TED英語演講：1後人類會變成什麼樣子

我們能夠進化細菌，植物和動物——未來主義學者胡安問道：進化人體是否道德?在這個從中世紀假肢到當今神經元工程，再到人造DNA技術的頗具前瞻性的演講中，胡安·恩裏克斯幫我們理清了進化人體的道德標準，並設想了我們未來為移居其他星球而可能做出的人體改造。下面是小編為大家收集關於TED英語演講：120xx年後人類會變成什麼樣子，歡迎借鑑參考。

演説題目：What will humans look like in 100 years?

演説者：Juan Enriquez

Here's a question that matters.

這裏有一個重要的問題。

[Is it ethical to evolve the human body?]

【改造人體會出現道德問題嗎】

Because we're beginning to get all the tools together to evolve ourselves. And we can evolve bacteria and we can evolve plants and we can evolve animals, and we're now reaching a point where we really have to ask, is it really ethical and do we want to evolve human beings? And as you're thinking about that, let me talk about that in the context of prosthetics, prosthetics past, present, future.

因為我們已經開始擁有改造自身所需的所有工具了。我們可以改造細菌，我們可以改造植物，我們也可以改造動物，我們現在已經到了必須要問這個問題的時候了，這是否會導致道德問題，或者我們是否想要改造人類?在你們思考這個問題的時候，讓我就假肢為例子 和你們談談這件事，假肢的過去，現在和未來。

So this is the iron hand that belonged to one of the German counts. Loved to fight, lost his arm in one of these battles. No problem, he just made a suit of armor, put it on, perfect prosthetic. That's where the concept of ruling with an iron fist comes from.

這是一隻鐵製手臂，它屬於一位德國伯爵。嗜愛戰爭的他，在一場 戰役中失去了他的手臂。不過也不是問題，他做了一套戰服，穿上它，就擁有了完美的假肢。這就是術語“鐵拳執政”的來源。

And of course these prosthetics have been getting more and more useful, more and more modern. You can hold soft-boiled eggs. You can have all types of controls, and as you're thinking about that, there are wonderful people like Hugh Herr who have been building absolutely extraordinary prosthetics. So the wonderful Aimee Mullins will go out and say, how tall do I want to be tonight? Or Hugh will say what type of cliff do I want to climb? Or does somebody want to run a marathon, or does somebody want to ballroom dance?

當然，這些假肢變得越來越實用，越來越現代化。你可以用它拿像水煮蛋這樣柔軟的東西。你可以做出各種控制，當你們思考這件事的時候，像修米?赫爾這樣神奇的人就做出了絕對不可思議的假肢。這就讓偉大的艾米·穆林斯 (殘奧會短跑冠軍)能走出家門説，今晚我要什麼身高，戴哪副假肢呢?或者她會説：我今天應該爬哪種巖壁?亦或者，有人想去跑個馬拉松，或是參加交際舞會嗎?

And as you adapt these things, the interesting thing about prosthetics is they've been coming inside the body. So these external prosthetics have now become artificial knees. They've become artificial then they've evolved further to become not just nice to have but essential to have.

當你適應了這些事情的時候，有趣的是，現在的假肢 都已經能來自體內了。所以這些外部假肢 就變成了人造膝蓋，變成了人造髖關節。然後它們又更進一步的發展了，不再只是錦上添花的東西，而是至關重要的部分。

So when you're talking about a heart pacemaker as a prosthetic, you're talking about something that isn't just, "I'm missing my leg," it's, "if I don't have this, I can die." And at that point, a prosthetic becomes a symbiotic relationship with the human body.

當你把一個心臟起搏器當成假肢時，那你就不僅僅是在説，“我缺條腿”這麼簡單，而是“如果我沒有這個，我就會死掉。” 在那種程度上，假肢與人體就形成了 一種共生關係。

And four of the smartest people that I've ever met -- Ed Boyden, Hugh Herr, Joe Jacobson, Bob Lander -- are working on a Center for Extreme Bionics. And the interesting thing of what you're seeing here is these prosthetics now get integrated into the bone. They get integrated into the skin. They get integrated into the muscle. And one of the other sides of Ed is he's been thinking about how to connect the brain using light or other mechanisms directly to things like these prosthetics.

