A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: 'If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.' He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: 'The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet.'
美国总统奥巴马(Barack Obama)在最近一次拉票演讲中掷地有声地说，“你的生意不是光靠自己做成的，是有人在旁边使了劲。”他以路桥设施为例，力证政府机构相对企业主发挥了更大的作用，并紧接着举例道，“互联网也不是从石头缝里蹦出来的，是政府研究机构发明了互联网，让各路企业从互联网上挣钱。”
It's an urban legend that the government launched the Internet. The myth is that the Pentagon created the Internet to keep its communications lines up even in a nuclear strike. The truth is a more interesting story about how innovation happens─and about how hard it is to build successful technology companies even once the government gets out of the way.
所谓政府发明了互联网的说法就是一个“都市传奇”。相传，互联网是五角大楼为了确保其通讯网络即便遭遇核打击也能正常运转才发明出来的。而真相是一个更引人入胜的故事，讲述了创新是如何发生的，以及即便在没有政府干预的情况下，科技企业要想成功都是非常艰难的。
For many technologists, the idea of the Internet traces to Vannevar Bush, the presidential science adviser during World War II who oversaw the development of radar and the Manhattan Project. In a 1946 article in The Atlantic titled 'As We May Think, ' Bush defined an ambitious peacetime goal for technologists: Build what he called a 'memex' through which 'wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified.'
在很多科技工作者的心目中，互联网概念应当追溯到二战期间的美国总统科学顾问范内瓦•布什(Vannevar Bush)，他领导了雷达的研究开发和曼哈顿计划（即原子弹计划）。1945年，范内瓦在《大西洋月刊》(The Atlantic)上发表了一篇名为《诚如所思》(As We May Think)的文章，为科技工作者确定了一个和平时期的宏伟蓝图：构建一个“memex”系统。在这个系统框架内，“各种全新形式的、带有预制关联路径网络的百科全书将会出现，随时可投进memex，在那里得到扩展。”
That fired imaginations, and by the 1960s technologists were trying to connect separate physical communications networks into one global network─a 'world-wide web.' The federal government was involved, modestly, via the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Its goal was not maintaining communications during a nuclear attack, and it didn't build the Internet. Robert Taylor, who ran the ARPA program in the 1960s, sent an email to fellow technologists in 2004 setting the record straight: 'The creation of the Arpanet was not motivated by considerations of war. The Arpanet was not an Internet. An Internet is a connection between two or more computer networks.'
梦想由此起航，到了上世纪六十年代，科技业者积极行动，努力将各种通讯网络连接起来，形成一个全球统一的“万维网”。五角大楼有一个阿帕网(Advanced Research Projects Agency Network)，因此，美国联邦政府在一定程度上参与了这项工作。但是，阿帕网的建立初衷并非是为了防止核打击导致通讯中断，它最终也没有形成互联网。罗伯特•泰勒(Robert Taylor)正是当年阿帕网计划的负责人。他在2004年向其科技同僚发送了一封电子邮件，道明了真相：“创建阿帕网并非是出于战事考虑。阿帕网不是互联网。真正的互联网应该是两个或两个以上计算机网络之间的连接。”
If the government didn't invent the Internet, who did? Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet's backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks.
如果说政府没有发明互联网，那么互联网到底是谁发明的？文特•瑟夫(Vinton Cerf)制定了互联网的基石──TCP/IP协议，超链接的发明则归功于蒂姆•伯纳斯•李(Tim Berners-Lee)。
But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto) and the graphical user interface that still drives computer usage today.
而发明互联网的最大功臣当属罗伯特•泰勒离开阿帕网项目后加盟的公司：施乐公司(Xerox)。七十年代，在施乐公司位于硅谷的施乐帕克研究中心(Xerox PARC)，诞生了连接不同计算机网络的以太网。施乐帕克研究中心的研究人员还开发出了首台个人电脑──施乐阿尔托(Xerox Alto)，以及至今仍对计算机应用发挥重要推动作用的图形用户界面。
According to a book about Xerox PARC, 'Dealers of Lightning' (by Michael Hiltzik), its top researchers realized they couldn't wait for the government to connect different networks, so would have to do it themselves. 'We have a more immediate problem than they do, ' Robert Metcalfe told his colleague John Shoch in 1973. 'We have more networks than they do.' Mr. Shoch later recalled that ARPA staffers 'were working under government funding and university contracts. They had contract administrators . . . and all that slow, lugubrious behavior to contend with.'
