實(shí)現(xiàn)。右翼狂想分子，特別是在美國(guó)，都幻想聯(lián)合國(guó)正在朝這一方向走去，但聯(lián)合國(guó)只能決定用什么顏色的紙等不痛不癢的問題，更別說該怎樣管理世界了。

7) Floating Cities 漂浮的城市

Imagine a city that soars in the sky, or that floats permanently upon the sea! In an increasingly crowded world, this is a common fantasy - but one that's not likely to come true anytime soon.The resources to build such a thing would be immense, and the only effort so far, a bizarre American project called the Liberty Ship which aimed to present a permanent sea-going home for 50 000 people mostly looking to dodge national taxes, seems to be more scam than practical project. Land reclamation, though, is being pioneered by small nations or cities such as Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, dumping new earth into the sea to create artificial islands or extend the existing coastline.

設(shè)想一座城市浮在空中，或永久地浮在海面上！面對(duì)這個(gè)日益擁擠的世界，有這種幻想很正常，但在短期內(nèi)這不太可能成為現(xiàn)實(shí)。要修建這么個(gè)龐然大物，需要大量資源，目前為此所做的努力只是美國(guó)一個(gè)稱為《自由輪》的奇怪工程，這個(gè)工程的目標(biāo)是建造一個(gè)可以容納50000人永久航行的家園，居住在船上的人多是為了逃避國(guó)家稅款。這個(gè)工程似乎比現(xiàn)實(shí)中的工程更像個(gè)騙局。然而一些小國(guó)和城市，如日本、香港和新加坡都正率先進(jìn)行填海造地工程，將土壤倒入海中，造建人工海島或延長(zhǎng)現(xiàn)有的海岸線。

8) Space Colonization 太空殖民地

This world may be going to hell, but living on other worlds doesn't look like a very likely prospect either. At present, it would take centuries or millenia for spaceships to reach other solar systems, yet alone ones with inhabitable planets - if they even exist. One solution that's been proposed is terraforming the rest of our solar system, transforming Mars and Venus into planets like earth through ecological engineering. It's way out of our reach at the moment, but recent discoveries that Mars has a significant water supply have lent hope to scientists dreaming of a Martian vacation home.

這個(gè)世界也許將會(huì)毀滅，但是去另一個(gè)星球居住似乎也不太可能。目前來看，人類要花幾個(gè)世紀(jì)甚至上千年才能使宇宙飛船進(jìn)入其它太陽系，還必須是具有適宜生存條件的星球——假如這些星球存在的話。一個(gè)已經(jīng)設(shè)想出的解決辦法是轉(zhuǎn)變我們所在的太陽系的其它星球，利用生態(tài)工程將火星和金星轉(zhuǎn)變成像地球一樣的星球。目前人類還無法實(shí)現(xiàn)這些，但最新發(fā)現(xiàn)顯示火星可以提供大量的水資源，這使夢(mèng)想有一個(gè)火星度假家園的科學(xué)家們有了希望。