而四個我見過的最聰明的人—— 艾德·鮑登，修米?赫爾，喬?雅各布森，鮑勃?蘭登——他們都在一家極致仿生中心工作。而你們現在看到的 一件有趣的事情是，這些假肢已經能融入人體骨骼當中，能融入皮膚之中，也能融入肌肉組織之中。而另一方面，艾德也開始思考如何使用燈光或其他機制 使大腦能夠直接和 假肢類的東西相聯結。

And if you can do that, then you can begin changing fundamental aspects of humanity. So how quickly you react to something depends on the diameter of a nerve. And of course, if you have nerves that are external or prosthetic, say with light or liquid metal, then you can increase that diameter and you could even increase it theoretically to the point where,as long as you could see the muzzle flash, you could step out of the way of a bullet. Those are the order of magnitude of changes you're talking about.

如果我們能做到那一點，那麼我們就可以改變 人類的基本組成部分了。你對於一個事物的反應速度 是由神經元直徑決定的。但是當然，如果你的神經是外緣的，或是假肢，舉個例子，光線或是液態金屬，那麼你們就能增寬神經元的直徑，從理論上來説，我們甚至 可以提升反應速度，快到只要能看見槍口的 閃光，就能躲開子彈。這些就是我們準備討論的變化的級別。

This is a fourth sort of level of prosthetics. These are Phonak hearing aids, and the reason why these are so interesting is because they cross the threshold from where prosthetics are something for somebody who is "disabled" and they become something that somebody who is "normal" might want to actually have,because what this prosthetic does, which is really interesting, is not only does it help you hear, you can focus your hearing, so it can hear the conversation going on over there.

這是假肢的第四種境界。這是一些峯力助聽器，這些東西很有趣，原因是它們已經跨越了假肢是 幫助“障礙人羣”的門檻了。它們變成了“正常人羣” 也想要的東西，因為這種假肢所能做的，非常有趣，不僅僅能夠幫助你聽見聲音，還能幫助你專注於聽，能幫你聽見別處的聲音。這樣你就有了順風耳。

You can have superhearing. You can have hearing in 360 degrees. You can have white noise. You can record, and oh, by the way, they also put a phone into this. So this functions as your hearing aid and also as your phone. And at that point, somebody might actually want to have a prosthetic voluntarily.

你可以聽到全方位的聲音。你可以聽見白噪聲。你可以錄音，順便提一下，它們還可以承載手機功能。所以它的功能不僅是助聽，還可以成為你的手機。到了那時，就會有人自願去安裝假肢了。

All of these thousands of loosely connected little pieces are coming together, and it's about time we ask the question, how do we want to evolve human beings over the next century or two? And for that we turn to a great philosopher who was a very smart man despite being a Yankee fan.

這些成千的連接疏鬆的碎片 正在聚集起來，是時候讓我們提出疑問，我們在下一個，或者兩個世紀 打算如何改造人類?我們向一個偉大的哲學家求助，他是非常聰明的人，儘管是洋基隊的粉絲。

And Yogi Berra used to say, of course, that it's very tough to make predictions, especially about the future.

當然，就像約吉·貝拉説過的那樣，預測不是一件簡單的事情，特別是關於未來的預測。

So instead of making a prediction about the future to begin with, let's take what's happening in the present with people like Tony Atala, who is redesigning 30-some-odd organs. And maybe the ultimate prosthetic isn't having something external, titanium. Maybe the ultimate prosthetic is take your own gene code, remake your own body parts, because that's a whole lot more effective than any kind of a prosthetic.

所以説，我們開篇就先不預測未來，讓我們看看當下，發生在像 託尼?阿塔拉這樣的人身上的故事吧，託尼身上有着30多個再設計過的器官。也許最終版本的假肢已經不需要了，例如金屬鈦這種外緣材料。也許會來自你們自身的基因編碼，重新制造身體的一部分，因為那會比任何一種假肢效果都要好。

But while you're at it, then you can take the work of Craig Venter and Ham Smith. And one of the things that we've been doing is trying to figure out how to reprogram cells. And if you can reprogram a cell, then you can change the cells in those organs. So if you can change the cells in those organs, maybe you make those organs more radiation-resistant. Maybe you make them absorb more oxygen. Maybe you make them more efficient to filter out stuff that you don't want in your body.

