艺术家如今不是躲在象牙塔，而是高高地把守着社会的控制塔了
转自博客“理论车间”
傍晚火车上连立足之地都没有，但我的iPod这次发挥作用了，四十分钟里我读了六、七十页的麦克卢汉的《理解媒体》。他不是社会科学的写法，而是文学的写法，作大量的类比，也就是说，不是理论式的抽象和符号化，而是将许多例子和文学引用塞进来，所以，反而是读起来较难的，因为不够抽象。
1-我们总是处于至少两种媒体之间的平行之中，如处于电台和电视之间的长期并存之中。这是一种混合型状态，如电动和汽油混合型汽车的状态一样，是hybrid。为什么会这样的呢？麦克卢汉认为，the meeting of two media is a moment of truth and revelation from which new form is born. For the parallel between two media holds us on the frontiers between forms that snap us out of the Narcissus-narcosis. The moment of the meeting of media is a moment of freedom and release from the ordinary trance and numbness imposed by them on our senses（《理解媒体》，第五章）.
2-人的媒体，类似于高等猿猴的抓过来，又放掉，再抓过来，每一次都比前一次做得更放任，好象一辈子都是这样轻浮地在要不和要之间回环。只要人还是动物，他就有这种时时的媒体冲动。而且，人还有自恋冲动，一定认为自己的水中倒影不是自己，而是别的东西到了外面，幻想出距离，来猛爱。媒体里的东西本来是他的四肢和身体的延伸后的纠结，他却非要将它看成是另外层面上的东西，来神往。媒体的内容，就是人类的自恋的全部疆域（第六章）。
3-在我们时代，我们每一个人都像是一个部落人突然将电视机抱回家那样地不安于新技术的遍地开放结果，只有艺术家是从容不迫，从容自在。他也有病，但无症状。艺术家就是那能免疫于技术病和媒体病的人：
a-To have a
disease without its symptoms is to be immune. No society has ever known enough about its actions to have developed immunity to its new extensions or technologies. Today we have begunto sense that art may be able to provide such immunity.
In the history of human culture there is no example of a conscious adjustment of the various factors of personal and social life to new extensions except in the puny and peripheral efforts of artists. The artist picks up the message of cultural and technological challenge decades before its transforming impact occurs. He, then, builds models or Noah's arks for facing the change that is at hand. "The war of 1870 need never have been fought had people read my Sentimental Education," said Gustave Flaubert（《第七章》）.
b-艺术家如今不是躲在象牙塔，而是高高地把守着社会的控制塔了：To prevent undue wreckage in society, the artist tends now to move from the ivory tower to the control tower of society. Just as higher education is no longer a frill or luxury but a stark need of production and operational design in the electric age, so the artist is indispensable in the shaping and analysis and understanding of the life of forms, and structures created by electric technology.
c-艺术家总是为未来写出详细的历史的人，因为他是唯一理解当前之性质的人："The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future
because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present." Knowledge of this simple fact is now needed for human survival. The ability of the artist to sidestep the bully blow of new technology of any age, and to parry such violence with full awareness, is age-old. Equally age-old is the inability of the percussed victims, who cannot sidestep the new violence, to recognize their need of the artist. To reward and to make celebrities of artists can, also, be a way of ignoring their prophetic work, and preventing its timely use for survival. The artist is the man in any field, scientific or humanistic, who grasps the implications of his actions and of new knowledge in his own time. He is the man of integral awareness.
d-难道艺术是要提供准确的信息，告诉我们下一步我们将如何遭受那来自我们的四肢延伸出去的官能/媒体的沉重打击，以便让我们不要垮掉和肉溃，重新安排我们的心理，重新变得麻木？如果一个人能预知某一种技术将造成怎样的心理和社会后果，那他就是不折不扣的艺术家了！The artist can correct the sense ratios before the blow of new technology has numbed conscious procedures. He can correct diem before numbness and subliminal groping and reaction begin. If this is true, how is it possible to present the matter to those who are in a position to do something about it? If there were even a remote likelihood of this analysis being true, it would warrant a global armistice and period of stock-taking. If it is true that the artist possesses the means of anticipating and avoiding the consequences of technological trauma, then what are we to think of the world and bureaucracy of "art appreciation"? Would it not seem suddenly to be a conspiracy to make die artist a frill, a fribble, or a MUltown? If men were able to be convinced that art is precise advance knowledge of how to cope with the psychic and social consequences of the next technology, would they all become artists? Or would they begin a careful translation of new art forms into social navigation charts? 1 am curious to know what would happen if art were suddenly seen for what it is, namely, exact information of how to rearrange one's psyche in order to anticipate the next blow from our own extended faculties. Would we, then, cease to look at works of art as an explorer might regard the gold and gems used as the ornaments of simple nonliterates?
