集体智慧

The world is rich with languages and cultures, and because of this some contemporary thinkers doubt the possibility of any genuine collaboration in pursuit of truth. Humans are portrayed as irrational captives to their background and identity, unable to be objective. I do not share this view.
这个世界拥有丰富的语言和文化，因此，是否会出现真正的，追求真理的合作呢？当代的思想家们对此表示怀疑。在他们眼中，人类缺乏理性，无法客观地看待这个世界以及他们自己。对此，本人不敢苟同。

Seven years ago, I founded Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia in which any reasonable person can join us in writing and editing entries on any encyclopedic topic. We are a charitable humanitarian effort to create and distribute a free high-quality encyclopedia to every single person on the planet. Already, we are the biggest, fastest-growing, and most popular general reference work in the world. Wikipedia attracts 683m visitors annually, with more than 10m articles in over 150 languages.
七年前，我创建了维基百科，任何人都可以平等的参与编写这部在线百科全书，并编辑它的任意条目。我们以仁慈与博爱之心，免费的为这个星球上的每个人分发高质量的百科全书。很久以来，我们就为这个世界提供最大的，成长最快的以及最受欢迎的参考文献服务。

Today, there are around one billion people online. In the next five to 10 years, the next billion people will be joining the great global conversation by coming online to participate in blogs, mailing lists and, of course, Wikipedia itself. If we look beyond the languages of Europe plus Chinese and Japanese, most Wikipedia projects are small but fast growing. Where the German Wikipedia is today, with more than a half million articles, the Hindi and Swahili editions of Wikipedia will be in just a few short years.
时至今日，大约十亿在线用户。在下一个五到十年里，通过博客，邮件列表，当然，还有维基，又将有数以十亿计的用户加入这个伟大的全球性交流平台。我们还可以看到其他语种比如欧洲语言、中文和日语的维基百科版本，它们大多项目虽小，但成长迅速。目前德语版本的维基百科大约有五十万个词条，而印地语和斯瓦希里语版本的维基将会在几年内建立。

If we were to take seriously the ideas of those who view all human activity through a lens of irrationalism and conflict, we would imagine that all of this would be impossible. But my experiences with Wikipedia have given me great optimism – optimism grounded in direct observation of the facts of reality – that the vast majority of people around the world are comfortable with the idea of working hard to present facts objectively.
非理性的偏见和冲突，有些人带着这样的有色眼镜去观察所有的人，如果把这些人的想法当真，那么我们会认为上文所讲述的所有这一切都是不可能的。但是，我在维基百科的经验给了我极大的鼓舞——乐观之处在于直接观察现实的细节——世界上绝大多数人都乐于把这个想法化为客观的事实。

From Bangkok to Bogota, people can exchange ideas and share experiences. To the extent that we are thoughtful and reflective, we can learn from the best among us. To the extent that we are committed to reason and the non-initiation of force as fundamental organising principles for a free world, we can come together to create values that would be impossible for people dedicated to eternal class or ethnic conflict.
从曼谷到波哥大，人们可以交流思想，并分享他们的经验。在这样一个广大的区域里，我们深思熟虑，并相互反馈，可以向最好的人学习。在这个地方，为了建立一个自由世界，我们承诺用理智和非暴力作为基本的组织原则，我们可以携手创造价值，而不必在意那些永恒的阶级和种族冲突。

Some are concerned about the erosion of local culture in the face of a world of hyper-connectivity. But the evidence so far suggests that people everywhere are rational enough for this to take place when it is a good thing, and to not take place when it is a bad thing. As people become more educated, more in tune with the idea that knowledge is a good thing, they tend to throw out the worst elements of their culture (such as rights violations and ignorant prejudice) and preserve that which has genuine value (such as science and art).
通过超链接，当人们面对外面的世界时，有些人担心此举将会侵蚀本地的文化。但到目前为止，一些迹象表明各地的人们有足够的能力区分什么是好的事物，什么是坏的，他们对于好坏会有正确的取舍。由于人们接受了良好的教育，很多人认可知识是好东西，他们倾向于抛弃那些当地文化中的糟粕（例如侵犯人权和愚昧的偏见），并保留那些真正的精华（例如科学和艺术）。

I believe we are already beginning to see the fruits of this change worldwide. China has been widely, and properly, criticised for their extensive censorship of the internet, but it is not the criticism that is causing them to begin to dismantle that censorship. It is rather, I believe and hope, a growing understanding and appreciation for the power of a culture of communication both for prosperity, but also for the valid preservation of what is valuable in local culture.
我相信，我们正在见证全世界的变革。由于大范围的互联网信息审查制度，中国遭到广泛的批评，但批评之声无法拆除互联网铁幕。与之相反的是，我坚信，并且希望，为促进共同繁荣而生的交流文化可以推动双方的理解和信任，并可以保护那些本土文化的精华。

In an effort to begin to resolve the long-standing Tibetan problem, China has recently committed, in partnership with the Louise T Blouin Foundation, $70m to Tibetan cultural preservation. In my view, this reflects a preliminary but increasing understanding on the part of the Chinese leadership that free expression, particularly of the type fostered by projects such as Wikipedia with a kind focus on a loving effort to share knowledge, will lead to a stronger China. I hope that they will soon recognise the right of the Chinese-speaking people to assist in explaining China to the world by ending their ban on participation in Wikipedia.
为了解决长期悬而未决的西藏问题，中国方面最近承诺将与Louise T Blouin基金会建立伙伴关系，提供七千万美元用于西藏文化的保护。在我看来，这反映出一部分中国领导人开始初步的，但是越来越强烈的对自由表达表示认同，特别是一些培养计划，例如维基百科这样以善意的共享知识为目的，将引导中国走向强大。我将乐于看到他们取消对人们参与维基百科的禁令，让中国人自由的向全世界宣传其成就。

