Steven Johnson: A guided tour of the Ghost Map

Translator: Sandra Petrović Reviewer: Nika Kotnik

If you haven't ordered yet, I generally find the rigatoni with the spicy tomato sauce

Če še niste jedli, priporočam rigatone s pekočo paradižnikovo omako,

goes best with diseases of the small intestine.

saj gredo najbolje z boleznimi tankega črevesa.

(Laughter)

(smeh)

So, sorry -- it just feels like I should be doing stand-up up here because of the setting.

Oprostite, a zaradi postavitve odra se mi zdi, da sem tu za stand up nastop.

No, what I want to do is take you back to 1854

Sedaj pa vas bom za nekaj minut popeljal nazaj v leto 1854,

in London for the next few minutes, and tell the story --

in sicer v London, da vam na kratko povem zgodbo tega izbruha,

in brief -- of this outbreak,

which in many ways, I think, helped create the world that we live in today,

ki je po moje na mnoge načine doprinesel k sodobnemu načinu življenja,

and particularly the kind of city that we live in today.

predvsem pa sodobnim velemestom.

This period in 1854, in the middle part of the 19th century,

To obdobje v letu 1854, sredi 19. stoletja v zgodovini Londona,

in London's history, is incredibly interesting for a number of reasons.

je izredno zanimivo iz številnih razlogov.

But I think the most important one is that

Menim pa, da je najpomembnejši dejstvo,

London was this city of 2.5 million people,

da je bil London velemesto z 2,5 milijona prebivalcev

and it was the largest city on the face of the planet at that point.

in je bil tisti trenutek največje mesto na planetu.

Bil pa je tudi največje mesto vseh časov.

But it was also the largest city that had ever been built.

And so the Victorians were trying to live through

Tako so viktorijanci istočasno skušali preživeti

and simultaneously invent a whole new scale of living:

in nekako izumiti novo stopnjo v razvoju življenjskega stila,

this scale of living that we, you know, now call "metropolitan living."

stopnjo, ki ji danes rečemo, gotovo veste, "urbani življenjski stil".

And it was in many ways, at this point in the mid-1850s, a complete disaster.

Ta je bil takrat, sredi 50-ih let 19. st., v številnih pogledih še popolna polomija.

They were basically a city living with a modern kind of industrial metropolis

Dejansko so živeli v prototipu modernega industrijskega velemesta

with an Elizabethan public infrastructure.

s srednjeveško infrastrukturo.

So people, for instance, just to gross you out for a second,

Tako so ljudje imeli na primer - da vas malce zgrozim -

had cesspools of human waste in their basement. Like, a foot to two feet deep.

v kleteh greznice s človeškimi iztrebki. Mislim, globine 30 do 60 cm.

And they would just kind of throw the buckets down there

Dejansko so vsebino čebrov nekako zlivali tja dol

and hope that it would somehow go away,

in upali, da bo čudežno izginila in seveda nikoli ni povsem izginila.

and of course it never really would go away.

And all of this stuff, basically, had accumulated to the point

Vse te tegobe so se nabirale do točke,

where the city was incredibly offensive to just walk around in.

da je bilo skrajno neprijetno že samo hoditi po mestu.

It was an amazingly smelly city. Not just because of the cesspools,

Mesto je imelo neverjetno neprijeten vonj. Pa ne samo zaradi greznic,

but also the sheer number of livestock in the city would shock people.

ampak že število glav živine v mestu bi vas presenetilo.

Not just the horses, but people had cows in their attics that they would use for milk,

Ne samo konji, na podstrešju so imeli tudi krave za mleko,

that they would hoist up there and keep them in the attic

s škripci so jih dvignili tja in jih vzdrževali tam,

until literally their milk ran out and they died,

dokler ni zmanjkalo mleka in so poginile.

and then they would drag them off to the bone boilers down the street.

Po tem so jih odvlekli do najbližje predelovalnice kosti.

So, you would just walk around London at this point

Če bi v tistem času hodili po Londonu,

and just be overwhelmed with this stench.

bi vas šokiral neznosen smrad.

And what ended up happening is that an entire emerging public health system

Sledilo je to, da je nastajajoči sistem za varovanje javnega zdravstva

became convinced that it was the smell that was killing everybody,

kot vzrok za smrtnost meščanov prepoznal smrad

that was creating these diseases

in določil, da smrad ustvarja bolezni,

that would wipe through the city every three or four years.

ki so vsake tri ali štiri leta povzročile morijo v mestu.

And cholera was really the great killer of this period.

Kolera je bila v tem času huda morilka.

