【美联英语】TED-ted演讲稿：人际关系的潜在影响7

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Now, what is the point of this? How does this help us understand? How does this help us figure out some of the problems that are affecting us these days? Well, the argument I'd like to make is that networks have value. They are a kind of social capital. New properties emerge because of our embeddedness in social networks, and these properties inhere in the structure of the networks, not just in the individuals within them. So think about these two common objects. They're both made of carbon, and yet one of them has carbon atoms in it that are arranged in one particular way -- on the left -- and you get graphite, which is soft and dark. But if you take the same carbon atoms and interconnect them a different way, you get diamond, which is clear and hard. And those properties of softness and hardness and darkness and clearness do not reside in the carbon atoms; they reside in the interconnections between the carbon atoms, or at least arise because of the interconnections between the carbon atoms. So, similarly, the pattern of connections among people confers upon the groups of people different properties. It is the ties between people that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. And so it is not just what's happening to these people -- whether they're losing weight or gaining weight, or becoming rich or becoming poor, or becoming happy

or not becoming happy -- that affects us; it's also the actual architecture of the ties around us.

说这些的目的是什么呢?如何加深我们的理解?如何帮助我们解决现今与我们生活息息相关的各种问题呢?我的论点是这些社会网络充满价值。他们好比一种社交资产。由于我们身陷其中，新的网络属性会出现，而这些属性是继承在网络的结构之中，不仅仅是在网络中的个人身上。所以想想这两个日常用品，他们都是由碳做成的，不过其中的一个是由碳原子以独特的方式组合而成的，形成了左手边的石墨，柔软和漆黑。但如果你将相同的碳原子以不同的方式关联到一起，就会得到钻石，透彻而坚硬。而这些柔软、坚硬、漆黑和透彻的属性并不是存在于碳原子本身中。而是存在于碳原子之间的联系中，或者至少是由于这些联系造成的。同样的，人与人之间的关联形态也是赋予了各组群不同的属性。正是人与人之间的关联使得这个世界要比单单各部分的总和伟大许多。所以不仅仅是这些人所经历的事情──他们在减肥还是在增肥，在变富还是在变穷，在快乐还是在不快乐──影响着我们; 同时影响我们的还有我们彼此关系所组成的实质结构。

Our experience of the world depends on the actual structure of the networks in which we're residing and on all the kinds of things that ripple and flow through the network. Now, the reason, I think, that this is the case is that human beings assemble themselves and form a kind of superorganism. Now, a superorganism is a collection of individuals which show or evince behaviors or phenomena that are not reducible to the study of individuals and that must be understood by reference to, and by studying, the collective. Like, for example, a hive of bees that's finding a new nesting site, or a flock of birds that's evading a predator, or a flock of birds that's able to pool its wisdom and navigate and find a tiny speck of an island in the