我們必須拯救的網路世界

# 我們必須拯救的網路世界 > By Hossein Derakhshan > 原文：[The Web We Have to Save](https://medium.com/matter/the-web-we-have-to-save-2eb1fe15a426) >> The rich, diverse, free web that I loved — and spent years in an Iranian jail for — is dying. Why is nobody stopping it? > > 如此多彩、豐富、自由，我所熱愛甚至因此在伊朗監獄裡消耗數年人生的網路世界，正在邁向死亡。為什麼沒有人試著阻止這一切的發生？ # 301 MOVED PERAMANENTLY This document had been moved to https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/The-Web-We-Have-to-Save--0SegVFkN3kfvWdH4WKUyx. Please edit it there. (2016/8/29) ## 正文 > Seven months ago, I sat down at the small table in the kitchen of my 1960s apartment, nestled on the top floor of a building in a vibrant central neighbourhood of Tehran, and I did something I had done thousands of times previously. I opened my laptop and posted to my new blog. This, though, was the first time in six years. And it nearly broke my heart. 七個月前，我坐在德黑蘭1960年代公寓廚房裡的桌前，…，而且做了以往做了上千次的一件事情，就是打開我的筆電、在新的部落格上貼了幾篇文章。但這是六年來的第一次。而且它幾乎讓我心碎了。 > A few weeks earlier, I’d been abruptly pardoned and freed from Evin prison in northern Tehran. I had been expecting to spend most of my life in those cells: In November 2008, I’d been sentenced to nearly 20 years in jail, mostly for things I’d written on my blog. 幾個星期前，我突然從德黑蘭的埃溫監獄被赦免且釋放了出來。我原本已經期待要在監獄裡度過餘生，因為在2008年11月，我被判了將近20年的徒刑，大多只因我在部落格上所寫的事情。 > But the moment, when it came, was unexpected. I smoked a cigarette in the kitchen with one of my fellow inmates, and came back to the room I shared with a dozen other men. We were sharing a cup of tea when the voice of the floor announcer — another prisoner — filled all the rooms and corridors. In his flat voice, he announced in Persian: “Dear fellow inmates, the bird of luck has once again sat on one fellow inmate’s shoulders. Mr. Hossein Derakhshan, as of this moment, you are free.” 但是，事情發生得如此無法預料。我在廚房裡抽著雪茄，…。他以平淡的波斯語宣布：「親愛的獄友們，代表幸運的鳥兒再次停在一位獄友的肩上。Hossein Derakhshan先生，你從此時此刻已經自由了。」 --- > That evening was the first time that I went out of those doors as a free man. Everything felt new: The chill autumn breeze, the traffic noise from a nearby bridge, the smell, the colors of the city I had lived in for most of my life. 那天傍晚，是我第一次以自由之身走出那些門。所有事物都像是新的一般：微冷帶著秋意的寒風、不遠處橋上車來車往的聲音、那些氣味、顏色，來自這個我度過大半生命的城市。 > Around me, I noticed a very different Tehran from the one I’d been used to. An influx of new, shamelessly luxurious condos had replaced the charming little houses I was familiar with. New roads, new highways, hordes of invasive SUVs. Large billboards with advertisements for Swiss-made watches and Korean flat screen TVs. Women in colorful scarves and manteaus, men with dyed hair and beards, and hundreds of charming cafes with hip western music and female staff. They were the kinds of changes that creep up on people; the kind you only really notice once normal life gets taken away from you. > Two weeks later, I began writing again. Some friends agreed to let me start a blog as part of their arts magazine. I called it [*Ketabkhan*](http://blogs.tarjomaan.com/books/) — it means book-reader in Persian. 兩個星期以後，我又開始寫作了。朋友們同意我開一個部落格作為它們藝術雜誌的一部份。我把它稱作 Ketabkhan，在波斯語中是「閱讀者」的意思。 > Six years was a long time to be in jail, but it’s an entire era online. Writing on the internet itself had not changed, but *reading* — or, at least, getting things read — had altered dramatically. I’d been told how essential social networks had become while I’d been gone, and so I knew one thing: If I wanted to lure people to see my writing, I had to use social media now. 六年對監獄中的人來說，是一段很長的時間，但對於網路世界，它是整個世代的流轉。在網路上寫作的模式基本上沒有改變，但是閱讀，或至少「讓東西被閱讀」的模式已經戲劇性的改變了。我離開的這段時間被告知社群網站會變成什麼樣子，所以我清楚明白：如果我想要吸引人們來看我的文章，現在我一定要借助社群媒體了。 > So I tried to post a link to one of my stories on Facebook. Turns out Facebook didn’t care much. It ended up looking like a boring classified ad. No description. No image. Nothing. It got three likes. Three! That was it. 所以我試著把一篇文章的連結貼在Facebook上。看來Facebook不怎麼在乎。它看起來顯然就像一則無趣的廣告。沒有說明、沒有圖片。什麼都沒有。最後它得到了三個讚。三個！就這樣而已。 > It became clear to me, right there, that things had changed. I was not equipped to play on this new turf — all my investment and effort had burned up. I was devastated. 我清楚意識到，世界變得不太一樣了，而我來不及準備好(I was not equipped to play on this new turf)。所有我的投資和心力都已付之一炬。我徹底絕望了。 --- > Blogs were gold and bloggers were rock stars back in 2008 when I was arrested. At that point, and despite the fact the state was blocking access to [my blog](https://web.archive.org/web/20081030105806/http://i.hoder.com/) from inside Iran, I had an audience of around 20,000 people every day. Everybody I linked to would face a sudden and serious jump in traffic: I could empower or embarrass anyone I wanted. 在2008年，也就是我被捕的那時候，部落格像是黃金一般珍貴、部落客則像是搖滾巨星。就算我的部落格在伊朗境內無法瀏覽，我的部落格依然每天有大約兩萬名粉絲。我所連結到的每個頁面都會流量遽增：只要我想要，我彷彿可以給予它們權力，或是使它們出糗。 > People used to carefully read my posts and leave lots of relevant comments, and even many of those who strongly disagreed with me still came to read. Other blogs linked to mine to discuss what I was saying. I felt like a king. 人們習於謹慎地閱讀我的文章，而且留下很多相關的評論，甚至很多堅決反對我論調的人還是會來讀。而其他部落格也會連到我的文章，討論我說了什麼。我好像是一國之君。 > The iPhone was a little over a year old by then, but smartphones were still mostly used to make phone calls and send short messages, handle emails, and surf the web. There were no real apps, certainly not how we think of them today. There was no Instagram, no SnapChat, no Viber, no WhatsApp. iPhone在當時才一歲有餘，但那時的智慧型手機主要的目的還是打電話、傳簡訊、發E-mail和瀏覽網頁。沒有真正的App，就算有也和今日我們想的不一樣。沒有Instagram、沒有SnapChat、沒有Viber，也沒有WhatsApp。 > Instead, there was the web, and on the web, there were blogs: the best place to find alternative thoughts, news and analysis. They were my life. 但是，那時的確有網路，網路上有部落格，那是尋找另類觀點、新聞和分析的最好去處。它們曾經是我生命的一部份。 --- > It had all started with 9/11. I was in Toronto, and my father had just arrived from Tehran for a visit. We were having breakfast when the second plane hit the World Trade Center. I was puzzled and confused and, looking for insights and explanations, I came across blogs. Once I read a few, I thought: This is it, I should start one, and encourage all Iranians to start blogging as well. So, using Notepad on Windows, I started experimenting. Soon I ended up writing on [hoder.com](https://web.archive.org/web/20020613100521/http://hoder.com/i/default.asp), using Blogger’s publishing platform before Google bought it. > Then, on November 5, 2001, I published a [step-to-step guide](https://web.archive.org/web/20030401200358/http://i.hoder.com/index.php?sec=guide) on how to start a blog. That sparked something that was later called a [blogging revolution](http://www.amazon.com/Blogistan-Internet-Politics-International-Library/dp/1845116070): Soon, hundreds and thousands of Iranians made it one of the top 5 nations by the number of blogs, and I was proud to have a role in this unprecedented democratization of writing. > Those days, I used to keep [a list of all blogs in Persian](https://web.archive.org/web/20020802005944/http://hoder.com/i/links.asp) and, for a while, I was the first person any new blogger in Iran would contact, so they could get on the list. That’s why they called me “[the blogfather](https://www.flickr.com/photos/hoder/1878402927/)” in my mid-twenties — it was a silly nickname, but at least it hinted at how much I cared. > Every morning, from my small apartment in downtown Toronto, I opened my computer and took care of the new blogs, helping