手机版
您的当前位置: 首页 > 英语考试 > GRE > 一场虚拟世界的反动(双语)

一场虚拟世界的反动(双语)

来源:GRE 时间:2019-01-13 点击:

The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it
互联网已经成为大众、公司和网络系统的超级联合体;而一些强权势力却有将它巴尔干化【注:分裂瓦解】的危险。  


A fragmenting virtual world
支离破碎的虚拟世界

THE first internet boom, a decade and a half ago, resembled a religious movement. Omnipresent cyber-gurus, often framed by colourful PowerPoint presentations reminiscent of stained glass, prophesied a digital paradise in which not only would commerce be frictionless and growth exponential, but democracy would be direct and the nation-state would no longer exist. One, John-Perry Barlow, even penned “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”.

十五年前的第一波互联网热潮有点像一场宗教运动。无所不能的网络高人,通常被放在色彩明艳的PowerPoint展示图框中,让你想起(教堂的)彩色玻璃窗;他们预言在一幢未来的数码乐园里,不仅商业将没有阻碍发展飞速,民众也可以直接享受民主,国家无需存在。约翰-佩里•巴洛【注:美国诗人和政治活动家、电子前哨基金会创始人之一、网络自由主义提倡者】甚至拟写了一份“网络空间独立宣言书”。

【注:cyberlibertarianism:The libertarian philosophy applied to the Internet and electronic media. Libertarians believe everyone should have complete and full civil liberties. Organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation promote cyberlibertarianism 】

Even though all this sounded Utopian when it was preached, it reflected online reality pretty accurately. The internet was a wide-open space, a new frontier. For the first time, anyone could communicate electronically with anyone else—globally and essentially free of charge. Anyone was able to create a website or an online shop, which could be reached from anywhere in the world using a simple piece of software called a browser, without asking anyone else for permission. The control of information, opinion and commerce by governments—or big companies, for that matter—indeed appeared to be a thing of the past. “You have no sovereignty where we gather,” Mr Barlow wrote.

尽管这一切在布道般宣传声中听起来十分乌托邦,但它相当准确地反映了当初的网络现实。互联网曾是一个完全开放的空间,一个崭新的领域。有史以来第一次,任何人都可以在全球范围内,以电子形式相互交流,并且基本上无需花费。任何人都可以自创一个网站或者网上购物店。不用任何许可,只要用一个称作“浏览器”的简单软件,你就能从全世界任意一处到这家网店逛逛。政府(或针对这点来说,大型集团)对信息、舆论及商业贸易的控制,似乎确确实实已成了过往历史。巴洛写道:“在我们的聚合之地,你们没有主权”。

The lofty discourse on “cyberspace” has long changed. Even the term now sounds passé. Today another overused celestial metaphor holds sway: the “cloud” is code for all kinds of digital services generated in warehouses packed with computers, called data centres, and distributed over the internet. Most of the talk, though, concerns more earthly matters: privacy, antitrust, Google’s woes in China, mobile applications, green information technology (IT). Only Apple’s latest iSomethings seem to inspire religious fervour, as they did again this week.

关于“网络空间”崇高言论早已成了过眼云烟,这一术语如今甚至显得落伍了。今天,另有一个反复使用、像神喻一般的词汇正统领着网络天下:“云” ——这个指令代表了所有那些由堆满仓库的电脑(又称数据中心)操作,通过网络送出的各类数据服务。然而,大多数的舆论还是对坊间俗事更为关心一些:如隐私权、反垄断、谷歌中国的不爽遭遇、手机应用软件、绿色信息技术(IT)等等。似乎只有苹果公司的最新的“i--某某新创”才能激起宗教般的热情,如本周他们又激昂了一回。

Again, this is a fair reflection of what is happening on the internet. Fifteen years after its first manifestation as a global, unifying network, it has entered its second phase: it appears to be balkanising, torn apart by three separate, but related forces.

我们再次看到了互联网现状的准确反映。自从这个全球性联合网络问世作至今15个年头,它迈进了第二阶段:它看来正被“巴尔干化”,被三个即独立又相关的力量扯成散片。

First, governments are increasingly reasserting their sovereignty. Recently several countries have demanded that their law-enforcement agencies have access to e-mails sent from BlackBerry smart-phones. This week India, which had threatened to cut off BlackBerry service at the end of August, granted RIM, the device’s maker, an extra two months while authorities consider the firm’s proposal to comply. However, it has also said that it is going after other communication-service providers, notably Google and Skype.

