名人軼事:蘋果公司CEO喬布斯的人生故事
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
這是蘋果電腦公司兼皮克斯動畫公司的CEO史蒂夫·喬布斯於2005年6月12日在斯坦佛大學畢業典禮上作的極富啓發意義的演講。
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
在呆了六個月之後，我便從裏德學院輟學了，但在那之後，我以旁聽者的身份在學院裏又呆了18個月才真正離開大學。那麼，我爲什麼要輟學呢？
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
話還要從我出生之前說起。我的生母是一個年輕的未婚大學畢業生，她決定把我送去別人家收養，並堅持認爲，收養我的人必須是大學畢業生。在我出生前，所有關於收養我的事宜都已經安排妥當了。我本該被一個律師和他的妻子收養，但等到我真正出生了，他和他的妻子卻在最後時刻決定他們真正想要的是個女孩。所以，我現在的養父母（他們當時在等候名單上）在半夜接到一通電話，“我們有一個意外出生的男孩，你們想收養他嗎？”他們回答說，“當然想。”但後來，我的生母發現了我的養母不是大學畢業生，而我的養父甚至連高中都沒有畢業，於是她拒絕在最終的收養文件上簽字。幾個月後，她才最後妥協了，因爲我的養父母保證以後會送我去上大學。
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
十七年過去了，我真地上了大學。但我卻很天真地挑了一個和斯坦福大學一樣學費昂貴的學校，光是學費就花掉了我養父母辛辛苦苦積攢多年的積蓄，他們只是工薪階層。在學校待了六個月後，我看不出這學費花得值得。我不知道我的人生計劃是什麼，也不知道大學能夠如何幫助我找到這一目標。而且，我在學校唸書會花掉養父母一生的積蓄。於是，我決定輟學，並堅信這是一個正確的決定。當時，這是一個相當冒險的舉動，但今天回頭看看，那是我做出的最明智的決定之一。輟學之後，我馬上逃離了那些我對之乏味的課程，轉而開始旁聽那些看起來很有趣的科目。
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
但事情也並非全是美好的。輟學後我就沒有寢室了，因此，我睡在朋友房間的地板上。爲了有錢吃飯，我把可樂瓶子退回商店，只爲了那5美分的押金，每週星期天晚上，爲了吃一頓好的大餐，我還要走7英里的路，到城鎮另一頭的印度哈而克利須那寺。但我熱愛這種生活。而且，許多我出於好奇和直覺而偶然去做的事，後來也變證明是非常值得的。我來爲你們舉一個例子：
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
當時，裏德學院提供的恐怕是全國最棒的書法教育。走在校園裏，每一幅貼在牆上的海報，每一張抽屜上的標籤，都是漂漂亮亮的手寫體。由於我輟了學，不用再去上常規課程，我便決定報名參加書法班，學寫一手漂亮的字。在班裏，我學到了燈芯體和襯線體，在不同字母組合間的間隙的變化，以及如何才能讓印刷字體美觀。那種美妙、古樸、藝術、微妙，是科學所不能達到的。我對之着了迷。
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
在當時看來，這些事物彷彿於我的人生沒有任何實際的應用。但十年之後，我在設計第一臺蘋果電腦時，它們都重新浮現在我的腦海裏，我們在設計電腦時好好地運用了它們，使我們的蘋果電腦成爲了第一臺精緻排版的電腦。如果我當時沒有去旁聽書法班，蘋果電腦就不會有多字體選擇，字母間也不會有勻稱的間隙。而且，由於Windows系統是借鑑了Mac系統的產物，如今所有的個人電腦都沒有多字體選擇和美妙的字母間隙，這也是有可能的。這些事情就像一個一個的點。當我還在學校時，是不可能看得出這些未來的來龍去脈的。但十年之後，再回頭來看，一切就很明顯了。
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
你們也是一樣，現在要將未來看透是不可能的，只有在將來，事物間的聯繫纔會顯現出來。因此，你們必須要相信，現在所學的東西總是能與未來聯繫起來的。而且，你們還得堅信一種東西，不管是直覺也好，命運也罷，甚至人生，或是因果循環，無論什麼都好。我的這種信仰從來沒有讓我失望，我的生命中的所有轉折都是它造成的。