It arrived in London in 1832, and every four or five years

V Londonu se je pojavila leta 1832 in na vsake štiri ali pet let

another epidemic would take 10,000, 20,000 people in London

je epidemija usmrtila 10.000, 20.000 ljudi v Londonu,

and throughout the U.K.

pa tudi v celotnem Združenem kraljestvu.

And so the authorities became convinced that this smell was this problem.

Oblasti so bile torej prepričane, da je vzrok problema smrad.

We had to get rid of the smell.

Iskali so način, da se znebijo smrada.

And so, in fact, they concocted a couple of early, you know,

Tako so zasnovali nekaj zgodnjih ukrepov

founding public-health interventions in the system of the city,

za varstvo javnega zdravja v mestnem sistemu,

one of which was called the "Nuisances Act,"

eden od teh se je imenoval "Zakon o javnem redu",

which they got everybody as far as they could

ki je - kolikor je lahko - ljudi prisilil,

to empty out their cesspools and just pour all that waste into the river.

da so vsebino svojih greznic izpraznili v reko.

Because if we get it out of the streets, it'll smell much better,

Ker: če jih odmaknemo z ulic, bo vonj znosnejši

and -- oh right, we drink from the river.

in ... Saj res! Mi vendar pijemo iz reke.

So what ended up happening, actually,

Posledično se je pravzaprav zgodilo, da se je število obolelih zvišalo,

is they ended up increasing the outbreaks of cholera

because, as we now know, cholera is actually in the water.

ker, kot sedaj vemo, je kolera v vodi.

To je bolezen, ki se prenaša z vodo, ne preko zraka.

It's a waterborne disease, not something that's in the air.

Je ne vohamo in ne vdahnemo, v resnici jo zaužijemo.

It's not something you smell or inhale; it's something you ingest.

And so one of the founding moments of public health in the 19th century

Tako so začetki javnega zdravja v 19. st.

effectively poisoned the water supply of London much more effectively

dejansko zastrupili pitno vodo v Londonu s takšnim uspehom,

da lahko o tem kateri koli sodobni bioterorist samo sanja.

than any modern day bioterrorist could have ever dreamed of doing.

So this was the state of London in 1854,

Takšna je bila torej situacija v Londonu leta 1854

and in the middle of all this carnage and offensive conditions,

in sredi tega masakra in obupnih razmer

and in the midst of all this scientific confusion

in sredi te znanstvene zmede o vzroku smrtnosti ljudi

about what was actually killing people,

it was a very talented classic 19th century multi-disciplinarian named John Snow,

je bil nadarjen multidisciplinaren znanstvenik 19. st. po imenu John Snow,

who was a local doctor in Soho in London,

sicer lokalni zdravnik v predelu Soho v Londonu,

who had been arguing for about four or five years

ki je že štiri ali pet let zagovarjal, da se kolera prenaša z vodo,

that cholera was, in fact, a waterborne disease,

and had basically convinced nobody of this.

o čemer ni uspel prepričati še nikogar.

The public health authorities had largely ignored what he had to say.

Snovalci politike javnega zdravja so preslišali njegove argumente.

And he'd made the case in a number of papers and done a number of studies,

O tem je napisal veliko tehtnih člankov in izvedel precej raziskav,

but nothing had really stuck.

vendar ni šlo nič skozi.

Del tega, zakaj mi je ta zgodba všeč, je,

And part of -- what's so interesting about this story to me

is that in some ways, it's a great case study in how cultural change happens,

da na nek način predstavlja učni primer poteka kulturnih sprememb,

how a good idea eventually comes to win out over much worse ideas.

kako dobra zamisel premaga precej slabše.

And Snow labored for a long time with this great insight that everybody ignored.

Snow je dolgo garal s tem uvidom pred očmi, ki so ga drugi ignorirali.

And then on one day, August 28th of 1854,

Nato pa se je nekega dne, in sicer 28. avgusta 1854,

a young child, a five-month-old girl whose first name we don't know,

majhen otrok, petmesečna deklica, katere niti imena ne vemo,

poznamo jo kot Lewisovega dojenčka, se je nekako okužila s kolero

we know her only as Baby Lewis, somehow contracted cholera,

came down with cholera at 40 Broad Street.

in zbolela za to boleznijo na naslovu Broad Street 40.

You can't really see it in this map, but this is the map

Na tem zemljevidu se ne vidi, toda ta zemljevid

that becomes the central focus in the second half of my book.

postane osrednji fokus v drugi polovici moje knjige.