當你們這麼想的時候，就可以看看克雷格·文特爾和翰姆·史密斯的工作。我們一直以來想要做的事情之一，就是想出如何重新編碼細胞。如果你可以重新編碼細胞，你就可以改變那些器官中的細胞。因此，如果我們可以改變器官中的細胞，也許我們就能使得 那些細胞更加耐輻射; 也許能讓它們吸收更多氧氣; 讓它們更加高效的 過濾人體所不需要的雜質。

And over the last few weeks, George Church has been in the news a lot because he's been talking about taking one of these programmable cells and inserting an entire human genome into that cell. And once you can insert an entire human genome into a cell, then you begin to ask the question, would you want to enhance any of that genome?

在過去的幾周裏，喬治·丘奇經常上新聞，因為他一直都在描述 一種可編碼細胞，以及將整個人類基因組 插入那個細胞。一旦我們能夠將整個 人類基因組插入那個細胞當中，我們就會開始問這樣的問題：你們想要加強 基因中的任何部分嗎?你們想要強化人體嗎?

Do you want to enhance a human body? How would you want to enhance a human body? Where is it ethical to enhance a human body and where is it not ethical to enhance a human body? And all of a sudden, what we're doing is we've got this multidimensional chess board where we can change human genetics by using viruses to attack things like AIDS, or we can change the gene code through gene therapy to do away with some hereditary diseases, or we can change the environment, and change the expression of those genes in the epigenome and pass that on to the next generations.

你們想要怎樣強化人體?怎樣強化是合乎道德的?而怎樣又是不合乎道德的?突然之間，我們正在做的，彷彿是得到了一個多維棋盤：我們可以通過病毒來改變人類的基因，從而攻克艾滋這樣的疾病，或者我們也可以通過 改變基因序列，基因療法，來對付遺傳性疾病，又或者説，我們 可以改變我們的環境，我們還可以改變顯性基因的基因表達，將表象傳遞給下一代人。

And all of a sudden, it's not just one little bit, it's all these stacked little bits that allow you to take little portions of ituntil all the portions coming together lead you to something that's very different.

一瞬之間，就變得不止是一點點了，這些一點點累積起來，每次拿走一點點，直到它們彙集起來，讓你變得完全不同。

And a lot of people are very scared by this stuff. And it does sound scary, and there are risks to this stuff. So why in the world would you ever want to do this stuff? Why would we really want to alter the human body in a fundamental way?

很多人對此感到害怕。這聽起來確實很恐怖，也很有風險。那麼我們到底為什麼想要這麼做呢?為什麼我們希望徹底的改變人體呢?

The answer lies in part with Lord Rees, astronomer royal of Great Britain. And one of his favorite sayings is the universe is 100 percent malevolent. So what does that mean? It means if you take any one of your bodies at random, drop it anywhere in the universe, drop it in space, you die. Drop it on the Sun, you die. Drop it on the surface of Mercury, you die. Drop it near a supernova, you die. But fortunately, it's only about 80 percent effective.

英國皇家天文協會的洛德?里斯給我們提供了部分答案。他最喜歡説的一句話就是： 宇宙是百分之百邪惡的。這是什麼意思呢?意思就是，隨機取下你身體的一部分 扔在宇宙的任何地方，扔在太空，你就死定了。扔在太陽上，死定了。扔在水星表面上，死定了。扔在超新星附近，死定了。但幸運的是，這句話只有80%是正確的。

So as a great physicist once said, there's these little upstream eddies of biology that create order in this rapid torrent of entropy. So as the universe dissipates energy, there's these upstream eddies that create biological order. Now, the problem with eddies is, they tend to disappear. They shift. They move in rivers.

