I'd like to introduce you to an interesting person named Otzi.
我想给大家介绍一个有趣的人，名叫奥茨。
He lives in Italy at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology because he's a mummy.
他在意大利的南蒂罗尔考古博物馆，因为他是个木乃伊。
This is an artist's rendition of what he might have looked like when he was alive 5,300 years ago.
这是一个艺术家对他5300年前活着时的样子的重现。
You want to see what he looks like today?
你想看看他现在什么样子了吗？
OK, brace yourselves, gross mummy pic coming at you.
好了，准备好，恶心的木乃伊照片向你走来。
So, he's not as handsome as he used to be,
是的，他不像过去那样帅气了，
but he's actually in great shape for a mummy because he was discovered frozen in ice.
但作为木乃伊，他看起来非常好，因为他被发现时冻在冰中。
Otzi is the oldest mummy that's been discovered with preserved skin.
奥茨是目前发现的保存有皮肤的最古老木乃伊。
5,300 years is super old, older than the Egyptian pyramids, and Otzi's skin is covered in 61 black tattoos,
5300年是超级古老，比埃及金字塔还古老，奥茨的皮肤上有61个黑色纹身，
all lines and crosses on parts of his body where he might have experienced pain.
他身体上所有这些交织的线条反映出他曾遭遇的疼痛。
So scientists think that they might have been used to mark sites for some kind of therapy, like acupuncture.
所以科学家认为它们可能是被用来标记某种治疗的部位，比如针灸。
So clearly, if the oldest skin we've seen is all tattooed up, tattooing is a very ancient practice.
所以很明显，如果我们看到的这个最古老的皮肤纹满了身，纹身是一种非常古老的习俗。
But fast-forward to today and tattoos are everywhere.
但快进到今天，纹身几乎无处不在。
Almost one in four Americans has a tattoo, it's a multibillion-dollar industry,
几乎每四个美国人就有一个纹过身，这是一个数十亿美元的产业，
and whether you love tattoos or hate them, this talk will change the way you think about them.
不管你爱纹身还是憎恨它们，这个演讲将会改变你对它们的看法。
So, why are tattoos so popular? Unlike Otzi, most of us today use tattoos for some kind of self-expression.
那么，为什么纹身如此流行？跟奥茨不同的是，今天我们很多人把纹身当作自我的表达。
Personally, I love tattoos because I love art and there is something so wonderful to me,
个人而言，我爱纹身因为我爱艺术，并且这对我而言是一种神奇的事物，
almost romantic, about the way a tattoo as an art form cannot be commodified. Right?
纹身作为一种艺术形式无法商品化，这相当浪漫。没错吧？
Your tattoo lives and dies with you.
你的纹身伴你一生。
It can't be bought or sold or traded, so its only value is really personal to you, and I love that.
它不能买卖和交易，所以它的唯一价值在于是你个人的东西，我爱这一点。
Now, I tend to gravitate towards really colorful tattoos because I'm obsessed with color.
现在，我倾向于那些色彩鲜艳的纹身，因为我对色彩着迷。
I teach a whole course on it at my university.
我在大学里教了一整门这样的课程。
But my very first tattoo was an all-black tattoo like Otzi's.
但我的首个纹身是全黑的，跟奥茨类似。
Yep, I did that clichéd thing that young people do sometimes and I got a tattoo in a language I can't even read.
是的，我那时也做年轻人都会做的事情，我纹了个我自己都不懂的语言的纹身。
OK, but I was 19 years old, I had just returned from my first trip overseas,
但我当时是19岁，我刚从首个海外旅行回来，
I was in Japan in the mountains meditating in Buddhist monasteries, and it was a really meaningful experience to me,
我在日本的山上，在佛教寺庙里冥想，这对我真是一个很有意义的体验，
so I wanted to commemorate it with this Japanese and Chinese character for "mountain."
所以我想用“山”的日文和汉字来纪念它。
Now, here's what blows my mind.
现在，这是让我大吃一惊的。
My 14-year-old tattoo and Otzi's 5,300-year-old tattoos are made of the same exact stuff:
我14年之久的纹身和奥茨5300年之久的纹身都来自同完全一样的材料：
soot, that black powdery carbon dust that gets left behind in the fireplace when you burn stuff.
烟灰，黑色的粉状碳尘，这种当你燃烧东西时，留在壁炉里的东西。
And if you zoom way, way in on either my tattoo or Otzi's tattoos, you'll find that they all look something like this.
如果你放大我的纹身或者奥茨的纹身，你会发现它们都长得像这样子。
A tattoo is nothing more than a bunch of tiny pigment particles, soot in this case, that get trapped in the dermis,
纹身不过是一堆微小的色素颗粒，在这里是烟灰，被困在真皮里，
which is the layer of tissue right underneath the surface of the skin.
真皮是皮肤表面下面的一层组织。
So in over five thousand years, we've done very little to update tattoo technology,
所以在超过5千年的时候里，我们对纹身的技术升级甚少，
apart from getting access to more colors and slightly more efficient methods of installation.