them gain exposure and audience. It was a diverse crowd — from exiled authors and journalists, female diarists, and technology experts, to local journalists, politicians, clerics, and war veterans — and I always encouraged even more. I invited more religious, and pro-Islamic Republic men and women, people who lived inside Iran, to join and start writing. > The breadth of what was available those days amazed us all. It was partly why I promoted blogging so seriously. I’d left Iran in late 2000 to experience living in the West, and was scared that I was missing all the rapidly emerging trends at home. But reading [Iranian blogs](http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Blogging_in_Iran) in Toronto was the closest experience I could have to sitting in a shared taxi in Tehran and listening to collective conversations between the talkative driver and random passengers. --- > There’s a story in the Quran that I thought about a lot during my first eight months in solitary confinement. In it, a group of persecuted Christians find refuge in a cave. They, and a dog they have with them, fall into a deep sleep. They wake up under the impression that they’ve taken a nap: In fact, it’s 300 years later. One version of the story tells of how one of them goes out to buy food — and I can only imagine how hungry they must’ve been after 300 years — and discovers that his money is obsolete now, a museum item. That’s when he realizes how long they have actually been absent. 在受軍事監禁的前八個月，一則《古蘭經》的故事讓我想了很多。在故事裡，一群遭受迫害的基督徒在一座山洞裡避難。他們以及隨行的狗在洞穴裡沉沉睡去。他們醒來以後十分震驚：事實上，已經是三百年以後了。故事的一個版本是他們其中一人如何走出山洞買食物 — 而我幾乎無法想像三百年過去他們他們有多餓 — 然而他發現他使用的錢幣在當時已經被棄用了，如博物館裡的物品一般。這時他才意識到時間已經流逝了這麼久。 > The hyperlink was my currency six years ago. Stemming from the idea of the hypertext, the hyperlink provided a diversity and decentralisation that the real world lacked. The hyperlink represented the open, interconnected spirit of the world wide web — a vision that started with its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee. The hyperlink was a way to abandon centralization — all the links, lines and hierarchies — and replace them with something more distributed, a system of nodes and networks. 超連結在六年前對我曾像是那貨幣一般。超連結填補了超文字概念的內涵，提供了真實世界中缺少的多樣性和去中心性。超連結代表了全球資訊網 (world wide web) 開放而互相聯繫的精神 — 它的發明者 Tim Berners-Lee 開創的願景。超連結曾是捨棄中心化的一種方式 — 拋棄所有的連結、連線和階層 — 以類似節點和網路的方式取而代之。部落格賦予了我們「去中心化」的靈魂：如窗口，通往你很少真正了解的生命；如橋樑，連接不同的心靈並改變了彼此。部落格像是人們交流不同意見的咖啡館，上面討論著任何你可能有興趣的主題。他們像是大型的伊朗計程車。直到我出獄，才了解到「超連結」失去了它的價值，幾乎是要被棄如敝屣。幾乎所有的社群網站，都將超連結視作和其他事物相同：如一張照片、一段文字，而非一個使文字更豐富的途徑。你只被鼓勵貼單一的連結，將其暴露在一個半民主的程序中：讓人按讚、按+1、按「喜歡」，通常在一段文字中是不能加好幾個連結的。超連結被目的化、被孤立，被除去它應有的力量。在這同時，這些社群媒體傾向善待直接貼到他們網站上的文字和圖片，至少和網站外的頁面相比顯得尊重多了。一個攝影師朋友向我解釋直接上傳到Facebook的圖片如何收到大量的讚，它還會回過頭來促使圖片在其他人的塗鴉牆上更常出現。相反的，當它被貼到Facebook以外的地方，比如他陳舊的部落格，這些圖片在Facebook上本來就較不明顯，所以只能得到一點點讚。這個循環不斷重複。有些社群網路(像是Twitter)，對待超連結還比較好一些。其他的，包括一些不安全的社群服務，偏執程度更甚。像是Facebook旗下的Instagram，不允許閱聽者離開。你可以在照片旁放上一個連結，但這連結哪兒都去不了。很多人一的一天，是從名為社群網頁的死巷(cul de sacs)開始的，而且往往也結束於此。很多人甚至不明白，當他們正在Instagram上按「喜歡」，或是在Facebook上對朋友的影片留言時，他們正在用的是Internet。那只是個app罷了。超連結不只是網頁的骨架之一。他們是網頁的眼睛，是一條直通靈魂的途徑。一個沒有超連結的網頁形同目盲，無法觀照到其他網頁，這會對網頁充滿動態的力量帶來嚴重的後果。 More or less, all theorists have thought of gaze in relation to power, and mostly in a negative sense: the gazer strips the gazed and turns her into a powerless object, devoid of intelligence or agency. But in the world of webpages, gaze functions differently: It is more empowering. When a powerful website — say Google or Facebook — gazes at, or links to, another webpage, it doesn’t just connect it — it brings it into existence; gives it life. Metaphorically, without this empowering gaze, your web page doesn’t breathe. No matter how many links you have placed in a webpage, unless somebody is looking at it, it is actually both dead and blind; and therefore incapable of transferring power to any outside web page. 