所屬教程:英語漫讀

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2016年07月26日

手機版
掃描二維碼方便學習和分享

Last week, I decided to take a gaggle of kids for an end-of-school-year lunch in a New York neighbourhood that I did not know well. I duly began looking for a suitable restaurant. A decade ago, I would have done that by turning to a restaurant guide. In the world I grew up in, it was normal to seek advice from the “experts”.

不久前，我打算帶一群孩子到紐約一個我不太熟悉的街區(qū)吃午餐，以慶祝他們學年的結(jié)束。理所當然地，我開始找合適的餐廳。10年前，我會去求助餐廳指南。依我的成長經(jīng)歷，向“專家們”尋求建議很正常。

But in Manhattan last week, it did not occur to me to consult Fodor’s. Instead, I typed what I needed into my cellphone, scrolled through a long list of online restaurant recommendations, including comments from people who had eaten in them — and picked one.

但這一次，我卻沒想到去查查Fodor's旅游指南，而是把自己的需求輸入手機，接著瀏覽一長串的網(wǎng)上餐廳推薦，包括過往食客們的評論——然后選了一家。

Yes, it was a leap of faith; those restaurant reviews might have been fake. But there were enough voices for me to feel able to trust the wisdom of the cyber crowds — and, as it happened, our lunch choice was very good.

是的，這有些冒險;那些餐廳點評可能是偽造的。但點評的數(shù)量挺多，讓我覺得可以相信網(wǎng)上群眾的智慧——而且，事實證明，我選的餐廳棒極了。

This is a trivial example of a much bigger change that is under way, and one that has some thought-provoking implications in the wake of the Brexit vote. Before the referendum, British citizens were subjected to a blitz of advice about the potential costs of Brexit from “experts”: economists, central bankers, the International Monetary Fund and world leaders, among others. Indeed, the central strategy of the government (and other “Remainers”) appeared to revolve around wheeling out these experts, with their solemn speeches and statistics.

這件微不足道的小事體現(xiàn)出一場更大的變化正在發(fā)生;在英國脫歐公投之后，這一變化有一些發(fā)人深省的影響。公投前，英國公民被“專家們”關(guān)于英國脫歐潛在代價的建議狂轟濫炸。這些專家包括經(jīng)濟學家，央行官員，國際貨幣基金組織(IMF)及各國的領(lǐng)導人，等等。的確，政府(及其他“留歐派”人士)的核心策略，似乎就是搬出這些專家，讓他們發(fā)表莊嚴的演講，拿出嚴肅的統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)。

The pro-Brexit politician Michael Gove warned, “People in this country have had enough of experts,” and to some extent he was proved right: the country narrowly voted to ignore their advice and leave anyway. Some might view this as an example of clever messaging by the Leave camp — or, if they agree with the Leavers, as a case of the right arguments winning through. Others might attribute it to anti-elite populism.

支持脫歐的政治家邁克爾•戈夫(Michael Gove)警告說，“這個國家的民眾已經(jīng)受夠?qū)＜伊?rdquo;。在某種程度上事實證明他是對的：英國以微弱多數(shù)票數(shù)決定，無視專家們的建議，還是脫離歐盟。一些人或許會將此視為退歐陣營善于拉票的一個例子——或者，若他們與“退歐派”意見一致，則可將此看成一個以正確論點勝出的案例。其他人或許將其歸結(jié)為反精英的民粹主義。

I suspect that it indicates something else: that citizens of the cyber world no longer have much faith in anything that experts say, not just in the political sphere but in numerous others too. At a time when we increasingly rely on crowd-sourced advice rather than official experts to choose a restaurant, healthcare and holidays, it seems strange to expect voters to listen to official experts when it comes to politics.

