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Not long ago, Larry Page watched the Disney film “Tomorrowland.” He didn’t like it.
不久前，拉里·佩奇(Larry Page)看了迪士尼电影《明日世界》(Tomorrowland)，表示不喜欢。
“The reason I went to the movie is that I was interested in a version of the future that would be positive, because that’s so seldom portrayed in science fiction or movies,” Mr. Page, the co-founder of Google and the chief executive of its parent company, Alphabet, told shareholders in June. But while Mr. Page is an optimist’s optimist, like many critics he thought “Tomorrowland” failed because of the very way it flirted with utopia. “I came away from that and said, ‘It’s not a very good story, because it’s not dark,’ ” he shrugged.
佩奇是谷歌的联合创始人，也是其母公司Alphabet的首席执行官，今年6月他对股东说：“我看这部电影是因为科幻小说或电影很少描述乐观的未来世界，所以我对它怎么描绘乐观未来很感兴趣。”但是，尽管佩奇是乐观主义者中的乐观主义者，他也像许多批评者一样，认为乌托邦情调是《明日世界》的败笔。“看完后，我觉得‘这不是一个好故事，因为它不黑暗，’”他耸耸肩说。
Mr. Page hit on a central problem with attempts to imagine the future in the positive way that many in Silicon Valley see it: A perfect future makes for a dull story. So how do you dramatize the sunny possibilities of technology in a way that would ring true for a tech founder, but that also doesn’t bore the rest of us?
在想象未来时，硅谷有很多人都抱有乐观积极的心态，但佩奇这番话指出了它的一个核心问题：一个完美的未来会让故事变得平淡无奇。那么，你要如何对这种阳光明媚的可能性进行戏剧化，既让科技公司创始人感到真实，又不会让其他人觉得无聊呢？
I’d urge Mr. Page to watch “Steve Jobs,” the director Danny Boyle’s new biopic about the late Apple impresario. The film, which stars Michael Fassbender as Mr. Jobs, is nominally a story about a tech visionary who is unpleasant to just about everyone around him. Yet surprisingly, “Steve Jobs” ends up presenting Mr. Jobs in a positive light, partly because it accepts that his products did change the world for the better, in just the ways he’d promised they would.
我建议佩奇看看《史蒂夫·乔布斯》(Steve Jobs)，导演丹尼·博伊尔(Danny Boyle)为已故苹果掌门人新拍的传记片，由迈克尔·法斯宾德(Michael Fassbender)扮演乔布斯。表面上，这部电影讲述了一个有远见的科技领袖的故事，周围的人都觉得他很难相处。然而奇怪的是，《史蒂夫·乔布斯》最终以正面的视角呈现了乔布斯，部分上是因为这部电影承认，乔布斯的产品确实让世界变得更美好，就像他自己的承诺那样。
“Steve Jobs” will be seen by many as an attack on Mr. Jobs — his family and his former colleagues have harshly criticized it — but that is just half the story. The film ultimately suggests that the deeply unpleasant behavior of people in the tech industry may be worth putting up with because of what they sometimes manage to create, often in spite of themselves. It is one of the few pop cultural depictions of the tech industry to buy into Silicon Valley’s essential worldview: an aggressive optimism that is willing to roll over just about everything and everyone in its path in the service of what it sees as the more important goal of building tomorrow.
很多人将把《史蒂夫·乔布斯》视为对乔布斯的攻击，他的家人和前同事已经严厉批评了这部电影，但这只是故事的一半。这部电影最终表明，高科技从业者那些让人极为不快的行为可能是值得忍受的，因为他们自己虽然不讨人喜欢，他们创造出来的东西却很出色。在流行文化对高科技产业的描绘中，只有极少数像这部电影一样，认同了硅谷的基本世界观：一种强势的乐观主义，朝着建设未来的目标前进，掀翻路上一切阻挡它的事物与人，因为它认为它的目标更加重要。
The film, which opens in limited release this weekend and more widely on Oct. 23, is the most sophisticated take yet in a growing body of movies, TV shows, novels and other cultural takes on Silicon Valley. Based on a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin that is loosely adapted from Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of Mr. Jobs, this is the third major film about the Apple co-founder. There was also “Jobs,” the 2013 movie starring Ashton Kutcher, and, this year, “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine,” the documentarian Alex Gibney’s critical take on Mr. Jobs.
