REAL TIME
作者╱斯蒂克斯 ( Gary Stix )
譯者╱王道還
By Gary Stix

時間就是金錢。今天大家都耳熟能詳的這句格言，是富蘭克林在200多年前創造的。

　 　新的千紀年，以及過去的幾十年，使這句話產生了真正的意義。在21世紀，時 間的價值就像前幾世紀的化石燃料與貴金屬一樣；時間繼續是刺激經濟成長的重要原料，現代經濟就是以
每秒兆位元組（TB）與每秒十億位元（Gb）些單位為 基礎，所以分秒必爭，錙銖必較。

 　　More than 200 years ago Benjamin Franklin coined the now famous dictum that equated passing minutes and hours with shillings and pounds. The new millennium—and the decades leading up to it—has given his words their real meaning. Time has become to the 21st century what fossil fuels and precious metals were to previous epochs. Constantly measured and priced, this vital raw material continues to spur the growth of economies built on a foundation of terabytes and gigabits per second.

　 　有位英國經濟學教授甚至為富蘭克林的格言設計了數學公式，以捕捉新千紀年的時代精神。根據英國瓦立克大學教授華克的公式，刷牙所花的三分鍾，相當於45 美分，換言之，要是一位普通的英國人拿那三分鍾去工作，扣了所得稅與社會安全保險金後，可以賺到那麼多錢。人工洗車半小時，相當於四塊半美元。

　 　An English economics professor even tried to capture the millennial zeitgeist by supplying Franklin's adage with a quantitative underpinning. According to a formula derived by Ian Walker of the University of Warwick, three minutes of brushing one's teeth works out to the equivalent of 45 cents, the compensation (after taxes and Social Security) that the average Briton gives up by doing something besides working. Half an hour of washing a car by hand translates into $4.50.

　 　這種將時間化約成金錢的方式，也許會將富蘭克林的格言引申到荒謬的地步。但是時間已成為商品，千真萬確，因為我們看待事象流逝的方式，已全盤改變了。人 類的基本驅力從舊石器時代以來就沒有改變，都幾十萬年了。人之所以為人，大多基於飲食、男女、鬥爭、避凶的衝動，在原始社群就是這樣了。儘管這些根本的衝 動是恆定的，自從我們的狩獵–採集祖先在草原上活動以來，人類文化卻經歷了一次又一次的大變動。從石器時代到資訊時代的漫長轉型期間，最深遠的變化也許以 我們對時間的主觀感受為主。

　 　This reduction of time to money may extend Franklin's observation to an absurd extreme. But the commodification of time is genuine—and results from a radical alteration in how we view the passage of events. Our fundamental human drives have not changed from the Paleolithic era, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Much of what we are about centers on the same impulses to eat, procreate, fight or flee that motivated Fred Flintstone. Despite the constancy of these primal urges, human culture has experienced upheaval after upheaval in the period since our hunter-gatherer forebears roamed the savannas. Perhaps the most profound change in the long transition from Stone Age to information age revolves around our subjective experience of time.

　　時間可以定義成事件的連續流，在其中，過去的事一件又一件地承先啟後，與現在的事件、未來的事件銜接。今天，某個 時段裡所塞入的事件已無止境地增加了，無論間距是一年還是一奈秒；技術時代已經成為一場出人頭地的競賽：多多益善，越快越好。葛雷克在《毫秒必爭》中指 出，聯邦快遞（FedEx）服務在1980年代使郵遞成為家常便飯，而在過去，寄送商務文件是不作興規定「隔夜絕對送達」的。一開始，FedEx的顧客是 佔到了便宜，但是不久後，整個世界都期望貨品交寄後第二天早上就要送達。葛雷克寫道︰「每個人都採用『隔夜送達』後，人與人的平等就恢復了，只有大家都加 快步伐的態勢不變。」

　　By one definition, time is a continuum in which one event follows another from the past through to the future. Today the number of occurrences packed inside a given interval, whether it be a year or a nanosecond, increases unendingly. The technological age has become a game of one-upmanship in which more is always better. In his book Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, James Gleick noted that before Federal Express shipping became commonplace in the 1980s, the exchange of business documents did not usually require a package to be delivered 「absolutely positively overnight.」 At first, FedEx gave its customers an edge. But soon the whole world expected goods to arrive the next morning. 「When everyone adopted overnight mail, equality was restored,」 Gleick writes, 「and only the universally faster pace remained.」

