You can easily trade all your dumb stuff for smart things. Smart is now becoming the new normal. You don’t even have to seek it out. Wait long enough and the upgrades will come to you — in your home, your work, your city — if they haven’t already.

您可以同时轻松地交易所有愚蠢的东西智能的东西。 智能现在正成为新常态。 您甚至不必寻找它。 等待足够长的时间，如果升级尚未完成，升级将在您的家中，您的工作中，您的城市中出现。

Smart umbrellas light up to alert you that rain is in the forecast. Smart vehicles take over the drudgery of driving during rush hour. Smart, virtual assistants obey your every command, learn your preferences and routines, and automatically adjust accordingly. Think of a thing — whether it is a comb or city — and there is almost certainly a smart version of it available, if not multiple versions to choose from. It’s not always clear why things are made smart, but that hasn’t stopped the spread of smartness through society. Often it seems silly and unnecessary, if not annoying or creepy. But no thing, no space, is safe from smartification.

智能雨伞亮起以提醒您雨I N的预测。 在高峰时段，智能汽车接管了繁重的驾驶工作。 聪明，虚拟的助手会听从您的每条命令，了解您的偏好和例程，并自动进行相应调整。 想一想-无论是梳子还是城市-几乎可以肯定有一个智能版本，即使没有多个版本可供选择。 为何事物变得聪明并不总是很清楚，但这并没有阻止智慧在社会中的传播。 如果不是令人讨厌或令人毛骨悚然的话，这似乎常常很愚蠢和不必要。 但是，没有东西，没有空间，是无法安全进行智能化的。

Besides signaling “high tech” or “new and improved,” what does it actually mean for something to be smart? The label is now applied haphazardly, so definitions are not always clear and consistent. But a good, simple definition, which works well for our purposes, is that “smart” means a thing is embedded with digital technology for data collection, network connectivity, and enhanced control.

除了发出“高科技”或“新的和改进的”信号，对某些事物来说，智能意味着什么？ 现在可以随意使用标签，因此定义并不总是清晰和一致的。 但是，一个很好的，简单的定义(对于我们的目的非常有用)是：“智能”表示某物已嵌入数字技术中，以进行数据收集，网络连接和增强的控制。

Take, for instance, a smart toothbrush, which uses sensors to record when, how long, and how well you brush your teeth. Since it is Bluetooth enabled and software embedded, the smart toothbrush sends that brushing data to cloud servers owned by the manufacturer or a third party. You and your dentist can then access the data via an app, which provides “the user with real time brushing guidance and performance monitoring” that scores your daily dental hygiene, as one smart toothbrush on the market proclaims.

例如，一个智能牙刷，它使用传感器记录何时，多长时间以及刷牙的程度。 由于启用了蓝牙并嵌入了软件，因此智能牙刷会将刷牙数据发送到制造商或第三方拥有的云服务器。 然后，您和您的牙医就可以通过一个应用程序访问数据，该应用程序可以为“用户提供实时刷牙指导和性能监控”，从而为您的日常牙齿卫生打分，正如市场上一款智能牙刷所宣称的那样。

Depending on your dental insurance plan, your hygiene scores could also directly impact your monthly premiums. Good brushers get discounts, while bad brushers are punished. An honest tagline might read, “With a smart toothbrush, we know what happens in your mouth!” These “enchanted objects,” as an entrepreneur with the MIT Media Lab calls them, “will respond to our needs, come to know us, and even learn to think ahead on our behalf.” While the wonders of smart tech might feel like magical enchantments that enable us to cast digital spells, I intend to dispel any notions that we inhabit the charmed castle of Fantasia. If anything, it’s more like the witchy world of Sabrina, where every spell comes at a cost and unintended consequences abound.

根据您的牙科保险计划，您的卫生评分也会直接影响您的每月保费。 好的刷牙者可享受折扣，而坏的刷牙者则受到惩罚。 诚实的标语可能是：“使用智能牙刷，我们知道您的口腔会发生什么！” 麻省理工学院媒体实验室的企业家称这些“附魔对象”为“将满足我们的需求，结识我们，甚至学会代表我们思考。” 尽管智能技术的奇迹听起来像是神奇的附魔，使我们能够投射数字咒语，但我打算消除关于我们居住在迷人的幻想曲城堡中的任何观念。 如果有的话，它更像是萨布丽娜的巫婆世界，那里的每一个咒语都是以代价为代价的，意想不到的后果比比皆是。

The modest conveniences provided by smart tech are what we get in exchange for not asking too many questions about why our lives are now filled with data-collecting, internet-connected machines: Why is everything getting smart now? What else is going on behind the scenes? Who is really benefiting?