e-我们创造和使用媒体，就好像出于一种毒瘾：我们以新发明为形式，来将我们身上的某些器官延伸到外面，我们试图以此来中和那些集体压力和烦恼。但我们这样制造出来的反烦恼制剂，反而比它所要去对付的瘟疫毒性更大。我们用来对付瘟疫的媒体，反而比疫的毒性更大。我们越用媒体，越是摆脱不了对媒体的依赖，媒体最后对我们的伤害也更大。只有艺术家才能做到手里的媒体比所要解决的旧媒体更厉害，能将计就计，深入虎穴，而不是偷鸡不成蚀把米。只有艺术家才能积极利用媒体，不患媒体依赖症，能用更的新媒体去对付旧媒体遗留下来的问题：At any rate, in experimental art, men are given the exact specifications of 'coming violence to their own psyches from their own counter-irritants or technology. For those parts of ourselves that we thrust out in the form of new invention are attempts to counter or neutralize collective pressures and irritations. But the counter-irritant usually proves a greater plague than the initial irritant, like a drug habit. And it is here that the artist can show us how to "ride with the punch," instead of "taking it on the chin " It can only be repeated that human history is a record of "taking it on the chin."
f-只有艺术家才有那种直面当前的实际的力量：Toynbee is very generous in providing examples of widely varied challenge and collapse, and is especially apt in pointing to the frequent and futile resort to futurism and archaism as strategies of encountering radical change. But to point back to the day of the horse or to look forward to the coming of antigravitational vehicles is not an adequate response to the challenge of the motorcar. Yet these two uniform ways of backward and forward looking are habitual ways of avoiding the discontinuities of present experience with their demand for sensitive inspection and appraisal. Only the dedicated artist seems to have the power for encountering the present actuality.
傍晚火车上连立足之地都没有，但我的iPod这次发挥作用了，四十分钟里我读了六、七十页的麦克卢汉的《理解媒体》。他不是社会科学的写法，而是文学的写法，作大量的类比，也就是说，不是理论式的抽象和符号化，而是将许多例子和文学引用塞进来，所以，反而是读起来较难的，因为不够抽象。
1-我们总是处于至少两种媒体之间的平行之中，如处于电台和电视之间的长期并存之中。这是一种混合型状态，如电动和汽油混合型汽车的状态一样，是hybrid。为什么会这样的呢？麦克卢汉认为，the meeting of two media is a moment of truth and revelation from which new form is born. For the parallel between two media holds us on the frontiers between forms that snap us out of the Narcissus-narcosis. The moment of the meeting of media is a moment of freedom and release from the ordinary trance and numbness imposed by them on our senses（《理解媒体》，第五章）.
2-人的媒体，类似于高等猿猴的抓过来，又放掉，再抓过来，每一次都比前一次做得更放任，好象一辈子都是这样轻浮地在要不和要之间回环。只要人还是动物，他就有这种时时的媒体冲动。而且，人还有自恋冲动，一定认为自己的水中倒影不是自己，而是别的东西到了外面，幻想出距离，来猛爱。媒体里的东西本来是他的四肢和身体的延伸后的纠结，他却非要将它看成是另外层面上的东西，来神往。媒体的内容，就是人类的自恋的全部疆域（第六章）。
3-在我们时代，我们每一个人都像是一个部落人突然将电视机抱回家那样地不安于新技术的遍地开放结果，只有艺术家是从容不迫，从容自在。他也有病，但无症状。艺术家就是那能免疫于技术病和媒体病的人：
a-To have a
disease without its symptoms is to be immune. No society has ever known enough about its actions to have developed immunity to its new extensions or technologies. Today we have begunto sense that art may be able to provide such immunity.