除了有更多的颜色和相对更高效率的纹身方法外。
While I'm an artist, I'm also a scientist, and I direct a laboratory that researches nanotechnology,
我是个艺术家，也是个科学家，我领导一个研究纳米技术的实验室，
which is the science of building things with ultratiny building blocks,
这是一门用超小积木来建造东西的科学，
thousands of times smaller even than the width of a human hair.
比人类头发的宽度还要小几千倍。
And I began to ask myself, how could nanotechnology serve tattooing?
于是我开始问自己，纳米技术如何应用于纹身？
If tattoos are just a bunch of particles in the skin,
如果纹身只是身体上的一堆微粒，
could we swap those particles out for ones that do something more interesting?
我们能把这些粒子换成更有趣的粒子吗？
Here's my big idea: I believe that tattoos can give you superpowers.
这是我的大设想：我认为纹身可以给你带来超能力。
Now, I don't mean they're going to make us fly,
我不是说它可以让我们飞起来，
but I do think that we can have superpowers in the sense that tattoos can give us new abilities that we don't currently possess.
但我确实认为我们可以拥有超能力，从某种意义上，纹身可以给我们目前我们不拥有的新能力。
By upgrading the particles, we can engineer tattooing so that it will change not only the appearance of our skin,
通过升级粒子，我们可以设计纹身，这样它们不仅会改变我们皮肤的样子，
but also the function of our skin. Let me show you. This is a diagram of a microcapsule.
还有我们皮肤的功能。让我给你们展示下。这是一个微胶囊的示意图。
It's a tiny hollow particle with a protective outer shell, about the size of a tattoo pigment,
它是一个微小的空心粒子，有一个保护性的外壳，和纹身颜料差不多大，
and you can fill the inside with practically whatever you want.
你可以在里面填满任何你想要的东西。
So what if we put interesting materials inside of these microcapsules and made tattoo inks with them?
所以如果我们把有趣的材料放进这些胶囊里面，用它们来纹身怎样？
What sorts of things could we make a tattoo do?
我们可以用纹身来做什么呢？
What problems could we solve? What human limitations could we overcome?
我们能解决什么问题？我们能克服人类的什么局限？
Well, here's one idea: one of our weaknesses as humans is that we can't see ultraviolet, or UV, light.
这是其中一个主意：我们人类的其中一个弱点是我们看不到紫外线，简称UV。
That's the high-energy part of sunlight that causes sunburn and increases our risk of skin cancer.
这是阳光中的高能部分，它会导致晒伤，增加我们患皮肤癌的风险。

Many animals and insects can actually see UV light, but we can't.
很多动物和昆虫可以看到紫外线，但我们不能。
If we could, we'd be able to see sunscreen when it was applied on our skin.
如果我们可以，我们就可以看到在皮肤上涂抹防晒霜。
Unfortunately, most of us don't wear sunscreen,
不幸的是，我们很多人不涂抹防晒霜，
and those of us who do can't really tell when it wears off, because it's invisible.
而那些涂防晒霜的人也不知道什么时候它没功效了因为它不可见。
It's the main reason we treat over five million cases of preventable skin cancer every year in the US alone,
这是我们每年仅在美国就治疗500多万例可预防皮肤癌的主要原因，
costing our economy over five billion dollars annually.
这每年导致我们经济损失超过50亿美金。
So how could we overcome this human weakness with a tattoo?
那么我们如何使用纹身来解决这个人类的缺点？
Well, if the problem is that we can't see UV rays, maybe we can make a tattoo detect them for us.
如果问题出在我们看不见紫外线，也许我们可以让纹身为我们来探测它。
So I thought, why don't we take some microcapsules,
于是我想，为什么我们不取一些胶囊，
load it up with a UV-sensitive, color-changing dye, and make a tattoo ink out of that?
装上一种对紫外线敏感的变色染料，然后用来做纹身墨水呢？
Now, one of the troubles of being a tattoo technologist is finding willing test subjects.
现在，纹身科技师的麻烦是找小白鼠。
And when it came time to test this tattoo ink, I thought it best not to torture my poor graduate students.
当测试纹身墨水时，我觉得最好还是不要折磨我可怜的研究生们。
So I decided to tattoo a couple of spots on my own arm instead.
所以我决定在自己的手臂上纹几个斑点。
And It actually worked. Check it out! I call these tattoos solar freckles because they're powered by sunshine.
它确实生效了。一起来看看！我把这些纹身叫做太阳雀斑，因为它们是阳光供能的。
And right now, they're invisible, but as soon as I expose them to a UV light,
现在，它们是不可见的，但只要我把它们曝光在紫外线下，
acting as the Sun -- there they are, blue spots.
跟太阳一样--它们就来了，蓝色的点。
Now, I'm not wearing sunscreen in this video, but if I was, those blue spots would not appear,
我没有在这个视频中涂防晒霜，如果我涂了，这些蓝点就不会出现，
and then when my sunscreen wore off later,
然后当我的防晒霜用完时，
the solar freckles would reappear in UV light and I would know that it was time to reapply sunscreen.