智能技术所提供的适度便利是我们获得的回报，因为他们没有问太多问题，为什么现在我们的生活充满了数据收集，互联网连接的机器：为什么现在一切都变得智能了？ 幕后还有什么？ 谁真正在受益？

The occasional scandal — when a company is caught creepily tracking people or its databases are hacked — is enough to focus our collective scorn on a specific issue, but it’s usually not enough to spur deeper critical inquiry. The disgraced company will issue a mea culpa and all is forgiven — if not explicitly, then effectively when we forget about the trespass or just get used to offending events. And it’s back to business as usual. We are expected to continue buying, using, and upgrading according to schedule.

偶尔的丑闻(当公司被抓到令人毛骨悚然地跟踪人员或数据库遭到黑客入侵时)足以使我们的集体嘲笑集中于一个特定的问题，但这通常不足以刺激更深入的关键询问。 这家名不见经传的公司将签发“小计”，一切都可以原谅。 它又恢复了正常运作。 我们预计将继续按计划购买，使用和升级。

Smart tech is sold as the inevitable next generation of technology. You may choose not to proactively upgrade, but eventually that choice will be made for you. Whereas smart used to be the premium option, it’s now becoming the standard as things are integrated with sensors, computers, and Wi-Fi connections by default. This is more than just the “feature creep” we now expect with new gadgets, wherein more buttons and settings are crammed into the same appliance. The rapid rise of smart tech is not just the result of consumers demanding smarter things, smarter homes, and smarter cities.

智能技术是不可避免的下一代技术。 您可以选择不主动升级，但最终将为您做出选择。 尽管智能曾经是高级选项，但由于默认情况下将其与传感器，计算机和Wi-Fi连接集成在一起，因此它已成为标准。 这不仅仅是我们现在对新小工具的期望，其中更多的按钮和设置被塞在同一设备中。 智能技术的Swift崛起不仅是消费者需要更智能的事物，更智能的房屋和更智能的城市的结果。

Rather, the interests of corporations and governments hold vastly more influence than consumer choice over how or why certain technologies are made and used. Making things smart is big business: projections for the market value of the smart city sector alone — not including homes, offices, and consumer goods — hover around $1 trillion by 2020. While some market research firms are bullish — Frost & Sullivan projects the smart city’s value at $1.56 trillion — even the conservative forecasts tend to be north of $500 billion. The research firm Gartner predicts that the number of “connected things” in use worldwide will continue to grow exponentially, from 8.3 billion in 2017 to 20.4 billion in 2020. Media coverage of smart tech tends to be trapped between breathless excitement about cool gadgets and vague concerns about privacy and cybersecurity.

相反，在如何制造和使用某些技术以及为什么使用某些技术方面，与消费者的选择相比，公司和政府的利益拥有更大的影响力。 使事物变得智能是一项大生意：仅对智能城市领域的市场价值(不包括房屋，办公室和消费品)的预测到2020年就将徘徊在1万亿美元左右。尽管一些市场研究公司看涨，但Frost＆Sullivan预测智能城市纽约市的价值为1.56万亿美元，即使保守的预测也往往超过5000亿美元。 研究公司Gartner预测，全球使用的“互联事物”的数量将继续以指数级增长，从2017年的83亿增长到2020年的204亿。智能技术的媒体报道往往被困在对酷炫小玩意的兴奋和模糊之间对隐私和网络安全的担忧。

To be sure, smart tech can be pretty awesome and privacy issues are important. But the impacts of smart tech are much too significant and comprehensive to warrant such clichéd takes. A passive, shallow stance toward smart tech and its creators is a grave mistake. Smart tech is shaping up to be more than just a trend. It has become a pervasive, powerful presence in our lives and society. Thus it is marked as a technological paradigm in urgent need of critical analysis. We would be remiss to treat it as anything less.

