PBS高端访谈:2017年技术及社交媒体回顾

Hari Sreenivasan: Technology has traditionally been seen by the public and many in the media in a more hopeful light. But 2017 felt different, a year that frequently cast technology, and its unintended consequences, in a much harsher light. In a moment, we will have a conversation that I recorded last week in New York, but, first, a quick reminder¹ about some of the major problems this year. Russia used Facebook and social media to try and influence the 2016 elections. The revelations reverberated² throughout the nation's capital this year. As congressional committees detailed³, Russian operatives bought ads that sought to capitalize on racial, religious and political divisions in the U.S. Just 120 fake accounts posted on Facebook 80,000 times and reached as many as 126 million Americans. Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, initially⁴ doubted that the platform could have influenced the election, but later pledged to make political advertising⁵ more transparent⁶.

Mark Zuckerberg:Not only will you have to disclose which page paid for an ad, but we will also make it so you can visit an advertiser's page and see the ads that they're currently running to any audience on Facebook.

Hari Sreenivasan:Members of both parties were angry at the company's slow admission, but the focus grew beyond just one company to other tech giants, since Russian agents used Twitter, Google and YouTube too.The Senate Intelligence Committee grilled⁷ top lawyers for the companies.

Sen. Mark Warner: Many of us on this committee have been raising this issue since the beginning of this year. And our claims were, frankly⁸, blown off by the leaderships of your companies, dismissed, so there's no possibility nothing like this happening, nothing to see here.

Hari Sreenivasan:Hacking, a perennial¹⁰ problem, took on new urgency this past year. The ransomware cyber-attack called WannaCry temporarily crippled computer systems in hospitals, banks and companies around the world. More than 230,000 computers in 150 countries were affected¹¹. Just a week ago, the Trump¹² administration named the country it says was responsible.

Tom Bossert: After careful investigation¹³, the United States is publicly attributing the massive WannaCry cyber-attack to North Korea. We do not make this allegation lightly. We do so with evidence, and we do so with partners.

Hari Sreenivasan:Hackers also tore into Equifax, one of the largest credit bureaus, stealing the personal information of more than 145 million people. They got Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and driver's licenses¹⁴. The tech industry faced a new conversation on inequality by race and gender¹⁵. Susan Fowler, a former engineer at Uber, published a damning account of a harassment¹⁶-filled workplace culture. Uber fired 20 employees and it eventually helped lead to the CEO's resignation. She told "TIME" she was amazed by the reaction to her essay.

Susan Fowler:I expected it would be like a 24-hour, like, viral thing, but it didn't slow down at all. And I was reading through all of these things. And I thought like, oh, my gosh, like, I'm not alone.

Hari Sreenivasan:Others, like Ellen Pao, who filed and lost a gender discrimination case against a powerful venture capital firm, said change was needed.

Ellen Pao:Well, I think if playing along means participating in sexist and racist¹⁷ jokes, that expectation has to change.

Hari Sreenivasan:The year ended with a divisive decision by the FCC that many fear will lead to the end of net neutrality, the idea of treating all content on the Web equally without charging more or blocking your ability to see other content.For a closer look at the potential turning point that 2017 is shaping up to be for the most well-known tech giants, I'm joined by two people who follow that world closely. Farhad Manjoo is a New York Times columnist¹⁸ who writes on how technology is changing society and business. And David Kirkpatrick is the founder¹⁹ of Techonomy. He's a technology journalist and author of "The Facebook Effect." Thank you both for joining us. So, Farhad, let me start with you. How did tech shift in our perception this year?

Farhad Manjoo:Yes, I think we got, justifiably²⁰, a lot less optimistic about tech, and a lot more worried about the implications of a few big tech companies kind of taking over much of the world, much of our communications, much of how we kind of learn and experience the world, all of our personal information. And I think the tech companies responded to that. They started to notice. I mean, after the questions about the Russia hack⁹, after questions about sexual harassment, they started to respond to these criticisms. And I think the key change they made was a lot of these — a lot of the big tech companies started, at first grudgingly²¹ and then more willingly, I think, they started to accept that they have some responsibility to the rest of the world, that their technologies aren't necessarily kind of neutral platforms, and that they have some responsibility to kind of police what happens there. How that plays out, I think, will be the big question of 2018. But this year, I think that the big change is that, in the past, technology companies sort of thought of themselves as kind of neutral. And I think that started to change. They are less neutral now.

Hari Sreenivasan:But, David Kirkpatrick, what happened to make Silicon²² Valley less the sort of darling of, well, Washington, D.C., as well as Wall Street?

