評論
打印
So, if you have a ham butt problem, and you're thinking about the ham butt problem,
所以如果你知道火腿屁股這事兒，而你又正在考慮這個問題，
the conclusion that it leads you to is inexorable and counterintuitive: paper is the enemy of words.
它引向的結論是決絕又有違直覺的：紙張是文字的敵人。
How can this be? I mean, I love books. I really love books.
怎么可能？我愛書，非常的愛書。
Some of my best friends are books.
我的一些最好的朋友就是書。
But the book is not the best shape for the dictionary.
但是書本并不是字典最好的載體。
Now they're going to think "Oh, boy. People are going to take away my beautiful, paper dictionaries?"
有人會疑惑：“不要吧，人們不是要把優美的紙質字典拿走吧？”
No. There will still be paper dictionaries.
不是。紙質的字典還是會存在的。
When we had cars -- when cars became the dominant mode of transportation,
當我們有了車，當車成了主要的交通工具，
we didn't round up all the horses and shoot them.
就不見得要把所有的馬匹都斃了。
You know, there're still going to be paper dictionaries,
紙質的字典還是會存在的，
but it's not going to be the dominant dictionary.
只是不會再是主要的載體了。
The book-shaped dictionary is not going to be the only shape
書本形式的字典不將是唯一形式的字典，
dictionaries come in. And it's not going to be the prototype for the shapes dictionaries come in.
而且不會是將來字典的原型。
So, think about it this way: if you've got an artificial constraint,
設想一下，如果你有人為的制約，
artificial constraints lead to arbitrary distinctions and a skewed worldview.
這種制約就會引致一個武斷的區分和一個傾斜的世界觀。
What if biologists could only study animals that made people go, "Aww." Right?
如果生物學家只研究人們喜歡的動物，對吧，
What if we made aesthetic judgments about animals,
如果我們以審美角度來判斷動物，
and only the ones we thought were cute were the ones that we could study?
只研究我們覺得可愛的動物，這會怎樣？
We'd know a whole lot about charismatic megafauna, and not very much about much else.
我們就只能了解那些有魅力的大群落，對其它的物種就不太了解了。
And I think this is a problem. I think we should study all the words,
我認為這是一個問題。我們應該研究所有的詞，
because when you think about words, you can make beautiful expressions from very humble parts.
因為使用詞可以創造出美麗的表達，即使是從非常卑下的部分。
