A cyber-hou divided
老马识途造句分化的数字之屋
Online as much as in the real world, people bunch together in mutually suspicious groups—and in both realms, peacemaking is an uphill struggle
无论是在网络世界，还是在现实世界，人们几乎都会聚集在各自的圈子里，互
相怀疑——不仅如此，无论是在哪一个世界，调解矛盾都是十分困难的事情。Sep 2nd 2010 | WASHINGTON, DC
IN 2007 Danah Boyd heard a white American teenager describe MySpace, the social network, as “like ghetto or whatever”. At the time, Facebook was stealing members from MySpace, but most people thought it was just a fad: teenagers tired of networks, the theory went, just as they tired of shoes.
2007年，一位美国白人少年这样对黛娜•波伊德描述聚友网（一家社交网站）：“就像是个贫民窟，或者类似的场所”。而脸谱网此时却不动声色地将聚友网的玩得开心英语
用户吸引到自己门下；但对于大多数人来说，这不过是年轻人一时兴起：这种看法认为，正如年轻人会对自己的鞋子感到厌倦，他们对社交网络也会产生厌倦的情绪。
But after hearing that youngster, Ms Boyd, a social-media rearcher at Microsoft Rearch New England, felt that something more than whimsy might be at work. “Ghetto” in American speech suggests poor, unsophisticated and black. That led to her sad conclusion: in their online life, American teenagers were recreating what they knew from the physical world—paration by class and race.
galaxy是什么意思然而，作为微软新英格兰研究中心的一名社会与媒体研究人员，波伊德女士在听完那位年轻人的描述之后，却感到事情背后或许大有蹊跷。在美国人的语境
下，“贫民窟”带有“穷困潦倒”、“不谙世故”以及“黑人聚居”的含义。因而，波伊德女士得出以下负面结论：在网络生活中，美国青少年仍旧会再现自己在现实世界中的认识——阶级与种族的隔离。
A generation of digital activists had hoped that the web would connect groups parated in the real world. The internet was suppod to transcend colour, social identity and national borders. But rearch suggests that the internet is not so radical. People are online what they are offline: divided, and slow to build bridges.
有整整一代的网络活动家都希望，通过互联网络，那些在现实世界里分立的群体能够取得联系。互联网的存在本应超越肤色、社会身份以及国界，但有研究表明，互联网并没有带来这样的变革。人们在
现实生活当中是什么状况，在网
络生活当中也就是什么状况：彼此分立，且不愿建立沟通的桥梁。
This summer Ms Boyd heard from a scholar in Brazil who, after reading her rearch, saw a parallel. Almost 80% of internet urs in Brazil u Orkut, a social network owned by Google. As internet u ris in Brazil and reaches new social groups, better-off Brazilians are leaving Orkut for Facebook. That is partly becau they have more friends abroad (with whom they link via Facebook) and partly snobbishness. Posh Brazilians have a new word: orkutificação, or becoming “orkutid”. A place undergoing orkutificação is full of strangers, open to anyone. Brazilians are now the cond biggest urs of the micro-blogging site Twitter; but some wonder whether the dreaded o-word awaits that neighbourhood too.
今夏，波伊德女士收到了一位巴西学者的来信，这位学者读完波伊德女士的研究报告之后，也有类似的感触。近80%的巴西互联网用户都在使用谷歌旗下的一家社交网站——
Orkut。随着巴西互联网用户日益增多，并扩展到新的社会群体，经济条件较好的互联网用户却开始放弃使用Orkut，转而使用脸谱网。这种现象的发生，部分原因是这些经济条件较好的用户拥有更多的外国朋友（通过脸谱网能与他们取得联系），还有部分原因则是出于势利心理。巴西上流社会发明了一
个新词：o rkutificação，意即“Orkut化”。发生“Orkut化”过程的地方通常都聚集着外地人，而且对任何人都开放。目前，在微型博客网站推特的用户中，巴西用户的总人数位居第二；但在推特社区是否会发生像“Orkut化”那样可怕的过程，这也未可知。
Facebook’s architecture makes it easy for groups to remain clod. For example, it suggests new friends using an algorithm that looks at existing ones. But simpler, more open networks also permit lf-gregation. On Twitter, members can choo to “follow” anyone they like, and can form groups by embedding words and shortened phras known as “hashtags” in their messages. In May Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas, who rearch the display of social information, looked at the ten most popular hashtags on Twitter and discovered that most were ud almost exclusively by either black or white authors. The hashtag “#cookout” was almost entirely black; the hashtag “#oilspill” almost entirely white.
