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(雨林的聲音)2011年夏季,我以旅遊者的身份第一次拜訪了婆羅洲的雨林。你或許能想像,令我印象最深刻的就是鋪天蓋地而來的雨林聲,其中包括持續不斷的刺耳聲響,有些確實引人注目,例如有一種大鳥,名叫馬來犀鳥。這種嗡嗡的聲響是蟬鳴,這是長臂猿家族,事實上牠們正在與遠處的家人彼此唱和。據記載,這個地方事實上是長臂猿保護區,這就是為何你能聽見這麼多猿叫聲。但事實上此時最重要的雜訊來自森林外,是我沒有注意到的雜訊。事實上現場沒有任何人注意到,因此,如我所言,這是長臂猿保護區,他們花了大部分時間復育長臂猿,但他們也花了大量時間保護他們的地區不受非法砍伐的影響。因此如果我們將森林的聲音,事實上我們將長臂猿、昆蟲和其它聲音調低,你可以聽見在錄音裡,整段時間的背景中出現來自遠處的電鋸聲。有三名全職警衛駐守在這個保護區附近,他們的工作事實上是防範非法伐木。某天,我們再次以旅遊者的身分走進這片雨林,在五分鐘的步行路程中,我們偶然遇見有人正鋸倒一棵樹。五分鐘的步行路程,離護林站僅數百公尺。他們不曾聽見電鋸聲,因為如你所聽見的,森林的聲音相當響亮。這讓我難以接受,在這個現代化時代保護區內、離護林站僅數百公尺處,電鋸啟動時竟然沒人聽見。聽來不可思議,事實上卻是千真萬確。那麼我們如何制止非法砍伐?這相當誘人,身為工程師的我總是希望想出超級瘋狂的高科技解決方案,但事實上你身處雨林當中,必須採用簡單而易於規模化的方法。因此我們在那裡也注意到,我們所需的每樣東西都已經在雨林中。我們可以就地取材,建立一個阻止非法砍伐的系統。
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(Rainforest noises) In the summer of 2011, as a tourist, I visited the rainforests of Borneo for the very first time, and as you might imagine, it was the overwhelming sounds of the forest that struck me the most. There's this constant cacophony of noise. Some things actually do stick out. For example, this here is a big bird, a rhinoceros hornbill. This buzzing is a cicada. This is a family of gibbons. It's actually singing to each other over a great distance. The place where this was recorded was in fact a gibbon reserve, which is why you can hear so many of them, but in fact the most important noise that was coming out of the forest that time was one that I didn't notice, and in fact nobody there had actually noticed it. So, as I said, this was a gibbon reserve. They spend most of their time rehabilitating gibbons, but they also have to spend a lot of their timeprotecting their area from illegal logging that takes place on the side. And so if we take the sound of the forest and we actually turn down the gibbons, the insects, and the rest, in the background, the entire time, in recordings you heard, was the sound of a chainsaw at great distance. They had three full-time guards who were posted around this sanctuary whose job was in fact to guard against illegal logging, and one day, we went walking, again as tourists, out into the forest, and within five minutes' walk, we stumbled upon somebody who was just sawing a tree down, five minutes' walk, a few hundred meters from the ranger station. They hadn't been able to hear the chainsaws, because as you heard, the forest is very, very loud. It struck me as quite unacceptable that in this modern time, just a few hundred meters away from a ranger station in a sanctuary, that in fact nobody could hear it when someone who has a chainsaw gets fired up. It sounds impossible, but in fact, it was quite true. So how do we stop illegal logging? It's really tempting, as an engineer, always to come up with a high-tech, super-crazy high-tech solution,but in fact, you're in the rainforest. It has to be simple, it has to be scalable, and so what we also noticed while were there was that everything we needed was already there. We could build a system that would allow us to stop this using what's already there.
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誰在那裡?雨林裡已經存在的是什麼?好,我們有人手,我們有現成的團隊-三名全職警衛,他們的職責就是阻止非法砍伐,但他們需要知道森林裡發生了什麼事。真正出人意料、令人大吃一驚的是,森林裡有手機連線訊號。在這個鳥不生蛋的地方竟然有手機服務訊號,我們談論的是離最近的公路數百公里之遙的地方。肯定沒有電,卻有相當良好的手機訊號。城裡的人總是掛在Facebook上,他們用手機瀏覽網頁,這讓我思考,事實上利用森林裡的聲音是可能的,用程式擷取電鋸的聲音,因為人們無法聽見,然後發出警報,但你必須將某個裝置掛在樹上。因此如果我們能利用某種設備聆聽森林的聲音,連接到當地的手機網路,將警報傳送給當地人,也許我們就能替他們找到這個問題的解決方案。但我們花點時間來談談拯救雨林,因為那肯定是我們都聽聞已久的事。與我同世代的人從小就聽過拯救雨林的呼籲,這個訊息似乎從未改變過:我們必須拯救雨林,這是極其緊迫之事。過去許多足球場大小的雨林已被摧毀,如今約有半數雨林依然存在。我們有更緊迫的潛在問題,例如氣候變遷。
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Who was there? What was already in the forest? Well, we had people. We had this group there that was dedicated, three full-time guards,that was dedicated to go and stop it, but they just needed to know what was happening out in the forest. The real surprise, this is the big one, was that there was connectivity out in the forest. There was cell phone service way out in the middle of nowhere. We're talking hundreds of kilometers from the nearest road, there's certainly no electricity, but they had very good cell phone service, these people in the towns were on Facebook all the time, they're surfing the web on their phones, and this sort of got me thinking that in fact it would be possible to use the sounds of the forest, pick up the sounds of chainsaws programmatically, because people can't hear them, and send an alert. But you have to have a device to go up in the trees. So if we can use some device to listen to the sounds of the forest, connect to the cell phone network that's there, and send an alert to people on the ground, perhaps we could have a solution to this issue for them. But let's take a moment to talk about saving the rainforest, because it's something that we've definitely all heard about forever. People in my generation have heard about saving the rainforest since we were kids, and it seems that the message has never changed: We've got to save the rainforest, it's super urgent, this many football fields have been destroyed yesterday. and yet here we are today, about half of the rainforest remains, and we have potentially more urgent problems like climate change.