首先是各国政府越来越强调他们的主权。最近,有几个国家已要求让其执法机构能够进入黑莓智能手机发送的电子邮件。本周,印度在威胁8月底终止黑莓服务之后,又允许给黑莓制造商RIM公司额外两个月的时间,让当局考虑该公司递交的服从规定的申请。但政府还表示要对付其他的通信服务供应商,尤其是谷歌和Skype。

Second, big IT companies are building their own digital territories, where they set the rules and control or limit connections to other parts of the internet. Third, network owners would like to treat different types of traffic differently, in effect creating faster and slower lanes on the internet.

其次为大型IT公司正在建立自己的数码区域,给它们设置了特定的规范、控制或限制联接互联网的其他部分。第三是一些网络业主喜欢以不同等级款待不同类型的数据流,其效果就像在互联网上修建了快慢线。

It is still too early to say that the internet has fragmented into “internets”, but there is a danger that it may splinter along geographical and commercial boundaries. (The picture above is a visual representation of the “nationality” of traffic on the internet, created by the University of California’s Co-operative Association for Internet Data Analysis: America is in pink, Britain in dark blue, Italy in pale blue, Sweden in green and unknown countries in white.) Just as it was not pre ordained that the internet would become one global network where the same rules applied to everyone, everywhere, it is not certain that it will stay that way, says Kevin Werbach, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

现在就称互联网已经进入了支离破碎的各种“网路” 尚言之过早,但危险是它可能沿着地理和商业类型的界限开裂。(上面图片以图视表现各国在互联网上的流通量,由加州大学的互联网数据分析合作协会提供:美国为粉红色,英国深蓝色,意大利淡蓝色,瑞典绿色,其它国籍不明者用白色)。宾州大学沃顿商学院教授凯文韦巴赫指出,正如互联网并非命中注定地会成为一个全球性网络,网中的每人和每地都得遵循同样的规则,它也不能保证将来会维持这个形式。

To grasp why the internet might unravel, it is necessary to understand how, in the words of Mr Werbach, “it pulled itself together” in the first place. Even today, this seems like something of a miracle. In the physical world, most networks—railways, airlines, telephone systems—are collections of more or less connected islands. Before the internet and the world wide web came along, this balkanised model was also the norm online. For a long time, for instance, AOL and CompuServe would not even exchange e-mails.

要抓住为什么互联网可能四分五裂的根源,就有必要了解它是怎样在第一时间(按韦巴赫先生的说法) “自我相联” [自我救赎?]的。时至今日,它仍然像奇迹一般。在物质世界中,大多数网络系统——铁路,航空,电话系统——都或多或少地像连接的岛屿。在互联网和万维网之前,这种巴尔干模式也属于网上的规范。例如,有相当一段时间里,美国在线(AOL)和CompuServe甚至没有电子邮件相互往来。

Economists point to “network effects” to explain why the internet managed to supplant these proprietary services. Everybody had strong incentives to join: consumers, companies and, most important, the networks themselves (the internet is in fact a “network of networks”). The more the internet grew, the greater the benefits became. And its founding fathers created the basis for this virtuous circle by making it easy for networks to hook up and for individuals to get wired.

经济学家拎出“网络效应”来解释为什么互联网能够取代了原先那些专有服务系统。这是因为所有人都有加入网络的强烈动机:消费者、公司、以及最重要的,是网络本身(互联网事实上就是一个“网络”之网)。互联网增长越快,从中收益就越显著。再者,因为网络之父们奠定了一个良性循环的基础,使它便于人网相连、网网相连。

Yet economics alone do not explain why the internet rather than a proprietary service prevailed (as Microsoft did in software for personal computers, or PCs). One reason may be that the rapid rise of the internet, originally an obscure academic network funded by America’s Department of Defence, took everyone by surprise. “The internet was able to develop quietly and organically for years before it became widely known,” writes Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard University, in his 2008 book, “The Future of the Internet—And How To Stop It”. In other words, had telecoms firms, for instance, suspected how big it would become, they might have tried earlier to change its rules.

