I'm an artist and an engineer. And lately, I've been thinking a lot about how technology mediates the way we perceive reality.
我是一位艺术家兼工程师。最近，我一直在思考科技在以怎样的方式影响我们感知现实的能力。
And it's being done in a superinvisible and nuanced way.
这种影响是潜移默化的。
Technology is designed to shape our sense of reality by masking itself as the actual experience of the world.
科技通过伪装对现实的真实体验，来塑造我们对现实的感知。
As a result, we are becoming unconscious and unaware that it is happening at all.
于是，我们对正在发生的一切变得毫无意识，也毫无察觉。
Take the glasses I usually wear, for example.
就拿我平时戴的眼镜举例。
These have become part of the way I ordinarily experience my surroundings.
眼镜变成我平日里体验周围环境方式的一部分。
I barely notice them, even though they are constantly framing reality for me.
尽管它们一直框住了我的现实世界，我也很少注意到它们的存在。
The technology I am talking about is designed to do the same thing: change what we see and think but go unnoticed.
我现在所说的科技也被设计成做同样的事：不知不觉地改变着我们的所见所思。
Now, the only time I do notice my glasses is when something happens to draw my attention to it,
如今，我很少意识到我带着眼镜，除非发生了一些事情，引起我的注意，
like when it gets dirty or my prescription changes.
比如，眼镜脏了，或者度数不够了。
So I asked myself, "As an artist, what can I create to draw the same kind of attention to the ways digital media
所以我自问：“作为一名艺术家，我能创造出什么作品，来吸引注意力，就如同数字媒体那样，
like news organizations, social media platforms, advertising and search engines -- are shaping our reality?"
像新闻机构、社交媒体平台、广告，和搜索引擎，来塑造我们的现实？”
So I created a series of perceptual machines to help us defamiliarize and question the ways we see the world.
所以我创造了一系列的感知机器来帮助我们陌生化并质疑我们看世界的方式。
For example, nowadays, many of us have this kind of allergic reaction to ideas that are different from ours.
例如，现在我们很多人对持有不同观点的人有着这样一种过敏反应。
We may not even realize that we've developed this kind of mental allergy.
我们可能甚至都没意识到我们已经产生了这样一种“精神过敏”。
So I created a helmet that creates this artificial allergy to the color red.
所以我做了一个头盔，对红色产生人工过敏。
It simulates this hypersensitivity by making red things look bigger when you are wearing it.
当你佩戴头盔时，它会通过放大红色物体，来模拟这一超敏反应。
It has two modes: nocebo and placebo.
它有两种模式：非安慰剂效应和安慰剂效应。
In nocebo mode, it creates this sensorial experience of hyperallergy.
在非安慰剂模式下，头盔可以创造超敏的感官体验。
Whenever I see red, the red expands.
只要我看到红色，红色就会膨胀开来。
It's similar to social media's amplification effect, like when you look at something that bothers you,
这和社交媒体的放大效应类似，就像你在看到某些不喜欢的言论，
you tend to stick with like-minded people and exchange messages and memes, and you become even more angry.
你会倾向于去找和自己想法一样的人交换信息和表情包，然后你变得更加生气。
Sometimes, a trivial discussion gets amplified and blown way out of proportion.
有时，无关紧要的小讨论会被放大、夸张到不合时宜的程度。
Maybe that's even why we are living in the politics of anger.
可能这就是“愤怒政治”出现的原因。
In placebo mode, it's an artificial cure for this allergy.
在安慰剂模式下，有种针对该过敏的人造疗法。
Whenever you see red, the red shrinks. It's a palliative, like in digital media.
只要你看到红色，红色会缩小。这是一种缓和剂，就像在数字媒体中一样。
When you encounter people with different opinions, we will unfollow them, remove them completely out of our feeds.
当你遇到有着与你有不同想法的人时，你会取消关注他们，不接收他们的推送。
It cures this allergy by avoiding it.
通过避免接触来治疗过敏。
But this way of intentionally ignoring opposing ideas makes human community hyperfragmented and separated.
但是，这种有意无视对立观点的方法，使人类社区变得极其破碎且分离。
The device inside the helmet reshapes reality and projects into our eyes through a set of lenses to create an augmented reality.
头盔内部的设备重塑现实，并通过一组镜头投射入我们的眼睛，从而实现增强现实。
I picked the color red, because it's intense and emotional, it has high visibility and it's political.
我选择红色，因为红色紧张激烈且饱含情绪，它具有高度可见性，也同时具有政治性。
So what if we take a look at the last American presidential election map through the helmet?
所以，要是我们利用这头盔看看上次美国总统大选的地图，会是如何？
You can see that it doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican, because the mediation alters our perceptions.
可以看到，不论你是民主党还是共和党，都不重要了，因为这一调解改变了我们的感知。

The allergy exists on both sides. In digital media, what we see every day is often mediated, but it's also very nuanced.
