虛擬現實技術向科幻小說借些靈感
Tech companies have spent years developing better, cheaper devices to immerse people in digital worlds. Yet they are still figuring out how to make virtual reality the kind of technology that people cannot live without.
多年來，科技公司一直致力於開發更好、更廉價的設備，以便讓人們沉浸在數字世界中。但它們依然不清楚，怎麼讓虛擬現實成爲那種人們離了就無法生活的技術。
So for inspiration, they are turning to science fiction.
這些公司正在求助於科幻小說，尋求靈感。
At Oculus, a leading virtual reality company, a copy of the popular sci-fi novel “Ready Player One” is handed out to new hires. Magic Leap, a secretive augmented reality start-up, has hired science fiction and fantasy writers. The name of Microsoft’s HoloLens headset is a salute to the holodeck, a simulation room from “Star Trek.”
在領先的虛擬現實公司Oculus，新入職人員會收到一本頗受歡迎的科幻小說《一級玩家》(Ready Player One)。神祕的增強現實初創公司Magic Leap已經聘請了科幻小說和幻想作品的作者。微軟(Microsoft)的HoloLens頭顯設備的名字，正是向《星際迷航》(Star Trek)中的模擬房間全息甲板(holodeck)的致敬。
“Like many other people working in the tech space, I’m not a creative person,” said Palmer Luckey, 23, a co-founder of Oculus, which was bought by Facebook for $2 billion in 2014. “It’s nice that science fiction exists because these are really creative people figuring out what the ultimate use of any technology might be. They come up with a lot of incredible ideas.”
“和科技業的其他很多從業者一樣，我不是一個有創意的人，”23歲的帕爾默·勒基(Palmer Luckey)說。他是2014年被Facebook用20億美元收購的Oculus的聯合創始人。“有科幻小說存在是件好事，因爲它們的作者真的很有創造力，他們會想出任何技術可能會有的終極用途。他們想出了很多不可思議的創意。”
Those ideas are especially relevant now, as some of the biggest technology companies are nearing a major push of a new generation of virtual reality products. In the next few months, virtual reality headsets from Oculus, Sony and HTC go on sale. Venture capital money is pouring into the industry.
那些創意現在尤其重要，因爲一些最大的科技公司即將大力推介新一代虛擬現實產品。接下來的幾個月裏，Oculus、索尼(Sony) 和宏達國際電子(HTC)的虛擬現實頭顯將紛紛上市。風投資金正在涌入這個行業。
But how people will interact with the imaginary worlds remains largely unknown territory. And that is where science fiction comes in. Science fiction is shaping the language companies are using to market the technology, influencing the types of experiences made for the headsets and even defining long-term goals for developers.
但總的來說，人們將如何與虛擬世界互動仍是一個未知領域。而這正是科幻小說的用武之地。科幻小說正影響着科技公司用來推銷相關技術的用語。它們還影響着爲耳機設計的體驗類型，甚至決定着開發人員的長期目標。
“Science fiction, in simplest terms, sets you free,” said Ralph Osterhout, chief executive of the Osterhout Design Group, which builds augmented reality glasses.
“簡單說來，科幻小說能讓你自由，”生產增強現實眼鏡的公司奧斯特豪特設計集團(Osterhout Design Group)首席執行官拉爾夫·奧斯特豪特(Ralph Osterhout)說。
Perhaps no fictional work resonates more throughout the industry these days than “Ready Player One,” written by Ernest Cline and now being made into a movie by Steven Spielberg.
如今，或許沒有哪部科幻作品能比《一級玩家》在整個行業引起更多共鳴。由歐內斯特·克萊因(Ernest Cline)所著的《一級玩家》現在正在被史蒂文·斯皮爾伯格(Steven Spielberg)改編成電影。
Much of the action in the book takes place inside the Oasis, a global virtual reality network. Characters in the network attend school, socialize and take part in a high-stakes treasure hunt. Through virtual reality, they can inhabit the perspectives of actors in classic movies.
書中的大量活動都發生在一個叫綠洲(Oasis)的全球虛擬網絡裏。這個網絡裏的角色會上學、社交、參加高風險的尋寶活動。通過虛擬現實，他們能夠處於經典影片裏演員所處的那些景觀中。
The book was published in 2011, around the time Mr. Luckey began building an early prototype of the Oculus headset. Mr. Luckey said he appreciated Mr. Cline’s portrayals of characters controlling their avatars through full-body suits rather than plugging “Matrix”-style cables into their brains.