不过,仅仅靠经济原因还不能解释为什么互联网而不是某种专有服务(如微软装在个人电脑PC机上的软件)能获得成功。另外可能是互联网发展之迅速,让所有人都意料未及。它的前身只是一个由美国国防部资助的毫不起眼的学术网络。 “在闻名于世之前,互联网能够被平静、随性地开发了多年”,哈佛大学教授乔纳森•吉特仁在他2008年《互联网的未来—及如何阻止它》一书中写道。换句话说,如果电信公司能早点预料到网络的发展规模,他们或许会早点着手更改其规则。

Whatever the cause, the open internet has been a boon for humanity. It has not only allowed companies and other organisations of all sorts to become more efficient, but enabled other forms of production, notably “open source” methods, in which groups of people, often volunteers, all over the world develop products, mostly pieces of software, collectively. Individuals have access to more information than ever, communicate more freely and form groups of like-minded people more easily.

无论什么原因,开放的互联网已成为人类的福音。它不仅使企业和各种其他各类机构增进了效率,而且促成了各种形式的制造方法。特别是“开源”理论能够让多组人员,通常是来自世界各地的志愿者集体开发(多为软件)的产品。互联网使个人比以往任何一个时期更容易获得信息、更自由地相互交流以及更便于组成志同道合的团体【such as eco 】。

Even more important, the internet is an open platform, rather than one built for a specific service, like the telephone network. Mr Zittrain calls it “generative”: people can tinker with it, creating new services and elbowing existing ones aside. Any young company can build a device or develop an application that connects to the internet, provided it follows certain, mostly technical conventions. In a more closed and controlled environment, an Amazon, a Facebook or a Google would probably never have blossomed as it did.

更重要的是,互联网作为一个开放平台,不是专为某一种特定服务如电话网而建。吉特仁先生称之为“激发活力”:人们可以用它修改、创造新的服务项目和弃旧迎新。任何一家创业公司只要遵循互联网特定的且多为技术层面的公约,便可以配备设备或开发某种应用程序进行联网。如果生存在一个较为封闭与受控制的环境中,亚马逊、脸谱(Facebook)或谷歌也许再不会拥有今天的盛况。

Forces of fragmentation
拆散之手

However, this very success has given rise to the forces that are now pulling the internet apart. The cracks are most visible along geographical boundaries. The internet is too important for governments to ignore. They are increasingly finding ways to enforce their laws in the digital realm. The most prominent is China’s “great firewall”. The Chinese authorities are using the same technology that companies use to stop employees accessing particular websites and online services. This is why Google at first decided to censor its Chinese search service: there was no other way to be widely accessible in the country.

然而,正是这种巨大成功引发了拆散互联网的势力愈演愈烈。沿着地理界限的裂缝最为明显。互联网的影响力太大使得政府不容忽视。他们越来越竭力设法把国家法律延伸到数码领域之内。最著名的有中国的“金盾防火墙”。中国政府使用的与公司阻止员工访问特定网站和在线服务的技术一样。这就是为什么谷歌最初决定审查其中文搜索服务:因为除此而外,它无法在中国获得通过和被广泛使用的机会。

 

But China is by no means the only country erecting borders in cyberspace. The Australian government plans to build a firewall to block material showing the sexual abuse of children and other criminal or offensive content. The OpenNet Initiative, an advocacy group, lists more than a dozen countries that block internet content for political, social and security reasons. They do not need especially clever technology: governments go increasingly after dominant online firms because they are easy to get hold of. In April Google published the numbers of requests it had received from official agencies to remove content or provide information about users. Brazil led both counts (see chart 1).

但中国远远不是唯一在网络空间里垒边境墙的国家。澳大利亚政府计划建立一个防火墙来屏蔽具有儿童性虐待及其他犯罪或攻击性内容的信息。网络活动组织“开放网倡议”(The OpenNet Initiative)列出了一份数据表,上面有十几个国家和地区鉴于政治、社会和安全等原因,屏蔽互联网的信息。政府不需要特殊智能技术:他们只是越来越密切地盯住龙头网络公司,因其目标显著,容易掌控。谷歌4月份公布了一份官方要求它删除内容或提供有关用户信息的统计数据。巴西占了上面两项统计的首位。(见图表1)。

Not every request or barrier has a sinister motive. Australia’s firewall is a case in point, even if it is a clumsy way of enforcing the law. It would be another matter, however, if governments started tinkering with the internet’s address book, the Domain Name System (DNS). This allows the network to look up the computer on which a website lives. If a country started its own DNS, it could better control what people can see. Some fear this is precisely what China and others might do one day.