所有的理論學家多多少少向眼前的權力垂涎，而且效應常常是負面的：迷戀權勢者掠奪他們眼前的人，把他們變成失去了智慧與動力、毫無權力可言的物體。但網頁的世界，凝視的功用不一樣：它是賦予權力的。當一個權威的網站，像 Google 或 Facebook 連結到另一個網頁，它不只建立了一個聯繫，而是賦予它生命，使它得以存在。隱喻地說，若不是這種賦予權力的凝視，你的網頁根本無法呼吸。無論你在網頁上放上多少連結，除非有人正看著它，它其實是死而盲目的 (dead and blind)，因而無法將權力傳送給網頁外的一切。另一方面，最有力量網頁是那些有很多人關注的。像是慈善事業匯集了世界上友善的力量，任何時間都有成千上萬人在關注著。網頁一樣可以憑藉著超連結，匯集和散布他們的力量。但一些應用程式像Instagram是盲目的，或說接近盲目。他們只向內看，拒絕將其力量轉與其他人，將自己導向寧靜的死亡中。後果是，離開了社群媒體的網頁正在步向死亡。 > But apps like Instagram are blind — or almost blind. Their gaze goes nowhere except inwards, reluctant to transfer any of their vast powers to others, leading them into quiet deaths. The consequence is that web pages outside social media are dying. --- > Even before I went to jail, though, the power of hyperlinks was being curbed. Its biggest enemy was a philosophy that combined two of the most dominant, and most overrated, values of our times: novelty and popularity, reflected by the real world dominance of young celebrities. That philosophy is the Stream. 就算是在我入獄之前，超連結的能力就已經被拘束了。它最大的敵人是由我們時間的價值決定的兩個原理，最主要的、也是最被高估的：新鮮感與受歡迎的程度，反應了年輕一代的人在現實世界中的支配地位。這個原理稱為串流 (stream)。 > The Stream now dominates the way people receive information on the web. Fewer users are directly checking dedicated webpages, instead getting fed by a never-ending flow of information that’s picked for them by complex –and secretive — algorithms. 串流現在已經支配了人們如何從網路上獲得資訊。愈來愈少的使用者直接翻閱網頁，而是被一條永無止境的資訊流所餵飽。這些資訊是由複雜而神祕的演算法所撿選的。 > The Stream means you don’t need to open so many websites any more. You don’t need numerous tabs. You don’t even need a web browser. You open Twitter or Facebook on your smartphone and dive deep in. The mountain has come to you. Algorithms have picked everything for you. According to what you or your friends have read or seen before, they predict what you might like to see. It feels great not to waste time in finding interesting things on so many websites. 串流 (Stream) 代表著你再也不用開啟這麼多網頁了。你不需要數量龐大的分頁了。你甚至不需要一個網頁瀏覽器，只要在智慧型手機開啟 Twitter 或 Facebook 然後潛身進去就可以。山為你而移動了 (The mountain has come to you.)，於是演算法幫你撿選好了一切。根據你或你朋友曾經讀過的內容，他們預測了你可能會想看到的內容。不需要浪費時間在茫茫網頁中尋找有趣內容的感覺很棒。 > But are we missing something here? What are we exchanging for efficiency? 但我們是不是失去了什麼？我們用什麼交換了這種便利性？ In many apps, the votes we cast — the likes, the plusses, the stars, the hearts — are actually more related to cute avatars and celebrity status than to the substance of what’s posted. A most brilliant paragraph by some ordinary-looking person can be left outside the Stream, while the silly ramblings of a celebrity gain instant Internet presence. And not only do the algorithms behind the Stream equate newness and popularity with importance, they also tend to show us more of what we’ve already liked. These services carefully scan our behaviour and delicately tailor our news feeds with posts, pictures and videos that they think we would most likely want to see. Popularity is not wrong in and of itself, but it has its own perils. In a free-market economy, low-quality goods with the wrong prices are doomed to failure. Nobody gets upset when a quiet Brooklyn cafe with bad lattes and rude servers goes out of business. But opinions are not the same as material goods or services. They won’t disappear if they are unpopular or even bad. In fact, history has proven that most big ideas (and many bad ones) have been quite unpopular for a long time, and their marginal status has only strengthened them. Minority views are radicalized when they can’t be expressed and recognized. Today the Stream is digital media’s dominant form