They have no name and no leader. But you could call them “techno-hippies”. Somewhere between the cheerful profiteering of Silicon Valley and the libertarianism of online hackers, this loose collection of artists and entrepreneurs is using the profusion of new devices and digital networks to challenge mainstream ideas about capitalism, consumption and the relationship between humans and nature.这群人没名字，也没领袖。但你可以把他们称为“技术嬉皮士”。他们介于硅谷兴高采烈的逐利主义和在线黑客的自由主义之间，是一个艺术家和企业家的牢固群体，他们于是以利用层出不穷的新设备和数字网络，挑战有关资本主义、消费以及人类与大自然之间关系的主流观念。Last month, they descended on Linz, a pretty city perched on the banks of the Austrian Danube that hosts the annual Ars Electronica festival, a digital media event that has become a magnet for counter-cultural technologists from around the world.上月，他们回到坐落于奥地利多瑙河沿岸的美丽城市林茨，参与一年一度的电子艺术节(Ars Electronica)，这场数字媒体盛会更有了全球各地的反主流文化技术专家。

Colonising Linz’s shopping malls, schools and even the local bishop’s residence, this year’s installations ranged from a cathedral being played with lasers like a giant musical instrument, to hermit crabs scuttling around under the burden of miniature 3D-printed cityscapes, to a display of “agriculturally printed” farmland in which algorithms had calculated the optimum planting pattern and ratio of crops to bug-resistant grasses.今年的装置作品占有了林茨的购物中心、学校甚至当地主教的居所，还包括一个用激光弹奏的大教堂，就像一件极大的乐器，还有在3D打印机的城市高楼微型复制品的压力下四散逃窜的寄居蟹，以及“经过农业印刷”的农田，利用算法计算出来出有拟合栽种模式和农作物与防虫祸青草的比率。“Ars Electronica is an early warning system,” says Hiroshi Ishii, the associate director of MIT’s Media Lab, who was visiting the festival. “It shows we are living in an era when the connectivity of people and machines can contribute to solving societal problems.”“电子艺术节是一个预警系统，”参与此次电子艺术节的麻省理工(MIT)媒体实验室(Media Lab)副主任石井裕(Hiroshi Ishii)回应，“它表明出有在我们生活的这个时代，人和机器的互联互通有助解决问题社会问题。”Where a typical start-up preaches the values of disruption and convenience, these alternative futurists point to the social or environmental impact. Instead of swooning over the latest high-profile product launch, they find playful ways to ask who controls and benefits from that technology. And with each new proprietary device, they question whether “open source” strategies might be better at empowering individuals to direct their own destinies and create incentives for innovation other than the profit motive.一般的初创企业鼓吹政治宣传和便捷的价值，而这些另类未来主义者指向社会或环境影响。他们没为近期公布的高调产品尖叫声，而是寻找冷笑话的方式发问：谁掌控并获益于这种技术。

每当有新的专有技术设备问世，他们不会发问，“对外开放源”战略不会会更加不利于让个人以求接掌自己的命运，并给创意获取利润动机以外的鼓舞？Their initiatives include “repair cafés” that encourage people to avoid waste by sharing skills to fix defunct electronic objects, and “open source gardens”, where crates full of soil, flowers and plants are left in public spaces to see who takes care of them. Those projects were kicked off by Martin Hollinetz, my host for the festival. Mr Hollinetz, who trained as an engineer and a psychotherapist, runs a chain of so-called “open technology labs” or “Otelos” in rural Austria, which act as a cross between community groups and high-tech research laboratories.他们发动的计划还包括“维修咖啡馆”，希望人们通过共享维修怕了的电子产品技能来增加垃圾，还有“对外开放源花园”，在公共场所摆放装进土壤、花上和植物的大盒，想到谁能照料它们。这些计划是由我在此次电子艺术节的东道主马丁霍林耐茨(Martin Hollinetz)发售的。他是科班出身的工程师和心理治疗师，他在奥地利乡村地区运营着一个所谓的“对外开放技术实验室”（被称作Otelos）连锁，它们兼备社区的组织和高科技研究实验室的特点。

Mr Hollinetz, who lives in a yellow house he and his wife built from reclaimed freight containers previously used to transport refrigerators, took his cues for Otelos from the “maker” movement, a collection of digital do-it-yourselfers who gather in clubs to tinker with high-tech devices such as 3D printers. But he wanted Otelos to be more inclusive than the traditional hacker crowd.霍林耐茨居住于在他和他妻子用重复使用的货运集装箱修建的黄色屋子里，这个集装箱以前用来运输冰箱。他就是指“maker”运动中取得创建Otelos的启发的。这个运动是一个由数字DIY爱好者构成的群体，他们不会挤满在俱乐部，摆弄3D打印机等高科技设备。

