【英语生活】自制烤面包机

The electric toaster seems a humble thing. It was invented in 1893, not long after the light bulb and long before the microchip and the laser. This century-old technology is now a household staple, and reliable, efficient toasters are available for a few pounds. Nevertheless, Thomas Thwaites, a postgraduate design student at the Royal College of Arts in London, discovered just what an astonishing achievement the toaster is when he embarked on what he called “The Toaster Project”. Quite simply, Thwaites wanted to build a toaster from scratch.

The difficulty of the task began to become clear. To obtain the iron ore, Thwaites had to travel to a former mine in Wales that now serves as a museum. His first attempt to smelt the iron using 15th-century technology failed dismally. His second attempt was something of a cheat, using a recently patented smelting method and a microwave oven – the microwave oven was a casualty of the process – to produce a coin-size lump of iron.

Further short cuts were to follow. Plastic comes from oil, but despite launching a charm offensive against BP, he never did make it out to an oil rig. His attempts to make plastic from potato starch were foiled by hungry snails. He settled for scavenging plastic from a local dump, melting it and moulding it into a toaster casing.

Copper he obtained via electrolysis from the polluted water of an old mine in Anglesey. Nickel was even harder; he cheated and bought some commemorative coins, melting them with an oxyacetylene torch. These compromises were inevitable. “I realised that if you started absolutely from scratch, you could easily spend your life making a toaster,” he explained to me.

An ordinary toaster has more than 400 components and sub-components, made from nearly 100 different materials. Thwaites's home-made toaster is a simpler affair, using just iron, copper, plastic, nickel and mica, a ceramic. It looks more like a toaster-shaped birthday cake than a real toaster, its coating dripping and oozing like icing gone wrong. “It warms bread when I plug it into a battery,” he says, brightly. “But I'm not sure what will happen if I plug it into the mains.”

What should we make of the Toaster Project? Free-market fans point out the wonderful way in which, for no effort and very little money, we can buy a toaster and enjoy the global efforts of an uncounted workforce, and the accumulated knowledge of the centuries that the toaster embodies. The more churlish among them have grumbled that Leonard Read made such a point in an elegant 1958 essay, “I, Pencil”.

Anti-globalisation types fret about the vast and impersonal industrial forces that have been mobilised beyond our vision, leaving us ignorant of any harmful effects on the planet or the poor, and impotent to do anything about them.

Both sides have a point. The modern market economy is mind-bogglingly complex, producing billions of products, many vastly more complex than a toaster. The complexity of the society we have created for ourselves surrounds us so completely that, instead of being dizzied, we tend to take it for granted.

Yet as we celebrate our good fortune to be born at a time of such astonishing material wealth, the toaster should give us pause for thought. It is a symbol of the sophistication of our world, but also a symbol of the obstacles that lie in wait for those who want to change it. Whether attempting to deal with climate change, social deprivation, economic development or healthcare, improving faults in such a complex system is a task best approached with humility.

电动烤面包机似乎是微不足道的东西。它发明于1893年，略晚于电灯，远早于微晶片和激光。这件问世一个多世纪的设备，如今成为家庭日常用具。买一台可靠实惠的烤面包机只需几英镑。虽说如此，伦敦皇家艺术学院(Royal College of Arts)设计专业研究生托马斯•思伟茨(Thomas Thwaites)却发现，烤面包机堪称一项惊人成就。他正是在开展一项所谓的“烤面包机项目”。简单来说，他打算从零开始，造出一台烤面包机。

这项任务的困难开始逐渐显现。为获得铁矿石，思伟茨不得不动身前往威尔士的一座废矿场，如今矿场已被改作博物馆。思伟茨先是试图利用15世纪的技术提炼出铁，结果惨败。他的第二次尝试略有弄虚作假的成分，利用近期获得专利的一项提炼技术和一台微波炉——在此过程中微波炉成了牺牲品——提炼出一块硬币大小的铁。

接下来他不得不继续抄捷径。塑料来自石油，但尽管他对英国石油(BP)发起了一轮魅力攻势，却终究未能进入石油钻塔。他尝试用马铃薯淀粉制作塑料，也被饥饿的蜗牛们破坏了。最后他只得从当地一处垃圾场捡来塑料，熔化后做成烤面包机的外壳。

铜是从安格尔西岛一座旧矿场的污水中经过电解获得的。镍更难获得；他以哄骗加购买的方式，得到了几枚纪念币，用一支氧乙炔焊炬把它们熔化。采取这些折衷办法是不可避免的。“我意识到，假如你要完全从头开始制造一台烤面包机，很可能要花去一辈子的时间。”他这么对我解释。

一台普通烤面包机有400多个零件和子零件，由近100种不同材料制成。思伟茨的自制烤面包机要简易些，只用了铁、铜、塑料、镍和云母（一种陶瓷材料）。它看上去更像是具有烤面包机形状的生日蛋糕，而非真正的烤面包机。它的外壳在不断渗出什么东西，并往下滴落，就像蛋糕上的糖霜出了差错。“接上电池，它能够把面包温热，”思伟茨愉快地说道，“但我不能确定，如果接通插座会有什么结果。”

我们应从这个“烤面包机项目”得到什么启示？自由市场拥护者指出，我们大可购买一台烤面包机，无需付出任何努力，只要掏一点点钱，就可以享受全球不计其数的劳动大军的努力成果，享受烤面包机上累积了数个世纪的知识，这不是很美妙吗？他们当中脾气比较暴躁的人会抱怨道，伦纳德•里德(Leonard Read)在写于1958年的优美随笔《铅笔的故事》(I, Pencil)中早已阐明了这一点。

反全球化者则对非人力的巨大工业力量感到焦虑不安，这种力量的运作超出了我们的想象，它们会对这个星球或贫穷的人们造成怎样的伤害我们无从得知，也无力采取任何对策。

双方都有道理。现代市场经济之复杂令人难以置信，制造的产品不计其数，许多都比烤面包机复杂百倍。我们为自己创造了这样一个社会，它的复杂性将我们彻底包围，以至我们非但没有感到头昏目眩，反而倾向于理所当然地加以接受。

然而，我们在庆幸生逢物质如此惊人丰富的时代之时，烤面包机足以令我们心生踌躇并就此深思。它既象征着我们这个世界的复杂，也象征着希望改变这种局面的人们面前横亘的障碍。不管是尝试处理气候变化、社会剥夺、经济发展抑或是医疗卫生问题，要改进这个复杂体系中的缺陷，最好应本着谦逊的态度去着。

译者/岱嵩