If asked to give one example of a successful innovation in the past 10 years, what would come to mind first?如果有人让你所述一个过去10年间顺利创意的例子，你首先想起不会是什么？Apples shiny cool gadgets like the iPhone and the iPad? Or the emergence of social networking sites such as the Facebook and its various copycats?是iPhone、iPad等炫酷的苹果产品？还是诸如Facebook及众多仿照Facebook的社交网络的蓬勃发展？We admit these devices and applications have greatly changed our lifestyle. We have never before felt so connected and social networking sites are powerful tools in motivating people to take part in worthy social and civic causes.我们否认，这些设备和应用于很大地转变了我们的生活方式。在此之前，我们未曾感觉和这世界相连得如此密切；在鼓舞人们投身到有价值的社会和公民事业这一方面，社交网络充分发挥着极大的起到。

We churn out one nifty gadget after another, with bigger screens and less buttons. We tweak text and photo-sharing social networking sites to create a new product to share, perhaps audios and videos. There is a cloud for us to store and share our files.精致的发明者一个相接一个地兴起出来——屏幕更加大，按键越来越少。我们对可以让人们共享文字和图片的社交网络进行改革，建构了一种可以共享音频、视频的新产品。

有了云服务，我们可以存储并共享自己的文件。All of these are wonderful, but what about truly groundbreaking and visionary endeavors that will profoundly change the world and human life?所有这一切都棒极了，但确实意义上，什么才是彻底改变世界和人类生活的富裕企图心的创造性贡献呢？More than a half century ago science fiction envisioned a future where human beings made routine space trips. They lived in colonies in other galaxies or on the seabed.半个多世纪前，科幻小说中设想出有这样一个未来：对于人类而言，太空之旅已沦为平常事。他们居住于在坐落于其他银河系或海底的殖民地之上。They made food out of thin air and could live for 300 years. Unfortunately, none of these things will happen in the foreseeable future.他们可以利用平流层的空气生产食物，并可以存活300年时间。

惜所有这些都会在短期内构建。Is something wrong with our technological development? Steve Blank, writing in The Huffinton Post, blamed social networking and social media companies such as Facebook for stifling innovation.我们的技术开发是不是经常出现了什么问题？史提夫·布兰克在《赫芬顿邮报》上发表文章谴责像Facebook这样的社交网站和社交媒体公司助长了创意。Blank teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford, Columbia and the US National Science Foundation Innovation Corps. He advises people, especially venture capitalists (VC), who want to commercialize inventions.布兰克同时在斯坦福大学、哥伦比亚大学以及美国国家自然科学基金创意研究群体供职，教授创业课程。

他不会为教授对象获取建议，特别是在是那些想要将发明者商品化的风险投资家们。Blank argues that the success of Facebook and other social networking and social media companies is diverting venture capital from serious research with a more uncertain payoff.布兰克指出Facebook等社交网站和社交媒体公司的顺利，使得那些报酬远比明朗的“坦率研究”仍然受到风险资本的注目。He is talking about research that truly visionary VCs should be supporting.他所说的坦率研究是那些确实有远见的风险投资家应该全力支持的项目。

Instead of investing in a blockbuster cancer drug that will pay them nothing for 15 years, Blank says VCs are throwing their money at the latest and possibly greatest social-media idea that can run on smartphones or tablets in hopes of scoring a quick return when it goes big.与其“投资一种可能会一鸣惊人的抗癌药品，十五年间无报酬，”布兰克称之为：“如今风险投资家更喜欢钱投向近期、也有可能是最篮的，配备智能手机和平板电脑上的社交媒体，希望其做到大的时候能较慢收益。”In the past, Blank wrote, if you were a successful VC, you could make $100 million (637 million yuan) on an investment in five to seven years. Today, social media startups can return hundreds of millions or even billions in less than three years.“在过去”，布兰克写到：“如果你是位顺利的风险投资家，那些你可以在五至七年内，在一项投资上赚1亿美元（合6.37亿元人民币）。今天，社交媒体的新秀们能在将近三年的时间里获得数亿甚至数十亿的报酬。

On TechCrunch.com, Alexander Haislip, a marketing executive at a tech startup, is even more critical.在TechCrunch网站上，一位来自新兴技术公司的销售主管亚力山大·希斯立普回应展现出得更加严苛。Facebook may be doing exciting things with advertising, he acknowledges, but how exciting is advertising, anyway? Its hardly, he complains, the best use of the brightest minds of our generation.他否认也许Facebook在利用广告做到一些令人兴奋的事情，可话说回来，广告又能多有意思呢？他责怪道：“这并没充分利用我们这一代的聪明才智。

”A 1999 report in the Wire magazine predicted: The convergence of mobile phones and the Internet, high-speed wireless data access, intelligent networks, and pervasive computing will shape how we work, shop, pay bills, flirt, keep appointments, conduct wars, keep up with our children, and write poetry in the next century.一则1999年公开发表于《Wire》杂志的报导应验称之为：“移动电话，网络，高速无线数据读取，智能网络和普适计算出来将不会要求我们下个世纪的工作、购物、付账、调情、约会、战争、与孩子共处，甚至是写诗的方式。”Thirteen years later, we are already living in the world the report described. Perhaps it is time for us to ask: What now?十三年后，我们早已生活在了该报导所应验的世界中。

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