該書2011年出版。勒基正是在該書出版前後開始開發Oculus頭顯的早期樣品的。勒基說，他欣賞克萊因的描寫，因爲書中的人物是通過覆蓋全身的衣服，而不是在頭上插入《黑客帝國》(Matrix)裏那種線纜，來控制代表自己的角色的。
“One of the things I like about ‘Ready Player One’ is all of the depictions in the book are pretty feasible,” Mr. Luckey said. “None of it is crazy, far-out tech.”
“我喜歡《一級玩家》的一個地方是，書中所有的描寫都相當可行，”勒基說。“沒有一個地方說的是瘋狂的，遙不可及的技術。”
Oculus gave out 3,000 copies of the book to attendees of an Oculus developer conference last year. For good measure, Oculus named the meeting rooms at its headquarters after famous fictional versions of virtual reality, including the holodeck, the Oasis and the Matrix, from the movie of the same name and, before that, William Gibson’s “Neuromancer.”
去年，Oculus發了3000本《一級玩家》給出席Oculus開發者會議的人。此外，Oculus還用知名科幻作品中的虛擬現實系統命名其總部的會議室，包括全息甲板、綠洲和來自電影《黑客帝國》的母體，以及更早的一部科幻小說——威廉·吉布森(William Gibson)的《神經漫遊者》。
Mr. Cline said he wrote “Ready Player One” partly because he could not figure out why virtual reality had not taken off in the real world.
克萊因說，他之所以會寫《一級玩家》，有一部分原因是想不通爲什麼虛擬現實還沒有在現實世界中流行起來。
“I think that was the same impulse that drove Palmer,” said Mr. Cline, who has visited Oculus several times to speak to employees. “Growing up with ‘Neuromancer’ and Max Headroom, it had the same effect on me as a writer as it did on businesspeople.”
“我覺得驅動帕爾默的也是這同一種力量，”克萊因說。他曾多次來Oculus，給這裏的員工做演講。“讀着《神經漫遊者》和看着《超級麥克斯》(Max Headroom)長大，對我這樣一個作家的影響，和對商人是一樣的。”
Techies do not need any encouragement from their employers to read or watch science fiction, long a pillar of geek culture. Throw a rock in Silicon Valley and you are likely to hit a software engineer who can cite how long it took the Millennium Falcon to make the Kessel Run in “Star Wars.” (Less than 12 parsecs, according to Han Solo, whose use of a term for distance — one parsec equals about 3.26 light-years — rather than time has been the subject of entire articles.) The genre has influenced many corners of technology, from smartphones to robotics to space exploration.
科技人士壓根不需要僱主鼓勵他們閱讀科幻小說和看科幻電影，長久以來，他們一直是極客文化的中堅力量。在硅谷，你隨便扔出一塊石子，都有可能砸中一個可以說出《星球大戰》裏的千年隼號(Millennium Falcon)用多長時間跑完克賽爾航程(Kessel Run)的軟件工程師。（據漢·索羅[Han Solo]講，這個時間是不到12秒差距——一秒差距約相當於3.26光年，他使用的是一個描述距離而非時間的詞彙，這個在以前曾是一些文章整篇談論的主題。）科幻題材的作品對各個技術領域都產生了影響，不管是智能手機、機器人，還是太空探索。
But there is something unique about the interplay between science fiction and virtual reality, a technology that is essentially an instrument for fooling people into believing they are someplace — and often someone — they are not. Virtual reality is a medium, like television or video games, that can borrow liberally from the virtual worlds experienced by fictional characters.
但科幻作品與虛擬現實之間的相互影響，卻有一些獨特之處。虛擬現實技術實質上是一種欺騙人的手法，讓人誤以爲自己置身其他某個地方，而且常常具有另一個身份。虛擬現實是一個媒介，就像電視或電子遊戲，可以從虛構人物所處的虛擬世界中任意借用各種元素。
Magic Leap, based in Dania Beach, Fla., and which counts Google as one of its big investors, has gone even further than most companies by hiring three science fiction and fantasy writers on staff. Its most famous sci-fi recruit is Neal Stephenson, who depicted the virtual world of the Metaverse in his seminal 1992 novel “Snow Crash.”
總部在佛羅里達州達尼亞灘的Magic Leap嘗試的舉動，比大多數公司都更進一步，該公司僱傭了三名科幻和幻想作家。這家公司的大型投資者中包括谷歌(Google)。該公司在科幻領域最著名的招聘舉動就是僱下尼爾·斯蒂芬森(Neal Stephenson)，後者在1992年的傑出小說《雪崩》(Snow Crash)中描繪了稱作“超元域”(Metaverse)的虛擬世界。
In an interview, Mr. Stephenson — whose title is chief futurist — declined to say what he was working on at Magic Leap, describing it as one of several “content projects” underway at the company.
