繁忙都市中可以不和自己多年的左鄰右舍說(shuō)一句話(huà)，對整個(gè)世界都充滿(mǎn)了不信任感的現代人越來(lái)越感到孤獨，卻愿意在社交媒體和廣播電臺中感受生活，書(shū)寫(xiě)生活，或長(cháng)篇大論，或三言?xún)烧Z(yǔ)，我們借此展露自己，似乎大千世界就只剩下一隅偏安的自嗨，我們越急于用文字表達自己，就越無(wú)法理解世界，表達心事，甚至會(huì )失去更多可能性。我們生來(lái)是自由的，但這種自由不是建立在能言善辯的基礎之上，單單依靠話(huà)語(yǔ)，不論你懷揣著(zhù)多么強烈的表現欲望，世界也絕不會(huì )成為你的話(huà)筒！
膨脹的表達欲，渺小的你我他
作者：Tom Chatfield
譯者：張?chǎng)谓?amp;朱星漢
校對：朱星漢&朱小釗
導讀&筆記：泮海倫&朱小釗
策劃： 朱星漢&朱小釗
I type, therefore I am
我寫(xiě)故我在
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More human beings can write and type their every thought than ever before. Something to celebrate or deplore?
能寫(xiě)字、能打字的人比以前多了很多，這到底是好事還是壞事？
At some point in the past two million years, give or take half a million, the genus of great apes that would become modern humans crossed a unique threshold. Across unknowable reaches of time, they developed a communication system able to describe not only the world, but the inner lives of its speakers. They ascended — or fell, depending on your preferred metaphor — into language.
在過(guò)去二百萬(wàn)年間的某個(gè)時(shí)間點(diǎn)（前后五十萬(wàn)年），類(lèi)人猿跨越了一個(gè)特殊的節點(diǎn)，即將進(jìn)化成智人。不知過(guò)了多久，這群類(lèi)人猿進(jìn)化出了一套交流系統，不僅能描述外部世界，還能表達內心感受。就這樣，它們進(jìn)入——或有些人更喜歡說(shuō)，陷入了——語(yǔ)言的世界里。
The vast bulk of that story is silence. Indeed, darkness and silence are the defining norms of human history. The earliest known writing probably emerged in southern Mesopotamia around 5,000 years ago but, for most of recorded history, reading and writing remained among the most elite human activities: the province of monarchs, priests and nobles who reserved for themselves the privilege of lasting words.
寂靜是進(jìn)化的主題。誠然，黑暗與寂靜是人類(lèi)歷史的基調。已知最早的手寫(xiě)文字紀錄可以追溯到約5000年前的美索不達米亞南部，但縱觀(guān)史書(shū)，閱讀和寫(xiě)作在大部分時(shí)間都是核心的精英階層才能進(jìn)行的活動(dòng)，只有帝王、牧師和貴族的小圈子才享有用文字記錄的特權。
Mass literacy is a phenomenon of the past few centuries, and one that has reached the majority of the world’s adult population only within the past 75 years. In 1950, UNESCO estimated that 44 per cent of the people in the world aged 15 and over were illiterate; by 2012, that proportion had reduced to just 16 per cent, despite the trebling of the global population between those dates. However, while the full effects of this revolution continue to unfold, we find ourselves in the throes of another whose statistics are still more accelerated.
大部分民眾能識字的現象是近幾個(gè)世紀內才出現的，在過(guò)去的75年中，全世界絕大多數成年人才能識字。1950年，據聯(lián)合國教科文組織估計，在全世界所有15歲以上的人中，文盲率高達44%；而在2012年，這一數字下降至16%，而且世界人口在此期間增長(cháng)了兩倍。隨著(zhù)掃盲運動(dòng)逐步展開(kāi)，另一波運動(dòng)正愈演愈烈，同時(shí)伴隨著(zhù)數字的瘋狂增長(cháng)。
In the past few decades, more than six billion mobile phones and two billion internet-connected computers have come into the world. As a result of this, for the first time ever we live not only in an era of mass literacy, but also — thanks to the act of typing onto screens -— in one of mass participation in written culture.
