Too Much Information

Nick Berthoud

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在信息传播极为发达的时代，我们每个人在日常生活中的小玩笑或不经意的行为，一经网络传播，都有可能被无限放大，甚至登上新闻头条。一方面，我们通过微博之类的社交网络能够很方便地和朋友进行分享互动；但另一方面，这也让我们在不知不觉中泄露了个人隐私，变成“过度分享”。与其责怪网络公司没有保护好用户个人信息，我们是否可以从自身出发，三思之后再发帖呢？

In October 2012 a woman from Massachusetts called Lindsey Stone went on a work trip to Washington DC, and paid a visit to Arlington National Cemetery1. Arlington National Cemetery: 美国阿灵顿国家公墓，坐落于美国弗吉尼亚州阿灵顿郡，长眠在这里被视为安息者的光荣。,where American war heroes are buried. Crouching2. crouch: 蹲伏，弯腰。next to a sign that said‘Silence and Respect’, she raised a middle finger and pretended to shout while a colleague took her photo. It was the kind of puerile clowning that most of us (well me, anyway) have indulged in at some point, and once upon a time, the resulting image would have been noticed only by the few friends or family to whom the owner of the camera showed it.3.这就是大多数人（当然也包括我自己在内）在某些情况下热衷的孩子气的胡闹拍照行为。曾几何时，这些照片本应该只会被拍照人的少数朋友或家人看到（而现在情况并非如此）。puerile: 孩子气的，天真的；indulge in: 沉溺于，肆意从事。However, this being the era of sharing, Stone posted the photo to her Facebook pro file.

Within weeks, a ‘Fire Lindsey Stone’ page had materialised, populated by commentators frothing with outrage at a desecration of hallowed ground.4. froth: 发泄，表达；desecration:亵渎神明；hallowed ground: 圣地。Anger rained down on Stone’s employer, a non-pro fit that helps adults with special needs.Her employers decided, reluctantly, that Stone and her colleague would have to leave.

Stone’s story is hardly unique. Every day, embarrassments are endured, jobs lost and individuals endangered because of unforeseen consequences triggered by a tweet or a status update. Despite the many anxious articles about the latest change to Facebook’s privacy settings, we just don’t seem to be able to get our heads around the idea that when we post our private life, we publish it.

At the beginning of this year, Facebook launched the drably5. drably: 单调地，枯燥乏味地。named ‘Graph Search’,a search engine that allows you to crawl through the data in everyone else’s pro files.Days after it went live, a tech-savvy6. savvy: 懂行的，精通的。Londoner called Tom Scott started a blog in which he posted details of searches that he had performed using the new service. By putting together imaginative combinations of ‘likes’ and pro file settings he managed to turn up‘Married people who like prostitutes’, ‘Single women nearby who like to get drunk’, and‘Islamic men who are interested in other men and live in Tehran’ (where homosexuality is illegal).7. prostitute: 娼妓；Tehran: 德黑兰，伊朗的首都； homosexuality:同性恋。

Scott was careful to erase names from the screenshots he posted online: he didn’t want to land anyone in trouble with employers, or predatory sociopaths, or agents of repressive regimes,8. predatory: 掠夺性的； sociopath:反社会的人；regime: 社会制度。or all three at once. But his findings served as a reminder that many Facebook users are standing in their bedroom naked without realising there’s a crowd outside the window. Facebook says that as long as users are given the full range of privacy options, they can be relied on to figure them out. Privacy campaigners want Facebook and others to be clearer and more upfront with users about who can view their personal data. Both agree that users deserve to be given control over their choices.

But what if the problem isn’t Facebook’s privacy settings, but our own?

Just as many people mistakenly think that driving is safer than flying because they feel they have more control over it, so giving people more privacy settings to fiddle with makes them worry less about what they actually divulge.9. fiddle with: 摆弄；divulge: 泄露。

Then again, perhaps none of this matters. Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg is not the only tech person to suggest that privacy is an anachronistic social convention about which younger generations care little.10.Facebook创始人马克·扎克伯格曾说过隐私权是一种过时的社会传统，年轻一代甚少关注。同行中不止他一个人表达过类似的观点。anachronistic: 过时的。There are many anthropological11. anthropological: 人类学的。reports of premodern societies whose members happily coexisted while carrying out almost all of their lives in public view.

Over time, we will probably get smarter about online sharing. But right now, we’re pretty stupid about it. Perhaps this is because, at some primal12. primal: 最初的。level, we don’t really believe in the internet. Humans evolved their instinct for privacy in a world where words and acts disappeared the moment they were spoken or made. Our brains are barely getting used to the idea that our thoughts or actions can be written down or photographed, let alone take on a free- floating, indestructible life of their own.13. 我们的大脑好不容易才慢慢习惯“人类的思想或行为可能会被文字或图片定格”，而关于“人们的生活可以自由自在、坚不可摧，不受外界的束缚和影响”这一观点，我们需要更多的时间去消化。Until we catch up, we’ll continue to overshare.

The internal memo enabled us to capture and store our thoughts and memories but,today, the best thing about paper is that it can be shredded14. shred: 切碎，撕碎。.