这部电影将于本周末在有限范围内公映，将在10月23日进行更为广泛的公映。有关硅谷的电影、电视剧、小说及其他文化作品中在不断涌现，而该片是其中最成熟的一部。影片以艾伦·索尔金(Aaron Sorkin)的剧本为基础，是第三部有关这位苹果联合创始人的电影。索尔金的剧本大略参照了沃尔特·艾萨克森(Walter Isaacson)那部得到乔布斯授权的传记。阿什顿·库彻(Ashton Kutcher)2013年出演了电影《乔布斯》(Jobs)。今年，纪录片导演亚历克斯·吉布尼(Alex Gibney)执导了批判乔布斯的纪录片《史蒂夫·乔布斯：机器人生》(Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine)。
Beyond Apple, there’s “Silicon Valley,” the HBO comedy about the travails of a start-up, and “Halt and Catch Fire,” the AMC drama about the brutal personal computer business of the 1980s. Then there was “The Social Network,” the 2010 film about the history of Facebook, which Mr. Sorkin also wrote. Even stories not nominally about the industry feature cameos by tech billionaires, who have become easy stand-ins for the powerful forces unleashed by technology — see “Book of Numbers,” the recent acclaimed novel by Joshua Cohen, or the Google-like founder who’s the chief villain in the film “Ex Machina.”
除了苹果公司，HBO喜剧《硅谷》(Silicon Valley)还讲述了一家初创公司的艰辛之路，AMC电视剧《奔腾年代》(Halt and Catch Fire)呈现了20世纪80年代蓬勃发展的个人电脑产业。然后还有2010年上映的讲述Facebook历史的《社交网络》(The Social Network)，电影剧本也来自索尔金。甚至名义上与该行业无关的故事中也会出现科技业出身的亿万富翁这样的配角，他们已经成为科技释放的强大力量的简单替身——比如乔舒亚·科恩(Joshua Cohen)最近推出的广受好评的小说《数字》(Book of Numbers)，或者《机械姬》(Ex Machina)里的大反派——一个谷歌式企业的创始人。
It’s easy to explain the bumper crop of pop-cultural takes on the tech industry. Like finance in the 1980s, technology has lately become not just a source of widespread economic angst, but one of social and cultural angst. And a small class of tech founders have become the most powerful figures of our time. Techies are the “New Establishment,” as Vanity Fair calls them. The magazine even hosts an annual conference devoted to the emerging group of titans who seem certain to one day preside over every aspect of how we buy, watch, read, chat, eat, sleep, dream — if they don’t already.
取材自科技行业的流行文化作品的盛行并不难解释。就像80年代的金融业一样，科技业近来不仅引发了广泛的经济担忧，还激起了社会文化方面的焦虑。一小群科技创始人成了我们这个时代最有影响力的人物。正如《名利场》杂志(Vanity Fair)所说，科技宅是当今的“新贵”。该杂志甚至还主办年度会议，专门讨论这帮新出现的巨头。即使现在没做到，这些人似乎也肯定会在将来某一天主导我们购物、观影、阅读、聊天、吃饭、睡觉、做梦的方方面面。
And if the recent movies and TV shows about the tech industry are anywhere near accurate, we are all in for a heap of trouble. The tech founders who will rule our future are shown as hapless and comically myopic, inspired either by a desire for world domination or by petty efforts to relieve their social anxieties.
如果近期有关科技业的影视作品哪怕有那么一点接近真相，我们所有人都在劫难逃。在这些作品里，将会支配我们未来的那些科技业创始人既可悲，又短视得可笑。激励他们的不是主宰世界的欲望，就是为缓解社会焦虑而做出的可怜之举。
What is unusual about “Steve Jobs” is its search for a more authentic motivation for the villainies that we associate with tech billionaires like the Apple founder. “Steve Jobs” is not very kind to Steve Jobs. He is presented as a man who spent years denying paternity of his daughter and who later only grudgingly paid for her support. At every turn, he treats employees and colleagues as expendable cogs in his corporate game, often without understanding the damage he inflicts on those around him.
