愛鼓搗的人成就美國的偉大

??? 縱觀人類歷史，人們常常訴諸鬼神和幻想的故事來解釋許多無法理解的事物。人生或許是骯臟、粗魯和短暫的，但在某種意義上，這個容納它的世界卻魅影重重。

????隨后爆發了啟蒙運動。這場運動強調理性和科學高于迷信,從而引發了“世界的祛魅”（馬克斯·韋伯語）。換言之，人們不再譴責魔鬼，而是開始揣摩事物的運行方式。好奇心重、擅長操作機械的人終于迎來了自己的好時光。

????但在上世紀中葉的某個時候面紗再次垂下。戰后的技術革命帶給我們激光、計算機以及其他一些神秘莫測的技術。許多人熱情擁抱它們，但很少有人能夠理解它們、擺弄它們。結果留給我們一大堆神奇的電子用品（比如iPad），但以自己動手為特征的DIY活動卻就此式微。這一悠久的傳統形成了一種有益健康的鼓搗文化，與自立和創新等內涵更廣泛的美國傳統密切相連。

????亞歷克·福奇認為，這種鼓搗傳統是美國的一項核心美德。福奇在他的新著《愛鼓搗的人成就美國偉業：業余愛好者、DIY愛好者和發明家贊歌》（The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Made America Great）一書中，對這種傳統進行了毫無保留的探索。他在書中寫到：“擺弄我們周圍的機械其實已經成為了一種成年禮。對于許多人來說，這是一種生活方式。”

????福奇認為鼓搗有三個基本特征。第一種特征是，“用我們周圍已經存在的事物制造出某種全新的東西”；其二，它“最開始時往往沒有什么目的”；其三，它是“一種破壞性行為，鼓搗者背對歷史開始了一段全新的旅程”。

????福奇意識到，鼓搗這種行為既可能發生在實體世界，也可能發生在虛擬空間。比如它有可能涉及移動應用，就如同它曾經涉及化油器一樣。這與他的主旨觀點是一致的——無論受到怎樣的威脅，鼓搗行為并沒有在這個國家消亡。

????就這一點而言，他是正確的。從生產新手工藝品的小作坊中，從誠摯的年輕學子對務農生活（美國相當多的鼓搗行為都發軔自農耕時代）重燃的興趣中，我們都可以看到這一點。請不要忽視《制造》雜志（Make）和制匯節（Makers Faires）的成功，也不要對從東海岸至西海岸星羅棋布的各類科技作坊和駭客空間視而不見。

????For much of human history, people explained away the many things they couldn't understand by resorting to gods, spirits, and fanciful tales. Life may have been nasty, brutish, and short, but the world that contained it was in some sense enchanted.

????Then came the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason and science over superstition, leading to what Max Weber called the "disenchantment of the world." People stopped blaming the devil, in other words, and started figuring out how things worked. It was a great time for the curious and the mechanically inclined.

????But sometime in the middle of the last century, the veil descended once again. The postwar technological revolution served to re-enchant everyday life, giving us lasers and computers and other mysterious technologies that many embraced but few understood or could work on. The result was a great many magical gizmos (iPad, anyone?) but the decline of a long tradition of hands-on, do-it-yourself activity that formed a salutary culture of tinkering -- one linked to such broader American traditions as self-reliance and innovation.

????This tinkering tradition is a core American virtue, in the view of Alec Foege, who explores it, warts and all, in his new book?The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Made America Great.?"Puttering around with the mechanical devices that surrounded us was practically a rite of passage," he writes, "and for many, a way of life."

????Foege argues that tinkering has three essential characteristics. First, it involves "making something genuinely new out of the things that already surround us." Second, it "happens without an initial sense of purpose." And third, it's "a disruptive act in which the tinkerer pivots from history and begins a new journey."

????Foege recognizes that tinkering can be virtual as well as physical -- that it can involve, say, mobile apps just as it once involved carburetors. That's in keeping with his thesis that tinkering, however threatened, isn't dead in this country.

????He's right about this. We see it in the host of small production runs for new artisanal products, and in the renewed interest of earnest young college graduates in a life of farming, which harks back to the agrarian roots of so much American tinkering. And let's not overlook the success of?Make?magazine and the Makers Faires, or the spread of techshops and hackerspaces from coast to coast.