科技企业应创造多于破坏

Nicolas Brusson, the founder of BlaBlaCar, the French ride-sharing start-up that in June raised $100m to expand across Europe, got the biggest laugh of the week at the DLD technology conference in Munich. Asked about operating in a “single market” with 28 sets of laws and regulations, he replied: “When you start from France, everything looks simple.”

在慕尼黑DLD科技大会周上，BlaBlaCar的创始人尼古拉•布吕松(Nicolas Brusson)令观众发出了最开心的笑声。去年6月，这家法国拼车初创公司曾融资1亿美元。当被问到如何在一个有着28套法律法规的“单一市场”运作时，尼古拉•布吕松答道：“只要你从法国开始，万事看上去都很简单。”

DLD is where tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from the US and Europe gather to discuss their industry before they shuttle to Davos for the World Economic Forum. In Munich, they chew over the contrasts between the two continents: risk-taking versus safety nets, the free market versus regulations, start-ups versus incumbents.

来自欧美的科技企业家和风险投资家在前往达沃斯参加世界经济论坛(World Economic Forum)之前，先聚集到DLD大会围绕科技产业展开了探讨。在慕尼黑，他们详细讨论了欧美两大洲之间的差异，话题包括风险承担与安全网络、自由市场与监管条规、初创公司与现有企业等。

The notable thing about this year’s event, though, was that this no longer felt like the biggest issue. Instead of the main question being whether Europe can get its act together to take on Silicon Valley, it was whether technological progress will swallow us all, no matter where we live and work.

不过，今年大会上最引人注目的事，就是高科技似乎不再是最重要的议题。今年的主题不再是欧洲能否组织起来挑战硅谷，而是技术进步是否会吞噬我们所有人，无论我们在哪里生活、工作。

Travis Kalanick, the combative founder of the cab-hailing network Uber, embodied the shift. He turned up in Munich with an emollient speech, carefully crafted by David Plouffe, the former campaign strategist for US President Barack Obama, who heads strategy at Uber. The new Uber pitch is all about co-operation, not confrontation.

在打车应用优步(Uber)斗志旺盛的创始人特拉维斯•卡兰尼克(Travis Kalanick)的身上，就体现出了这种转变。他现身慕尼黑发表了一个平和的演讲，演讲稿由大卫•普劳夫(David Plouffe)精心拟定。普劳夫曾任美国总统巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)的竞选首席策略师，现在负责替优步管理经营策略。优步新的推销主题是合作，而不是对抗。

Mr Kalanick’s claim that Uber can simultaneously create jobs, raise local taxes, save citizens from needing to own cars and reduce carbon emissions was intended not only for European cities. He has to convince a global audience that his platform is progress.

卡兰尼克称，优步可以在创造就业机会的同时，增加当地税收，降低城市居民的购车需求，减少二氧化碳排放，他的发言并不仅针对欧洲城市。他必须说服全球观众相信，他的平台带来的是进步。

The Uber question is part of a bigger one facing the global economy. More and more people work for virtual platforms instead of companies; work is auctioned to pools of contractors; median wages stagnate while returns on capital rise; some duties of doctors and lawyers may soon be done by machines. Is this what we want?

优步的问题是全球经济面临的一个更大问题的一部分。越来越多的人效力于虚拟平台而不是企业；工作任务通过竞拍方式分给承包商；工资中位数停滞不前，而资本回报率却在上升；机器或许很快就能分担医生和律师的部分职责。这就是我们想要的吗？

One notable absentee from Munich was the word “disruption”, which has become a mantra of the tech industry in recent years. Venture capitalists have preached that every industry is ripe for disruption of the kind Uber brings to cabs and Amazon brings to retailing.

此次慕尼黑DLD大会最值得注意的是“破坏”一词的缺席，近几年这个词已成为科技产业的口头禅。风险资本家不断鼓吹各个行业已做好准备，能承受类似优步对出租车行业、亚马逊(Amazon)对零售业造成的破坏。

It has just occurred to them that promising to arrive in town and cause trouble is not the best way to make yourself popular, even if you genuinely believe that creative destruction is good for consumers, and ultimately for society as a whole. Disruption, after all, disrupts people’s lives.

因为他们忽然发现，承诺要跑到镇上制造麻烦并不是令自己受欢迎的最佳方式，哪怕你真的相信这种创造性破坏对消费者有利，且最终会造福整个社会。归根到底，“破坏”所破坏的是人们的生活。

As workers, people in advanced industrial economies have not gained a lot from free trade and technological progress. As consumers, they have: Amazon has made buying things cheaper and easier. And in developing economies, workers have seen their wages rise sharply. But the median American and western European employee, no. Nor is the outlook very reassuring for employees in the upper half of the income scale. Artificial intelligence, on which many start-ups are working, could allow machines to do at least some of the work of professionals such as doctors and accountants.