在一次採訪中，擔任“首席未來學家”職務的斯蒂芬森拒絕透露他在Magic Leap公司正在做些什麼，只是說那是該公司進行的若干項“內容項目”中的一個。
More broadly, Mr. Stephenson said science fiction books and movies are often useful within tech companies for rallying employees around a shared vision.
斯蒂芬森比較寬泛地說，在科技公司裏，科幻小說和電影常常有助於用一個共同的願景凝聚員工。
“My theory is that science fiction can actually have some value in that it gets everyone on the same page without the kind of expensive and tedious process of PowerPoint,” he said. But the influence of the genre within tech companies is “surprising and mysterious to me as well,” he added.
“我的理論是，科幻小說實際上具有一定價值，因爲它能讓所有人都有一致的理解，而不必採用那種又費錢又枯燥的講很多PPT的過程，”他說。但這種文學題材在科技企業內部的影響力，他補充道，“對我來說也是相當讓人驚訝，相當神祕的。”
There is a regular theme in science fiction that its fans in tech talk less about, though: the dystopian aspects of virtual reality. Addiction, disconnection from relationships in the real world and alienation from the environment are often side effects in narratives about virtual reality. It’s hard to make that into a selling point for the technology.
但是科幻小說中一個時常出現的主題，在科技企業的粉絲當中談論得卻沒有那麼多：虛擬現實技術也有反烏托邦的特性。在關於虛擬現實的論述中，時常談到的副作用有成癮、疏離現實世界中的人際關係、與周遭環境相隔絕。企業很難把這些問題變成相關技術的賣點。
“Entrepreneurs are optimistic and upbeat by nature, which is why I enjoy hanging around with them,” Mr. Stephenson said. “They’ve got an admirable ability to completely ignore the more dystopian elements you’re talking about and see the cool stuff and positive potential of where it might go.”
“創業者天生就是樂觀、向上的，所以我喜歡和他們打交道，”斯蒂芬森說。“他們具有一種讓人羨慕的能力，可以完全忽視你談的這些較爲反烏托邦的元素，看到酷的東西和它未來走向的積極潛力。”
Of course, authors and moviemakers get to overlook details of their own — like the tough technological challenges that real tech companies face.
當然，作者和電影人自己也會忽略一些細節，比如真正的科技企業需要面對的艱鉅的技術挑戰。
“You never have to reboot the damned thing” in sci-fi books, said Genevieve Bell, a cultural anthropologist who works at Intel and has written about the interplay between technology and science fiction. “The mechanics are less interesting to most science fiction writers than the experience.”
在科幻小說裏“永遠都不需要重啓那個破玩意兒，”吉納維芙·貝爾(Genevieve Bell)說。“對多數科幻作家來說，原理機制不如那種體驗有意思。”貝爾是文化人類學家，曾在英特爾(Intel)工作，撰寫過關於科技與科幻相互影響的著作。
Sometimes science fiction plants seeds in the minds of inventors that take years to sprout. The holographic chess game that Chewbacca played on a tabletop aboard the Millennium Falcon was pretty far-out in the 1970s, when Jeri Ellsworth saw it in the original “Star Wars.” It took several decades before technology caught up.
有時候，科幻作品能在發明家頭腦裏植下種子，再經過很多年才能萌芽。1970年代，傑瑞·埃爾斯沃斯(Jeri Ellsworth)看到楚巴卡(Chewbacca)在千年隼號裏的桌子上玩的全息國際象棋，當時還覺得相當超前。過了幾十年後，技術纔跟上。
In 2013, Ms. Ellsworth’s start-up, CastAR, gave the first public demonstration of the company’s augmented reality glasses, which overlay digital imagery on the user’s view of the real world.
在2013年，埃爾斯沃斯的創業公司CastAR首次公開展示了該公司的增強現實眼鏡，它能在用戶看到的現實世界之上覆蓋一層數字圖像。
By now, the experience shown in the demonstration should come as no surprise — the glasses enabled the person wearing them to play a holographic chess game on a tabletop.
現在，展示中提供的體驗應該不會讓人感到驚訝——戴上眼鏡後，佩戴者就可以在桌面上玩全息象棋遊戲了。
“It’s something I’ve been dreaming about my entire life,” Ms. Ellsworth said.
“這是我夢想了一輩子的事情，”埃爾斯沃斯說。