Torej v Sohu, soseski delavskega razreda,

It's in the middle of Soho, in this working class neighborhood,

this little girl becomes sick and it turns out that the cesspool,

to dekletce zboli in izkaže se, da greznica,

that they still continue to have, despite the Nuisances Act,

ki jo še vedno imajo, navkljub "Zakonu o javnem redu",

bordered on an extremely popular water pump,

meji na izredno priljubljeno vodno črpalko.

local watering hole that was well known for the best water in all of Soho,

Lokalni vodnjak, ki je slovel po najboljši vodi v celotnem Sohu

that all the residents from Soho and the surrounding neighborhoods would go to.

in h kateremu so hodili vsi prebivalci Soha in okoliških sosesk.

And so this little girl inadvertently ended up

Tako je to dekletce nehote pomagalo

contaminating the water in this popular pump,

kontaminirati vodo v tej črpalki

and one of the most terrifying outbreaks in the history of England

in eden najbolj grozljivih izbruhov kolere v angleški zgodovini

je sledil dva ali tri dni pozneje.

erupted about two or three days later.

Literally, 10 percent of the neighborhood died in seven days,

Resnično, 10 odstotkov soseščine je umrlo v sedmih dneh

in verjetno bi je še več, če ljudje ne bi zbežali po začetku izbruha.

and much more would have died if people hadn't fled

after the initial outbreak kicked in.

So it was this incredibly terrifying event.

Dogodek je bil izredno grotesken.

You had these scenes of entire families dying

Predstavljajte si, kako v roku 48 ur od izbruha kolere umirajo celotne družine,

over the course of 48 hours of cholera,

alone in their one-room apartments, in their little flats.

sami v svojih garsonjerah, v svojih malih stanovanjih.

Just an extraordinary, terrifying scene.

Neverjetna, grozljiva slika.

Snow lived near there, heard about the outbreak,

Snow, ki je stanoval v bližini, je slišal za izbruh,

in pogumno odbrzel v epicenter izbruha,

and in this amazing act of courage went directly into the belly of the beast

because he thought an outbreak that concentrated

ker je ocenil, da bi lahko tako koncentriran izbruh

could actually potentially end up convincing people that,

morda ljudi vendarle prepričal,

da je resnična nevarnost kolere v pitni vodi in ne v zraku.

in fact, the real menace of cholera was in the water supply and not in the air.

Domneval je, da bi tako koncentriran izbruh

He suspected an outbreak that concentrated

would probably involve a single point source.

lahko imel eno samo točko izvora.

En sam kraj, h kateremu so vsi hodili,

One single thing that everybody was going to

ker ni prišlo do tipičnega počasnega načina okužbe.

because it didn't have the traditional slower path

of infections that you might expect.

Odšel je torej naravnost tja in začel ljudi spraševati.

And so he went right in there and started interviewing people.

He eventually enlisted the help of this amazing other figure,

Priskrbel si je tudi pomoč še ene izjemne osebnosti,

who's kind of the other protagonist of the book --

nekako drugega protagonista knjige -

this guy, Henry Whitehead, who was a local minister,

Henryja Whiteheada, okoliškega duhovnika,

who was not at all a man of science, but was incredibly socially connected;

sicer ne znanstvenika, vendar zelo socialno povezanega

he knew everybody in the neighborhood.

in je poznal vse v soseski.

And he managed to track down, Whitehead did,

In ravno Whiteheadu je uspelo izslediti

many of the cases of people who had drunk water from the pump,

večino, ki so pili vodo iz črpalke,

or who hadn't drunk water from the pump.

in tiste, ki tam niso pili.

And eventually Snow made a map of the outbreak.

Tako je Snow naredil "zemljevid izbruha".

Kazalo je, da so tisti, ki so tam pili, večinoma zboleli,

He found increasingly that people who drank from the pump were getting sick.

People who hadn't drunk from the pump were not getting sick.

tisti, ki pa niso pili, niso zboleli.

And he thought about representing that

Premišljeval je, da bi to predstavil

kot nekakšno statistično preglednico prebivalcev različnih sosesk,

as a kind of a table of statistics of people living in different neighborhoods,

ljudi, ki niso, oz. delež ljudi, ki niso,

people who hadn't, you know, percentages of people who hadn't,

but eventually he hit upon the idea

naposled pa se je domislil, da bi potreboval nekaj bolj očitnega.

that what he needed was something that you could see.

Nekaj, kar bi nazorno prikazalo

Something that would take in a sense a higher-level view

of all this activity that had been happening in the neighborhood.

dogajanje v soseski.

And so he created this map,

Tako je ustvaril ta zemljevid,

ki število smrti v soseski dejansko prikazuje

which basically ended up representing all the deaths in the neighborhoods

as black bars at each address.

kot črni stolpec na vsakem naslovu.