两边都存在过敏反应。在数字媒体中，我们每天看到的内容通常都是经过调整的，但这些调整也非常细微。
If we are not aware of this, we will keep being vulnerable to many kinds of mental allergies.
如果我们无法意识到这一点，我们会变得脆弱，容易遭受到许多不同的“精神过敏”。
Our perception is not only part of our identities, but in digital media, it's also a part of the value chain.
我们的感知不仅是我们身份认同的一部分，在数字媒体中也是价值链的一部分。
Our visual field is packed with so much information that our perception has become a commodity with real estate value.
我们的视野中充斥着如此多的信息，以至于我们的感知已经变成了商品，跟房地产一样明码标价。
Designs are used to exploit our unconscious biases, algorithms favor content that reaffirms our opinions,
设计被用来挖掘我们的无意识的偏爱，算法则偏爱那些能再次确认我们想法的内容，
so that every little corner of our field of view is being colonized to sell ads.
我们视线所及的每个角落都被掌控，来销售广告。
Like, when this little red dot comes out in your notifications, it grows and expands, and to your mind, it's huge.
例如，当这一个小红点出现在你的推送中，它会不断放大，在你脑海中，它变得巨大。
So I started to think of ways to put a little dirt, or change the lenses of my glasses, and came up with another project.
我开始想办法弄脏我的眼镜，或是改变镜片的度数，于是想出了另一个项目。
Now, keep in mind this is conceptual. It's not a real product.
请记住，目前还只是概念性的，并未投产。
It's a web browser plug-in that could help us to notice the things that we would usually ignore.
这是一个浏览器插件，能帮我们注意到那些经常被忽略的内容。
Like the helmet, the plug-in reshapes reality, but this time, directly into the digital media itself.
像刚刚的头盔一样，这一插件能重塑现实，但这次，是直接从数字媒体本身入手。
It shouts out the hidden filtered voices.
被埋没、被过滤的声音得以传播。
What you should be noticing now will be bigger and vibrant, like here, this story about gender bias emerging from the sea of cats.
值得你关注的东西会变得更大、更明显，比如这里，一篇关于性别偏见的文章，从一堆关于猫咪的文章中被筛选出来。
The plug-in could dilute the things that are being amplified by an algorithm.
这个插件能够稀释被算法放大的东西。
Like, here in this comment section, there are lots of people shouting about the same opinions.
例如，在这个评论区，很多人都在发表着同样的观点。
The plug-in makes their comments super small.
这个插件就能把他们的评论变得超级小。
So now the amount of pixel presence they have on the screen is proportional to the actual value they are contributing to the conversation.
所以现在，这些相同观点的占屏面积和他们为这场对话贡献的实际价值成正比了。
The plug-in also shows the real estate value of our visual field and how much of our perception is being commoditized.
这个插件也能展现我们视野的房地产价值，以及我们的感知有多少正在被商品化。
Different from ad blockers, for every ad you see on the web page, it shows the amount of money you should be earning.
与广告拦截器不同，它能告诉你，你每看一个广告，你本应该挣到多少钱。
We are living in a battlefield between reality and commercial distributed reality,
我们身处战场之中，双方是现实和商业分销化的现实，
so the next version of the plug-in could strike away that commercial reality and show you things as they really are.
所以下一个插件版本将可能打破商业化的现实还原一个真正的现实。
Well, you can imagine how many directions this could really go.
你们可以想象一下，这个插件能做多少事情。
Believe me, I know the risks are high if this were to become a real product.
相信我，我知道把它做出来会有很大风险。
And I created this with good intentions to train our perception and eliminate biases.
我提出这个概念的出发点是好的，是为了训练感知和消除偏见。
But the same approach could be used with bad intentions,
但它也可能被用来做不好的事情，
like forcing citizens to install a plug-in like that to control the public narrative.
例如，强迫公民安装这样的插件来控制公众叙事。
It's challenging to make it fair and personal without it just becoming another layer of mediation.
挑战之处在于把它变得公平且个人化，而非只是变成另一层调和工具。
So what does all this mean for us?
所以，这一切对我们来说意味着什么？
Even though technology is creating this isolation,
尽管科技正在让我们分裂隔离，
we could use it to make the world connected again by breaking the existing model and going beyond it.
但通过打破并超越现有模型，我们依旧可以利用科技把世界再次连结起来。
By exploring how we interface with these technologies,
通过探索我们如何与这些科技建立联系，
we could step out of our habitual, almost machine-like behavior and finally find common ground between each other.
我们能够摆脱习惯性的、甚至类似机器的行为，最终找到我们彼此间的共同点。
Technology is never neutral. It provides a context and frames reality.
科技永远不会是中立的。它能提供情境，也能构建现实。
It's part of the problem and part of the solution.
它既是问题的一部分，也是解决方法的一部分。
We could use it to uncover our blind spots and retrain our perception and consequently, choose how we see each other. Thank you.
我们能够利用它来发现我们的盲点，并重新训练我们的感知能力，这么一来，我们就能选择如何看待彼此。谢谢大家。