在過(guò)去幾十年內，全世界新增逾六十億部智能手機，逾二十億臺接入互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的電腦，人類(lèi)首次邁入“萬(wàn)眾識字”的時(shí)代，同時(shí)由于電子設備的輸入功能，人類(lèi)也第一次浸淫在了“萬(wàn)眾寫(xiě)字”的文化中。
As a medium, electronic screens possess infinite capacities and instant interconnections, turning words into a new kind of active agent in the world. The 21st century is a truly hypertextual arena (hyper from ancient Greek meaning ‘over, beyond, overmuch, above measure’). Digital words are interconnected by active links, as they never have and never could be on the physical page. They are, however, also above measure in their supply, their distribution, and in the stories that they tell.
作為一種媒介，電子設備容量極大，即時(shí)互聯(lián)，它讓文字變得更加鮮活。21世紀是超文本（Hypertextual，其中hyper詞源為古希臘，意為“高于、超過(guò)、過(guò)多的、難以估量的”）的舞臺。數字時(shí)代的文本通過(guò)鏈接相互聯(lián)系，因為它們不可能，也未曾全部打印出來(lái)。它們是取之不盡、用之不竭的，它們所傳遞的信息也是難以估量的。
Just look at the ways in which most of us, every day, use computers, mobile phones, websites, email and social networks. Vast volumes of mixed media surround us, from music to games and videos. Yet almost all of our online actions still begin and end with writing: text messages, status updates, typed search queries, comments and responses, screens packed with verbal exchanges and, underpinning it all, countless billions of words.
我們大多數人都使用電腦和手機瀏覽網(wǎng)站，登錄社交平臺，收發(fā)郵件，可謂生活在琳瑯滿(mǎn)目的媒體設備中，從音樂(lè )到游戲到視頻一應俱全。然而我們在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上的絕大多數活動(dòng)仍是以打字開(kāi)始，又以打字結束：發(fā)送消息、更新?tīng)顟B(tài)、輸入搜索框、發(fā)表評論，滿(mǎn)屏幕都是文字交互。這一切的背后是無(wú)窮盡的文字。
Underpin/??nd??p?n / v. to support or form the basis of an argument, a claim, etc. 加強，鞏固，構成（…的基礎等）
This sheer quantity is in itself something new. All future histories of modern language will be written from a position of explicit and overwhelming information — a story not of darkness and silence but of data, and of the verbal outpourings of billions of lives. Where once words were written by the literate few on behalf of the many, now every phone and computer user is an author of some kind. And — separated from human voices — the tasks to which typed language, or visual language, is being put are steadily multiplying.
這龐大的量級本身便是前所未有的。在未來(lái)，現代語(yǔ)言歷史的出發(fā)點(diǎn)是不再是黑暗與寂靜的故事，而是清晰而巨量的信息，是數十億人制造的浩如煙海的文字信息。曾經(jīng)，只有少數文化人才能使用文字，他們就代表了其他人；而現在，每一位手機、電腦用戶(hù)在某種意義上都是獨立的作者。而除了聲音以外，人類(lèi)所錄入的文字，或稱(chēng)視覺(jué)語(yǔ)言，所承載的任務(wù)量也與日俱增。
Consider the story of one of the information age’s minor icons, the emoticon. In 1982, at Carnegie Mellon University, a group of researchers were using an online bulletin board to discuss the hypothetical fate of a drop of mercury left on the floor of an elevator if its cable snapped. The scenario prompted a humorous response from one participant — ‘WARNING! Because of a recent physics experiment, the leftmost elevator has been contaminated with mercury. There is also some slight fire damage’ — followed by a note from someone else that, to a casual reader who hadn’t been following the thread, this comment might seem alarming (‘yelling fire in a crowded theatre is bad news… so are jokes on day-old comments’).