全球同步化
Simultaneity

 網際網路出現後，就不必再等待第二天FedEx的送貨車了。透過網際網路，每件事在每個地點都同時發生，無論人在何處，美國的紐約也好，塞內加爾的達卡也 好，只要坐在上線的電腦面前，都能在同一時刻目擊網頁的更新。基本上，時間已經超越了空間。瑞士帥奇錶（Swatch）製造商注意到了這個趨勢，甚至還想 廢除分隔各地的時區。他們為網際網路設計了新的計時標準，不採取時區制，而是將每一天分隔成1000個單位，世界各地都標示同樣的時間，以通過帥奇錶總部 所在地（瑞士俾爾市）的經線為本初子午線。

 　　THE ADVENT of the Internet eliminated the burden of having to wait until the next day for the FedEx truck. In Internet time, everything happens everywhere at once—connected computer users can witness an update to a Web page at an identical moment in New York or Dakar. Time has, in essence, triumphed over space. Noting this trend, Swatch, the watchmaker, went so far as to try to abolish the temporal boundaries that separate one place from another. It created a standard for Internet timekeeping that eliminated time zones, dividing the day into 1,000 increments that are the same anywhere on the globe, with the meridian at Biel, Switzerland, the location of Swatch's headquarters.

　　網際網路的數位時計仍在帥奇錶網頁上與時俱進，帥奇錶總部建築的牆上也掛著同樣的時計，但是它成為世界標準時的前景，大概會與世界語一樣；當年許多人提倡世界語作人類通用語言，可惜壯志未酬。

　　The digital Internet clock still marches through its paces on the Web and on the Swatch corporate building in Biel. But the prospects for it as a widely adopted universal time standard are about as good as the frustrated aspirations for Esperanto to become the world's lingua franca.

　 　暫且不談花招巧思，以網路連線的世界，的確將時區界限給抹掉了，這個成就是我們不斷進步的精確計時能力所創造的。多少年以來，我們測量時段的能力，已經 與我們控制生活環境的本事直接相關。計時行為也許可以回溯到兩萬年以前，那時冰河時代的獵人在木棍或骨頭上刻洞，可能是為了記錄月相變化的日程。大概 5000年前左右，巴比倫人與埃及人為農耕或其他與時間相關的活動，製作了曆法。

 　Leaving gimmickry aside, the wired world does erase time barriers. This achievement relies on an ever progressing ability to measure time more precisely. Over the aeons, the capacity to gauge duration has correlated directly with increasing control over the environment that we inhabit. Keeping time is a practice that may go back more than 20,000 years, when hunters of the ice age notched holes in sticks or bones, possibly to track the days between phases of the moon. And a mere 5,000 years ago or so the Babylonians and Egyptians devised calendars for planting and other time-sensitive activities.

早期的時計技術家並不死命追求精確。他們遵循自然的循環：太陽日、太陰月，還有太陽年。日晷只能投影，要是天陰或夜幕低垂，就成了無用的裝飾品。但是，自 13世紀起，機械鍾引發了一場革命，對歷史的影響相當於後來古騰堡活字印刷術引發的革命。在以水鍾計時的時代裡，時間的確是在「流逝」。機械鍾出現了之 後，時間不再「流逝」了，而是用機械裝置來分割，這個裝置能計算振盪器的敲擊聲。機械鍾經過改良之後，比一秒還要短的時段都抓得出來。

　　Early chronotechnologists were not precision freaks. They tracked natural cycles: the solar day, the lunar month and the solar year. The sundial could do little more than cast a shadow, when clouds or night did not render it a useless decoration. Beginning in the 13th century, though, the mechanical clock initiated a revolution equivalent to the one engendered by the later invention by Gutenberg of the printing press. Time no longer 「flowed,」 as it did literally in a water clock. Rather it was marked off by a mechanism that could track the beats of an oscillator. When refined, this device let time's passage be counted to fractions of a second.

最後，機械鍾使計時器可以縮小；一旦計時裝置的驅動力不再來自鍾擺而是「游絲」，計時器就能像珠寶一般當作隨身物件了。技術改變了我們對社會組織的 感知，「隨身時計」使人能協調彼此的行動。美國哈佛大學經濟史家藍迪斯（David S. Landes）在《時間革命》中寫道︰「暫不論好歹，多虧了機械鍾，關注時間的文明才可能誕生，生產力與性能因此而受到重視。」

　　The mechanical clock ultimately enabled the miniaturization of the timepiece. Once it was driven by a coiled spring and not a falling weight, it could be carried or worn like jewelry. The technology changed our perception of the way society was organized. It was an instrument that let one person coordinate activities with another. 「Punctuality comes from within, not from without,」 writes Harvard University historian David S. Landes in his book Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World. 「It is the mechanical clock that made possible, for better or worse, a civilization attentive to the passage of time, hence to productivity and performance.」

