(单词翻译:单击)
Add to the disruption and isolation of the pandemic a political climate that urges us to meditate on the distance—ethnic, generational, ideological, socioeconomic—separating us from others, and it’s not hard to see why many Americans feel disconnected.
除了疫情造成的中断和隔离之外，一种政治气候也促使我们反思种族、代际、意识形态、社会经济等因素将我们与他人分隔开来的距离，不难理解为什么许多美国人感到孤立。
A trust spiral, once begun, is hard to reverse.
信任螺旋一旦开始，就很难逆转。
What has suffered most are “weak ties”—relationships with acquaintances who fall somewhere between stranger and friend, which sociologists find are particularly valuable for the dissemination of knowledge.
受影响最大的是“弱关系”——介于陌生人和朋友之间的熟人关系，社会学家发现这种关系对知识的传播特别有价值。
A closed inner circle tends to recycle knowledge it already has.
封闭的内部圈子往往会循环利用已有的知识。
New information is more likely to come from the serendipitous encounter with Alan, the guy with the fern in his office who reports to Phoebe and who remembers the last time someone suggested splitting the marketing division into three teams, and how that went.
新信息更可能来自与艾伦的偶然相遇，艾伦在他放置着蕨类植物的办公室里向菲比汇报工作，他还记得上次有人建议把营销部门分成三个小组，以及后来的情况如何。
Some evidence suggests that having more weak ties can shorten bouts of unemployment.
一些证据表明，有更多的弱关系可以缩短失业的周期。
In a famous 1973 survey, the Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter discovered that, among 54 people who had recently found a new job through someone they knew, 28 percent had heard about the new position from a weak tie, versus 17 percent from a strong one.
在1973年的一项著名调查中，斯坦福大学社会学家马克·格兰诺维特发现，在最近通过认识的人找到一份新工作的54人中，有28%的人是从弱关系中听说新职位的，17%的人是从强关系中听说的。
When the weak ties fall away, our “radius of trust”—to borrow Fukuyama’s term—shrinks.
当这种弱关系消失时，我们的“信任半径”——借用福山的说法——就会缩小。
That’s a problem for individual employees, as much as they may appreciate the flexibility of working anywhere, anytime.
这对员工个人来说是个问题，尽管他们可能喜欢随时随地工作的灵活性。
And it’s a problem for business leaders, who are trying to weigh the preferences of those employees against the enduring existence of the place that employs them.
对于商界领袖来说，这是一个问题，因为他们正试图权衡这些员工的偏好与他们所在公司的长期存在。
They don’t want to end up like IBM.
他们不希望落得IBM那样的下场。
It saved $2 billion making much of its workforce remote as early as the 1980s, only to reverse course in 2017, when it recognized that remote work was depressing collaboration.
早在20世纪80年代，该公司就让大部分员工远程办公，从而节省了20亿美元，但在2017年，该公司又改变了这一做法，因为它认识到远程工作会抑制合作。
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently wondered whether companies were “burning” some of the face-to-face “social capital we built up in this phase where we are all working remote. What’s the measure for that?”
微软首席执行官萨提亚·纳德拉最近怀疑，公司是否在“消耗”我们在远程工作阶段积累的面对面的“社会资本”。这是怎么衡量的?”
A trust spiral, once begun, is hard to reverse.
信任螺旋一旦开始，就很难逆转。
One study found that, even 20 years after reunification, fully half of the income disparity between East and West Germany could be traced to the legacy of Stasi informers.
一项研究发现，即使在统一20年后，东德和西德之间的收入差距有整整一半可以追溯到斯塔西告密者的遗留问题上。
Counties that had a higher density of informers who’d ratted out their closest friends, colleagues, and neighbors fared worse.
告密者密度较高的县情况更糟，这些告密者出卖了他们最亲密的朋友、同事和邻居。
The legacy of broken trust has proved extraordinarily difficult to shake.
事实证明，信任缺失的遗留问题极其难以撼动。
It’s not hard to find advice on how to build a culture of trust: use humor, share your vulnerabilities, promote transparency.
不难找到关于如何建立信任文化的建议：运用幽默，分享你的弱点，促进透明度。
But striking the right tone in today’s pitched political climate, often over Zoom, possibly under surveillance, is no easy feat.
但在今天激烈的政治气候下，通常是在Zoom问题上，可能受到监视，要想找到正确的基调并不是一件容易的事情。
