[VIDEO] Stephen Hawking's Final Words to China Misconstrued
The death of world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking at
the age of 76 shocked the world on Wednesday, and China was no
different. Hawking is a figure who, along with the likes of Bill Gates,
Steve Jobs, and Albert Einstein, is often lionized throughout Chinese
education, and China's newspapers were quick to write memorials praising
his contributions to humanity while the country's social media paid
tribute to his genius.
Without Hawking to guide us, we are only
left with his written works to remember him by. But, if you're China,
you're lucky enough to have received a personal message he left on his
official Weibo micro-blogging account. Unfortunately, the problem is
that it appears that Hawking's message hasn't gotten through to his
audience.
Written on Nov 24 last year, Hawking's final Weibo post consisted of a video interview (see above) he made with TFBoy Karry Wang as part of Tencent's Next Idea Innovation Contest, a competition designed to encourage China's next generation of young minds.
Although
Hawking urged China's youth to face the future with "curiosity and
confidence," the contest had other ideas in mind ... namely, finding a
way to firmly hold onto its past.
Awkwardly conducted with both
Hawking and Wang both speaking into the camera instead of each other,
the video interview nevertheless gets off to a solid start with Hawking
giving his arguments that humanity must begin space colonization.
However, the interview takes a turn for the worse when Wang asks Hawking (at 2:22 of the video), "How should we protect our traditional
culture while exploring the future and developing science and
technology at the same time?" As Wang speaks, images of the Temple of
Heaven and Beijing's new performance hall flashes on the screen.
Hawking answers with the following, leaving nothing to doubt:
I do not believe that traditional culture will disappear. I think our
art and music are human orientated and would be meaningless to an alien
species. I do not think we need to worry.
For
a man who was more concerned about saving humanity from extinction, it
seemed like Hawking had a broader scope in mind instead of one that is
in the shape and size of China. And yet, as though their segments were
taped at separate times, Wang immediately followed up Hawking's answer
with this off-key response:
Maybe science and technology will provide new and interesting possibilities for us to revive our traditional culture.
Wishful thinking? Sure. Following the same conversation thread? Not at all.
It's
clear that Hawking misunderstood Wang's question as being not specific
to China while Wang seems to have misunderstood Hawking's answer to be
wholly specific to the Celestial Kingdom, alien species notwithstanding.
How did this interview get to this point? Let's take a step back for a moment to fully appreciate the Next Idea contest.
At
the same time as China makes huge advances in fields like
supercomputers, artificial intelligence, and cloning, the country also
looks to employ cutting-edge technology to help maintain the culture and
traditions that make it the way it is, an aim realized by campaigns and
contests like Next Idea. In fact, one of the main beneficiaries of Next Idea is
Beijing's greatest cultural attraction, the Forbidden City, which is
looking for ways to turn itself into a new intellectual property that
can be marketed to a wider audience.
In
practical terms, the contest finds ways of modernizing ancient Chinese
painted landscapes with computer graphics as seen in a Next Idea promotional
video that features a hybrid soundtrack of both Peking Opera and rap
lyrics. For this reason, China's next generation will be responsible for
guarding its past and future, or as one headline put it, a people who
must be "given free rein to dream when facing the future without ever
forgetting the past."
With these conservative restraints placed
upon them, we've managed to meander a long way from Hawking's initial
message of inspiring China's youth with "curiosity and confidence." But,
as we say farewell to the greatest mind of our generation, we may have
to admit that we weren't listening the first time around.
Photos: 56.com, Weibo.com
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