米切尔•希尔兹克(Michael Hiltzik)所着《闪电商人》(Dealers of Lightning)一书谈到施乐帕克研究中心时指出，该中心的高层研究人员意识到，干等着政府去连接各种网络不是个办法，他们必须自力更生地实现这个目标。1973年，罗伯特•梅特卡夫(Robert Metcalfe)对同事约翰•索苏(John Shoch)说，“我们面对的问题比他们更紧迫，我们的网络比他们更多。”索苏事后回忆道，阿帕网项目的参与者“是在政府资助和高校协议的前提下工作的。上面有执行协议的管理人员……必须得应对各种各样迟钝的和负面的反应。”
So having created the Internet, why didn't Xerox become the biggest company in the world? The answer explains the disconnect between a government-led view of business and how innovation actually happens.
那么，既然创建了互联网，施乐公司为何没能成为世界上最大的公司呢？这个问题的答案揭示了管理层主导的商业理念与创新的实际发生过程之间的脱节。
Executives at Xerox headquarters in Rochester, N.Y., were focused on selling copiers. From their standpoint, the Ethernet was important only so that people in an office could link computers to share a copier. Then, in 1979, Steve Jobs negotiated an agreement whereby Xerox's venture-capital division invested $1 million in Apple, with the requirement that Jobs get a full briefing on all the Xerox PARC innovations. 'They just had no idea what they had, ' Jobs later said, after launching hugely profitable Apple computers using concepts developed by Xerox.
施乐公司位于纽约州罗彻斯特市(Rochester)总部大楼内的高管们一心想着的还是销售打印机。在他们看来，以太网的作用只在于把一个办公室内的电脑连接起来，好让这个办公室内的人共享一台打印机。1979年，史蒂夫•乔布斯(Steve Jobs)与施乐公司达成一项协议，根据该协议，苹果公司(Apple)接受施乐公司风险投资部100万美元的入资，而作为交换条件之一，施乐公司必须向乔布斯展示其施乐帕克研究中心的所有发明。基于施乐公司创立的很多理念，苹果公司推出了创利丰厚的电脑产品。乔布斯后来说，“他们当时根本没意识到自己拥有些什么。”
Xerox's copier business was lucrative for decades, but the company eventually had years of losses during the digital revolution. Xerox managers can console themselves that it's rare for a company to make the transition from one technology era to another.
施乐的打印机生意曾经成功经营数十载，但最终，在数字革命时代陷入了连年的亏损。施乐的经营团队唯一能够聊以自慰的，也许就是在科技的跨时代转变过程中，很少有哪家公司能够称得上成功。
As for the government's role, the Internet was fully privatized in 1995, when a remaining piece of the network run by the National Science Foundation was closed─just as the commercial Web began to boom. Blogger Brian Carnell wrote in 1999: 'The Internet, in fact, reaffirms the basic free market critique of large government. Here for 30 years the government had an immensely useful protocol for transferring information, TCP/IP, but it languished. . . . In less than a decade, private concerns have taken that protocol and created one of the most important technological revolutions of the millennia.'
至于政府在其中的角色，1995年，当美国国家科学基金会(National Science Foundation)负责的网络被彻底关闭后，互联网实现了完全的私有化。当时，商业化网站刚刚开始大量涌现。博主布莱恩•卡奈尔(Brian Carnell)在1999年写道：“实际上，互联网支持了自由市场理论对大政府的根本批判。政府发明了很有用的信息传输协议──TCP/IP，但经过了三十年都没有流行起来……当民间力量主导后，不到十年，基于该协议便催生了新世纪最为重要的一场科技革命。”
It's important to understand the history of the Internet because it's too often wrongly cited to justify big government. It's also important to recognize that building great technology businesses requires both innovation and the skills to bring innovations to market. As the contrast between Xerox and Apple shows, few business leaders succeed in this challenge. Those who do─not the government─deserve the credit for making it happen.
了解这段互联网的历史很重要，因为人们经常错误地引用它来歌颂政府的伟大作用。同时，有一点也很重要，那就是要创建伟大的科技企业，必须既有创新能力，又有将创新转化为商机的能力。施乐和苹果之间的鲜明对比表明，只有极少数的商业领袖能够堪此大任。那些采取了切实行动的人，而非政府，才是使得梦想成真的功臣。
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