Wikipedia is booming in the languages of the developing world. People are writing in their own languages. This is the opposite of the monolithic culture which would have been the product of a top-down broadcast-oriented media. One important fact about participatory media is that people will participate in their own ways, expressing and preserving the best things that they care about.
在发展中国家，维基百科增长迅速。人们用自己的语言书写。与自上而下的传统广播媒体不同，这种方式是与单一文化截然相反的。一个重要的事实是，人们将用自己独有的方式参与其中，留意并保护那些他们所关心的，最好的事物。

I advocate for the value of a universal encyclopedia which is accessible to everyone and which rationally puts forward the basic facts about various arguments and controversies in such a manner that newcomers to an issue can understand what the disagreement is about. Don't tell me what to think, don't feed me one side of the story; give me actual facts and I will think for myself to decide. And I respect you as a human being enough to return the favour.
我主张一种普遍的价值，百科全书应为每一个人所用，当遇到不同观点的争论时，应当理性的提出有关争议的基本事实，并且争论应当遵循这样一种方式——当遇到争议时，讨论的内容应该让每一个新来者都可以理解。不要告诉我应当思考什么，不要把片面的言论灌输给我，给我真正的事实，我会自己思考并作出判断。对于你的赐予，我的尊重就是最好的报答。

Wikipedia tends to be written by people who are significantly more educated than average, by people who are passionate about ideas, about getting it right. This is a good thing. Because thinking is not automatic, the avoidance of bias is not automatic. A ruthless precision in thinking is a great virtue in the project. And you have to bring that kind of precision because, unlike the comfortable writers of a classic top-down encyclopedia, you are likely to be contacted and challenged if you have made a flawed argument or based your conclusion on faulty premises. Such is the virtue of the marketplace of ideas.
相比一般的普罗大众，那些受过良好教育的人，善于思考的人以及求知欲望强烈的人更钟情于维基百科，这是一件好事情。因为思考并不是天生的，避免偏见也不是天生的。精确严密的思考是这个项目的一大优点。精确的思维是必须的，因为不同于那些舒适的，撰写自顶向下分发的百科全书作者，如果你提出了一个有缺陷的论据，或是把你的结论建立在错误的前提基础上，那么你很有可能遭遇挑战。这就是交流思想的好处。

On any Wikipedia entry, if you wonder who wrote it and why, you can click on the history tab and see every change made to the article and who made that change. You can visit that person's user page and ask them a question. You can, for the first time, directly engage in the validation of the work before you. Or, just as we are normally too busy to attend jury trials, you can take comfort in the fact that there is a process, a system, a genuine social design behind the project which seeks to empower and preserve the possibility of improvement when there is an error.
对于任意的维基百科条目，如果你想知道谁撰写了它，以及为什么撰写它，可以点击历史标签，从这里可以看到这篇文章的每一个更正，以及是谁更正了它。你可以访问那些人的用户页面，并向他们请教问题。你也可以参与审核在你之前的工作，或者，正如你通常无暇参与陪审团的审讯，你不会为这个系统担心，当出现错误时，这个支持集体设计的项目最大限度的为寻找和更正那些错误提供了可能。

The overall lesson of Wikipedia is one of great humanitarian opportunity and hope. Tyrants and politicians have traditionally divided us and pushed us into war. People have been enslaved and abused in countless horrific ways. Ignorance and poverty, which go hand in hand with totalitarianism and control, continue to be widespread. And yet it turns out that as we have given a voice to millions of people with a mission to build "the sum of all human knowledge", nearly all of them are able to do so with kindness, compassion, and thoughtfulness.
维基百科的所有课程为每个人提供了伟大的，平等的机会，也为他们带来了希望。暴君和政治家们一直在企图分裂人民，并把人民推向战争。用无数残酷的方式被用于对付人民，人民被奴役和虐待。极权和专制总是与愚昧和贫穷一路相伴，贻害四方。尽管现在被拒之门外，百千万人以发出呼声，我们的任务是建立“所有人类的知识总和”，他们几乎所有的人都有能力这样做，籍由仁慈、同情以及体贴之心。

Genuine collaboration is possible, and comes natural to us. Aristotle defined man as "the rational animal" and he was right. And when we set out in a spirit of genuine inquiry and respect for humanity, we can achieve great things. Each of us, coming to a project like Wikipedia for our own reasons, can help to build something that, I think, shows the promise of the future, our dreams of peace, to be within reach.
真正的合作是有可能的，这是我们的天性。亚里士多德把人类定义为“理性动物”，他是对的。当发自内心去探索，对他人致以敬意，我们应当可以作出伟大的功业。我们中的每一个人，因为自己的原因，来到像维基百科这样的一个平台，为某项事业添砖加瓦，我想，这说明，未来的希望，以及我们和平的梦想，均来自我们的内心。

Jimmy Wales will be speaking at Technology of Tomorrow 08 on September 30 2008 at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
2008年9月30日，伦敦，Technology of Tomorrow 08大会上作者的演讲稿。