　　幾個世紀來，機械鍾一直是最準確的計時器。但是過去半個世紀就像先前的700年間，在精準度方面仍然有大幅進步（見〈計時器史話〉）。時間征服了空間，不只是網際網路造成的；時間能測量得這麼精確，其他的物理實體都比不上，因此空間的維度是以時間來丈量的。今天，標準制定者以光在真空中行進1/299792458秒所穿越的距離，定「公尺」的長度。

　　 Mechanical clocks persisted as the most accurate timekeepers for centuries. But the past 50 years has seen as much progress in the quest for precision as in the previous 700 [see 「A Chronicle of Timekeeping,」 by William J. H. Andrewes, on page 76]. It hasn't been just the Internet that has brought about the conquest of time over space. Time is more accurately measured than any other physical entity. As such, elapsed time is marshaled to size up spatial dimensions. Today standard makers gauge the length of the venerable meter by the distance light in a vacuum travels in 1.299,792,458 of a second.

　 　用來做這種測量的原子鐘，也可以用來決定方位。有些原子鐘裡，銫原子的共振頻率極為穩定，功能相當於鍾擺，精準度可達奈秒。全球定位系統衛星不斷播送資 訊，表示它們的精確位置及衛星上原子鐘的數值，駕駛員或登山客的接收裝置要是能收到至少四個衛星的資訊，就能解算出他在地球表面的精確坐標，無論是在南美 南端的巴塔哥尼亞還是北極圈內的拉普蘭。不過條件極為嚴苛，要是一個衛星有百萬分之一秒的時間誤差，而其他衛星沒有校正，接收裝置解算出來的地面坐標就不 正確，誤差最大可能達320公尺。

　　Atomic clocks, used to make such measurements, also play a role in judging location. In some of them, the resonant frequency of cesium atoms remains amazingly stable, becoming a pseudo-pendulum capable of maintaining near nanosecond precision. The Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites continuously broadcast their exact whereabouts as well as the time maintained by onboard atomic clocks. A receiving device processes this information from at least four satellites into exact terrestrial coordinates for the pilot or the hiker, whether in Patagonia or Lapland. The requirements are exacting. A time error of a millionth of a second from an individual satellite could send a signal to a GPS receiver that would be inaccurate by as much as a fifth of a mile (if it went uncorrected by other satellites).


精確達永恆
　　計時的精準程度繼續飛快進展。事實上再過幾年，鍾錶製造商就可能超越自己。他們也許會製造出一種極為精確的原子鐘，其他計時器根本無法與它同步（見〈終極時鍾〉）。研究人員也繼續推進，將每一秒更細膩地切割開來。爭取速度已成為資訊時代的基石，實驗室裡電晶體開關的速度還不到一皮秒，也就是一奈秒的千分之一（見 〈從轉瞬到永恆〉）。

　　Advances in precision timekeeping continue apace. In fact, in the next few years clock makers may outdo themselves. They may create an atomic clock so precise that it will be impossible to synchronize other timepieces to it [see 「Ultimate Clocks,」 by W. Wayt Gibbs, on page 86]. Researchers also continue to press ahead in slicing and dicing the second more finely. The need for speed has become a cornerstone of the information age. In the laboratory, transistors can switch faster than a picosecond, a thousandth of a billionth of a second [see 「From Instantaneous to Eternal,」 on page 56].

　　去年，法國與荷蘭合組的研究團隊創下新紀錄，根據他們報導，一束頻閃雷射光發射的脈衝，只持續了250阿秒（10^-18秒）。未來這種頻閃雷射也許可用來製作照相機，用以追蹤單個電子的運動。在測量大的時段方面，現代也有進展。放射性元素定年法是「深層時間」的測量桿，可以告訴我們地球的年齡究竟有多大。

　 　A team from France and the Netherlands set a new speed record for subdividing the second, reporting last year that a laser strobe light had emitted pulses lasting 250 attoseconds—that's 250 billionths of a billionth of a second. The strobe may one day be fashioned into a camera that can track the movements of individual electrons. The modern era has also registered gains in assessing big intervals. Radiometric dating methods, measuring rods of 「deep time,」 indicate how old the earth really is.