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但事實上有個我當時不知道、且鮮為人知的事實:砍伐森林將造成更多溫室氣體,勝於世上所有飛機、火車、汽車、卡車和船隻的總和,這是導致氣候變遷的第二大原因。此外,根據國際刑警組織的報告,發生在雨林區的伐木高達90%屬於非法砍伐,如我們所看見的非法砍伐。因此如果我們能幫助雨林區的人執行當地法律,事實上我們能大幅減少這17%的溫室氣體,並有機會在短期內產生重大影響,這或許是對抗氣候變遷最便宜、最迅速的方法。因此這是我們構想的系統,看起來像是超級尖端科技。森林中的電鋸聲被聽見的那一刻,這個裝置就會擷取電鋸聲,透過現有的標準GSM網路發出警示給當地的護林員。他們可以即時出現、阻止非法砍伐,再也不需要走到外面才知道哪棵樹被砍了,也不需要觀看衛星圖才知道哪片區域的樹被砍了。這是即時的干預。
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But in fact, this is the little-known fact that I didn't realize at the time: Deforestation accounts for more greenhouse gas than all of the world's planes, trains, cars, trucks and ships combined. It's the second highest contributor to climate change. Also, according to Interpol, as much as 90 percent of the logging that takes place in the rainforest is illegal logging, like the illegal logging that we saw. So if we can help people in the forest enforce the rules that are there, then in fact we could eat heavily into this 17 percent and potentially have a major impact in the short term. It might just be the cheapest, fastest way to fight climate change. And so here's the system that we imagine. It looks super high tech. The moment a sound of a chainsaw is heard in the forest, the device picks up the sound of the chainsaw, it sends an alert through the standard GSM network that's already there to a ranger in the field who can in fact show up in real time and stop the logging. It's no more about going out and finding a tree that's been cut. It's not about seeing a tree from a satellite in an area that's been clear cut, it's about real-time intervention.
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因此我說這是最便宜、最迅速的方法。但事實上如你所見,他們無法做到這一點,因此也許不會那麼便宜、迅速。但如果樹上的裝置是手機的話,成本將會變得相當低。每年有幾億支手機被丟棄,僅在美國就有上億支,這還沒計算世上其它地區。當然,我們應該一併計算。事實上手機是相當棒的東西,其中有許多感測器可以聆聽森林的聲音。我們必須保護它們,我們必須把它放入你在這裡看見的盒子,我們必須替它們充電。充電是我們必須面對的其中一項較大的工程挑戰,因為在樹蔭下替手機充電,任何在樹蔭下吸收的太陽能都是尚未解決的問題。你在這裡所見的獨特太陽能面板設計,事實上也是由工業製程中回收的副產品所製。這些是被切除的剩料,這是我將所有東西組合在一起,事實上是在我父母的車庫中,十分感謝他們允許我這麼做。如你所見,這是裝置掛在樹上的樣子,你或許可以從這裡看出。從遠處看來它們在樹冠下,相當不起眼。這很重要,因為雖然它們能接收遠至一公里處的電鋸聲,範圍可覆蓋約3平方公里,如果有人把它拿走,這個區域就無法受到保護。
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So I said it was the cheapest and fastest way to do it, but in fact, actually, as you saw, they weren't able to do it, so it may not be so cheap and fast. But if the devices in the trees were actually cell phones, it could be pretty cheap. Cell phones are thrown away by the hundreds of millions every year, hundreds of millions in the U.S. alone, not counting the rest of the world, which of course we should do, but in fact, cell phones are great. They're full of sensors. They can listen to the sounds of the forest. We do have to protect them. We have to put them in this box that you see here, and we do have to power them. Powering them is one of the greater engineering challenges that we had to deal with,because powering a cell phone under a tree canopy, any sort of solar power under a tree canopy, was an as-yet-unsolved problem, and that's this unique solar panel design that you see here, which in fact is built also from recycled byproducts of an industrial process. These are strips that are cut down. So this is me putting it all together in my parents' garage, actually. Thanks very much to them for allowing me to do that. As you can see, this is a device up in a tree. What you can see from here, perhaps, is that they are pretty well obscured up in the tree canopy at a distance. That's important, because although they are able to hear chainsaw noises up to a kilometer in the distance, allowing them to cover about three square kilometers, if someone were to take them, it would make the area unprotected.