《史蒂夫·乔布斯》的不同之处在于，它试图为苹果公司创始人这样的科技业巨富身上的恶行寻找更真实的动机。影片本身并未恭维史蒂夫·乔布斯。他被刻画成了一个多年不认自己的女儿、后来也只是勉强支付抚养费的人。每时每刻，他对待员工和同事就像是自己商业游戏里无足轻重的蝼蚁，常常意识到不到给身边的人造成的伤害。
Yet unlike many across the business world, the Steve Jobs in this film is not motivated mainly by ego and greed. Instead, what really gets him going is an insatiable desire to “put a dent in the universe,” as Mr. Jobs often put it. Silicon Valley’s insistence on changing the world is usually pilloried in the news media. But here, Mr. Jobs’s mission is accorded respect — and his behavior, the film implies, can be ultimately tolerated because of what he built.
但不同于商界的很多人，这部影片中激励史蒂夫·乔布斯的，主要不是自负和贪婪。就像乔布斯本人经常说的那样，真正让他不断向前的，是“在宇宙中留下印记”的强烈愿望。在新闻媒体上，硅谷对改变世界的执着常常会受到抨击。但在这部电影里，乔布斯的使命受到了尊重，而且按照片子的意思，正是因为打造出来的产品，他的行为最终可以被容忍。
Part of the film’s success in this regard rests on Mr. Sorkin’s decision to set the story on the development of the personal computer, a technology whose eventual importance is no longer a matter of dispute. Mr. Jobs’s other great product, the touch-screen smartphone, may one day prove more thoroughly world-changing, but at the moment, it raises almost as many fears as it does hopes, and the film wisely stays away from it.
在这一点上，影片的成功部分在于索尔金决定根据个人电脑的发展来讲述整个故事。这项技术最终的重要性已毋庸置疑。或许有一天，乔布斯另一款伟大的产品——触屏智能手机——会证明更彻底地改变了世界，但目前，它引发的忧虑和激起的希望不相上下。影片明智地避开了它。
The personal computer, though — who could argue that it hasn’t proved groundbreaking? To show Mr. Jobs’s ability to see the future, Mr. Sorkin quotes Mr. Jobs’s best argument for the personal computer almost word for word. Humanity’s greatest strength, Mr. Jobs once noted, is that we’re tool builders. A condor is the most mechanically efficient animal on the planet, but a human being on a bicycle blows the condor away.
但就个人电脑而言，谁能说它还没证明具有开天辟地的意义？为了表现乔布斯预见未来的能力，索尔金几乎一字不差地引用了乔布斯为支持个人电脑给出的最有力的理由。乔布斯曾指出，人类最厉害的地方是能发明工具。从机械的角度来说，秃鹰是地球上效率最高的动物，但骑上自行车后人便能把秃鹰甩在身后。
“What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with,” Mr. Jobs said. “It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”
“在我看来，电脑是我们发明出来的最非凡的工具，”乔布斯说。“它相当于我们大脑的自行车。”
The ultimate importance of the personal computer hangs over every conflict in the film. When Mr. Jobs harangues his staff, when he puts the company ahead of his supposed friends, when he shows little regard for his family in the service of building what’s next, he implicitly holds an ace card with the audience who knows how things eventually turned out. Sure, he may have been terrible to be around, but in the end, wasn’t he right about the importance of that dent in the universe? And if he hadn’t been as obnoxious about his aims, would the dent have been as large?
影片中，个人电脑的终极重要性弥漫在每一场冲突中。每当乔布斯滔滔不绝地教训员工、把公司置于本该是朋友的人之上、或是为了打造接下来的新产品而几乎无暇顾及家庭时，他手里隐隐握着观众这张王牌，因为我们知道事情的最终结果。当然，他大概是对身边的人不好吧，但到最后，他对宇宙中那道印记的重要性的认知难道有什么不对吗？况且，如果他对自己的目标没有执着到令人生厌的地步，那道印记还会这么大吗？
During an argument late in the movie, Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder, who, like everyone else, often clashed with Mr. Jobs, tells him: “Your products are better than you are, brother.”
在影片快结束时的一场争吵戏中，苹果联合创始人史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克(Steve Wozniak)对乔布斯说：“老兄，你的产品比你本人好。”和其他所有人一样，沃兹尼亚克常和乔布斯起冲突。
“That’s the idea,” Mr. Jobs responds. The tech industry may be peopled with many petty, ruthless, self-important weirdos. But look at the products, not the people. In the future, only the products will matter.
“正是我想要的，”乔布斯回答。科技业可能是有很多心胸狭隘、冷酷无情、妄自尊大的怪胎。但要看产品，而不是看人。将来，重要的也只有产品本身。