David Kirkpatrick: Well, if there is one single thing that changed the situation, I would say it's Russian fake news affecting the election, in the opinion of — and the desire of Russia to alter our electoral process, and using Facebook and Google, but Facebook in particular, as a key means of doing that. And I think what that concern at a national level did was draw attention to the extraordinary social, cultural and informational weight of these companies, and then caused a lot of people to start asking bigger questions about what it meant that these very small number of tech giants have had such a monumental impact on our social dialogue and have, in effect, become the central platform for social dialogue, and increasingly in many ways for political behavior as well.

Hari Sreenivasan:Mark Zuckerberg famously said it is a crazy idea that they would have had any impact on the U.S. elections. And then, since then, he's made several statements that walked that back.

David Kirkpatrick:Right. He said that to me on my Techonomy stage in 2016 two days after the election, in which, by the way, I also asked him if Facebook had special responsibilities because of its scale. And he essentially²³ demurred²⁴ on that. So, again, while I agree with what Farhad said, it is really notable how much he has changed since then.

Farhad Manjoo:I think David is right. Mark Zuckerberg has changed in a way that I have been surprised by. When he started Facebook, the main sort of idea behind Facebook was that he wanted to kind of connect the world. Connecting the world, he argued, was enough. And that was kind of the general feeling among others in the tech industry, that just sort of building the technology, the technology itself would kind of help people, would democratize the world. And now the thing that Mark Zuckerberg talks about is not just connecting people, but creating meaningful connections. This is a — meaningful is a word he has been using more often lately. And what that means exactly is not clear. But they plan to change the Facebook news feed to address some of these concerns, both the fake news concerns, but also this idea that Facebook may be kind of putting us into echo chambers²⁵, kind of splintering much of our dialogue.

Hari Sreenivasan: Well, Farhad, how much of this has to do with who is designing the underlying²⁶ technology in the first place?

Farhad Manjoo: This is a big problem for them to solve. The big tech companies are all based on the West Coast of the United States, several here in California and then a couple in Seattle. Their sort of work forces kind of look the same. They are not very diverse. They are not gender-diverse. They don't have a lot of minorities. They are not kind of class-diverse or geographically²⁷ diverse. And they are increasingly gatekeepers for information for not just the United States, but the entire planet. And so you really have this question where there are a small number of people who are essentially homogeneous kind of making decisions for the rest of the world.

Hari Sreenivasan:David Kirkpatrick, what is the likelihood, then, of these technologists attacking the problems that are underlying this, the diversity, the lack of transparency, and the ultimate consequences of the tools that they build?

David Kirkpatrick:Well, I think there is no question that there is a major shift under way in the mind-set of the Silicon Valley work force and the leaders of these companies that they have to do that. However, as Farhad has written, and as I firmly believe, it is an extremely challenging project to understand the true weight of these massively important systems in our society, and how to actually more effectively manage them.

I mean, it is a question of governance, in effect. And the reality is when the public square is, in effect, dominated by commercial enterprises, who should regulate that is entirely²⁸ undetermined. Clearly, these people are starting to recognize, if they don't take actions that appear to be in the public's benefit, they will become regulated by a government, both in the United States and abroad.

And that process is happening much more in Europe already. They want to desperately²⁹ avoid that. On the other hand, the ideas aren't really even there on their part as to what really could be done to properly regulate the flow of information, given their fundamental goal of selling advertising to make money on these services, because advertising effectively requires eyeballs and attention. And they still are more in the mind-set of drawing attention than they are of doing the right thing, in my opinion.

Hari Sreenivasan:All right, David Kirkpatrick of Techonomy, and Farhad Manjoo of The New York Times, thank you both.

Farhad Manjoo:Thanks. Good to be here.

Hari Sreenivasan:Thanks.

1 reminder   

n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示

参考例句：

• I have had another reminder from the library.我又收到图书馆的催还单。
• It always took a final reminder to get her to pay her share of the rent.总是得发给她一份最后催缴通知，她才付应该交的房租。

2 reverberated   

回响，回荡( reverberate的过去式和过去分词 )； 使反响，使回荡，使反射

参考例句：

• Her voice reverberated around the hall. 她的声音在大厅里回荡。
• The roar of guns reverberated in the valley. 炮声响彻山谷。

3 detailed   

adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的

参考例句：

• He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
• A detailed list of our publications is available on request.我们的出版物有一份详细的目录备索。

4 initially   

adv.最初，开始

参考例句：

• The ban was initially opposed by the US.这一禁令首先遭到美国的反对。
• Feathers initially developed from insect scales.羽毛最初由昆虫的翅瓣演化而来。