可以肯定的是，智能技术非常棒，隐私问题也很重要。 但是，智能技术的影响太大而又太全面，以至于无法保证如此陈词滥调。 对智能技术及其创造者的被动，浅淡的立场是一个严重的错误。 智能技术的发展将不仅仅是一种趋势。 它已成为我们生活和社会中无处不在的强大力量。 因此，它被标记为迫切需要批判分析的技术范式。 我们将其视为少之又少。

It’s important to understand that each phase of the technical process — from design to use — is loaded with politics, and even born of politics. This might be read as a call to politicize technology. But that would mean technology was removed from political concerns and consequences. That’s not right.

重要的是要理解，从设计到使用的技术过程的每个阶段都充满着政治，甚至源于政治。 这可能被理解为将技术政治化的呼吁。 但这意味着将技术从政治关注和后果中移除。 那是不对的。

Instead, this is a call to recognize the politics that have been, and continue to be, an integral part of technology all along. We should analyze the technopolitics of our emerging smart society by looking at three aspects: interests, imperatives, and impacts. In short, I argue three broad technopolitical points:

取而代之的是，这是一个呼吁，要认识到政治一直以来一直是技术不可分割的一部分。 我们应该从三个方面来分析新兴的智慧社会的技术政治：利益，当务之急和影响。 简而言之，我提出了三个广泛的技术政治论点：

• Smart tech advances the interests of corporate technocratic power, and over other values like human autonomy, social goods, and democratic rights.
  智慧技术提高了公司技术官僚力量的利益，超越了人类自治，社会物品和民主权利等其他价值观。
• Smart tech is driven by the dual imperatives of digital capitalism: extracting data from, and expanding control over, potentially everything and everybody.
  智能技术受到数字资本主义双重要求的驱动：从潜在的所有人中提取数据并扩展其控制范围。
• Smart tech’s impacts are a Faustian bargain of convenience and connection, in the Zuckerbergian sense, in exchange for a wide range of (un)intended and (un)known consequences.
  在扎克伯格的意义上，智能技术的影响是浮士德式的便利和联系交易，以换取各种(意料之外的)和(未知的)后果。

Technology is a way of materializing interests. Far from being objective or neutral, it is embedded with values and intentions. Technology is, after all, the result of decisions and actions made by humans, and it is then used by humans with motivations and goals. As decades of careful study by social scientists, historians, and engineers has shown, no technology’s existence is inevitable and all technologies are shaped by social processes. Behind every technology is a bunch of human choices about what problems should be solved, how resources should be spent, why people should use this thing, where tradeoffs should be made, and many other choices that boil down to doing X instead of Y or Z. Even when there are good reasons for making those decisions, they are still based on certain motivations, principles, values, goals, and so on. Thus, it’s not a question of if technology is political, but rather: what are the politics?

牛逼李有成是物化的利益的一种方式。 它远非客观或中立，而是嵌入了价值观和意图。 毕竟，技术是人类做出决定和采取行动的结果，然后人类以其动机和目标来使用它。 正如社会科学家，历史学家和工程师数十年来的认真研究所表明的那样，没有任何技术是不可避免的，并且所有技术都是由社会过程决定的。 每种技术的背后都是一堆人类的选择，这些问题涉及应解决的问题，应如何使用资源，人们为什么要使用此东西，应在哪里进行权衡以及许多其他选择，这些选择归结为X而不是Y或Z即使有充分的理由做出这些决定，它们仍然基于某些动机，原则，价值观，目标等。 因此，这不是技术是否具有政治性的问题，而在于：政治是什么？

Langdon Winner, a noted theorist of technopolitics, argued that “technology is itself a political phenomenon.” This does not only mean that technology is a thing in need of legislation that regulates its production, features, and uses. It means that technology is itself akin to a form of legislation, because of the way “technical forms do, to a large extent, shape the basic pattern and content of human activity in our time.” Whether it means crafting policy or building technology, what could be more political than some people having the power to make decisions about how other people live in the world? Legal systems are sets of rules for what is allowed, frameworks for what rights people have, and plans for what kind of society we will live in. Technical systems do the same things in different ways. They are sets of rules for what is (not) allowed, frameworks for what rights people (don’t) have, and plans for what kind of society we will (not) live in. Technologies are like legislation: there’s a lot of them, they don’t all do the same thing, and some are more significant, but together as a system they form the foundation of society.

