Things and Quotes I loved in 2023.

去年我看了不少覺得很棒的作品。抱持著好東西應該要有更多人看過的想法，我決定從書、電影、電視劇、文章和 Podcast 五大類別各挑一個我最愛的作品做排名，並附上簡短心得和節錄推薦給大家。

No.5 Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer 是 2023 年的年度大片之一，好像不需要特別推薦，尤其任何結合科學、科技和歷史的故事都非常對我胃口。不過出乎意料的是，整部電影我最喜歡的是片段不是原子彈試爆、也不是科學家對話，而是電影最後二十分鐘，Kitty 在為 Oppenheimer 向法官辯護的對手戲，短短二分半充滿戲劇張力的對話完完全全地抓住我眼球，真的是近期在大銀幕上看到最好的演出。

可能是因為以前讀物理系的關係，這部電影我印象最深的 Quote 都跟理論物理學家的看事情的視角有關：

“Algebra is like sheet music. The important thing isn’t can you read music. It’s can you hear it. Can you hear the music, Robert?”

“We're theorists. Yes? We imagine a future, and our imaginings horrify us. They won't fear it until they understand it, and they won't understand it until they've used it. When the world learns the terrible secret of Los Alamos, our work here will ensure a peace mankind has never seen.”

No.4 Chip War

關於計算機歷史如果只能推薦二本書，我應該會推薦 Mitchell Waldrop 在 2001 出版的 The Dream Machine 和 Chris Miller 在去年出版的 Chip War。前者探討的是過去一百年計算機和人機互動的理論、思想和技術發展，後者探討的則是過去七十年計算機底層的晶片產業的企業競爭和國際政治角力，讀完這二本書應該會對科技的演化有更成熟和宏觀的視角。

雖然 Chip War 花了很多時間在講晶片在商業和政治層面的影響，但我自己最愛的是第 39章在講 ASML 花了數十年的時間、數百億美元、整合由數千家公司組成的供應鏈打造出 13.5 奈米極紫外光機台（EUV）的故事。這個故事讓我比以往更加敬畏資本市場的力量和人類科技的可能性。以下是我印象最深的 Quote：

“Cymer, a company founded by two laser experts from the University of California, San Diego, had been a major player in lithographic light sources since the 1980s. The company’s engineers realized the best approach was to shoot a tiny ball of tin measuring thirty-millionths of a meter wide moving through a vacuum at a speed of around two hundred miles per hour. The tin is then struck twice with a laser, the first pulse to warm it up, the second to blast it into a plasma with a temperature around half a million degrees, many times hotter than the surface of the sun. This process of blasting tin is then repeated fifty thousand times per second to produce EUV light in the quantities necessary to fabricate chips.”

“The result was a machine with hundreds of thousands of components that took tens of billions of dollars and several decades to develop. The miracle isn’t simply that EUV lithography works, but that it does so reliably enough to produce chips cost-effectively. Extreme reliability was crucial for any component that would be put in the EUV system. ASML had set a target for each component to last on average for at least thirty thousand hours—around four years—before needing repair. In practice, repairs would be needed more often, because not every part breaks at the same time. EUV machines cost over $100 million each, so every hour one is offline costs chipmakers thousands of dollars in lost production.”

“ASML’s EUV lithography tool is the most expensive mass-produced machine tool in history, so complex it’s impossible to use without extensive training from ASML personnel, who remain on-site for the tool’s entire life span. Each EUV scanner has an ASML logo on its side. But ASML’s expertise, the company readily admits, was its ability to orchestrate a far-flung network of optics experts, software designers, laser companies, and many others whose capabilities were needed to make the dream of EUV a reality.”

No.3 Communal computing for 21st-century science

這篇報告是影響我很深的人機互動研究員 Bret Victor 在去年四月底發布的。可能是因為內容跟我工作的相關性更高，這也是唯一一個我有花時間寫心得文的作品。聽說今年春天 Bret 會上線全新的網站介紹 Dynamicland、公開大量研究成果，真的非常期待。

我受到 Bret 影響最深的思想是他看待介面（Interface）的方式。以下從這篇報告中節錄二段我很喜歡的 Quote：

“In a broad sense, we can define an “interface” as giving physical form to invisible concepts, thereby transforming the ways in which these concepts can be seen, reasoned about, manipulated, and discussed. The graphical user interface gave visible and spatial forms to computational concepts, precipitating a global transformation by people who could now apply their visual and spatial understandings to anything that could be represented computationally.”

“At the speed of thought, their vague intangible ideas become concrete scratch-paper programs, incorporating known facts and data, with implications immediately visible and explorable. They propose models, argue with models, refute models, refine models. The conversation spreads out, filling the space around them, immersing them within a shared imagination. Because computation is everywhere, model-driven conversation can happen in the most relevant context — a wet lab, a machine shop, an instrument — where real-world materials and data that are lying around can be readily incorporated into the models.”

No.2 The Social Radars: Brian Chesky, Co-Founder & CEO of Airbnb (Part II)

The Social Radars 是一個相對小眾的、不少 YC 創業者會聽的 Podcast，內容是 YC 的 Jessica Livingston 和 Carolynn Levy 找一些比較成功的 YC 校友做的訪談。值得一提的是，Carolynn Levy 就是當初負責面試我們公司的其中一個 YC Partner，也是發明 SAFE 的人。

他們去年第二次訪問 Brian Chesky 的這集是我截至目前聽到最喜歡、最受啟發的一集，內容在講 Brian Chesky 如何在 COVID-19 爆發期間「重新創辦 Airbnb」、帶領 Airbnb 走出困境。Brian 的分享讓我學到了很多關於如何成為更好的領導者的想法。以下是我很喜歡的 Quote：

“Bad companies are destroyed by a crisis. Good companies survive a crisis. But great companies, they're defined by the crisis.”

“I remember staring into the abyss and imagining us not existing. The first thing I realized is, I think the world would be deprived if we didn't exist. I like to ask entrepreneurs, why do you deserve to exist? The best answer I've ever heard is because if I don't do it, no one else will. I felt like within travel, if we didn't do this, the rest of the industry was moving towards mass tourism. There really weren't a lot of people trying to build community anymore in the physical world. That's why I exist. And the next thing I realized is, oh my God, a lot of what we do has nothing to do with that. We have a magazine division. We're doing transportation and flights. We have a business travel division. And so then I said, we need to focus. So if your house is burning, and somebody says, you can only take a few things out of the house, what do you take? I had to do that. We had to do that.”

No.1 The Wire

The Wire 是 2002 年推出的美劇，總共有五季，但我是直到去年看到某個 Youtube 影片推薦後才開始看，現在已經成為我心目中歷史排行第一的神劇。最一開始看的時候以爲是警匪片，但愈往後看才愈發現這部作品的主角其實是巴爾的摩這座城市的社會生態，以及每個人（警察、黑幫、政客、律師、教師、工人、…）在這個城市中扮演的角色。

看完的感想：我竟然在 2023 年才看到這部劇，實在是相見恨晚。如果人生只能看一部劇，應該就是 The Wire 了。

我印象最深的 Quote 是第二季第六集，流氓 Omar 在法庭上對律師 Levy 的回嘴：

“Just like you, man. I got the shotgun. You got the briefcase. It’s all in the game though, right?”