5 advertising   

n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的

参考例句：

• Can you give me any advice on getting into advertising? 你能指点我如何涉足广告业吗?
• The advertising campaign is aimed primarily at young people. 这个广告宣传运动主要是针对年轻人的。

6 transparent   

adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的

参考例句：

• The water is so transparent that we can see the fishes swimming.水清澈透明，可以看到鱼儿游来游去。
• The window glass is transparent.窗玻璃是透明的。

7 grilled   

adj. 烤的, 炙过的, 有格子的 动词grill的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• He was grilled for two hours before the police let him go. 他被严厉盘查了两个小时后，警察才放他走。
• He was grilled until he confessed. 他被严加拷问，直到他承认为止。

8 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

9 hack   

n.劈，砍，出租马车；v.劈，砍，干咳

参考例句：

• He made a hack at the log.他朝圆木上砍了一下。
• Early settlers had to hack out a clearing in the forest where they could grow crops.早期移民不得不在森林里劈出空地种庄稼。

10 perennial   

adj.终年的；长久的

参考例句：

• I wonder at her perennial youthfulness.我对她青春常驻感到惊讶。
• There's a perennial shortage of teachers with science qualifications.有理科教学资格的老师一直都很短缺。

11 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

12 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

13 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

14 licenses   

n.执照( license的名词复数 )v.批准，许可，颁发执照( license的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Drivers have ten days' grace to renew their licenses. 驾驶员更换执照有10天的宽限期。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Jewish firms couldn't get import or export licenses or raw materials. 犹太人的企业得不到进出口许可证或原料。 来自辞典例句

15 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

16 harassment   

n.骚扰，扰乱，烦恼，烦乱

参考例句：

• She often got telephone harassment at night these days.这些天她经常在夜晚受到电话骚扰。
• The company prohibits any form of harassment.公司禁止任何形式的骚扰行为。

17 racist   

n.种族主义者，种族主义分子

参考例句：

• a series of racist attacks 一连串的种族袭击行为
• His speech presented racist ideas under the guise of nationalism. 他的讲话以民族主义为幌子宣扬种族主义思想。

18 columnist   

n.专栏作家

参考例句：

• The host was interviewing a local columnist.节目主持人正在同一位当地的专栏作家交谈。
• She's a columnist for USA Today.她是《今日美国报》的专栏作家。

19 Founder   

n.创始者，缔造者

参考例句：

• He was extolled as the founder of their Florentine school.他被称颂为佛罗伦萨画派的鼻祖。
• According to the old tradition,Romulus was the founder of Rome.按照古老的传说，罗穆卢斯是古罗马的建国者。

20 justifiably   

adv.无可非议地

参考例句：

• There General Walters would come aboard to greet me, justifiably beaming with pride at his arrangement. 在那儿沃尔特斯将军会登上飞机来接我，理所当然为他们的安排感到洋洋得意。 来自辞典例句
• The Chinese seemed justifiably proud of their economic achievements. 中国人似乎为他们的经济成就感到自豪，这是无可非议的。 来自互联网

21 grudgingly   

参考例句：

• He grudgingly acknowledged having made a mistake. 他勉强承认他做错了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Their parents unwillingly [grudgingly] consented to the marriage. 他们的父母无可奈何地应允了这门亲事。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

22 silicon   

n.硅(旧名矽)

参考例句：

• This company pioneered the use of silicon chip.这家公司开创了使用硅片的方法。
• A chip is a piece of silicon about the size of a postage stamp.芯片就是一枚邮票大小的硅片。

23 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

24 demurred   

v.表示异议，反对( demur的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• At first she demurred, but then finally agreed. 她开始表示反对，但最终还是同意了。
• They demurred at working on Sundays. 他们反对星期日工作。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

25 chambers   

n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅

参考例句：

• The body will be removed into one of the cold storage chambers. 尸体将被移到一个冷冻间里。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Mr Chambers's readable book concentrates on the middle passage: the time Ransome spent in Russia. Chambers先生的这本值得一看的书重点在中间：Ransome在俄国的那几年。 来自互联网

26 underlying   

adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的

参考例句：

• The underlying theme of the novel is very serious.小说隐含的主题是十分严肃的。
• This word has its underlying meaning.这个单词有它潜在的含义。

27 geographically   

adv.地理学上，在地理上，地理方面

参考例句：

• Geographically, the UK is on the periphery of Europe. 从地理位置上讲，英国处于欧洲边缘。 来自辞典例句
• All these events, however geographically remote, urgently affected Western financial centers. 所有这些事件，无论发生在地理上如何遥远的地方，都对西方金融中心产生紧迫的影响。 来自名作英译部分

28 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

29 desperately   

adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地

参考例句：

• He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
• He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。