并非来自政府的每一个要求或屏蔽都有险恶用心的。澳大利亚的防火墙是为一例,即使它的执行方式比较笨拙。但是,如果各国政府都开始插手互联网的地址簿、域名系统(DNS)则是另一回事了,如此一来,系统便可以通过网络查找某个网站在哪台计算机上。如果一个国家开始建立自己的DNS,它就能够更有效地控制网站的阅读内容。有人担心这正是中国和其他政府某天会做的事。

To confuse matters, the DNS is already splintering for a good reason. It was designed for the Latin alphabet, which was fine when most internet users came from the West. But because more and more netizens live in other parts of the world—China boasts 420m—last October the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the body that oversees the DNS, allowed domain names entirely in other scripts. This makes things easier for people in, say, China, Japan or Russia, but marks another step towards the renationalisation of the internet.

更为混乱的状况是,DNS系统已经因为一个很充分的理由而陷于分裂之中。它最早设计为拉丁字母,这对大多数西方的互联网用户来说不存在问题。但由于住在世界其它地区的网民越来越多(中国达4.2亿),去年10月“监管DNS的机构互联网名称与数字地址分配机构”(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)允许域名可以全部采用另外的字符。这为中国,日本或俄罗斯提供了方便,却标志着互联网向“重新国有化”又跨了一步。

Many media companies have already gone one step further. They use another part of the internet’s address system, the “IP numbers” that identify computers on the network, to block access to content if consumers are not in certain countries. Try viewing a television show on Hulu, a popular American video service, from Europe and it will tell you: “We’re sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed within the United States.” Similarly, Spotify, a popular European music-streaming service, cannot be reached from America.

许多媒体公司已经不止跨了一步。他们利用互联网地址系统的另一部分,即用来识别网络电脑的“IP地址”,以阻挡不在特定国家之内的消费者访问网站内容。如果试图从欧洲观看一个流行于美国的视频服务Hulu的电视节目,它会告诉你:“很抱歉,目前我们的视频库只能在美国观看” 。同样,你无法从美国听到一家流行于欧洲的音乐流服务台Spotify。

Yet it is another kind of commercial attempt to carve up the internet that is causing more concern. Devotees of a unified cyberspace are worried that the online world will soon start looking as it did before the internet took over: a collection of more or less connected proprietary islands reminiscent of AOL and CompuServe. One of them could even become as dominant as Microsoft in PC software. “We’re heading into a war for control of the web,” Tim O’Reilly, an internet savant who heads O’Reilly Media, a publishing house, wrote late last year. “And in the end, it’s more than that, it’s a war against the web as an interoperable platform.”

还有另一种企图瓜分互联网的商业引起了更多担心。信仰网络空间联合的虔诚信徒担心网络世界很快就要走回互联网之前的时代:由一批或多或少相连的专有岛【proprietary islands?】,类似于美国在线(American Online)和CompuServe,其中之一甚至可能发展成类似PC软件业的巨头微软。"我们正进入一场网络控制的战争”,互联网专家、奥雷利媒体出版社主管蒂姆•奥雷利在去年年底写道: ““当然最终还不止于此,它是一场反对网络作为共用平台的战争”。

The trend to more closed systems is undeniable. Take Facebook, the web’s biggest social network. The site is a fast-growing, semi-open platform with more than 500m registered users. Its American contingent spends on average more than six hours a month on the site and less than two on Google. Users have identities specific to Facebook and communicate mostly via internal messages. The firm has its own rules, covering, for instance, which third-party applications may run and how personal data are dealt with.

向更加封闭的系统发展趋势是不可否认的。以互联网上最大的社交网络脸谱为例,该网站建于一个快速成长、注册用户超过5亿的半开放平台上。它的美国网民每月在该网站平均耗时6小时以上,却在谷歌上耗时不到2小时。脸谱用户持有特定身份并大多通过站内消息联系。该公司有自己的规则,其中包括了允许哪些第三方应用程序运行以及如何处理个人资料。

Apple is even more of a world apart. From its iPhone and iPad, people mostly get access to online services not through a conventional browser but via specialised applications available only from the company’s “App Store”. Granted, the store has lots of apps—about 250,000—but Apple nonetheless controls which ones make it onto its platform. It has used that power to keep out products it does not like, including things that can be construed as pornographic or that might interfere with its business, such as an app for Google’s telephone service. Apple’s press conference to show off its new wares on September 1st was streamed live over the internet but could be seen only on its own devices.