脸谱网的构造决定了各个群体可以轻易地保持对外封闭。举例来说，脸谱网会执行一套算法对现有的好友进行检阅，然后向用户推荐新的好友。但是，即使是构造更简单、更开放的网站，也同样有可能出现自我隔离的情况。推特的用
户可以选择“关注”他们喜欢的其他任何用户，还可以在他们的信息当中，嵌入被称为“井字标签”的词语
香港自由行以及缩略词组，进而形成各个群体。今年五月，马丁•瓦滕贝格和费尔南达•维耶加斯（两人研究的是社会信息方面的数据）对推特网
夸女人顺口溜大全站上最热门的十大井字标签进行了研究，他们发现，大部分井号标签的使用者
，几乎要么是清一色的黑人用户，要么就是清一色的白人用户。“#露天烤肉餐会”这一井字标签，其使用者几乎全部为黑人，而“#原油泄漏”这一井字标签，
其使用者则几乎全部为白人。
With ideology, the pair’s findings were a bit more hopeful; liberals and conrvatives at least communicate—by trading taunts. They do so by appropriating hashtags so as to surface in each others’ arches. By now, only one keyword in American political discour remains unaffected by such games of tag: #NPR, or National Public Radio, ud only by liberals.
在意识形态方面，瓦滕贝格与维耶加斯两人的发现则略显乐观；在自由派和保
守派之间起码还存在沟通交流——
方式是相互之间进行冷嘲热讽。为达到此目的，双方互相占用井字标签，让对方在搜索过程中注意到自己的存在。截止到目前，在美国政治话语当中，只有
一个关键词得以在这种井字标签拉锯战中幸免于难：“#NPR”，即“国家公共广播公司”，使用者只有自由派人士。
All this argues for a cautious respon to claims that e-communications abate conflict by bringing mutually suspicious people together. Facebook has a site called “Peace on Facebook,” where it describes how it can “decrea world conflict” by letting people from different backgrounds connect. (The optimism is catching; this spring a founder of Twitter described his rvice as “a triumph of humanity”.)
蝉蜕作用有人认为，电子通信可以使相互怀疑的群体彼此取得联系，从而淡化冲突；对
此，上述事例可以作为一个谨慎的回应。脸谱网上有一个公共主页，叫做“脸谱网上无战事”，根据页面上的描述，该主页通过让背景各异的人们相互间进行联系，达到了“减少世界冲突”的目的。（这种乐观心态具有传染性；今年春天，推特的一位创始人也形容其微博服务是“人类的一次胜利”。）
Peace on Facebook keeps a ticker of friend connections made each day between people from rival places. Israelis and Palestinians, the site claims, made about 15,000 connections on July 25th, the most recent available day. That is hard to put in context; Facebook does not make public the total number of friendships in any country. But Ethan Zuckerman, a blogger and activist, ud independen
t data to estimate that the links reprent roughly 1-2% of the combined total of friendships on Israeli and Palestinian accounts. Using the same method for Greece and Turkey, his estimate was 0.1%. That understates the role of Greek-Turkish friendship groups, or groups dedicated to music or films that both countries like. Among, say, people from either country who are studying outside their homeland (and have a better-than-average chance of becoming decision-makers), the share of trans-Aegean links would be far higher. And their mere existence nds an important moral signal.
“脸谱网上无战事”的页面上还有一个小控件，来自敌对两国的人若是加为好友，交友记录都会显示出来，每天均是如此。该主页称，7月25日（有记录可查、距今最近的一天）大约有15000对以色列人和巴勒斯坦人相互加为好友。但是若要联系整个大背景来考察这一数字，却是一件难事；因为脸谱网并没有公布任何一个国家的交友记录总数。但根据博客作者兼活动家埃坦•楚克曼使用独立数据估算出来的结果，这15000条左右的交友记录在所有以色列和巴勒斯坦用户帐号的交友记录总数当中，所占比例约为1%-
2%。而使用同样的方法对希腊和土耳其的情况进行分析，楚克曼估算出来的结果则为0.1%。但是，那些致力于两国友谊的群组，以及那些致力于两国人共同
喜爱的音乐或电影的群组，其扮演的角色却未能在这一结果当中得到充分的反应。再如，无论是希腊
人还是土耳其人，对于留学海外（成为决策层的机会也比一般人要来的多）的群体来说，与来自爱琴海彼岸的对方结下友谊的几率远大于留在各自国内的群体。而且，这些跨国友谊只要存在，就足以传递一个重要的道德信号。
But Mr Zuckerman frets that the internet really rves to boost ties within countries, not between them. Using data from Google, he looked at the top 50 news sites in 30 countries. Almost every country reads all but 5% of its news from domestic sources. Mr Zuckerman believes that goods and rvices still travel much farther than ideas, and that the internet allows us to be “imaginary cosmopolitans”.
但令楚克曼先生感到苦恼的是，互联网事实上促进的是各国国内居民的联系，
而非跨越国界的交流。利用谷歌提供的数据，他在30个国家当中考察了各国最受欢迎的50个新闻网站。对于每个国家的人来说，差不多有百分之九十五的新
闻都来自本国的信息来源。楚克曼先生认为，商品和服务仍旧比思想传播得更远，而互联网则能够让我们“在想象中实现世界大同”。
Peace on Facebook offers data for India and Pakistan, too. That is even harder to put in context. P不想想太多
akistan has banned Facebook in the past, and offers too few urs to qualify even for independent estimates. John Kelly, founder of Morningside Analytics, a firm that analys social networks, examined links between blogs and twitter accounts in India and Pakistan and discovered two hubs that link the two countries. South Asian expats in London who lf-identify as “Desis”—people from the sub-continent—link freely to each other and to their home countries. And cricket fans in both countries link up spontaneously.