一位偉大的物理學家曾説過，就是那些處於上游的小生物漩渦，創造了洶湧洪流當中的秩序。所以隨着宇宙不斷耗散能量，這些處於上游的小型生命漩渦，創造了生物界的秩序。現在，關於小漩渦的問題就是它們要消失了。它們會在星河中移動。

And because of that, when an eddy shifts, when the Earth becomes a snowball, when the Earth becomes very hot, when the Earth gets hit by an asteroid, when you have supervolcanoes, when you have solar flares,when you have potentially extinction-level events like the next election -

因為這樣的原因，當小漩渦移動的時候，當地球變成雪球的時候，變得炙熱的時候，當地球被小行星擊中的時候，當我們遇到超級火山爆發的時候，當我們遇到太陽耀斑爆發的時候，當我們遇到潛在的 毀滅級事件的時候，比如下屆選舉這種事——

then all of a sudden, you can have periodic extinctions. And by the way, that's happened five times on Earth,and therefore it is very likely that the human species on Earth is going to go extinct someday. Not next week,not next month, maybe in November, but maybe 10,000 years after that. As you're thinking of the consequence of that, if you believe that extinctions are common and natural and normal and occur periodically, it becomes a moral imperative to diversify our species.

然後突然之間，我們就會遇到週期性的大滅絕。順便提一下，這已經在地球上上演過五次了。因此，人類有朝一日 在地球上滅絕是非常可能發生的。不是下個星期，不是下個月，也許就是11月，但也許是那之後的一萬年。想象一下那樣的結果，如果你相信大滅絕 是平常的，自然的，會週期性發生，這就成為了一個使我們的物種多樣化的道德準則。

And it becomes a moral imperative because it's going to be really hard to live on Mars if we don't fundamentally modify the human body. Right? You go from one cell, mom and dad coming together to make one cell, in a cascade to 10 trillion cells.

之所以會成為道德準則，是因為如果我們不徹底修改人體，那麼我們就很難在火星上生存。不難理解吧?我們都來自一個細胞，父母一起產生的一個細胞，通過連續分裂產生了10兆個細胞。

We don't know, if you change the gravity substantially, if the same thing will happen to create your body. We do know that if you expose our bodies as they currently are to a lot of radiation, we will die. So as you're thinking of that, you have to really redesign things just to get to et about the moons of Neptune or Jupiter.

我們不能確定徹底改變重力時，相同的事情還會發生在我們體內。我們能確定的是現在將自己的身體 暴露在強輻射下，我們就會死。當你這樣想的時候，就會發現僅僅是為了去火星，我們就必須重新編碼自己。更不用説去海王星或木星的衞星了。

And to borrow from Nikolai Kardashev, let's think about life in a series of scales. So Life One civilization is a civilization that begins to alter his or her looks. And we've been doing that for thousands of years. You've got tummy tucks and you've got this and you've got that. You alter your looks, and I'm told that not all of those alterations take place for medical reasons.

借用一下尼古拉·卡爾達肖夫 (前蘇聯天體物理學家)的話，讓我們在一系列的尺度上考慮一下生命。在一級生命文明當中 可以開始改變人類的長相。我們已經這樣做了數千年了。你可以做腹部整形，整整這兒，整整那兒。你能改變你的長相，我聽人説 不是所有改變的背後都有醫療緣由。

Seems odd.

看起來很奇怪。

A Life Two civilization is a different civilization. A Life Two civilization alters fundamental aspects of the body. So you put human growth hormone in, the person grows taller, or you put x in and the person gets fatter or loses metabolism or does a whole series of things, but you're altering the functions in a fundamental way.

二級生命文明就是完全不同的了。二級生命文明就開始 改變人體的基本特徵了。所以你可以注射生長激素，使人長的更高，或者使用某種藥物，使人變胖，新陳代謝失調，或者發生一系列的改變。但是你已經徹底改變了基礎機能了。

To become an intrasolar civilization, we're going to have to create a Life Three civilization, and that looks very different from what we've got here. Maybe you splice in Deinococcus radiodurans so that the cells can resplice after a lot of exposure to radiation. Maybe you breathe by having oxygen flow through your bloodinstead of through your lungs.