苹果更像远岸的风景。在它的iPhone和iPad产品上,人们大多需要通过从该公司的“App商店”提供的专门应用程序而非普遍常用的浏览器才能使用线上服务。诚然,App商店提供了多达25万种应用程序,可是苹果仍然控制哪些程序能上它的平台。它利用这种权力将它不爱的产品拒之门外,包括那些可当作色情或可能妨碍其业务的产品,如为谷歌电话服务的应用程序。苹果在9月1日炫耀其新产品的新闻发布会视频直播虽然放在互联网上,但你只能用它的设备才能看到视频。

Even Google can be seen as a platform unto itself, if a very open one. The world’s biggest search engine now offers dozens of services, from news aggregation to word processing, all of which are tied together and run on a global network of dozens of huge data-centres. Yet Google’s most important service is its online advertising platform, which serves most text-based ads on the web. Being the company’s main source of revenue, critics say, it is hardly a model of openness and transparency.

甚至可以说谷歌也是它自己的平台,只是它很开放。这部世界上最大的搜索引擎现在提供了几十种从综合新闻到文字处理在线服务,它们被综合在一个全球网络中,通过数十个大型数据中心的运行。但谷歌最重要的服务是在线广告平台,用于处理网上最多的文字广告。批评者说,作为公司的主要收入来源,它很难被视为一个公开和透明度的模型。

There is no conspiracy behind the emergence of these platforms. Firms are in business to make money. And such phenomena as social networks and online advertising exhibit strong network effects, meaning that a dominant market leader is likely to emerge. What is more, most users these days are not experts, but average consumers, who want secure, reliable products. To create a good experience on mobile devices, which more and more people will use to get onto the internet, hardware, software and services must be more tightly integrated than on PCs.

这些新兴平台的背后并没有什么阴谋。公司需要业务赚钱。而社交网络和网页广告这类现象展示了强烈的网络效应,即主导市场的龙头公司很可能由此而催生。再说如今大多数的用户都不是行家而是需求安全可靠产品的普通消费者。使用手机上网的用户越来越多,公司要想为其移动产品创建优质口碑,软件和服务都必须比个人电脑还更加紧凑地组合在一起。


Net neutrality, or not?
网络中立否

Discussion of these proprietary platforms is only beginning. A lot of ink, however, has already been spilt on another form of balkanisation: in the plumbing of the internet. Most of this debate, particularly in America, is about “net neutrality”. This is one of the internet’s founding principles: that every packet of data, regardless of its contents, should be treated the same way, and the best effort should always be made to forward it.

对专有平台的讨论才仅仅开头而已,却有大量笔墨泼向另一种形式的巴尔干化:互联网的渠道问题。多数的有关辩论(特别是在美国)都是关于“网络中立性”的问题。这是互联网的基本原则之一:即每个数据包无论内容如何,都应当受到同样的处理方式,而最佳努力应当自始至终放在它的“发送”上。

Proponents of this principle want it to become law, out of concern that network owners will breach it if they can. Their nightmare is what Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia University, calls “the Tony Soprano vision of networking”, alluding to a television series about a mafia family. If operators were allowed to charge for better service, they could extort protection money from every website. Those not willing to pay for their data to be transmitted quickly would be left to crawl in the slow lane. “Allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the internet such a success,” said Vinton Cerf, one of the network’s founding fathers (who now works for Google), at a hearing in Congress.

支持者们出于担心网络系统雇主可能违法这项原则,希望把它定为法律,他们最怕的噩梦就是哥伦比亚大学教授吴添称之为“东尼•苏普兰侬的网络愿景”,隐喻一个黑手党家族的电视连续剧。【注:Tony Soprano是该美视《黑道家族》主角、黑手党老大】。如果经营商得到允许,让用户为其服务质量付费的话,他们可能到每一家网站收取保护费。那些不愿为其数据高速传送付费的人将会被留在慢速频道上踽踽而行。网络的创始人、现受聘于谷歌的文顿•瑟夫在国会听证会指出: “允许宽带经营商来控制人们的在线视行,会从根本上破坏让互联网取得巨大成功的原则”。

 

Opponents of the enshrining of net neutrality in law—not just self-interested telecoms firms, but also experts like Dave Farber, another internet elder—argue that it would be counterproductive. Outlawing discrimination of any kind could discourage operators from investing to differentiate their networks. And given the rapid growth in file-sharing and video (see chart 2), operators may have good reason to manage data flows, lest other traffic be crowded out.