以當今信息時(shí)代最簡(jiǎn)單的表情符號為例，它背后的故事是這樣的：1982年，卡耐基梅倫大學(xué)有一群研究人員在BBS上探討了這樣一個(gè)問(wèn)題：如果一個(gè)電梯的線(xiàn)纜斷裂了，而電梯地面上恰好有一滴水銀，那么這滴水銀將會(huì )如何？這場(chǎng)討論中產(chǎn)生了一則幽默的評論：警告！最左側電梯因近期物理實(shí)驗而受到水銀污染，其中可能還有些因火災導致的輕微損壞。隨后有人回復這則評論道，如果讀者并未完整讀完這篇帖子，他可能會(huì )覺(jué)得這條評論帶有警告意味（‘在擁擠的劇院中，有人大喊火災肯定是壞事…互聯(lián)網(wǎng)早期的評論里也是這樣’）。
Participants thus began to suggest symbols that could be added to a post intended as a joke, ranging from per cent signs to ampersands and hashtags. The clear winner came from the computer scientist Scott Fahlman, who proposed a smiley face drawn with three punctuation marks to denote a joke :-). Fahlman also typed a matching sad face :-( to suggest seriousness, accompanied by the prophetic note that ‘it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends’.
因此，這些討論者紛紛建議可以在發(fā)表的內容里加入某種符號，代表這些文字具有的玩笑意味。有人建議用“%”，還有人建議用“&”和“#”，但一位名為斯科特·法爾曼的計算機科學(xué)家毫無(wú)懸念的獲勝了，他用三個(gè)標點(diǎn)符號設計出了笑臉?lè )枺?-)），用它來(lái)表達開(kāi)玩笑的意味；同時(shí)他還設計了配套的哭泣符號（:-(），用來(lái)暗示嚴肅意味。同時(shí)，他還預言：“鑒于當下情況，這可能是表達某事絕非玩笑的最省時(shí)省力的辦法了?！?/span>
Within months, dozens of smiley variants were creeping across the early internet: a kind of proto-virality that has led some to label emoticons the ‘first online meme’. What Fahlman and his colleagues had also enshrined was a central fact of online communication: in an interactive medium, consequences rebound and multiply in unforeseen ways, while miscommunication will often become the rule rather than the exception.
數月之內，大批笑臉?lè )柕淖凅w版本迅速席卷了當時(shí)的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)：它是最原始的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)病毒式傳播，因此也有人將其稱(chēng)為“初代表情包”。法爾曼和他的同事也強調了網(wǎng)上交流的核心概念：在互動(dòng)式媒體中，某種結果會(huì )以各種難以預計的方式傳播、放大，而錯誤信息也通常會(huì )根深蒂固，而不是煙消霧散。
enshrine [?n??ra?n]v.to contain or keep as if in a holy place 把…奉為神圣；珍藏
Three decades later, we’re faced with the logical conclusion of this trend: an appeal at the High Court in London last year against the conviction of a man for a ‘message of menacing character’ on Twitter. In January 2010, Paul Chambers, 28, had tweeted his frustration at the closure of an airport near Doncaster due to snow: ‘Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!’
三十多年后，我們終于看到了表情符號可能會(huì )引發(fā)的后果：2012年，一男子因在推特上發(fā)表“帶有恐嚇字眼的信息”而遭到指控，而有人將此事上訴給倫敦高院。在2010年1月份，唐卡斯特一家機場(chǎng)因大雪關(guān)停，28歲的保羅· 錢(qián)伯斯在推特上發(fā)牢騷稱(chēng)：“我X，羅賓漢機場(chǎng)關(guān)了。你們就剩一周多一點(diǎn)的時(shí)間來(lái)收拾好自己的破爛滾蛋走人了，否則我就把這地方炸個(gè)稀巴爛！”
Chambers had said he never thought anyone would take his ‘silly joke’ seriously. And in his judgment on the ‘Twitter joke trial’, the Lord Chief Justice said that — despite the omission of a smiley emoticon — the tweet in question did not constitute a credible threat: ‘a(chǎn)lthough it purports to address “you”, meaning those responsible for the airport, it was not sent to anyone at the airport or anyone responsible for airport security… the language and punctuation are inconsistent with the writer intending it to be or to be taken as a serious warning’.