And you can see in this map, the pump right at the center of it

Na zemljevidu lahko vidimo, da se črpalka nahaja v središču

and you can see that one of the residences down the way

in da je hiša v neposredni bližini izgubila približno 15 stanovalcev.

had about 15 people dead.

And the map is actually a little bit bigger.

Ta zemljevid je v resnici nekoliko večji.

Bolj ko se oddaljujete od črpalke,

As you get further and further away from the pump,

the deaths begin to grow less and less frequent.

bolj se število smrti znižuje.

And so you can see this something poisonous

Tako lahko vidimo, da se nekaj strupenega širi iz vodnjaka, že na prvi pogled.

emanating out of this pump that you could see in a glance.

And so, with the help of this map,

Tako so se s pomočjo tega zemljevida in nekaj prepričevanja,

and with the help of more evangelizing

that he did over the next few years

ki ga je izvajal v naslednjih letih skupaj z Whiteheadom,

and that Whitehead did, eventually, actually,

mestne oblasti na koncu dejansko spreobrnile.

the authorities slowly started to come around.

It took much longer than sometimes we like to think in this story,

Sicer je trajalo dlje, kot bi si mi danes želeli predstavljati,

but by 1866, when the next big cholera outbreak came to London,

toda do leta 1866, ko je v Londonu vnovič prišlo do velikega izbruha kolere,

the authorities had been convinced -- in part because of this story,

so bile mestne oblasti spreobrnjene - delno zaradi tega primera,

delno zaradi tega zemljevida - da je bil izvor pravzaprav v vodi.

in part because of this map -- that in fact the water was the problem.

And they had already started building the sewers in London,

Gradnja kanalizacije v Londonu je že potekala

and they immediately went to this outbreak

in takoj so se lotili izbruha in ljudem rekli, naj vodo prekuhavajo.

and they told everybody to start boiling their water.

And that was the last time that London has seen a cholera outbreak since.

In to je bilo zadnjikrat, da je v Londonu prišlo do izbruha kolere.

So, part of this story, I think -- well, it's a terrifying story,

Tako mislim, da del te zgodbe - v bistvu je strašljiva,

it's a very dark story and it's a story

je zelo temačna zgodba in je zgodba, ki se še vedno dogaja

that continues on in many of the developing cities of the world.

v številnih mestih tretjega sveta.

It's also a story really that is fundamentally optimistic,

V resnici gre tudi za zgodbo, ki je v osnovi optimistična,

which is to say that it's possible to solve these problems

ki kaže, da je mogoče rešiti te probleme,

if we listen to reason, if we listen to the kind of wisdom of these kinds of maps,

če sledimo razumu, če sledimo modrosti takšnih zemljevidov,

if we listen to people like Snow and Whitehead,

če sledimo ljudem kot Snow in Whitehead

if we listen to the locals who understand

in sledimo krajanom, ki razumejo, kaj se dogaja v takšnih primerih.

what's going on in these kinds of situations.

And what it ended up doing is making the idea

Kar se je na koncu zgodilo,

je ohranitev ideje velemestnega "urbanega načina življenja" kot vzdržnega.

of large-scale metropolitan living a sustainable one.

When people were looking at 10 percent of their neighborhoods dying

Ko so ljudje opazovali, kako desetina njihovih sosedov umira v roku sedmih dni,

in the space of seven days,

there was a widespread consensus that this couldn't go on,

je obstajalo soglasje, da tako ne gre naprej,

that people weren't meant to live in cities of 2.5 million people.

da ljudje niso bili ustvarjeni za življenje v mestih z 2,5 milijona ljudi.

A zaradi Snowovih dejanj, zemljevida,

But because of what Snow did, because of this map,

because of the whole series of reforms

zaradi vrste reform, ki so sledile zemljevidu,

that happened in the wake of this map,

we now take for granted that cities have 10 million people,

so nam danes samoumevna mesta tudi z 10 milijoni ljudi,

mesta, kot je tudi to, so obstojna.

cities like this one are in fact sustainable things.

We don't worry that New York City is going to collapse in on itself

Niti za sekundo nas ne skrbi, da bi New York propadel,

quite the way that, you know, Rome did,

kot je, vemo, razpadel stari Rim,

and be 10 percent of its size in 100 years or 200 years.

in se zmanjšal na desetino velikosti v stoletju ali dveh.

And so that in a way is the ultimate legacy of this map.

Na nek način je to glavna zapuščina tega zemljevida.

It's a map of deaths that ended up creating a whole new way of life,

Zemljevid smrti, ki je na koncu ustvaril nov način življenja,

the life that we're enjoying here today. Thank you very much.

življenje, ki ga uživamo tudi mi danes tu. Najlepša hvala.