在发达工业经济体，作为工人，人们并未从自由贸易和技术进步获得大量利益。但作为消费者，人们得到了很多：亚马逊让商品变得更便宜，购物变得更容易。另外，在发展中经济体，工人们眼看着自己的工资大幅上涨。但美国和西欧的中等员工却没享受这一好处。中上等收入员工的工作前景也不大牢靠。许多初创公司正在研究的人工智能，至少可以机器承担医生、会计等专业人员的部分工作。

“We ain’t seen nothing yet. The amount of turbulence will not decrease. It will go like that,” Andrew McAfee, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and co-author of The Second Machine Age, told the DLD audience, pointing at the ceiling.

“好戏还在后头。这股湍流不会减弱，它将一路冲到那儿去。”安德鲁•麦卡菲(Andrew McAfee)指着天花板对DLD大会的观众说。麦卡菲是麻省理工学院(MIT)经济学家，与人合著有《第二次机器革命》(The Second Machine Age)。

There is still a gap between US and European attitudes to risk-taking, with all that it implies. One striking moment at DLD was when Axelle Lemaire, the French minister for digital affairs, praised the start-up culture while carefully avoiding admitting that it could mean failure and people being laid off.

美国和欧洲的冒险态度还存在一定差距，这一点从所有方面都体现出来。DLD大会上引人注目的时刻之一，是法国数字事务国务大臣阿克塞勒•勒迈尔(Axelle Lemaire)一面称赞创业文化，一面小心地避而不谈它可能意味着失败以及裁员。

But the gap is narrower than it was. The start-up generation in cities such as Stockholm and Berlin has more in common culturally with those in Silicon Valley than with conservative politicians, and many including Mr Brusson of BlaBlaCar have worked there. Europe is spawning its own disrupters.

但两地间的差距正渐渐缩小。在文化共同性上，斯德哥尔摩和柏林等城市的创业一代更接近硅谷的创业者，而不是保守派政客，而且包括BlaBlaCar的布吕松在内，许多创业者都曾在这些城市工作过。欧洲正大量制造自己的“破坏者”。

I share the view of Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley venture capital fund, that technological change is “largely inevitable and impossible to stop”. Short of closing borders and halting communications, like North Korea, an economy cannot turn its back on progress.

我赞同硅谷风险投资公司Andreessen Horowitz联合创始人本•霍罗威茨(Ben Horowitz)的观点：技术变革“基本不可避免，而且不可能停止”。除非像朝鲜那样封闭边境，终止交流，否则一个经济体的进步是不可能阻挡的。

Still, as Uber is realising, nor can tech companies set up a service platform on which workers and customers interact, bank their money and take no responsibility for the result. An Uber driver who attacks a passenger is not contractually its employee, but the distinction does not matter much to the victim.

然而，正如优步逐渐意识到的那样，科技公司建立不起一个服务平台，能让工人和消费者在上面互动、存钱，且不必为结果承担任何责任。从法律合同上讲，袭击乘客的优步司机不是优步的员工，但这一点对受害者来说没多大分别。

Some companies are already taking a gentler approach. One example is Etsy, an online marketplace for craft goods such as pottery and fashion, which is a B Corporation under US law. That means it tries to do good for society as well as reward shareholders.

一些公司已经采取了较为温和的做法。比如Etsy，一个交易陶器和时装等手工制品的在线集市，根据美国法律它属于公益型企业(B Corporation)。这意味着，Etsy除了回报股东，还要努力造福社会。

“If we have a world in which there are drones flying around delivering packages, but no one is talking to each other, that is really sad,” Chad Dickerson, Etsy’s chief executive, said in Munich. That is a change from tech companies for which drones replacing drivers is the next frontier of efficiency.

Etsy的首席执行官查德•迪克森(Chad Dickerson)在慕尼黑说：“如果在我们的世界，虽有无人机四处投递包裹，可人与人之间不再交谈，那真是可悲极了。”一些高科技公司原本认为，无人机取代司机是下一个提高效率的技术前沿，现在它们的态度发生了变化。

Silicon Valley and the global cities in which start-ups thrive are full of clever people. Their brainpower could be applied to augmenting jobs rather than eliminating them, or to countering the long stagnation of wages. Now that really would be disruptive.

硅谷，以及所有初创企业发达的城市充满了聪明人。他们的智力可用于增加就业机会，而不是减少机会，或者可用于缓解薪资长期停滞的局面，因为这才是真正具有破坏性的。