【英语语言学习】链接中断

Just about anyone who's used the Internet has encountered the message Error 404 or Page Not Found. That's what you see when a link is broken or dead, when a resource is no longer available. It happens on blogs. It happens on news websites, even on decisions by the U.S. Supreme¹ Court. Jonathan Zittrain is a professor of law and computer science at Harvard and joins us from Cambridge. Professor Zittrain, thanks so much for being with us.

JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Hello, Scott.

SIMON: This is called link rot?

ZITTRAIN: Yes. Link or reference rot is the phenomenon by which a URL - uniform resource locator - that you might click on or type in doesn't go where it's supposed to go anymore, maybe because the server where it lives has packed up and gone away, maybe because there's filtering of sometime between you and it. Many reasons why what you thought was only a click away turns out to be hard to find.

SIMON: This is one thing to happen if you're trying to follow a story from BuzzFeed. But if you're a law professor or just a citizen reading a Supreme Court decision, they cite something and the link goes nowhere, that's more than irritating, isn't it?

ZITTRAIN: It's extraordinarily² bad for the long-term maintenance of the information we need, say, to understand the law. When the Supreme Court justice offers a URL to explain what he or she is thinking, if you can't follow it and can't get there, or even worse, if something different is there, people can be misled.

SIMON: Something to be done about it?

ZITTRAIN: Well, yes. We found that within the field of law for judicial³ opinions of the Supreme Court, half of the links were dead already in Supreme Court opinions. And for the Harvard Law Review, just over 70 percent of the links there don't work anymore.

So we've put together a consortium of initially⁴ law libraries for which we are offering something called Perma.cc, which is an opportunity for an author or editor of a piece of scholarship or a judicial opinion to take that link that he or she is about to put in there and that's destined⁵ to rot probably - take it to one of the participating libraries, have a snapshot made of what's there, and then the Network of Libraries will commit to keeping that indefinitely.

SIMON: I apologize for a humble⁶ example, but is this essentially⁷ cold storage for data?

ZITTRAIN: Well, it's cold storage that can be warmed up pretty rapidly if need be. In this case, we're really just wanting to make sure that stuff that finds its way into scholarship that used to be stored by libraries systematically⁸ and that no longer is because it's just stuff that's borne and lives digitally on the web somewhere, can find a home in a way that preserves the distributed, anarchic web.

SIMON: And does this marvelous new technology come to us for free?

ZITTRAIN: Yes. The idea is this is part of the job...

SIMON: I was being arch when I said that.

ZITTRAIN: (Laughter) The job of universities, of academia and libraries is to be able to serve the basic function of preserving humanity's knowledge. Of course, we don't want to lose money doing it. But we want to make sure that the basic functions of getting the information in and getting it out aren't something that is going to be subject to the whims⁹ of a business model or a transfer of ownership of a company. And I should say this is one of several approaches to try to deal with this problem.

SIMON: Jonathan Zittrain, cofounder and director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. Thanks very much for being with us.

ZITTRAIN: Thank you, Scott.

1 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

2 extraordinarily   

adv.格外地；极端地

参考例句：

• She is an extraordinarily beautiful girl.她是个美丽非凡的姑娘。
• The sea was extraordinarily calm that morning.那天清晨，大海出奇地宁静。

3 judicial   

adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的

参考例句：

• He is a man with a judicial mind.他是个公正的人。
• Tom takes judicial proceedings against his father.汤姆对他的父亲正式提出诉讼。

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 destined   

adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的

参考例句：

• It was destined that they would marry.他们结婚是缘分。
• The shipment is destined for America.这批货物将运往美国。

6 humble   

adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低

参考例句：

• In my humble opinion,he will win the election.依我拙见，他将在选举中获胜。
• Defeat and failure make people humble.挫折与失败会使人谦卑。

7 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。

8 systematically   

adv.有系统地

参考例句：

• This government has systematically run down public services since it took office.这一屆政府自上台以来系统地削减了公共服务。
• The rainforest is being systematically destroyed.雨林正被系统地毀灭。

9 WHIMS   

虚妄，禅病

参考例句：

• The mate observed regretfully that he could not account for that young fellow's whims. 那位伙伴很遗憾地说他不能说出那年轻人产生怪念头的原因。
• The rest she had for food and her own whims. 剩下的钱她用来吃饭和买一些自己喜欢的东西。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