要成為整個太陽系內文明，我們必須要經歷三級生命文明，而且明顯有別於所提到的二級文明。也許你會被植入耐輻射球菌，這樣在大量暴露於輻射後受損的細胞仍能復原。也許你就會將氧氣 直接吸入血液當中 而不是肺中。

But you're talking about really radical redesigns, and one of the interesting things that's happened in the last decade is we've discovered a whole lot of planets out there. And some of them may be Earth-like. The problem is, if we ever want to get to these planets, the fastest human objects --Juno and Voyager and the rest of this stuff -- take tens of thousands of years to get from here to the nearest solar system.

但是我們正在討論的 是完全徹底的重設，在過去十年間發生了一件有趣的事情，那就是我們在宇宙間 發現了更多的行星。其中的很多都屬於類地行星。問題在於，如果我們 想要到達那些行星，人類擁有的的最快物體—— 朱諾和旅行者，還有剩下類似的東西—— 將花費我們數千萬年，才能從這裏到達離我們最近的恆星系。

So if you want to start exploring beaches somewhere else, or you want to see two-sun sunsets, then you're talking about something that is very different, because you have to change the timescale and the body of humans in ways which may be absolutely unrecognizable. And that's a Life Four civilization.

所以，如果我們想在 其他地方漫步沙灘，或者想要看雙日落，那麼我們在討論的 一定是非常不同的東西，因為我們必須要改變 時間維度和人體的構造直到超乎想象的地步。那就是四級生命文明。

Now, we can't even begin to imagine what that might look like, but we're beginning to get glimpses of instruments that might take us even that far. And let me give you two examples.

現在，雖然我們無法想象 我們會變成什麼樣，但是我們已經能看到 能把我們帶到那裏的 一些尖端設備了。我給你們舉兩個例子。

So this is the wonderful Floyd Romesberg, and one of the things that Floyd's been doing is he's been playing with the basic chemistry of life. So all life on this planet is made in ATCGs, the four letters of DNA. All bacteria, all plants, all animals, all humans, all cows, everything else. And what Floyd did is he changed out two of those base pairs, so it's ATXY.

這就是我們出色的弗洛伊德?瑞姆斯伯格，(另一位TEDMED演講者)弗洛伊德一直在做的事情之一就是 研究基礎生命化學。地球上的所有生命都由ATCG組成，DNA鏈中的四個結構單元。所有的細菌，植物，動物，人類，奶牛，所有的生物。弗洛伊德做的就是 改變了其中的兩組鹼基對，就變成了ATXY組合。

And that means that you now have a parallel system to make life, to make babies, to reproduce, to evolve, that doesn't mate with most things on Earth or in fact maybe with nothing on Earth. Maybe you make plants that are immune to all bacteria. Maybe you make plants that are immune to all viruses. But why is that so interesting? It means that we are not a unique solution. It means you can create alternate chemistries to us that could be chemistries adaptable to a very different planet that could create life and heredity.

這就意味着，你現在擁有了 一個製造生命的平行體系，去產生幼兒，去繁殖，去進化，不能與地球上的大多數生命配對，或者説事實上全都不能。也許你能夠製造出對所有細菌免疫的植物。也許你能製造出 對所有病毒免疫的植物。但是，這為什麼有趣呢?因為這就意味着，我們 不只有唯一的解決方案了。這就意味着，我們能夠造出 不同於我們的化學生物，它們能夠適應不同星球上的生活，它們能創造生命，繁衍生息。

The second experiment, or the other implication of this experiment, is that all of you, all life is based on 20 amino acids. If you don't substitute two amino acids, if you don't say ATXY, if you say ATCG + XY, then you go from 20 building blocks to 172, and all of a sudden you've got 172 building blocks of amino acids to build life-forms in very different shapes.

就是我們所有人，所有的 生命都基於20種氨基酸。 如果我們並不是 去替換其中的兩種， 我們不用ATXY的模式， 我們用ATCG+XY的模式， 我們就能夠從20種 基礎氨基酸增長到172種， 轉瞬間，我們就有了172種 基礎氨基酸的模型 去建造完全不同的生命形式。第二個實驗，或者説是這個實驗的另一個運用。

The second experiment to think about is a really weird experiment that's been taking place in China. So this guy has been transplanting hundreds of mouse heads. Right? And why is that an interesting experiment?Well, think of the first heart transplants. One of the things they used to do is they used to bring in the wife or the daughter of the donor so the donee could tell the doctors, "Do you recognize this person? Do you love this person? Do you feel anything for this person?"