反对将网络中立奉为法律的一方——不仅包括维护自我利益的电信公司,还有互联网专家,如戴夫•法伯网络前辈。他认为制定此法会适得其反。禁止任何形式的歧视可能降低网络管理商在网络分级方面的投资热情。由于文件共享和视频的增速迅猛(见图表2),经营商按理必须加强有效管理数据流,否则所有交通都将拥挤不堪。

The issue is not as black and white as it seems. The internet has never been as neutral as some would have it. Network providers do not guarantee a certain quality of service, but merely promise to do their best. That may not matter for personal e-mails, but it does for time-sensitive data such as video. What is more, large internet firms like Amazon and Google have long redirected traffic onto private fast lanes that bypass the public internet to speed up access to their websites.

这个问题难以非白即黑来断论。互联网从来也未如某些理想的那么中立。网络供应商并未保证特定质量的服务,而仅仅承诺了尽其所能。当然,流速对私人电子邮件来说不成问题,但对视频这类时间敏感的数据则大有影响了。更为重要的,像亚马逊和谷歌这样的大型互联网公司早已将其数据流避开了公共网络,导入了私家快速通道以加快其网站的访问速度。

Whether such preferential treatment becomes more widespread, and even extortionary,
will probably depend on the market and how it is regulated. It is telling that net neutrality has become far more politically controversial in America than it has elsewhere. This is a reflection of the relative lack of competition in America’s broadband market. In Europe and Japan, “open access” rules require network operators to lease parts of their networks to other firms on a wholesale basis, thus boosting competition. A study comparing broadband markets, published in 2009 by Harvard University’s Berkman Centre for Internet & Society, found that countries with such rules enjoy faster, cheaper broadband service than America, because the barrier to entry for new entrants is much lower. And if any access provider starts limiting what customers can do, they will defect to another.

这些优先待遇是否更加普遍甚至成为勒索的借口则要取决于市场及如何规范管理。显然,美国对网络中立的争议比其他国家更为政治化,反映了美国的宽带市场相对缺乏竞争。在欧洲和日本定有“开放连接” 规则,要求网络经营商以批发形式租出其部分网带给其它公司以促进竞争。2009年发表在哈佛大学互联网与社会伯克曼中心的一项宽带市场对比研究发现,因为新手入市的障碍要低很多,那些制定这类规则的国家可以享受到比美国更快更便宜的宽带服务。任何一家连网提供商一旦试图限制用户的服务选择范围,用户就会寻找另一家公司。

America’s operators have long insisted that open-access requirements would destroy their incentive to build fast, new networks: why bother if you will be forced to share it? After intense lobbying, America’s telecoms regulators bought this argument. But the lesson from elsewhere in the industrialised world is that it is not true. The result, however, is that America has a small number of powerful network operators, prompting concern that they will abuse their power unless they are compelled, by a net-neutrality law, to treat all traffic equally. Rather than trying to mandate fairness in this way—net neutrality is very hard to define or enforce—it makes more sense to address the underlying problem: the lack of competition.

美国经营商一直坚持认为开放连接的要求会破坏其建快速新网的动力:为何投资建网却要被迫分享? 经他们的积极游说,美国电信监管机构接受了这一观点。但是,根据其他发展国家得来的经验说明,这一看法是不正确的。其结果就是美国市场被一批为数不多但势力强大的网络经营商所占据。它提醒人们注意,少数人会滥用手中的权力,除非他们被迫按照网络中立的法律,平等对待所有数据流。鉴于网络中立确实非常难以界定或强制执行,与其试图以强制要求公平,不如解决缺乏竞争这一(美国网络市场的)内在问题要更为合理。

It should come as no surprise that the internet is being pulled apart on every level. “While technology can gravely wound governments, it rarely kills them,” Debora Spar, president of Barnard College at Columbia University, wrote several years ago in her book, “Ruling the Waves”. “This was all inevitable,” argues Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, under the headline “The Web is Dead” in the September issue of the magazine. “A technology is invented, it spreads, a thousand flowers bloom, and then someone finds a way to own it, locking out others.”