錢(qián)伯斯稱(chēng)，他從沒(méi)想過(guò)真的會(huì )有人把自己“弱智的玩笑話(huà)”當真。首席法官對這起“推特玩笑案”的判決意見(jiàn)是——盡管本案中的推文并沒(méi)有使用笑臉?lè )?，但也并未構成?shí)在的威脅：“盡管推文中提到的‘你們’指機場(chǎng)的負責人員，但這條推文并沒(méi)有發(fā)送給機場(chǎng)工作人員，也沒(méi)有發(fā)送給機場(chǎng)安保人員……用詞和標點(diǎn)說(shuō)明作者并不帶有恐嚇意圖，也不希望別人把它當成一則正經(jīng)的警告?！?/span>
The phrase a ‘victory for common sense’ was widely used by supporters of the charged man, such as the comedians Stephen Fry and Al Murray. As the judge also noted, Twitter itself represents ‘no more and no less than conversation without speech’: an interaction as spontaneous and layered with contingent meanings as face-to-face communication, but possessing the permanence of writing and the reach of broadcasting.
支持錢(qián)伯斯無(wú)罪的人（比如喜劇演員斯蒂芬·弗雷和阿爾·穆雷）中流行這樣一個(gè)短語(yǔ)：“常識的勝利?！狈ü偻瑫r(shí)指出，推特代表了一種“無(wú)聲的對話(huà)”：它和面對面交談一樣，充滿(mǎn)即興因素，話(huà)語(yǔ)含義也因當時(shí)情況而定；但同時(shí)，它又具備寫(xiě)作的永續性，以及和廣播相媲美的傳播范圍。
layer /?le??(r) / v. to arrange sth in layers 把…分層堆放
It’s an observation that speaks to a central contemporary fact. Our screens are in increasingly direct competition with spoken words themselves — and with traditional conceptions of our relationship with language. Who would have thought, 30 years ago, that a text message of 160 characters or fewer, sent between mobile phones, would become one of the defining communications technologies of the early 21st century; or that one of its natural successors would be a tweet some 20 characters shorter?
這樣的論斷與當代某種核心觀(guān)點(diǎn)十分接近?；ヂ?lián)網(wǎng)時(shí)代的文字與我們的口頭表達的交鋒越來(lái)越直接，它與傳統觀(guān)念里人類(lèi)和語(yǔ)言之間關(guān)系的交鋒也越來(lái)越直接。30年前，有誰(shuí)能想到不足160字的、在手機間傳遞信息的短信會(huì )成為21世紀早期最主要的溝通手段呢？誰(shuí)又會(huì )想到，不足20字的推特會(huì )取代短信呢?
Yet this bare textual minimum has proved to be the perfect match to an age of information suffusion: a manageable space that conceals as much as it reveals. Small wonder that the average American teenager now sends and receives around 3,000 text messages a month — or that, as the MIT professor Sherry Turkle reports in her book Alone Together (2011), crafting the perfect kind of flirtatious message is so serious a skill that some teens will outsource it to the most eloquent of their peers.
然而，這種極其短小的文字體量卻和這個(gè)信息臃腫的時(shí)代完美契合，文字長(cháng)度可控，既有所表達，也有所保留。難怪每個(gè)普通美國少年每月都要收發(fā)3000條短消息，也難怪麻省理工學(xué)院教授雪莉·特克爾在她2011年出版的書(shū)籍《群體性孤獨》中寫(xiě)道：要寫(xiě)出完美的勾搭短信是一項很正式的技能，有些小伙子甚至會(huì )把這項工作外包給最老道的同齡人。
Almost without our noticing, we weave worlds from these snapshots, until an illusion of unbroken narrative emerges.
幾乎在不知不覺(jué)之中，我們從零散的幾張快照拼湊出他人的生活，最后，我們陷入了從只言片語(yǔ)間讀取完整故事的錯覺(jué)中。
It’s not just texting, of course. In Asia, so-called ‘chat apps’ are re-enacting many millions of times each day the kind of exchanges that began on bulletin boards in the 1980s, complete not only with animated emoticons but with integrated access to games, online marketplaces, and even video calls. Phone calls, though, are a degree of self-exposure too much for most everyday communications. According to the article ‘On the Death of the Phone Call’ by Clive Thompson, published in Wired magazine in 2010, ‘the average number of mobile phone calls we make is dropping every year… And our calls are getting shorter: in 2005 they averaged three minutes in length; now they’re almost half that.’ Safe behind our screens, we let type do our talking for us — and leave others to conjure our lives by reading between the lines.
