2006年NPR美国国家公共电台三月-Student Gladly Shares Life Details on the

Renee Montagne: All this week we have been talking about your privacy, today we will meet a man who keeps very little private, in fact, puts his life online with a sound track. This music greets web surfers at a blog for Jonathon Coulson. There he writes he is a 22-year-old student at the University of Missouri, that a personality test gave him a 78% score in emotional stability and that he doesn't want to die alone. All that and more, and it's just one of his six blogs.

Steve Inskeep: And now we are gonna talk to Jonathon Carlson and ask whether anything is really private anymore whether anything should be. Jonathon Carlson, welcome to the program.

Jonathon Coulson: Thank you for having me.

Steve Inskeep: I wanna ask first about the website on which your blogs exist, something called MySpace.com. Explain what that is for people who've never seen it.

Jonathon Coulson: Um, MySpace is one of several social networks that allow people to post profiles and the basic concept here is that you are gonna find other users that share your interests. And in my personal experience, most of the other users you find are people you know offline anyway.

Steve Inskeep: You keep up a blog as lots of people, perhaps millions of people, now deal--

Jonathon Coulson: Six

Steve Inskeep: Yeah, why six?

Jonathon Coulson: I have a blog that's dedicated¹ purely² to my political ramblings. Then I have a personal blog that I use sort of as an open journal. The other 4 are smaller blogs that I've just used from time to time. One is just a blog about blogs actually. 'Coz I, I guess I'm that interested in them.

Steve Inskeep: Mr. Coulson, what are your limits? What are things you would never post online?

Jonathon Coulson: I guess I have a higher tolerance³ than most. I think there is a lot of value and personal expression. But even when I set up my profiles, I never put my phone number on there--it says "Upon quest"--or my personal address. Because these are just bits of information I just don't generally give out to people. I don't mind if they E-mail. So I leave those channels open to them.

Steve Inskeep: So you do have some limits, which is very interesting, because one would imagine that after reading all 6 of your blogs, there might be very little need to ever call you and ask anything in the first place.

Jonathon Coulson: Yeah, well, I guess the one group that I guess it does concern me that they may read my blog will be future employers. Granted. I don't particularly plan on applying anywhere that my political activism would be a problem. But this is a big concern for a lot of person my age.

Steve Inskeep: Have people that you know already had problems?

Jonathon Coulson: Um, this is a hard one. I don't know anyone who has personally had any sort of difficulty to get in a job outside of just the problems with our economy. I don't know anybody who has faced a university sanction. But I do know a number of students who have taken down personal information based on the threat of those things.

Steve Inskeep: To the extent that you are able to know, who's reading your blogs?

Jonathon Coulson: Um, my mother actually. Outside of that, I have quite a few friends here at school that have blogs because of me, and kind of read mine, as I read theirs. My political blog actually, I use it as a listserv as well. So it kicks out to about 60 people, who just are interested in hearing my thoughts.

Steve Inskeep: It sounds like you don't really worry about who, who reads this stuff, once you got your mom out of the way anyway?

Jonathon Coulson: Um, well, I don't even worry about her particularly. And like I noted⁴, I think I'm less concerned with privacy generally than other people are. I don't have much to hide. Personal information, I don't think it's a secret. And other than that, anything I am thinking or saying, I'd like to put out there because if I'm wrong, I could only learn from people's feedback.

Steve Inskeep: In the end, given that you are mostly communicating with the few people you already know, what's the point really of posting all those stuff? Why not just pick up a phone, send an E-mail?

Jonathon Coulson: That's a great question. The advantage I think to MySpace and blogs, it comes down to time shifting. I don't have to call them and expect them to pick up the phone, interrupt them in class or with their studies or work. I can just put it on my blog. And at their convenience, they can come and find that information. There is some personal satisfaction to me also in posting to the general audience.

Steve Inskeep: Are you likely to post whatever comments you may have about this interview on the one of you blogs?

Jonathon Coulson: En, yeah, yeah, I will have it.

Steve Inskeep: You wanna give us a sneak⁵ preview?

Jonathon Coulson: Er, it does seem that NPR has fallen and ranked with my university and a lot of others, and are looking at the privacy concerns and not looking at the benefits of these technologies, and so I'll highlight the benefits just to give some counter perspective, even if no one reads them.

Steve Inskeep: Oh, well, that's why we are talking to you now, so that millions of people can hear your perspective.

Jonathon Coulson: Well, I think that students and kids my age are using these tools to find each other and to keep in contact with each other. We can meet and share ideas and form issue groups and find allegiances .But when that doesn't happen, we don't share as many ideas.

Steve Inskeep: Jonathon Coulson, thanks very much for speaking with us.

Jonathon Coulson: Thank you very much for speaking with me.

Steve Inskeep: Oh, just before you go, if you could just give us your mother's home number?

Jonathon Coulson: Sure, that's 821-212-622. And that's a false number.

Renee Montagne: We did call Jonathon's mom Sara, with the correct number. She told us she too was worried about Jonathon's blog hurting his future employment prospects⁶. Tomorrow the future of privacy protection.

Steve Inskeep: Other conversations in our privacy series...

Note------------
sanction: a form of punishment that can be used if someone disobeys a rule or law;批准, 同意, 支持, 制裁, 认可
listserv: a computer program that allows a group of people to send and receive e-mail from each other about a particular subject;BITnet上用来管理讨论邮件清单的程序
out of the way: 不碍事的,偏远的,不显眼的

1 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

2 purely   

adv.纯粹地，完全地

参考例句：

• I helped him purely and simply out of friendship.我帮他纯粹是出于友情。
• This disproves the theory that children are purely imitative.这证明认为儿童只会单纯地模仿的理论是站不住脚的。

3 tolerance   

n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差

参考例句：

• Tolerance is one of his strengths.宽容是他的一个优点。
• Human beings have limited tolerance of noise.人类对噪音的忍耐力有限。

4 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

5 sneak   

vt.潜行(隐藏,填石缝)；偷偷摸摸做；n.潜行；adj.暗中进行

参考例句：

• He raised his spear and sneak forward.他提起长矛悄悄地前进。
• I saw him sneak away from us.我看见他悄悄地从我们身边走开。

6 prospects   

n.希望，前途(恒为复数)

参考例句：

• There is a mood of pessimism in the company about future job prospects. 公司中有一种对工作前景悲观的情绪。
• They are less sanguine about the company's long-term prospects. 他们对公司的远景不那么乐观。