所以,网络正在各个层面被拆散这点应该不足为怪。 “虽然网络技术可能会严重伤及政府,但它极少可能置其于死地” ,哥伦比亚大学巴纳德学院院长,黛伯拉•晶石几年前在她的《统治浪潮》一书中写道。 “这一切都是不可避免的”,在《连线》杂志9月刊标题为《网络死了》的一文中,杂志编辑克里斯•安德森争论道: “一项技术被发明传播后,带来了百花齐放,然后有人便设法独占它,把其余的人关在门外。”

Yet predictions are hazardous, particularly in IT. Governments may yet realise that a freer internet is good not just for their economies, but also for their societies. Consumers may decide that it is unwise to entrust all their secrets to a single online firm such as Facebook, and decamp to less insular alternatives, such as Diaspora.

其实,对各行各业的推测,尤其在资讯科技领域方面的危险是不准确。政府就可能还未意识到更自由一点的互联网其实不仅对本国经济,同时还对社会有利。消费者也许意识到把所有秘密托付给单独一家在线公司(如Facebook)非明智之举而决定从中撤离,另择不那么“城府高深”的公司(如Diaspora)以取代。

Similarly, more open technology could also still prevail in the mobile industry. Android, Google’s smart-phone platform, which is less closed than Apple’s, is growing rapidly and gained more subscribers in America than the iPhone in the first half of this year. Intel and Nokia, the world’s biggest chipmaker and the biggest manufacturer of telephone handsets, are pushing an even more open platform called MeeGo. And as mobile devices and networks improve, a standards-based browser could become the dominant access software on the wireless internet as well.

同样,更加开放的技术还是能在移动通信业获胜的。谷歌智能手机平台(比苹果开放)机器人(Android)正在迅速发展。今年上半年,它的美国用户超过了iPhone。英特尔和诺基亚等全球最大的芯片制造商和手机制造商正推出一个更加开放的平台,名为MeeGo。随着移动电讯产品和网络系统的不断改进,一套有标准规则的浏览器可能成为无线互联网的主导连接软件。

 

Stuck in the slow lane
堵在网络慢行道上

If, however, the internet continues to go the other way, this would be bad news. Should the network become a collection of proprietary islands accessed by devices controlled remotely by their vendors, the internet would lose much of its “generativity”, warns Harvard’s Mr Zittrain. Innovation would slow down and the next Amazon, Google or Facebook could simply be, well, Amazon, Google or Facebook.

【注:Technological generativity generally describes the quality of the Internet and modern computers that allows people unrelated to the creation and operation of either to produce content in the form of applications and in the case of the Internet, blogs. Jonathan Zittrain has expressed concern that many recent technologies such as DVR and GPS have moved away from the generative, two-way aspects of the personal computer and the Internet.】

互联网若继续沿另一条路分化下去则为不幸。如果网络成为了一群私有岛,上岛工具又被供应商所远程控制,那么互联网就失去它了的“生成性”(generativity),哈佛大学的吉特仁先生警告说。创新会受到阻滞,下一代亚马逊、谷歌或脸谱则可能仅与其前辈长成一个脸谱。

The danger is not that these islands become physically separated, says Andrew Odlyzko, a professor at the University of Minnesota. There is just too much value in universal connectivity, he argues. “The real question is how high the walls between these walled gardens will be.” Still, if the internet loses too much of its universality, cautions Mr Werbach of the Wharton School, it may indeed fall apart, just as world trade can collapse if there is too much protectionism. Theory demonstrates that interconnected networks such as the internet can grow quickly, he explains—but also that they can dissolve quickly. “This looks rather unlikely today, but if it happens, it will be too late to do anything about it.”

受地域隔离的网岛并不构成威胁,明尼苏达大学的安德鲁Odlyzko教授指出,但全球连接的价值太珍贵,不可丢弃。他认为 “真正的问题是各家花园之间的围墙究竟要起多高”。 沃顿商学院的韦巴赫议员提醒说,正如过多的保护主义会导致世界贸易崩溃那样,如果互联网失去了它的普遍性就可能真正变得四分五裂。理论表明像英特网这样的互联系统既可以快速成长,也可以迅速消散。他说: “这事今天看起来不太可能,而一旦发生了,一切挽救都将为时过晚”。

神马英语网—在线英语学习_免费英语学习 https://www.smyyk.com

Copyright © 2002-2018 . 神马英语网—在线英语学习_免费英语学习 版权所有 京ICP备10015900号

Top