當然不只是短信如此，在亞洲，所謂的“聊天軟件”每天都在不斷重現上世紀80年代BBS的信息交流方式。這種改變絕不僅僅是靠會(huì )動(dòng)的表情包完成的，更是由于軟件內整合了游戲、購物甚至視頻電話(huà)等功能。而在日常通信中，相比起其他溝通手段，打電話(huà)就顯得有些過(guò)分“袒露”自我了?？巳R夫·湯姆森2010年在《連線(xiàn)》雜志上發(fā)表了文章《論電話(huà)通信的死亡》，他在文中寫(xiě)道：“我們平均每天撥打電話(huà)的數量在逐年減少……每次的通話(huà)時(shí)長(cháng)也在縮短：2005年，平均通話(huà)時(shí)長(cháng)為3分鐘，現在通話(huà)時(shí)長(cháng)幾乎少了一半?！蔽覀儼踩囟阍谄聊槐澈?，任由打字取代講話(huà)的任務(wù)——寄希望于他人能從字里行間拼湊出我們的生活。
Conjure /?k?nd??(r) / v. to do clever tricks such as making things seem to appear or disappear as if by magic 變魔術(shù)；變戲法；使…變戲法般地出現（或消失）
Yet written communication doesn’t necessarily mean safer communication. All interactions, be they spoken or written, are to some degree performative: a negotiation of roles and references. Onscreen words are a special species of self-presentation — a form of storytelling in which the very idea of ‘us’ is a fiction crafted letter by letter. Such are our linguistic gifts that a few sentences can conjure the story of a life: a status update, an email, a few text messages. Almost without our noticing, we weave worlds from these snapshots, until an illusion of unbroken narrative emerges from a handful of paragraphs.
但文字通信并不代表安全程度更高。所有互動(dòng)行為，不管是口頭的還是書(shū)面的，都帶有表演性質(zhì)，都是角色與說(shuō)法的交流。屏幕上的文字是特殊的自我呈現——在這種敘事模式下，“我們”這一概念是逐字虛構出來(lái)的。我們的語(yǔ)言天賦讓我們能從只言片語(yǔ)中腦補出他人生活，不管是狀態(tài)更新、郵件還是幾封短消息。幾乎在不知不覺(jué)之中，我們從零散的幾張快照拼湊出他人的生活，最后，我們陷入了從只言片語(yǔ)間讀取完整故事的幻覺(jué)。
Behind this illusion lurks another layer of belief: that we can control these second selves. Yet, ironically, control is one of the first things our eloquence sacrifices. As authors and politicians have long known, the afterlife of our words belongs to the world — and what it chooses to make of them has little to do with our own assumptions.
在這一幻覺(jué)背后潛藏的觀(guān)念是，我們能掌握自己的第二個(gè)自我（即網(wǎng)絡(luò )化的自我）。但諷刺的是，我們巧言善辯的代價(jià)首先就是失去對第二自我的控制。作家和政治家們早就明白，我們留下的文字的在我們死后將屬于這個(gè)世界，而世界會(huì )怎樣看待這些文字，不是我們能預料到的。
lurk /l??k / v. when sth unpleasant or dangerous lurks, it is present but not in an obvious way （不好或危險的事）潛在，隱藏著(zhù)
In many ways, mass articulacy is a crisis of originality. Something always implicit has become ever more starkly explicit: that words and ideas do not belong only to us, but play out without larger currents of human feeling. There is no such thing as a private language. We speak in order to be heard, we write in order to be read. But words also speak through us and, sometimes, are as much a dissolution as an assertion of our identity.