但他期望Otelos沦为极具包容性的的组织，不仅还包括传统的黑客人群。“We wanted to create something like the ‘hackerspaces’ you see in Berlin and Barcelona, but to do it in a way that was more welcoming to people of all ages, to stop the brain drain to cities,” he explains. “We wanted to help show people that they had valuable knowledge to share.”“我们期望建构一些类似于你在柏林和巴塞罗那看见的‘黑客空间’那种的组织，但更加青睐各种年龄的阶层，以制止人才向城市萎缩，”他说明道，“我们期望协助展出给人们：他们有宝贵的科学知识可以共享。”With around 500 active members, Otelo projects to date include the design and fabrication of a plug-and-play microchip for broadcasting community radio, and a special soil-tilling machine to help farmers revive a traditional organic agricultural technique.Otelos项目约有500名活跃会员，目前为止的成果还包括设计和生产一种用作播出社区广播的即插即用芯片，以及一种类似的田地耕作机，协助农民完全恢复传统的有机农业方法。Artists and entrepreneurs like Mr Hollinetz are weighing in to a big debate about how technological development should happen. Because making technology can be expensive, innovation tends to come from companies that can generate returns on capital by convincing consumers to buy their products. “There is a real tension in the altruistic or utopian conception of the development of technology on the one hand, and market forces on the other,” says Roland Lamb, the founder and chief executive of London-based music start-up Roli.艺术家和霍林耐茨等企业家于是以重新加入一场大规模辩论，焦点是科技发展不应如何构建。

由于研发技术清有可能成本高昂，因此创意往往来自那些通过劝说消费者出售其产品而取得资本报酬的公司。伦敦音乐初创企业Roli创始人和首席执行官罗兰莱姆(Roland Lamb)回应：“显然不存在紧绷，一方面是科技发展的利他或乌托邦概念，另一方面是市场力量。

”Mr Lamb, who has a degree in comparative philosophy from Harvard, credits eastern thinking with helping him challenge western ideas about identity and discreteness in designing his company’s flagship Seaboard product, a piano that uses soft digital sensors in place of keys to allow a continuum of pressure from the player’s fingers to create changes in sound.莱姆享有哈佛大学(Harvard)较为哲学学位，他指出，在设计他公司的旗舰产品Seaboard的过程中，东方思维协助他挑战了西方有关身份以及分离性的观点，该产品是一台钢琴，用软性数字传感器代替钢琴键，利用来自演奏者手指的倒数压力，构建声音的变化。There is a certain irony, Mr Lamb notes, in corporations that have encouraged consumers to be reliant on their devices now having to tread more carefully as a result.莱姆认为，具备某种嘲讽意味的是，那些仍然希望消费者倚赖它们设备的企业，现在被迫更加慎重地行事。“Phones in particular are beginning to cross a line from being understood as an external object, separate from oneself, to an internal object,” Mr Lamb adds, pointing to the recent outrage over Apple automatically downloading U2’s album Songs of Innocence on to unsuspecting iPhone users. “The very intimacy and closeness of these devices means people want to forget that they have been developed by a company that can push things on to them.”“特别是在是，手机于是以开始从一种被视作与人们瓦解的外部产品变为一种内部产品，”莱姆补足称之为，他谈及，最近人们对苹果(Apple)自动向不知情的iPhone用户iTunesU2专辑Songs of Innocence深感气愤，“这些设备与人们的亲密性意味著，人们期望记得，这些设备是由那些需要将内容擅自引给它们的公司研发的。”But do these experimental interventions produce lasting benefits? Tech businesses such as Apple and Google have shown a willingness to use bottom-up approaches to turn themselves into “platforms”, sharing some of the secrets of their technology in exchange for a share of the revenues that developers get from building on top of it.但这些实验性介入不会产生长久效益吗？苹果和谷歌(Google)等科技企业表明出有不愿利用自下而上的方法把自己变为“平台”，分享一些技术秘密，并从开发者基于这些秘密建构的收益中获得分为。

“There’s still the question of who has control, in the end,” says Erkki Huhtamo, a media historian at UCLA. “It’s quite clear that the corporate world is not interested in releasing control for anybody; rather it’s a strategy or lesson they’ve learnt – that it’s wiser to give people leeway in moulding the technology in certain ways.”“最后，仍是一个谁享有控制权的问题，”加州大学洛杉矶分校(UCLA)媒体历史学家埃尔基胡塔莫(Erkki Huhtamo)回应，“很显著，企业界对于拱手让出控制权不感兴趣；它们教给了一项战略或者说汲取了一个教训：以某些方式在技术构成方面给人们腾出余地是更加明智的作法。”Still, Professor Huhtamo thinks artists and alternative futurists serve a valuable role in helping society adjust to massive technological shifts. He notes that Victorian-era fairground rides helped people come to terms with the mechanical culture of the industrial revolution at a time when many were still terrified of the escalators on the new London Underground. “Artists can help prepare the public for new technological paradigms.”然而，胡塔莫教授指出，在协助社会适应环境大规模技术变革方面，艺术家和另类未来主义者充分发挥着最重要起到。他认为，维多利亚时代的室外游乐场协助人们拒绝接受了工业革命的机械文化，当时很多人仍惧怕新建伦敦地铁(London Underground)的自动扶梯。

“艺术家需要协助让公众为新的科技范式作好打算。

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