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因此這真的行得通嗎?好,為了測試它,我們把它帶回印尼,不在同一個地方,而在另一個地方,另一個長臂猿保護區每天都遭受非法砍伐的威脅。就在第二天,它擷取到非法砍伐的電鋸聲,我們能收到即時警示,我的手機收到一封電子郵件。事實上我們才爬完樹,大家剛回到地面,所有人都在抽煙,然後我收到一封電子郵件。他們都安靜下來,事實上你可以聽到電鋸聲背景中,相當微弱的聲音,但沒人注意到,直到那一刻。因此我們立刻動身阻止那些伐木者,我十分緊張,這是我們接近伐木者所在地的時刻。你可以看出這時我或許為之前所有的努力感到後悔,我不確定山坡另一邊是什麼情況。那個傢伙比我勇敢得多,他繼續前進,因此我不得不跟上。事實上他越過那座山坡,阻止了伐木者的行動。對他們來說這是意想不到的事,他們之前不曾受到阻止,這對他們來說是相當印象深刻的事。我們從合作夥伴那裡聽說,從此以後他們不曾出現。他們確實是相當棒的人,他們向我們展示整個過程如何運作。他們真正使我們當場信服的是:如果你能即時現身阻止伐木者,就能產生足夠嚇阻作用,使他們不再回來。因此-謝謝。(掌聲)
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So does it actually work? Well, to test it, we took it back to Indonesia, not the same place, but another place, to another gibbon reserve that was threatened daily by illegal logging. On the very second day, it picked up illegal chainsaw noises. We were able to get a real-time alert. I got an email on my phone. Actually, we had just climbed the tree. Everyone had just gotten back down. All these guys are smoking cigarettes, and then I get an email, and they all quiet down, and in fact you can hear the chainsaw really, really faint in the background, but no one had noticed it until that moment. And so then we took off to actually stop these loggers. I was pretty nervous. This is the moment where we've actually arrived close to where the loggers are. This is the moment where you can see where I'm actually regretting perhaps the entire endeavor. I'm not really sure what's on the other side of this hill. That guy's much braver than I am. But he went, so I had to go, walking up,and in fact, he made it over the hill, and interrupted the loggers in the act. For them, it was such a surprise -- they had never, ever been interrupted before -- that it was such an impressive event for them, that we've heard from our partners they have not been back since. They were, in fact, great guys. They showed us how the entire operation works, and what they really convinced us on the spot was that if you can show up in real time and stop people, it's enough of a deterrent they won't come back. So -- Thank you. (Applause)
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這件事傳開了,很可能是因為我們四處宣傳。事實上,一些令人驚訝的事開始發生。來自世界各地的人開始寄電子郵件和打電話給我們,我們看見來自亞洲、非洲及南美洲的人告訴我們,他們也能運用這個方法。最重要的是,我們發現我們之前認為森林裡手機訊號相當不錯,可能是特例。人們告訴我們那不是特例,尤其是在深受威脅地區的森林四周。然後一些真正令人驚喜的事發生,人們開始將自己的舊手機寄給我們。因此事實上我們現在擁有一個系統,我們可以利用當地人,他們能改善及使用現有網路。我們使用全球群眾寄來的舊手機,他們希望自己的手機能在壽終正寢後發揮其他功效。或許可以這麼說,如果裝置其餘部分可以完全回收,我們相信這將是一個可升級改造的裝置。再次聲明,這尚未實現,因為這並非高科技解決方案,這只是就地取材。我完全相信,如果不使用手機,總會有足夠的東西讓你建構相似的解決方案,足以在新環境中發揮良好的作用,十分感謝。
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Word of this spread, possibly because we told a lot of people, and in fact, then some really amazing stuff started to happen. People from around the world started to send us emails, phone calls. What we saw was that people throughout Asia, people throughout Africa, people throughout South America, they told us that they could use it too, and what's most important, what we'd found that we thought might be exceptional, in the forest there was pretty good cell phone service. That was not exceptional, we were told, and that particularly is on the periphery of the forests that are most under threat. And then something really amazing happened, which was that people started sending us their own old cell phones. So in fact what we have now is a system where we can use people on the ground, people who are already there,who can both improve and use the existing connectivity, and we're using old cell phones that are being sent to us by people from around the world that want their phones to be doing something else in their afterlife, so to speak. And if the rest of the device can be completely recycled, then we believe it's an entirely upcycled device. So again, this didn't come because of any sort of high-tech solution. It just came from using what's already there, and I'm thoroughly convinced that if it's not phones, that there's always going to be enough there that you can build similar solutions that can be very effective in new contexts. Thank you very much.