從很多方面來(lái)看，當人人都得以表達的時(shí)候，語(yǔ)言的獨創(chuàng )性便會(huì )式微。一個(gè)一直以來(lái)比較隱晦的真相現在昭然若揭了：話(huà)語(yǔ)和想法并不是我們的所有物，它們不是人類(lèi)情感作用的結果。私人語(yǔ)言并不存在，我們說(shuō)話(huà)是希望有人能聽(tīng)到，書(shū)寫(xiě)是希望有人會(huì )閱讀。但我們同時(shí)也是話(huà)語(yǔ)的載體，甚至有些時(shí)候，話(huà)語(yǔ)在不斷強化我們身份的同時(shí)也在消解我們的身份。
譯注：維特根斯坦在《哲學(xué)研究》第243節里設想了一種私人語(yǔ)言（private language）：“這種語(yǔ)言的語(yǔ)詞指涉只有講話(huà)人能夠知道的東西；指涉他的直接的、私有的感覺(jué)。因此另一個(gè)人無(wú)法理解這種語(yǔ)言?！?/span>
In his essay ‘Writing: or, the Pattern Between People’ (1932), W H Auden touched on the paradoxical relationship between the flow of written words and their ability to satisfy those using them:
在《寫(xiě)作：或人與人之間的模式》（1932）一文中，威斯坦·休·奧登提到，作者筆下的文字并不能滿(mǎn)足其本身的寫(xiě)作欲望。
Since the underlying reason for writing is to bridge the gulf between one person and another, as the sense of loneliness increases, more and more books are written by more and more people, most of them with little or no talent. Forests are cut down, rivers of ink absorbed, but the lust to write is still unsatisfied.
寫(xiě)作在根本上是為了減少人與人之間的隔閡。隨著(zhù)孤獨感的增強，越來(lái)越多人開(kāi)始寫(xiě)書(shū)，但大多數人要么沒(méi)有寫(xiě)作的天賦，要么天賦平平。消耗了大量的木材和墨水，但他們寫(xiě)作的欲望卻依然沒(méi)有得到滿(mǎn)足。
Lust /l?st / n. very strong desire for sth or enjoyment of sth 強烈欲望；享受欲
Onscreen, today’s torrents of pixels exceed anything Auden could have imagined. Yet the hyper-verbal loneliness he evoked feels peculiarly contemporary. Increasingly, we interweave our actions and our rolling digital accounts of ourselves: curators and narrators of our life stories, with a matching move from internal to external monologue. It’s a realm of elaborate shows in which status is hugely significant — and one in which articulacy itself risks turning into a game, with attention and impact (retweets, likes) held up as the supreme virtues of self-expression.
今天，高清的電子設備遠超奧登的想象，但他所提到的因孤獨而寫(xiě)作欲旺盛的現象卻特別貼近當下，我們開(kāi)始在社交媒體上表現自我，自己講述自己的故事，滔滔不絕，吐露內心世界。社交媒體是一個(gè)自我展現的絕佳平臺，在其中占有一席之地至關(guān)重要。同時(shí)，在社交媒體上表達自己也變成了提高關(guān)注度和影響力（轉發(fā)和點(diǎn)贊）的一種手段，自我表達最大的好處便是會(huì )贏(yíng)得關(guān)注度和影響力。
Pixel /?p?ksl / n. any of the small individual areas on a computer screen, which together form the whole display 像素（組成屏幕圖像的最小獨立元素）
Consider the particular phenomenon known as binary or ‘reversible language’ that now proliferates online. It might sound obscure, but the pairings it entails are central to most modern metrics of measured attention, influence and interconnection: to ‘like’ and to ‘unlike’, to ‘favourite’ and to ‘unfavourite’; to ‘follow’ and ‘unfollow’; to ‘friend’ and ‘unfriend’; or simply to ‘click’ or ‘unclick’ the onscreen boxes enabling all of the above.
想想“二進(jìn)制”語(yǔ)言或“二分法”語(yǔ)言這一特殊的現象，這在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上特別常見(jiàn)。雖然這個(gè)術(shù)語(yǔ)聽(tīng)起來(lái)比較晦澀，但是它所包含的兩方面含義對于如何以當代視角來(lái)理解關(guān)注、影響、互動(dòng)等可量化的行為至關(guān)重要。比如，“喜歡”還是“討厭”；“最喜歡的”還是“最討厭的”；“關(guān)注”還是“不關(guān)注”；“好友”還是“陌生人”。亦或是“點(diǎn)擊”還是“不點(diǎn)擊”以上這些內容的按鈕。
Like the systems of organisation underpinning it, such language promises a clean and quantifiable recasting of self-expression and relationships. At every stage, both you and your audience have precise access to a measure of reception: the number of likes a link has received, the number of followers endorsing a tweeter, the items ticked or unticked to populate your profile with a galaxy of preferences.