著名的技术政治理论家兰登·温纳(Langdon Winner)指出，“技术本身就是一种政治现象。” 这不仅意味着技术需要制定法规来规范其生产，功能和用途。 这意味着技术本身类似于立法形式，因为“技术形式在很大程度上塑造了我们时代人类活动的基本模式和内容”。 无论是制定政策还是建设技术，没有什么比某些有权决定其他人生活方式的人更具政治性？ 法律制度是关于允许的东西的规则集，人们享有的权利的框架以及我们将生活在什么样的社会中的计划。技术系统以不同的方式做同样的事情。 它们是关于(不允许)什么的规则，人们(不)拥有的权利的框架，以及我们将(不)生活在什么样的社会中的计划。技术就像立法：有很多，它们并非都做同一件事，有些则更重要，但是作为一个系统，它们共同构成了社会的基础。

Following from Winner, legal scholar Lawrence Lessig famously proclaimed that “code is law.” But this comparison almost doesn’t go far enough. In response, media theorist Wendy Chun has pointed out that computer “code is better than law” because of its unwavering adherence to the rules and commands of its programmers.

法学家劳伦斯·莱西格(Lawrence Lessig)继温纳(Winner)之后，著名地宣称“代码就是法律”。 但是，这种比较几乎还远远不够。 对此，媒体理论家温迪·春(Wendy Chun)指出，计算机“代码胜于法律”，因为它坚定地遵守了程序员的规则和命令。

Even the most authoritarian dictator would be unable to enforce the exact letter of the law as strictly and consistently as a computer can execute its code. Just as with law, technologies are harnessed by elite groups to advance their own positions in and visions of the world. If technology is anything like a form of legislation, then we must scrutinize those who are the legislators. They are not merely engineers crafting better machines, innovators testing new designs, or entrepreneurs taking bold risks. They are technocrats creating systems that shape society and govern people. By neglecting the politics of smart tech, we allow powerful interests to reside in the shadows and exercise undue influence over our lives.

即使是最专制的独裁者也将无法像计算机可以执行其代码那样严格和一致地执行确切的法律条款。 与法律一样，精英团体也利用技术来提升自己在世界上的地位和视野。 如果技术就像某种形式的立法，那么我们必须仔细审查那些立法者。 他们不仅是制造更好机器的工程师，测试新设计的创新者，还是承担大胆风险的企业家。 他们是技术专家，负责创造塑造社会和统治人民的制度。 通过忽略智能技术的政策，我们允许强大的利益隐藏在阴影中，对我们的生活施加不适当的影响。

Backed by empirical research, there is consensus among political scientists that the United States is now more of an oligarchy than a democracy. The general public has little influence over which policies are put into law, while the preferences of the wealthy elite are almost always supported by policy. Not only can this same inequality in politics be seen in many other countries, but the oligarchy in making policy mirrors the oligarchy in creating technology. The design and development of technology is lorded over by the few, while the rest of the world must live with those decisions. When citizens are disenfranchised from influencing political processes, when they are shut out from meaningful channels of input and recourse, we rightly call such a regime authoritarian.

在经验研究的支持下，政治学家之间达成共识，即美国现在更多地是寡头而不是民主。 公众对将哪些政策制定成法律几乎没有影响，而富裕精英阶层的偏好几乎总是受到政策的支持。 在许多其他国家中，不仅可以看到同样的政治不平等现象，而且制定政策的寡头现象也反映了创造技术的寡头现象。 少数人主导着技术的设计和开发，而世界其他地方必须遵循这些决定。 当公民被剥夺了影响政治进程的权利时，当他们被排除在有意义的投入和追索渠道之外时，我们理所当然地称这种政权为专制。

Why, then, should we be willing to tolerate the fact that the technopolitical systems that shape society and impact our lives are largely created by an elite cadre of — mostly white, mostly male, extremely wealthy — corporate executives, engineers, and investors? The issues of whose interests are included in (and excluded from) technology generally and smart tech particularly is a critical concern of our time.