of organizing information. It’s in every social network and mobile application. Since I gained my freedom, everywhere I turn I see the Stream. I guess it won’t be too long before we see news websites organize their entire content based on the same principles. The prominence of the Stream today doesn’t just make vast chunks of the Internet biased against quality — it also means a deep betrayal to the diversity that the world wide web had originally envisioned. --- There’s no question to me that the diversity of themes and opinions is less online today than it was in the past. New, different, and challenging ideas get suppressed by today’s social networks because their ranking strategies prioritize the popular and habitual. (No wonder why Apple is hiring human editors for its news app.) But diversity is being reduced in other ways, and for other purposes. Some of it is visual. Yes, it is true that all my posts on Twitter and Facebook look something similar to a personal blog: They are collected in reverse-chronological order, on a specific webpage, with direct web addresses to each post. But I have very little control over how it looks like; I can’t personalize it much. My page must follow a uniform look which the designers of the social network decide for me. The centralization of information also worries me because it makes it easier for things to disappear. After my arrest, my hosting service closed my account, because I wasn’t able to pay its monthly fee. But at least I had a backup of all my posts in a database on my own web server. (Most blogging platforms used to enable you to transfer your posts and archives to your own web space, whereas now most platforms don’t let you so.) Even if I didn’t, the Internet archive might keep a copy. But what if my account on Facebook or Twitter is shut down for any reason? Those services themselves may not die any time soon, but it would be not too difficult to imagine a day many American services shut down accounts of anyone who is from Iran, as a result of the current regime of sanctions. If that happened, I might be able to download my posts in some of them, and let’s assume the backup can be easily imported into another platform. But what about the unique web address for my social network profile? Would I be able to claim it back later, after somebody else has possessed it? Domain names switch hands, too, but managing the process is easier and more clear— especially since there is a financial relationship between you and the seller which makes it less prone to sudden and untransparent decisions. But the scariest outcome of the centralization of information in the age of social networks is something else: It is making us all much less powerful in relation to governments and corporations. Surveillance is increasingly imposed on civilized lives, and it just gets worse as time goes by. The only way to stay outside of this vast apparatus of surveillance might be to go into a cave and sleep, even if you can’t make it 300 years. Being watched is something we all eventually have to get used to and live with and, sadly, it has nothing to do with the country of our residence. Ironically enough, states that cooperate with Facebook and Twitter know much more about their citizens than those, like Iran, where the state has a tight grip on the Internet but does not have legal access to social media companies. What is more frightening than being merely watched, though, is being controlled. When Facebook can know us better than our parents with only 150 likes, and better than our spouses with 300 likes, the world appears quite predictable, both for governments and for businesses. And predictability