就像其背后的組織系統一樣（互聯(lián)網(wǎng)建立在二進(jìn)制的基礎上），二進(jìn)制式的語(yǔ)言以一種清晰、可量化的方式重塑了自我表達以及人與人之間的關(guān)系。在所有的舞臺上，你和觀(guān)眾都可以精準地獲得反饋，比如，點(diǎn)贊的數量、推文的關(guān)注人數以及根據個(gè)人喜好勾選的個(gè)性清單等。
譯注：社會(huì )學(xué)家歐文·戈夫曼在其符號互動(dòng)理論中用“表演”一詞來(lái)指代個(gè)體持續面對特定觀(guān)察者時(shí)所表現的、并對那些觀(guān)察者產(chǎn)生了某些影響的全部行為，“舞臺”則是進(jìn)行表演活動(dòng)的場(chǎng)所
What’s on offer is a kind of perpetual present, in which everything can always be exactly the way you want it to be (provided you feel one of two ways). Everything can be undone instantly and effortlessly, then done again at will, while the machinery itself can be shut down, logged off or ignored. Like the author oscillating between Ctrl-Y (redo) and Ctrl-Z (undo) on a keyboard, a hundred indecisions, visions and revisions are permitted — if desired — and all will remain unseen. There is no need, ever, for any conversation to end.
眼前所見(jiàn)就像是無(wú)休止的進(jìn)行時(shí)，一切都可以呈現你想要的樣子。你可以毫不費力地立刻按下撤銷(xiāo)然后重做，也可以關(guān)掉電腦、退出系統或是將電腦棄于一旁。就像我自己經(jīng)常在撤銷(xiāo)和反撤銷(xiāo)之間按來(lái)按去，即使你有一百次猶豫不決，一百個(gè)構想，或是一百次修訂（如果你確定要這么做的話(huà)），都不是大問(wèn)題，因為其他人是看不到的。所有的對話(huà)，其實(shí)都沒(méi)有必要停止了。
Log off to finish using a computer system （從計算機系統）退出；注銷(xiāo)
Even the most ephemeral online act leaves its mark. Data only accumulates. Little that is online is ever forgotten or erased, while the business of search and social recommendation funnels our words into a perpetual popularity contest. Every act of selection and interconnection is another reinforcement. If you can’t find something online, it’s often because you lack the right words. And there’s a deliciously circular logic to all this, whereby what’s ‘right’ means only what displays the best search results — just as what you yourself are ‘like’ is defined by the boxes you’ve ticked. It’s a grand game with the most glittering prizes of all at stake: connection, recognition, self-expression, discovery. The internet’s countless servers and services are the perfect riposte to history: an eternally unfinished collaboration, pooling the words of many millions; a final refuge from darkness.
即便是一次短暫的訪(fǎng)問(wèn)也會(huì )留下痕跡，數據只增不減，只有極少部分的數據被永久刪除了。搜索引擎和社交媒體上的推薦將我們的言論推入永不停歇的人氣競賽，每一次選擇（二分法語(yǔ)言）和互動(dòng)，都會(huì )使這場(chǎng)競賽更加激烈。如果你在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上查不到某件東西，八成是因為你沒(méi)有輸入正確的字，這里就存在一個(gè)值得玩味的循環(huán)邏輯，即“正確”意味著(zhù)只顯示最佳搜索結果，就像你喜歡的東西都是由你自己勾選的?；ヂ?lián)網(wǎng)是一場(chǎng)巨型賭局，看你能否贏(yíng)得最終大獎，即人脈、認同感、自我表達和新鮮事物?；ヂ?lián)網(wǎng)擁有無(wú)數的服務(wù)器和設備，人類(lèi)可以永遠保持合作，千言萬(wàn)語(yǔ)匯集于此，人類(lèi)終于在黑暗中找到了最終的庇佑，互聯(lián)網(wǎng)是對歷史的完美詮釋。
There’s much to celebrate in this profligate democracy, and its overthrow of articulate monopolies. The self-dramatising ingenuity behind even three letters such as ‘LOL’ is a testament to our capacity for making the most constricted verbal arenas our own, while to watch events unfold through the fractal lens of social media is a unique contemporary privilege. Ours is the first epoch of the articulate crowd, the smart mob: of words and deeds fused into ceaseless feedback.