那么，为什么我们要忍受这样一个事实，即塑造社会并影响我们生活的技术政治体系很大程度上是由精英干部创建的，这些精英干部主要是白人，主要是男性，非常富有，是企业高管，工程师和投资者？ 谁的利益被普遍纳入(特别是排除在)技术之外，尤其是智能技术，这是我们这个时代的关键问题。

Two major imperatives drive the design, development, and use of smart tech: collection and control.

牛逼 WO主要当务之急驱动的设计，开发和利用智能技术的：采集和控制。

Whereas interests are about whose values and voices are included, imperatives are about the overarching principles and goals that have deeper influence and wider reach. For example, the profit motive is an imperative of capitalism, which pushes firms to maximize profits, usually as the primary or only imperative. Understanding these imperatives and how they are manifested through smart tech will reveal much about how technopolitics operates in society.

利益是关于其价值和声音被包括在内的，而当务之急是关于具有更深影响和更广泛影响的总体原则和目标。 例如，利润动机是资本主义的当务之急，资本主义迫使企业最大化利润，通常作为首要或仅当务之急。 了解这些必要条件以及它们如何通过智能技术体现出来，将在很大程度上揭示技术政治如何在社会中运作。

The imperative of collection is about extracting all data, from all sources, by any means possible. It compels businesses and governments to collect as much data as they can, wherever they can. Just as we expect corporations to be profit driven, we should now expect them to be data driven. This is why so much of smart tech is built to suck up data. For many industries, data is a new form of capital, and thus they are always seeking and exploiting new ways to accumulate data.

吨他势在必行收集的是有关提取的所有数据，从各种来源，通过任何可能的手段。 它迫使企业和政府尽可能地收集尽可能多的数据。 就像我们期望公司以利润为驱动力一样，我们现在也应该期望它们以数据为驱动力。 这就是为什么建立了如此多的智能技术来吸收数据的原因。 对于许多行业来说，数据是一种新的资本形式，因此，他们一直在寻找和利用新的方式来积累数据。

The imperative of control is about creating systems that monitor, manage, and manipulate the world and people. It’s represented by the tireless surveillance systems that help corporations and police govern people, regulate access, and modify behaviors. This imperative leads to sensors embedded everywhere, everything connected to the internet, and the reliance on automation to oversee it all. Smart tech is built to expand and enhance powers of control, whether that’s remote control over objects via software applications or social control over populations via algorithmic analysis. The key concern is not with control itself but rather with who has control over whom.

控制势在必行，它涉及创建监视，管理和操纵世界和人类的系统。 它以不懈的监视系统为代表，该监视系统可帮助公司和警察管理人员，调节访问权限并更改行为。 这势在必行，导致传感器无处不在，连接到互联网的所有事物以及对自动化进行监督的依赖。 智能技术旨在扩展和增强控制权，无论是通过软件应用程序对对象进行远程控制还是通过算法分析对人群进行社会控制。 关键问题不是控制本身，而是控制谁。

Harvesting data requires the technical ability and social authority to probe things, people, and places. Control systems are fueled by data, which allows for more granular, more effective, and more instantaneous command over those same things, people, and places. Smart tech is the offspring of both imperatives.

收集数据需要技术能力和社会权威来探测事物，人物和地点。 控制系统以数据为动力，从而可以对相同的事物，人和地点进行更细化，更有效和更即时的命令。 智能技术是这两种必要条件的产物。

It’s hard to underestimate the influence these imperatives have over the design and use of smart tech. They show up in a wide range of applications, spaces, and scales. This ranges from robot vacuums secretly mapping users’ homes so their manufacturers can then sell these “rich maps” to other companies, to insurers monitoring how people drive, exercise, and eat so that they can reward some behaviors and punish others.

很难低估这些必要条件对智能技术的设计和使用的影响。 它们出现在广泛的应用程序，空间和比例尺中。 范围从机器人吸尘器秘密地绘制用户的房屋，以便他们的制造商可以将这些“丰富的地图”出售给其他公司，再到监视人如何驾驶，运动和进食的保险公司，以奖励某些行为并惩罚其他行为。

As imperatives, collection and control are not new. We live under capitalism, and these imperatives have been integral parts of capitalism from the beginning. An entire library could be filled with studies about how capitalism continuously innovates new ways to extract profit and exercise power over everything — society and nature, human and nonhuman, mind and body. My aim here is to show how these dual imperatives operate in the age of digital capitalism and smart tech. We can then understand how, why, and for whom smart tech is designed. We can identify the trends and themes that influence technological development. We can make informed predictions about what to expect in the near future — if we continue down the same path.