这个太阳雀斑在紫外线下会出现，我就会知道是时候补充防晒霜了。
So these tattoos act as a real-time, naked-eye indicator of your skin's UV exposure.
所以这些纹身就像一个实时的皮肤紫外线曝光程度的裸眼指示器。
And of course, I think there are lots of really cool, artistic things you could do with a color-changing tattoo like this,
当然，我们可以用这样的色彩改变的纹身来做很多真的很酷，艺术方面的事情，
but I hope that it will also help us solve a big problem in skin protection.
但我希望它也会帮我们解决皮肤保护方面的大问题。
Let me give you another example.
让我给你们另一个例子。
Normal human body temperature is about 97 to 99 degrees Fahrenheit,
正常的人体温度大约是97到99华氏度，
and if you fall outside of that range, you need to seek medical attention right away.
如果你的体温在这个范围外，你就得立刻寻找医疗关照。
Now, the problem is that humans can't detect our own body temperature without a thermometer.
但问题在于人们没有温度计就无法探测自己身体的温度。
Sure, you could try the old hand-on-the-forehead trick, but there's zero scientific evidence to back that up.
当然，你可以沿用把手机按住前额的老把戏，但没有科学证据支撑这一点。
So what if we could create a tattooable thermometer that you could access anytime?
如果我们创造一个你随时可以获得纹身温度计会怎样？
Well, remember how the solar freckles used a UV-sensitive dye inside of the microcapsules of the tattoo ink?
还记得刚才太阳雀斑是如何利用微胶囊纹身墨水里面的紫外线敏感材料的吗？
Well, you could also put heat-sensitive dyes inside of microcapsules
你也可以把热敏染料放进微胶囊里面，
and you could make different tattoo inks that change color at different temperatures.
这样你可以做不同的纹身墨水可以在不同的温度下改变颜色。
Suppose it was 96, 98, and a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
假设现在是96，98和100华氏度。
If you place those inks side by side, now you have a temperature scale tuned to the human body.
如果你把这些墨水放在一起，现在你有了一个标在人体上的温标。
In this video, you can see the different patches of tattoos disappearing sequentially as the pigskin we tested them on is heated up.
在这个视频中，当我们在测试的猪皮上加热时，你可以看到不同的纹身渐次消失。
So if you were to place a tattoo like this in a location that was stable to external temperature fluctuations
所以如果你想把这样的一个纹身放在对外界温度波动稳定的地方，
maybe inside of the mouth, perhaps on the back of the lip?
也许放在嘴巴里面，嘴唇后面？
then you'd be able to read your body temperature anytime by just glancing at your tattoo in the mirror.
这样你就可以随时阅读你的体温了，只需要在镜子中看一看你的纹身。
Amazing, right? Thank you.
神奇，对吗？谢谢！
Another limitation that we have as humans is that our skin doesn't conduct electricity,
另外一个我们作为人类的局限是我们的皮肤并不导电，
and that can be a good thing, but not necessarily...
这是个好事情，但也未必...
if you have an electronic biomedical implant, like a pacemaker for example.
如果你有电子生物医学植入，比如起搏器。
Right now, if you have a pacemaker, you need surgery every five or 10 years to replace the battery when it dies.
现在，如果你有一个起搏器，你需要每五年或十年做一次手术来更换电池。
And wouldn't it be nice if, instead, we could simply recharge the battery through a patch of conducting skin?
如果我们能简单地通过一块导电皮肤给电池充电，岂不是很好？
Well, if you were to try to tackle that problem with a tattoo,
如果你想用纹身来解决这个问题，
the first step would be to make a tattoo that conducts electricity.
第一步是制作一个可以导电的纹身。
So we've been working on a conducting tattoo ink in my lab.
所以我们一直在实验室里研究一种导电纹身墨水。
And right now, we're able to increase the conductivity of skin over 300-fold with our conducting tattoo ink.
现在我们已经可以通过我们的导电纹身墨水把皮肤的导电性增加300倍。
Now, we have a long way to go before we reach the conductivity of something like a copper wire,
现在，在我们达到像铜那样的导电性前，仍有很长的路要走，
but we're making progress and I'm really excited about this
但我们在取得进步，并且我真的为此感到兴奋，
because I think that it could open up a whole new world of possibility for tattoos.
因为我认为这为纹身开辟了一个全新的天地。
I envision a future where tattoos enable us
我展望了一个纹身使我们，
tattooable wires and tattooable electronics enable us to merge our technologies with our bodies
可纹身的电线和可纹身的电子设备使我们能够将我们的技术与我们的身体结合起来，
so that they feel more like extensions of ourselves rather than external devices.
这样它们感觉起来更像是我们自己的扩展而非外部设备。
So these are a few examples of the new abilities that we can gain by using nanotechnology to upgrade our tattoos,
这是一些通过使用纳米技术升级我们的纹身可以获得的新能力的几个例子，
but this really is only the beginning.
但这仅仅是个开始。
I believe the sky is the limit for what we can do with high-tech tattoos.
我相信高科技纹身的前途无量。
In the future, tattoos will not only be beautiful, they'll be functional too. Thank you.
未来，纹身不仅美观，它们也实用。谢谢。