(单词翻译:单击)
Right now, next of kin can convert a dead person's Facebook profile into a memorial page. But there are a lot of questions surrounding passwords and access to private data that we haven't yet developed social norms for. Should accounts remain accessible? What should be made private? Should next of kin have the right to access email? Should memorial pages have comments? How do we handle trolling and vandalism? Should people be allowed to interact with dead user accounts? What lists of friends should they show up on?
现在死者的近亲可以将死者的Facebook页面变成一个纪念页。但这其中还涉及许多问题,比如密码、私人信息等,这些问题我们还没有形成社会共识。这些页面还要继续能被访问吗?哪些信息要被隐藏?死者的近亲有权进入邮箱吗?纪念页允许留言吗?如果遇到捣乱的或是恶意破坏该怎么办?其他用户可以与死者的账号互动吗?死者该出现在哪种好友名单上?
These are issues that we're currently in the process of sorting out by trial and error. Death has always been a big, difficult, and emotionally charged subject, and every society finds different ways to handle it.
这些问题,我们目前正在靠试错法寻找解决方案。死亡一直以来都是一个重大的、艰难的、情绪化的话题,不同的社会有不同的处理方法。
The basic pieces that make up a human life don't change. We've always eaten, learned, grown, fallen in love, fought, and died. In every place, culture, and technological landscape, we develop a different set of behaviors around these same activites.
但组成一个人的一生的基本事件是不会变的。我们都要吃饭、学习、长大、恋爱、斗争,最终死去。在不同的地理位置、文化环境以及技术图景中,我们围绕着这些基本活动发展出不同的行为。
Like every group that came before us, we're learning how to play those same games on our particular playing field. We're developing, through sometimes messy trial and error, a new set of social norms for dating, arguing, learning, and growing on the Internet. Sooner or later, we'll figure out how to mourn.
正如在我们之前活过的每一个人一样,我们都是在自己的人生运动场上进行着相同的游戏。虽然事情有时总不尽如人意,有时还会碰一鼻子灰,但我们还是不断地在互联网上更新着恋爱、争吵、学习以及长大的社交准则。我们迟早会明白该如何去祭奠。
1 At the time I wrote this, anyway, which was before the bloody robot revolution.
1. 至少在我写这篇文章的时候还是这样的,机器人的血腥革命还没开始呢。
2 You can get user counts for each age group from Facebook's create-an-ad tool, although you may want to try to account for the fact that Facebook's age limits cause some people to lie about their ages.
2. 你可以用Facebook的create-an-ad工具来数一下不同年龄段的用户数,不过你也得承认Facebook对用户年龄的限制使得一些用户不得不在年龄上撒谎。
3 Note: In some of these projections, I used US age/usage data extrapolated to the Facebook userbase as a whole, because it's easier to find US census and actuarial numbers than to assemble the country-by-country for the whole Facebook-using world. The US isn't a perfect model of the world, but the basic dynamics - young people's Facebook adoption determines the site's success or failure while population growth continues for a while and then levels off - will probably hold approximately true. If we assume a rapid Facebook saturation in the developing world, which currently has a faster-growing and younger population, it shifts many of the landmarks by a handful of years, but doesn't change the overall picture as much as you might expect.
3. 一些地方我用的是美国地区的数据来代表整体的数据,因为美国地区的数据比较好找,我也不想一个一个去找那些用Facebook国家的具体数字。美国数据并不能很好地代表全世界,但基本道理——人口数量会在继续上涨一段时间后持平,年轻人对Facebook的接纳程度决定了这个网站的成功与否——不管在什么地方大致都是一样的。发展中国家人口增长更快,平均年龄也更低,如果假设那里使用Facebook的人口迅速饱和,这会让一些里程碑式事件提前好几年,不过整体来说,变化并没有你想象中的大。
4 I'm assuming, in these cases, that no data is ever deleted. So far, that's been a reasonable assumption; if you've made a Facebook profile, that data probably still exists, and most people who stop using a service don't bother to delete their profiles. If that behavior changes, or if Facebook performs a mass purging of its archives, the balance could change rapidly and unpredictably.
4. 我假定的是Facebook不会删除用户信息,因为即使一些用户不用Facebook了,他们也很少会去删除个人数据。但一旦这一假设不成立,结论就会有很大的变化。
5 Of course, if there's a sudden rapid increase in the death rate of Facebook users - possibly one that includes humans in general - the crossover could happen tomorrow.
5. 也许Facebook用户——很有可能是全人类——的死亡率会在突然之间急速上升,转折点发生在明天也不是没有可能。
6 I hope.
6. 但愿如此。