在未來我們仍要飛赴各地開會

Next month, I will head west to Colorado to take part in the Aspen Ideas Festival, an annual current affairs conference. No surprise there, you might think. These days, pundits, politicians, academics, executives and journalists like me spend a considerable amount of time attending conferences — whether the Aspen event, the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos, the Milken Institute’s global conference in Los Angeles or countless others.

下個月，我將前往西部的科羅拉多州，參加一年一度的時事會議阿斯彭理念節(Aspen Ideas festival)。你或許會覺得這沒什麼好驚訝的。如今，專家、政治人士、學者、高管和像我這樣的記者會花費相當多的時間參加會議——阿斯彭理念節、達沃斯的世界經濟論壇(World Economic Forum)、洛杉磯的米爾肯研究院(Milken Institute)全球會議以及數不勝數的其他會議。

Conferences have become such a deeply ingrained ritual (at least for globetrotting executives and commentators) that you can mark the passage of the seasons by these events.

會議已經變成了一種根深蒂固的儀式（至少對那些奔波於世界各地的高管和評論人士來說是這樣的），以至於你可以通過這些會議來標記季節的變換。

But in another sense, the fact that I and hundreds of others are flying to Aspen is actually rather strange. One of the great themes discussed by conference attendees is that the internet is turning the business world upside down. Digital disruption has transformed the way media, retailing and industrial spheres work, and it is now spreading into medicine and government.

但在另一個層面上，我和其他數百人飛赴阿斯彭其實是一件相當怪異的事情。與會者討論的一個重大主題是互聯網正在顛覆商業世界。數字化的顛覆作用已經改變了媒體、零售和工業領域的運作方式，還正在波及醫藥業和政府。

This ought to imply that conferences are ripe for disruption. In a world where we can all connect online instantly, there should be no need to fly anywhere. When I recently met Klaus Schwab, the doughty founder of the World Economic Forum, at a conference (where else?), he predicted that this process of digital disruption was so powerful that within a couple of decades the conference business “will no longer exist” in its current form. “I don’t know what [a conference] will look like but it will be different,” he observed.

這本應暗示着顛覆會議的時機已經成熟。在一個我們所有人都能瞬間在線互聯的世界，我們本應無需飛到任何地方。我最近在一次會議上（還能是哪兒？）遇到克勞斯•施瓦布(Klaus Schwab)，這位世界經濟論壇的勇敢創始人預測道，這一數字化的顛覆進程來勢如此兇猛，不出幾十年，現在這種形式的會議業“將不復存在”。他說：“我不知道將來的（會議）會是什麼樣子，但肯定與現在不同。”

Here is the oddity: if you ask Schwab what is happening to the conference business now, it does not seem to have been seriously disrupted at all. Far from it. In the past five years, the revenues of the WEF have jumped by 40 per cent to almost SFr200m a year, since company executives are apparently so keen to participate in Davos that they have swallowed hefty price increases. Thus, it currently costs SFr600,000 a year to be a “strategic partner” of the WEF and about a tenth of that to be an affiliate.

奇怪的是：如果你問施瓦布，會議業現在正在發生什麼事情，你會發現這個行業似乎根本沒有被嚴重顛覆——遠遠談不上。過去5年，世界經濟論壇的收入躍增了40%，至每年近兩億瑞士法郎，企業高管看上去非常熱衷於參加達沃斯會議，因此咬牙接受了會費的大幅上漲。於是，現在要成爲世界經濟論壇的“戰略合作伙伴”需要每年繳納60萬瑞士法郎的會費，而成爲世界經濟論壇的會員公司大概需要6萬瑞士法郎。

And the WEF is not alone. This year’s Milken event was crammed with attendees — never mind that a ticket cost $10,000 per person. For next month in Aspen, tickets for the main events have already sold out — although they cost $3,000 or so. And this is similar elsewhere; even in a world of hyper-connected cyber links, conferences still keep people travelling.

世界經濟論壇並非唯一的例子。今年的米爾肯全球會議也爆滿——儘管入場券要1萬美元一位。本月召開的阿斯彭理念節的主要會議的門票已經售罄——儘管每張門票需要花費3000美元左右。其他地方的情況也與此類似；即使是在可以通過網絡高度互聯的世界，會議依然讓人們奔波於路途中。

Why? One explanation might be that it has become much easier to travel, because aviation has improved. Another might be that modern professionals spend so much time on the internet that they are eager to meet real people without a screen. And, of course, the beauty and value of face-to-face encounters is that they are exclusive. That is different from the internet, where everything can easily be replicated — and commoditised.