　 　不費吹灰之力就能超越時空的本領，無論是在網際網路上，還是駕駛以全球定位系統導引的民航機，都使我們能把事情做得更快；至於速度的極限究竟在哪裡，仍 然有待測試。參與學術會議的科學家與科普書作者，都有人扯些製造「穿梭時空極速飛車」的點子，也就是從事時光旅行的方法（見〈如何建造時光機？〉）。但是，儘管鍾錶業者已展現了非凡的技藝，所謂「光陰似箭」究竟是什麼意思，物理學家也好哲學家也罷，都還不能達成共識。

　　The ability to transcend time and space effortlessly—whether on the Internet or piloting a GPS-guided airliner —lets us do things faster. Just how far speed limits can be stretched remains to be tested. Conference sessions and popular books toy with ideas for the ultimate cosmic hot rod, a means of traveling forward or back in time [see 「How to Build a Time Machine,」 by Paul Davies, on page 50]. But despite watchmakers' prowess, neither physicists nor philosophers have come to any agreement about what we mean when we say 「tempus fugit.」

　 　人類在工業時代之前不知幾世紀，就對時間的性質感到困惑了。時間是包括三個成分的古怪玩意兒，分成過去、現在與未來。奧古斯丁將定義時間的窘境描述得比 任何人都有力。他在《懺悔錄》中寫道︰「那麼，時間是什麼？要是沒有人問我，我就知道；要是我想對問我的人解釋時間是什麼，我就不知道了。」

　　Perplexity about the nature of time—a tripartite oddity that parses into past, present and future—precedes the industrial era by centuries. Saint Augustine described the definitional dilemma more eloquently than anyone. 「What then, is time?」 he asked in his Confessions. 「If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone who does ask me, I do not know.」 He then went on to try to articulate why temporality is so hard to define: 「How, then, can these two kinds of time, the past and the future be, when the past no longer is and the future as yet does not be?」

　　 講究客觀的物理學家不受有神論的拘束，但也難以回答這個問題。我們面對無可迴避的死亡，嘆光陰似箭，人生如白駒過隙。但是光陰似箭究竟是什麼意思？說時間 以每秒一秒的速度前進，與禪宗公案中的妙語相較，科學的份量其實沒有什麼差異。當然我們可以假設有一種度規可以測量時間之流，它之於時間就好像安培數之於 電流。但是這樣的一種度規可能根本就不存在（見〈神秘的時間流〉）。事實上，理論物理學中最熱門的主題就是：時間是否為幻象？物理學家都搞糊塗了，甚至把哲學家都拉進來，想弄清楚時間這個變數是否應該加入他們的方程式裡（見 〈物理學核心的缺陷〉）。

　　Hard-boiled physicists, unburdened by theistic encumbrances, have also had difficulty grappling with this question. We remark that time 「flies」 as we hurtle toward our inevitable demise. But what does that mean exactly? Saying that time races along at one second per second has as much scientific weight as the utterance of a Zen koan. One could hypothesize a metric of current flow for time, a form of temporal amperage. But such a measure may simply not exist [see 「That Mysterious Flow,」 by Paul Davies, on page 40]. In fact, one of the hottest themes in theoretical physics is whether time itself is illusory. The confusion is such that physicists have gone as far as to recruit philosophers in their attempt to understand whether a t variable should be added to their equations [see 「A Hole at the Heart of Physics,」 by George Musser, on page 48]. 

曼荼羅-反覆呈現的自然韻律
The Great Mandala

時間的本質是個傷腦筋的問題，自古而然，不只物理學家、哲學家念茲在茲，人類學家也著迷。西方以外的許多文化都認為，宇宙事象發生的序列是循環的，即非直線 式的（見本期《科學人》86頁〈文化決定時間〉一文）。然而，對我們大部分人來說，時間不只是真實的，它還是我們做任何事的支配力量。我們不斷注意鍾錶上 的時間，無論那是天性還是訓練的結果。

　　THE ESSENCE of time is an age-old conundrum that preoccupies not just the physicist and philosopher but also the anthropologist who studies non-Western cultures that perceive events as proceeding in a cyclical, nonlinear sequence [see 「Clocking Cultures,」 by Carol Ezzell, on page 74]. Yet for most of us, time is not only real, it is the master of everything we do. We are clock-watchers, whether by nature or training.

我們感到自己處於過去與未來的夾縫中，或者某個傳統社會中的人覺得自己陷身於曼荼羅那反覆呈現的自然韻律中，也許都與同一個基本的生物實體有關︰我 們的體內到處都有時鍾，不斷地滴答運行，有的控制我們在棒球場上的揮棒時機，有的告訴我們該睡覺了，也許還有一個負責通知我們大限已到（見本期《科學人》 64頁〈生物時鍾滴答滴〉一文）。

　　The distinct feeling we have of being bookended between a past and a future —or, in a traditional culture, being enmeshed in the Great Mandala of recurring natural rhythms—may be related to a basic biological reality. Our bodies are chock-full of living clocks—ones that govern how we connect a ball with a bat, when we feel sleepy and perhaps when our time is up [see "Times of Our Lives,」 by Karen Wright].