在“脸谱网上无战事”这一公共主页上，同样还有印度和巴基斯坦用户的交友记录。但这组数据的大背景更难掌握。在过去，巴基斯坦一直禁止国民访问脸谱网，而即使有人要进行独立估算，网站上也没有足够多的巴基斯坦用户。Morni ngside
Analytics（一家分析和研究社交网站的公司）的创始人约翰•凯利考察了印巴两国博客和推特帐户间的联系，发现两国间的联系活动有两大中心：移居伦敦的南亚侨民自称“Desis”（意即“来自南亚次大陆的人”），他们不但彼此之间交流
自如，还可以自由地与自己的母国取得联系，是为中心之一；印巴两国的板球球迷也都能自发地取得联系，是为中心之二。
Mr Kelly believes that clusters of internet activity, when they do cross national borders, flow from pr
e-existing identities. Ethnic Baloch bloggers in three different countries link mainly to each other. Blogs in Afghanistan show some ties to NGOs and American rvice members, but a far greater number to Iranian news rvices and poetry blogs. That reflects old reality, not some new discovery. There is also some hope in Morningside’s data. Four websites most consistently account for links between countries: YouTube, Wikipedia, the BBC and, a distant fourth, Global Voices Online. The last of the, launched at Harvard University in 2005 and mainly funded by American foundations, works to create links between bloggers in different countries, and to find what it calls “bridge bloggers”: expats and cultural translators, like London’s Desis, who help explain their countries to each other. (This newspaper has a loo editorial collaboration with the site.)
凯利先生认为，对于互联网活动集群来说，如果它们的活动范围确实出现了跨越国界的情形，其根源则是早已存在的身份认同感。来自三个不同国家的俾路支族博客作者，多半还是会在本族同胞之间相互交流。阿富汗的博客作者们或许会与非政府组织和来自美国的博客作者交流，但在这些博主中间，有更多的人会与伊朗新闻机构以及诗歌博客建立联系。这个现象反映出来的是既存的现
实，而不是某项新的发现。Morningside公司的数据也带来了些许希望。对于国
与国之间的联系，下列四个网站的记载最为连贯：YouTube、维基百科、英国广播公司（BBC）以及并不怎么出名的全球之声在线。全球之声在线于2005年
在哈佛大学创办，由美国的基金会提供财力支持；该网站致力于在来自不同国家的博客作者之间建立联系，并借此机会发掘出“桥梁博主”（网站自己的说法）：这些人通常是旅居国外的侨民，但同时也是文化交流的中介者，就像旅居伦敦的Desis那样，在向他人介绍自己母国的过程中发挥自己的作用。（本刊与全球之声在线网站的编辑人员之间有松散的合作。）
Onnik Krikorian, Global Voices’ editor in Central Asia, is a British citizen with an Armenian name. He couldn’t go to Azerbaijan and had difficulty establishing any online contact with the country until he went to a conference in Tbilisi in 2008 and met four Azeri bloggers. They gave him their cards, and he found them on Facebook. To his surpri, they agreed to be his friends. Mr Krikorian has since found Facebook to be an ideal platform to build ties. Tho first four contacts made it easier for other Azeris to link up with him.
全球之声在线中亚地区主编欧恩尼克•柯里克里安是一位英国公民，但欧恩尼克•柯里克里安却是亚美尼亚人的名字。2008年，柯里克里安到第比利斯开会，遇
见了四个阿塞拜疆的博客作者；但在此之前，他一直未能前往阿塞拜疆，也很难同这个国家建立任何的网络联系。那四位阿塞拜疆博主把各自的名片递给了柯里克里安，之后柯里克里安在脸谱网上找到了这四人。令他感到惊喜的是，四人都同意与他加为好友。打那以后，柯里克里安先生便觉得脸谱网
是一个建立联系的理想平台了。有了一开始的四个阿塞拜疆联系人，往后其他的阿塞拜疆人要想和柯里克里安先生建立联系，也就容易多了。
But the internet is not magic; it is a tool. Anyone who wants to u it to bring nations clor together has to show initiative, and be ready to travel physically as well as virtually. As with the telegraph before it—also hailed as a tool of peace—the internet does nothing on its own.
难忘的国庆节但是，互联网可不是魔术，而是一种工具。一个人若是想要通过互联网来缩短国家之间距离，就必须显示出自己的主动性，在通过网络了解其他国家的同时，还必须准备好身体力行，亲自到那一国去拜访。而说到互联网之前的电报（同样也被人盛赞为和平的工具），要是没有它的话，互联网只怕会势单力薄。