第二個實驗，一個非常詭異的實驗。是在中國做的。這個傢伙已經換植過上百隻老鼠的頭了。聽上去怎麼樣?為什麼這個實驗很有趣呢?想一想第一場心臟移植手術。他人們以前經常做的一件事就是會把器官捐贈者的 妻子或女兒帶過來，這樣被捐贈者就可以回答醫生的問題，“你認識這個人嗎?你愛她嗎?你看到她能感覺到什麼嗎?”

We laugh about that today. We laugh because we know the heart is a muscle, but for hundreds of thousands of years, or tens of thousands of years, "I gave her my heart. She took my heart. She broke my heart." We thought this was emotion and we thought maybe emotions were transplanted with the heart. Nope.

今天，我們當然會把這當笑話講。我們笑是因為我們知道 心臟只是一塊肌肉，但是，在歷史上的若干年間，“我把心獻給了她。她勾走了我的心。讓我心碎。” 我們都把心臟當成感情的來源，我們以為感情會與心相隨，一同被移植。不是這樣的。

So how about the brain? Two possible outcomes to this experiment. If you can get a mouse that is functional, then you can see, is the new brain a blank slate? And boy, does that have implications. Second option: the new mouse recognizes Minnie Mouse. The new mouse remembers what it's afraid of, remembers how to navigate the maze, and if that is true, then you can transplant memory and consciousness.

但是如果換成大腦呢?有兩種可能的結局。如果你能成功得到一隻活着的老鼠，你會觀察到，它的新大腦是否是一片空白?甚至，這個大腦是不是有同樣的功能?第二種可能： 新的老鼠還記得它的戀愛對象。新的老鼠還記得它害怕什麼，記得迷宮的線路，如果這是真的，我們就能夠移植我們的記憶和意識。

And then the really interesting question is, if you can transplant this, is the only input-output mechanism this down here? Or could you transplant that consciousness into something that would be very different, that would last in space, that would last tens of thousands of years, that would be a completely redesigned body that could hold consciousness for a long, long period of time?

然後就引發了一個有趣的問題，移植大腦的過程，是否是對於下半身唯一的 輸入輸出信號的控制呢?或者説，我們能否將意識轉入一個 十分不同的東西里，使它能夠在宇宙中長遠留存，能夠持續數萬年，這是身體的完全重設，使我們的意識能夠存在很長，很長一段時間?

And let's come back to the first question: Why would you ever want to do that? Well, I'll tell you use this is the ultimate selfie.

那麼，讓我們重新回到開始的問題：為什麼我們會想要那麼做?好吧，讓我來告訴你們原因。因為這就是我們的終極自拍照。(笑聲)

This is taken from six billion miles away, and that's Earth. And that's all of us. And if that little thing goes, all of humanity goes. And the reason you want to alter the human body is because you eventually want a picture that says, that's us, and that's us, and that's us, because that's the way humanity survives long-term extinction. And that's the reason why it turns out it's actually unethical not to evolve the human body even though it can be scary, even though it can be challenging, but it's what's going to allow us to explore, liveand get to places we can't even dream of today, but which our great-great-great-great- grandchildren might someday.

這將來自六十億英里以外，那就是地球。裏面包括我們所有人。如果那個小東西能夠持續下去，整個人類就會存活下去。我們之所以想要改變人體，是因為我們最終想要一張照片，上面寫着，這是我們，這是我們，這也是我們，因為這讓人類得以 倖存於漫長的滅絕事件中。這就是為什麼結果表明，不進化人體是不道德的。即使那可能很可怕，即使可能很困難，但這會使我們能夠去探索，生存，到達當今無法想象的地方，也許我們的曾曾曾曾孫輩有朝一日會實現這個目標。

Thank you very much.(Applause)

非常感謝。(掌聲)