势在必行，收集和控制并不是新事物。 我们生活在资本主义之下，从一开始，这些当务之急就已经成为资本主义的组成部分。 整个图书馆可能充斥着有关资本主义如何不断创新以获取利润并在所有事物上行使权力的新研究，这些事物包括社会与自然，人类与非人类，思想与身体。 我的目的是展示在数字资本主义和智能技术时代，这些双重命令是如何运作的。 然后，我们可以了解如何，为什么以及为谁设计智能技术。 我们可以确定影响技术发展的趋势和主题。 如果我们沿着同样的道路前进，我们可以对不久的将来做出明智的预测。

Smart tech has gone viral — spreading, infecting, reproducing, disrupting, and thriving in nearly all spaces of society and parts of our lives. David Golumbia and Chris Gilliard, scholars of technology and culture, wrote an article in early 2018 that rounded up many of the “absurd” — and absurdly routine — ways that tech companies invade our personal lives, influence our behavior, ignore our interests, and enforce their own values. Here’s a sample from their long list of examples: A for-profit service tracks and sells prescription data. An app was proposed to “watch” for suicidal intentions on social media. A vibrator maker tracked its users’ sex lives without disclosing it was doing so. A school used the cameras in laptops it distributed to spy on its students.

智能技术已经风靡一时-在社会的几乎所有空间以及我们生活的各个部分中传播，感染，繁殖，破坏和繁荣。 科技和文化学者David Golumbia和Chris Gilliard在2018年初写了一篇文章，总结了科技公司侵害我们个人生活，影响我们的行为，忽略我们的利益以及贯彻自己的价值观。 以下是他们一长串示例中的一个示例：一家营利性服务跟踪并出售处方数据。 有人提出了一个应用程序来“监视”社交媒体上的自杀意图。 振动器制造商跟踪了用户的性生活，但未透露这样做的情况。 一所学校使用分发给他们的笔记本电脑中的相机监视学生。

Even though they all share the smart label, different types of smart tech are often treated as if they were (totally) separate from each other. The smart watch you wear, the smart home you live in, and the smart city you inhabit are rarely looked at together. Rather than analyzing them as pieces of a unified system, these connections are severed, as if smart tech operating in different places is somehow unrelated. This is ironic since the explicit goal of many major tech companies like Cisco and Google is to plug everything and everybody into a single meganetwork — a “system of systems” — which is, of course, constructed and controlled by them. IBM calls their project the “Smarter Planet,” which they boldly claim “was not merely the announcement of a new strategy, but an assertion of a new world view,” thus showing quite clearly the scope of their ambitions.

即使它们都共享智能标签，但通常会将不同类型的智能技术视为(完全)彼此分开。 您佩戴的智能手表，您所居住的智能家居以及您居住的智能城市很少会一起看。 这些连接并没有被视为统一系统的一部分，而是被切断了，好像在不同地方运行的智能技术之间毫无关系。 具有讽刺意味的是，像思科和谷歌这样的许多大型科技公司的明确目标是将所有事物和每个人都插入一个单一的巨型网络(一个“系统系统”)，该网络当然是由它们构建和控制的。 IBM将他们的项目称为“更智慧的星球”，他们大胆地宣称“不仅是宣布一项新战略，而且还主张一种新的世界观”，从而清楚地表明了他们的野心。

There are shared interests and imperatives that influence the design as well as use of smart tech across different types, scales, and spaces. In other words, instead of seeing these technologies as discrete and unrelated, we should see them as parts of a powerful, yet still emerging technopolitical regime of digital capitalism. Only then can we really grapple with their impacts on society.

存在着共同的利益和当务之急，它们影响着智能技术在不同类型，规模和空间的设计以及使用。 换句话说，我们不应将这些技术视为离散且不相关的技术，而应将它们视为强大而仍在兴起的数字资本主义技术政治体制的一部分。 只有这样，我们才能真正解决它们对社会的影响。