means control. --- Middle-class Iranians, like most people in the world, are obsessed with new trends. Utility or quality of things usually comes second to their trendiness. In early 2000s writing blogs made you cool and trendy, then around 2008 Facebook came in and then Twitter. Since 2014 the hype is all about Instagram, and no one knows what is next. But the more I think about these changes, the more I realize that even all my concerns might have been misdirected. Perhaps I am worried about the wrong thing. Maybe it’s not the death of the hyperlink, or the centralization, exactly. Maybe it’s that text itself is disappearing. After all, the first visitors to the web spent their time online reading web magazines. Then came blogs, then Facebook, then Twitter. Now it’s Facebook videos and Instagram and SnapChat that most people spend their time on. There’s less and less text to read on social networks, and more and more video to watch, more and more images to look at. Are we witnessing a decline of reading on the web in favor of watching and listening? Is this trend driven by people’s changing cultural habits, or is it that people are following the new laws of social networking? I don’t know — that’s for researchers to find out — but it feels like it’s reviving old cultural wars. After all, the web started out by imitating books and for many years, it was heavily dominated by text, by hypertext. Search engines put huge value on these things, and entire companies — entire monopolies — were built off the back of them. But as the number of image scanners and digital photos and video cameras grows exponentially, this seems to be changing. Search tools are starting to add advanced image recognition algorithms; advertising money is flowing there. But the Stream, mobile applications, and moving images: They all show a departure from a books-internet toward a television-internet. We seem to have gone from a non-linear mode of communication — nodes and networks and links — toward a linear one, with centralization and hierarchies. The web was not envisioned as a form of television when it was invented. But, like it or not, it is rapidly resembling TV: linear, passive, programmed and inward-looking. When I log on to Facebook, my personal television starts. All I need to do is to scroll: New profile pictures by friends, short bits of opinion on current affairs, links to new stories with short captions, advertising, and of course self-playing videos. I occasionally click on like or share button, read peoples’ comments or leave one, or open an article. But I remain inside Facebook, and it continues to broadcast what I might like. This is not the web I knew when I went to jail. This is not the future of the web. This future is television. Sometimes I think maybe I’m becoming too strict as I age. Maybe this is all a natural evolution of a technology. But I can’t close my eyes to what’s happening: A loss of intellectual power and diversity, and on the great potentials it could have for our troubled time. In the past, the web was powerful and serious enough to land me in jail. Today it feels like little more than entertainment. So much that even Iran doesn’t take some — Instagram, for instance — serious enough to block. I miss when people took time to be exposed to different opinions, and bothered to read more than a paragraph or 140 characters. I miss the days when I could write something on my own blog, publish on my own domain, without taking an equal time to promote it on numerous social networks; when nobody cared about likes and reshares. > That’s the web I remember before jail. That’s the web we have to save. 這是我在入獄前所記得的網路。這是我們要拯救的網路世界。