　 　生物學家現已開始研究這些生物韻律的性質。我們覺得歡樂時光最易消逝，科學家正探索大腦中製造這種感覺的區域；我們出席一場關於加拿大利率政策的單調演 講，會感到度日如年，也是那些區域的傑作。科學家也開始瞭解，不同種類的記憶，與事物在時間中的組織與回憶方式有關。神經學家研究各種形式的失憶症，發現 有些病人喪失了正確判斷時間的能力，有的誤差只有幾個小時、幾個月，還有的搞不清十年前十年後的事。這些病例提供的線索，方便學者找出大腦中處理時間感的 中樞（見〈記得當時〉）。

　 　These real biorhythms have now begun to reveal themselves to biologists. Scientists are closing in on areas of the brain that produce the sensation of time flying when we're having fun—the same places that induce the slow-paced torpor of sitting through a monotone lecture on Canadian interest-rate policy. They are also beginning to understand the connections between different kinds of memory and how events are organized and recalled chronologically. Studies of neurological patients with various forms of amnesia, some of whom have lost the ability to judge accurately the passage of hours, months and even entire decades, are helping to pinpoint which areas of the brain are involved in how we experience time [see 「Remembering When,」 by Antonio R. Damasio].

　　記得我們在事物秩序中的位置，決定了我們的身份與角色。所以到頭來，時間在宇宙中是否有堅實的物質基礎，其實並不重要；要是時間只是個幻象，也是個我們堅持不放的幻象。這第四維度 與空間的三個維度相輔相成，我們對它的崇敬與我們內心深處的一份渴求有關：我們所擁抱的時間紀念碑都有意義，譬如生日、春節、國慶日，它們全是我們可與其 他人分享的。不然，2000年1月不但與基督一生的重大事件無涉，以其他的紀年系統而論，也算不得是真正的千禧年，我們怎麼會舉行那麼狂熱的慶典？

　 　Recalling where we fit in the order of things determines who we are. So ultimately, it doesn't matter whether time, in cosmological terms, retains an underlying physical truth. If it is a fantasy, it is one we cling to steadfastly. The reverence we hold for the fourth dimension, the complement of the three spatial ones, has much to do with a deep psychic need to embrace meaningful temporal milestones that we can all share: birthdays, Christmas, the Fourth of July. How else to explain the frenzy of celebration in January 2000 for a date that neither marked a highlight of Christ's life nor, by many tallies, the true millennium?

　 　儘管如此，我們還是會慶祝下一個千禧年（要是人類到時候還生存在世上的話），同時，我們會繼續慶祝父母的金婚紀念日，以及我們社區義勇消防隊的20週年 紀念日；這樣做，是唯一使世界顯得有層次、結構的方式。現在世上充斥著各種抹殺時間的事物，像是即時通訊（instant messaging）、一小時照片沖洗服務、快速結帳櫃檯、當天送達的快遞等等，將我們的永恆感都剝奪了。

　　We will, nonetheless, continue to celebrate the next millennium (if we as a species are still around), and in the meantime, we will fete our parents' golden wedding anniversary and the 20th year of the founding of our local volunteer fire department. Doing so is the only way of imposing hierarchy and structure on a world in which instant messaging, one-hour photo, express checkout and same-day delivery threaten to rob us of any sense of permanence.

	1.Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything. James Gleick. Vintage Books, 1999.
	2.The Story of Time. Edited by Kristen Lippincott. Merrell Holberton, 1999.
	3.Revolution in Time. Revised edition. David S. Landes. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.
	4.The Discovery of Time. Edited by Stuart McCready. Sourcebooks, 2001. 5.  Warm Hole theory 6. 多次元與蟲洞理論 7. 如何建造時光機？ 8. 用幾何分析，破解時空奧秘 9. 玄之又玄話弦論 10. 超弦理論 11. 愛因斯坦(3/14/1879-4/18/1955) 12. 愛因斯坦的時空觀 13. 星空中的時間 14. 時間的起源與未來  15. 時間機器：幻想還是禮物？ 16. 沒有時間的世界 A World Without Time(第一章 沉默的共謀) 17. 蟲洞: 旅行家的天堂還是探險者的地獄？ 18. 傾聽黑洞的心聲 An ECHO of Black Holes 19. 哥德爾﹝ 1906-1978 ﹞ 20. 哥德爾定理、量子力學、決定論與非決定論——新的思考與嘗試