值得高興的是，信息時(shí)代雖然帶來(lái)了一種“過(guò)度參與”的民主，卻終結了少數群體壟斷知識的時(shí)代。我們甚至能在“LOL（laughing out loud）”這樣三個(gè)字母的簡(jiǎn)寫(xiě)中找到通過(guò)戲劇化手段表達自我的智慧靈光，“LOL”充分證明了我們能夠駕馭最嚴謹的文字，此外，通過(guò)社交媒體的碎片化視角來(lái)觀(guān)察事件也是當今時(shí)代的人們得天獨厚的優(yōu)勢。這是我們第一次進(jìn)入一個(gè)屬于普羅大眾皆可表達自我的時(shí)代，一個(gè)同樣屬于聰明暴民的時(shí)代，行為和言論共同作用，便誕生了源源不斷的反饋信息。
Profligate /?pr?fl?g?t / adj. using money, time, materials, etc. in a careless way 揮霍的；浪費的
Yet language is a bewitchment that can overturn itself — and can, like all our creations, convince us there is nothing beyond it. In an era when the gulf between words and world has never been easier to overlook, it’s essential to keep alive a sense of ourselves as distinct from the cascade of self-expression; to push back against the torrents of articulacy flowing past and through us.
但語(yǔ)言的魔力可能會(huì )反噬自身，也有可能像人類(lèi)其他的發(fā)明一樣，讓我們相信這便是最偉大的創(chuàng )造。當今時(shí)代，語(yǔ)言與世界的邊界十分模糊，因此，我們必須保持清醒的意識，不再沉溺于自我表達，抗擊這股即將吞噬我們乃至所有人的浪潮。
For the philosopher John Gray, writing in The Silence of Animals (2013), the struggle with words and meanings is sometimes simply a distraction:
哲學(xué)家約翰·格雷認為，探索話(huà)語(yǔ)和意義有時(shí)候毫無(wú)意義。在《動(dòng)物性的沉默》一書(shū)中，他寫(xiě)道：
Philosophers will say that humans can never be silent because the mind is made of words. For these half-witted logicians, silence is no more than a word. To overcome language by means of language is obviously impossible. Turning within, you will find only words and images that are parts of yourself. But if you turn outside yourself — to the birds and animals and the quickly changing places where they live — you may hear something beyond words.
哲學(xué)家說(shuō)，人類(lèi)沒(méi)有辦法保持沉默，因為我們的思想由語(yǔ)言組成。對這些愚蠢的邏輯學(xué)家而言，沉默也只不過(guò)是一個(gè)詞語(yǔ)。用語(yǔ)言戰勝語(yǔ)言當然是不可能的。如果只關(guān)注自己，那你只會(huì )構建自己的語(yǔ)言和圖像，但如果你看看外面的世界，如鳥(niǎo)兒和其他動(dòng)物，以及他們遷徙的場(chǎng)所，那么你就會(huì )聽(tīng)到一些超越語(yǔ)言文字的聲音。
Gray’s dismissal of ‘half-witted logicians’ might be a sober tonic, yet it’s something I find extraordinarily hopeful — an exit from the despairing circularity that expects our creations either to damn or to save us. If we cannot speak ourselves into being, we cannot speak ourselves out of being either. We are, in another fine philosophical phrase, condemned to be free. And this freedom is not contingent on eloquence, no matter how desperately we might wish that words alone could negotiate the world on our behalf.
我們總是覺(jué)得，人類(lèi)的創(chuàng )造，要么造福我們，要么毀滅我們，這兩種想法不斷變換，令人絕望。格雷對那些愚蠢的邏輯學(xué)家們嗤之以鼻，他的清醒或許能讓人為之一振，但我從他這里看到的是強烈的希望——我們要從執迷中解脫出來(lái)。如果我們無(wú)法用語(yǔ)言創(chuàng )造自身，自然也無(wú)法用語(yǔ)言毀滅自身。用一句哲學(xué)的話(huà)來(lái)說(shuō)就是，我們生來(lái)就是自由的。但這種自由不是建立在能言善辯的基礎之上，單單依靠話(huà)語(yǔ)，不論你懷揣著(zhù)多么強烈的表現欲望，世界也絕不會(huì )成為你的話(huà)筒。
Always ask yourself whether you have earned the right to have an opinion. —— Ray Dalio
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