爲什麼會這樣？一個可能的解釋是由於航空的發展，現在旅行變得容易得多。另一個可能原因是現代專業人士已在互聯網上花費了如此多時間，因此他們迫切地想與屏幕之外的真人會面。而且，面對面相遇的美好和可貴之處在於這種相遇是獨一無二的。這一點與互聯網上不同，在互聯網上，一切都可以輕易被複制和同質化。

But I suspect that another reason why conferences are booming is that they are tapping into two contradictory but powerful desires among the modern elite: to belong to a particular social tribe but also to find safe ways of jumping out of their intellectual ghetto. More specifically, when I look around at the attendees of Aspen, Milken and Davos, the first thing that strikes me is that the gathering feels rather tribal — these events allow the global elite to affirm their networks and identities. In that sense, conferences are a little like the 21st-century corporate equivalent of tribal weddings: they enable people to forge bonds and to express shared values.

但我懷疑，會議行業之所以欣欣向榮，是因爲會議切入了現代精英的兩種相互矛盾但又十分強烈的訴求：他們既想從屬於一個特定的“社會部落”，又想找到安全的辦法跳出自己所處的思想圈子。更確切地說，當我環顧阿斯彭、米爾肯和達沃斯的與會者時，我想到的第一件事，就是這些集會很有部落感——這些盛會讓全球精英確認他們的人脈和身份。在這種意義上，這些會議有點像是21世紀企業界版的部落婚禮：讓人們建立聯繫，表達共同的價值觀。

Homogeneity is not the only theme at these events: there is always a sprinkling of unexpected detail, debate, ideas and people. This enables the attendees to collide with the unexpected — be that an alternative political point of view, a religious idea, a medical breakthrough or something else — in a safe place. When I talk to conference devotees, they often say that one of the attractions of such events is precisely this note of serendipity. It seems that busy professionals are worried that they are living their lives in too narrow an intellectual ghetto — and want to find ways to break free (a little).

相似性並非這些會議的唯一主題：總會出現些許讓人意想不到的細節、辯論、想法和人。這讓參會者能夠在一個安全的地方與意外的事物發生碰撞——無論是一個另類的政治觀點、宗教理念、醫學突破，還是別的什麼東西。當我與熱衷參會的人聊天時，他們總是說到這些活動吸引人的一個地方正是這種意外之得。忙碌的專業人士似乎擔憂他們生活在一個過於狹小的思想圈子裏，並且希望找到方法（稍微）從中掙脫。

Can this experience be replicated online? The WEF and others are certainly trying to do this by investing heavily in their internet platforms. But the problem with the internet is that it is not just hard to replicate the full-blooded experience of interacting as a social tribe; it is also difficult to produce serendipity, or the moment when people bump into new ideas or individuals in a corridor or over dinner.

這種體驗是否在可以在網絡上覆制？世界經濟論壇和其他一些會議確實試圖通過大舉投資於自己的網絡平臺達到這樣的效果。但互聯網的問題在於，它不僅難以複製人們在一個社會部落中互動的真實體驗，也很難產生意外之得，或是創造那樣的時刻——讓人們在一條走廊裏或吃飯席間忽然撞見新想法或有趣的人。

Maybe it is just a matter of time. The canny Schwab (not to mention the good folks at Aspen, Milken, TED and so on) would dearly love to deliver serendipity in cyber bytes. But until then, the airlines who fly into Aspen and other conference zones will continue to do a roaring trade. It is perhaps one of the peculiar ironies of our modern digital age — our desire to find anti-digital backlashes.

或許這只是時間問題。精明的施瓦布（更不必說阿斯彭、米爾肯、TED等會議的那些心懷良好意願的主辦者）將非常樂意通過網絡來創造意外之得。但在這一天到來之前，飛赴阿斯彭和其他會議舉辦地的航班將持續火爆。這或許是我們所處的現代數字化時代的一個特有諷刺——我們渴望找到反數字化的反抗手段。