CHAPTER FOUR

第四章

ATARI AND INDIA

雅達利與印度

Zen and the Art of Game Design

禪宗與游戲設計藝術

Atari

雅達利

In February 1974, after eighteen months of hanging around Reed, Jobs decided to move back to his parents’ home in Los Altos and look for a job. It was not a difficult search. At peak times during the 1970s, the classified section of the San Jose Mercury carried up to sixty pages of technology help-wanted ads. One of those caught Jobs’s eye. “Have fun, make money,” it said. That day Jobs walked into the lobby of the video game manufacturer Atari and told the personnel director, who was startled by his unkempt hair and attire, that he wouldn’t leave until they gave him a job.

1974年2月，在里德學院晃蕩了18個月之后，喬布斯決定搬回父母在洛斯阿爾托斯的住處，然后找一份工作。這并不是什么難事。20世紀70年代，《圣何塞水星報》（SanJoseMercury）的分類廣告版面上，科技類的招工廣告最多時曾達到60頁。其中的一則廣告吸引了喬布斯的目光。“在享樂中賺錢”，廣告語是這么說的。那一天，喬布斯走進了游戲制造商雅達利公司（Atari）的大廳，對著被他不修邊幅的發型和裝扮嚇了一跳的人事主管說，得不到一份工作他是不會離開的。

Atari’s founder was a burly entrepreneur named Nolan Bushnell, who was a charismatic visionary with a nice touch of showmanship in him—in other words, another role model waiting to be emulated. After he became famous, he liked driving around in a Rolls, smoking dope, and holding staff meetings in a hot tub. As Friedland had done and as Jobs would learn to do, he was able to turn charm into a cunning force, to cajole and intimidate and distort reality with the power of his personality. His chief engineer was Al Alcorn, beefy and jovial and a bit more grounded, the house grown-up trying to implement the vision and curb the enthusiasms of Bushnell. Their big hit thus far was a video game called Pong, in which two players tried to volley a blip on a screen with two movable lines that acted as paddles. (If you’re under thirty, ask your parents.)

雅達利當時是非常熱門的公司。它的創始人是髙大健壯的企業家諾蘭·布什內爾（NolanBushnell），此人是個充滿魅力、能說會道的夢想家——換句話說，又一個時代偶像。成名之后，他喜歡開著勞斯萊斯四處轉悠，吸食毒品，在浴缸里開員工會議。他有一項能力——是弗里德蘭也具有的、喬布斯日后也學會了的——就是將個人魅力轉化為說服力，通過個性的力量進行勸誘、脅迫以及扭曲事實。他手下的首席工程師叫做阿爾·奧爾康（AlAlcom），一個健壯、快樂又很理性的人。他就像個家長一樣，一方面要幫助布什內爾實現他的夢想，另一方面又要控制住他的狂熱。1972年，布什內爾指派奧爾康研發一款視頻游戲《乒乓》（Pong）的街機版。游戲中兩名玩家分別操縱屏幕上兩根移動的光標充當球拍，攔截充當乒乓球的小光點（如果你不到40歲，問問你的父母）。利用500美元的投資，奧爾康做出了一臺游戲主機，然后將它安裝在了森尼韋爾國王大道的一家酒吧里。幾天之后，布什內爾接到電話說機器壞了。他派奧爾康去查看，發現問題出在游戲機被硬幣塞滿了，再也塞不進去了。他們靠這個狼賺了一筆。

When Jobs arrived in the Atari lobby wearing sandals and demanding a job, Alcorn was the one who was summoned. “I was told, ‘We’ve got a hippie kid in the lobby. He says he’s not going to leave until we hire him. Should we call the cops or let him in?’ I said bring him on in!”

當喬布斯穿著涼鞋來到雅達利公司要求工作時，有人通知了奧爾康。“我被告知：‘有個嬉皮士小子在大廳里，他說我們不雇他他就不走。我們該打電話報警還是讓他進來？’我說，快帶他進來！”

Jobs thus became one of the first fifty employees at Atari, working as a technician for $5 an hour. “In retrospect, it was weird to hire a dropout from Reed,” Alcorn recalled. “But I saw something in him. He was very intelligent, enthusiastic, excited about tech.” Alcorn assigned him to work with a straitlaced engineer named Don Lang. The next day Lang complained, “This guy’s a goddamn hippie with b.o. Why did you do this to me? And he’s impossible to deal with.” Jobs clung to the belief that his fruit-heavy vegetarian diet would prevent not just mucus but also body odor, even if he didn’t use deodorant or shower regularly. It was a flawed theory.

喬布斯由此成為了雅達利公司第一批50名員工之一，職位是技術員，薪水每小時5美元。“現在想想，雇用一名里德學院的輟學生真有點兒不可思議，”奧爾康說，“但我在他身上看到了一些東西。他非常聰明，富有激情，對技術狂熱。”奧爾康讓喬布斯與一個叫唐·朗（DonLang）的工程師一起工作，此人的思想極其保守。第二天朗就開始抱怨了：“這家伙是個該死的有體臭的嬉皮士。你為什么要這么對我？還有，我裉本沒法兒跟他相處。”喬布斯堅信，他以水果為主的素食習慣不僅會消除黏液，也會去除他的體味，就算他不用香體劑，也不常常洗澡。這是個錯誤的理論。

Lang and others wanted to let Jobs go, but Bushnell worked out a solution. “The smell and behavior wasn’t an issue with me,” he said. “Steve was prickly, but I kind of liked him. So I asked him to go on the night shift. It was a way to save him.” Jobs would come in after Lang and others had left and work through most of the night. Even thus isolated, he became known for his brashness. On those occasions when he happened to interact with others, he was prone to informing them that they were “dumb shits.” In retrospect, he stands by that judgment. “The only reason I shone was that everyone else was so bad,” Jobs recalled.

朗和其他人想趕走喬布斯，但布什內爾想出了一個解決方案。“他的體味和行為舉止對我來說并不是問題，”他說，“史蒂夫是很麻煩，但我挺喜歡他。所以我讓他上夜班。這樣就可以把他留下了。”喬布斯會在朗和其他人下班之后過來上班，工作一整晚。即便已經隔絕到如此地步，他還是因為自己的魯莽無禮出了名。在一些碰巧跟人交流的場合，他會肆無忌憚地稱別人為“蠢貨”。現在回想起來，他依然堅持自己的評判。“我那么耀眼的唯一原因就是，其他人都太糟糕了。”喬布斯回憶說。

Despite his arrogance (or perhaps because of it) he was able to charm Atari’s boss. “He was more philosophical than the other people I worked with,” Bushnell recalled. “We used to discuss free will versus determinism. I tended to believe that things were much more determined, that we were programmed. If we had perfect information, we could predict people’s actions. Steve felt the opposite.” That outlook accorded with his faith in the power of the will to bend reality.

盡管他很傲慢——或者正是因為他的傲慢——他獲得了雅達利公司老板的青睞。“他比其他與我共事過的人更加有哲學氣質，”布什內爾回憶道，“我們曾經討論過自由意志和宿命論的比較。我傾向于認為事情都是命中注定的，我們的人生都是被規劃好的。如果有足夠的信息的話，我們可以預知一個人的行動。史蒂夫的觀點與我正相反。”這一觀點與他“意志的力量可以改變現實”的信念是一致的。