In the history of human culture there is no example of a conscious adjustment of the various factors of personal and social life to new extensions except in the puny and peripheral efforts of artists. The artist picks up the message of cultural and technological challenge decades before its transforming impact occurs. He, then, builds models or Noah's arks for facing the change that is at hand. "The war of 1870 need never have been fought had people read my Sentimental Education," said Gustave Flaubert（《第七章》）.
b-艺术家如今不是躲在象牙塔，而是高高地把守着社会的控制塔了：To prevent undue wreckage in society, the artist tends now to move from the ivory tower to the control tower of society. Just as higher education is no longer a frill or luxury but a stark need of production and operational design in the electric age, so the artist is indispensable in the shaping and analysis and understanding of the life of forms, and structures created by electric technology.
c-艺术家总是为未来写出详细的历史的人，因为他是唯一理解当前之性质的人："The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future
because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present." Knowledge of this simple fact is now needed for human survival. The ability of the artist to sidestep the bully blow of new technology of any age, and to parry such violence with full awareness, is age-old. Equally age-old is the inability of the percussed victims, who cannot sidestep the new violence, to recognize their need of the artist. To reward and to make celebrities of artists can, also, be a way of ignoring their prophetic work, and preventing its timely use for survival. The artist is the man in any field, scientific or humanistic, who grasps the implications of his actions and of new knowledge in his own time. He is the man of integral awareness.
d-难道艺术是要提供准确的信息，告诉我们下一步我们将如何遭受那来自我们的四肢延伸出去的官能/媒体的沉重打击，以便让我们不要垮掉和肉溃，重新安排我们的心理，重新变得麻木？如果一个人能预知某一种技术将造成怎样的心理和社会后果，那他就是不折不扣的艺术家了！The artist can correct the sense ratios before the blow of new technology has numbed conscious procedures. He can correct diem before numbness and subliminal groping and reaction begin. If this is true, how is it possible to present the matter to those who are in a position to do something about it? If there were even a remote likelihood of this analysis being true, it would warrant a global armistice and period of stock-taking. If it is true that the artist possesses the means of anticipating and avoiding the consequences of technological trauma, then what are we to think of the world and bureaucracy of "art appreciation"? Would it not seem suddenly to be a conspiracy to make die artist a frill, a fribble, or a MUltown? If men were able to be convinced that art is precise advance knowledge of how to cope with the psychic and social consequences of the next technology, would they all become artists? Or would they begin a careful translation of new art forms into social navigation charts? 1 am curious to know what would happen if art were suddenly seen for what it is, namely, exact information of how to rearrange one's psyche in order to anticipate the next blow from our own extended faculties. Would we, then, cease to look at works of art as an explorer might regard the gold and gems used as the ornaments of simple nonliterates?
e-我们创造和使用媒体，就好像出于一种毒瘾：我们以新发明为形式，来将我们身上的某些器官延伸到外面，我们试图以此来中和那些集体压力和烦恼。但我们这样制造出来的反烦恼制剂，反而比它所要去对付的瘟疫毒性更大。我们用来对付瘟疫的媒体，反而比疫的毒性更大。我们越用媒体，越是摆脱不了对媒体的依赖，媒体最后对我们的伤害也更大。只有艺术家才能做到手里的媒体比所要解决的旧媒体更厉害，能将计就计，深入虎穴，而不是偷鸡不成蚀把米。只有艺术家才能积极利用媒体，不患媒体依赖症，能用更的新媒体去对付旧媒体遗留下来的问题：At any rate, in experimental art, men are given the exact specifications of 'coming violence to their own psyches from their own counter-irritants or technology. For those parts of ourselves that we thrust out in the form of new invention are attempts to counter or neutralize collective pressures and irritations. But the counter-irritant usually proves a greater plague than the initial irritant, like a drug habit. And it is here that the artist can show us how to "ride with the punch," instead of "taking it on the chin " It can only be repeated that human history is a record of "taking it on the chin."
f-只有艺术家才有那种直面当前的实际的力量：Toynbee is very generous in providing examples of widely varied challenge and collapse, and is especially apt in pointing to the frequent and futile resort to futurism and archaism as strategies of encountering radical change. But to point back to the day of the horse or to look forward to the coming of antigravitational vehicles is not an adequate response to the challenge of the motorcar. Yet these two uniform ways of backward and forward looking are habitual ways of avoiding the discontinuities of present experience with their demand for sensitive inspection and appraisal. Only the dedicated artist seems to have the power for encountering the present actuality.
Writing the entire passage in either Chinese or English (except some academic terms like Dasein which people left untranslated on purpose) makes more sense to me. And, if quotations are involved, they should be as quotes.