我感覺它反映了另一件事，那就是：網(wǎng)絡(luò)世界的公民已不再那么相信專家們所說的任何事情，不僅僅是在政治領(lǐng)域，在其他眾多領(lǐng)域都是如此。當我們越來越依賴來自普通人而非官方專家們的建議去挑選餐廳、醫(yī)療服務(wù)和度假產(chǎn)品時，指望選民們在政治問題上聽從官方專家們的建議就顯得很奇怪。

In our everyday lives, we are moving from a system based around vertical axes of trust, where we trust people who seem to have more authority than we do, to one predicated on horizontal axes of trust: we take advice from our peer group.

在日常生活中，我們正在脫離一個垂直信任體系(在這個體系里我們信任那些看起來比自己權(quán)威的人)，轉(zhuǎn)向一個水平信任體系(在這個體系里我們聽取同類人的建議)。

You can see this clearly if you look at the surveys conducted by groups such as the Pew Research Center. These show that faith in institutions such as the government, big business and the media has crumbled in recent years; indeed, almost the only institution in the US that has bucked the trend is the military.

由皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)這類團體所做的調(diào)研可以明顯地反映出這一趨勢。這些調(diào)研顯示，近年來人們對政府、大企業(yè)以及媒體這類機構(gòu)的信任已然坍塌;事實上，在美國幾乎只有軍隊頂住了這一趨勢。

What is even more interesting to look at, however, are the areas where trust remains high. In an annual survey conducted by the Edelman public relations firm, people in 20 countries are asked who they trust. They show rising confidence in the “a person like me” category, and surprisingly high trust in digital technology. We live in a world where we increasingly trust our Facebook friends and the Twitter crowd more than we do the IMF or the prime minister. 更有意思的卻是信任度居高不下的地方。在愛德曼公關(guān)公司(Edelman public relations firm)的一份年度調(diào)查中，20個國家的民眾被問及他們信任什么人。他們對“同類”這一類人的信任感上升，同時對數(shù)字技術(shù)表現(xiàn)出令人驚訝的高度信任。我們生活在這樣一個世界里：我們越來越相信自己的Facebook好友和Twitter上的人，而不是IMF和首相。

In some senses, this is good news. Relying on horizontal axes of trust should mean more democracy and empowerment for ordinary citizens. But the problem of this new world is that people can fall prey to social fads and tribalism — or groupthink. 從某種意義上來說，這是個好消息。對于普通民眾而言，依賴水平信任體系意味著更多的民主和賦權(quán)。但這個新世界的問題在于，人們可能會被社會風尚、部落主義(tribalism)或團體迷思所裹挾。

“The rise of ‘a person like me’ has given birth to a ‘post-truth’ era, where comforting narratives and familiar messengers beat fact and argument,” points out Nick Barron, an Edelman executive. “Social echo chambers prevent effective scrutiny of individuals, organisations and campaigns that we think are on the ‘right side’ of an argument . . . ‘My truth’, ‘our truth’ and ‘the truth I feel’ beat ‘objective truth’.”

愛德曼公關(guān)公司高管尼克•巴倫(Nick Barron)指出：“人們對‘同類人’的日益重視，催生了一個‘后真理’時代。在這個時代里，人們更愿意相信令人欣慰的表述和熟悉的信息渠道，而不是事實和論據(jù)。社交媒體回音室效應(yīng)使得我們認為處于辯論‘正確一方’的個人、組織及拉票運動得不到有效監(jiān)督……我們相信‘我所認為的真理’、‘我們所認為的真理’以及‘我所感覺的真理’，而不是客觀真理。”無論如何，誰也不會將這個妖怪重新放回魔瓶里。因此我們都應(yīng)思考在當今世界里，創(chuàng)造“信任”紐帶的是什么。我們還應(yīng)認識到，20世紀那種對專家和固定黨派懷有敬畏的政治模式，也許終將會如同餐廳指南一樣過時。我們所處的時代瞬息萬變。

Either way, nobody is going to put this genie back into the bottle. So we all need to think about what creates the bonds of “trust” in today’s world. And recognise that the 20th-century model of politics, with its reverence for experts and fixed parties, may eventually seem as outdated as restaurant guides. We live in volatile times.