數字服務並非免費 免費信息的高昂代價

In the past few weeks something we always knew to be true, but which we preferred to overlook for convenience’s sake, is proving harder to ignore.

過去幾周，我們一直都知道是怎麼回事、但爲了省事而不去深究的某些事情，變得更難忽視了。

The fact is that digital services are not free, they never were and that any entity from Silicon Valley that ever claimed they could be did so only because it suited their agenda or that of someone else.

事實是，數字服務並非免費，它們從未免費過，硅谷任何聲稱能夠提供免費數字服務的公司之所以那麼說，只是因爲這話符合它們或其他什麼人的利益。

Think of all the free digital services you use every day without paying a penny: email, travel apps, social media, YouTube, search, Wikipedia.

想想我們每天不花一分錢就可以使用的所有免費數字服務：電子郵件、旅行應用、社交媒體，YouTube、搜索、維基百科(Wikipedia)。

If you had to pay for all of them, how many would you use?

如果要爲所有這些服務付費，你還會使用多少？

This revelation is not the result of a crash in the share prices of companies providing free internet services.

我們醒悟到這一點並非提供免費互聯網服務的公司股價暴跌的結果。

Nor is it because a plethora of app companies has run out of financing options for their lossmaking operations.

也不是因爲衆多app開發商的虧損業務的融資選擇越來越少。

It has hit us because the fake news scandal has led us to question whether the news and information we have been consuming online for nothing was ever being generated in our interests.

我們之所以醒悟過來，是因爲假新聞醜聞使我們開始懷疑，我們在網上免費消費的新聞和信息，是否以符合我們利益的方式生成？

However, the outrage that has followed this realisation — with free services such as Google and Facebook being urged to censor and filter the news — misdiagnoses the situation.

然而，這一認識帶來的憤怒——要求谷歌(Google)、Facebook等免費服務提供商審查並過濾新聞——是對現實的錯誤診斷。

The right diagnosis is this: over the past 20 years we have normalised a digital economy that funds itself either by appealing to the sort of investors who will tolerate long-term cash burn if the ultimate pay-off is monopoly control or by creating business models that profit from morally ambiguous situations.

正確的診斷是：過去20年，我們已經讓這樣一種數字經濟正常化，這種經濟通過兩種方式募集資金：一是吸引那些願意爲最終獲得壟斷控制權而忍受長期燒錢的投資者，二是創建能夠獲利於道德上模糊的情況的業務模式。

Where traditional media institutions feared to tread with advertising-funded models because of a belief in editorial responsibility, balance and context, social media platforms — free from any industry codes of conduct — moved right in.

傳統媒體機構基於對採編責任、平衡與大背景的考慮，不敢隨便引入廣告贊助模式，這恰好讓不受任何行業行爲準則約束的社交媒體平臺趁虛而入。

The lines between editorial, advertising, entertainment and political propaganda became entirely blurred in the quest for clicks.

爲了追求點擊率，編輯、廣告、娛樂以及政治宣傳之間的界線變得完全模糊了。

The growing cyber-industrial complex has normalised this further, with cross-subsidisation models that gouge wealthier customer segments for the benefit of non-paying ones referred to euphemistically as ecosystems.

日益壯大的網絡工業複合體使這種狀況進一步常態化，它們搞出交叉補貼模式——向較富裕客戶羣體收取較高費用，以補貼非付費客戶——還美其名曰生態系統。

An ecosystem, in case you do not know, is a state of mutual co-dependence between organisms, often where one organism has to submit to the other in order to achieve balance.

一個生態系統（如果你不知道這個）是不同有機體相互依存的一種狀態，往往其中一個有機體必須屈從於另一個，才能保持平衡。

None of this is new.

這一切都並非新鮮事物。

The last time a country normalised a complex web of interdependencies, it was called Gosplan.

上一次一個國家讓一個複雜的相互依存網絡常態化，還是蘇聯國家計劃委員會(Gosplan)時代的事情。

Just like today’s internet economy, this Soviet system was based on the idea that a technocratic and scientific central planning process could justly punish some to the benefit of others.

正如當下的互聯網經濟一樣，蘇聯這一體制基於的理念是，某種技術官僚的、科學的中央規劃過程，可以理直氣壯地爲了造福於某些人而懲罰另一些人。

And, like today’s internet economy, it normalised the false idea that scientific progress could cultivate a cornucopia of free resources with no associated costs or losses of freedom.

也像當下的互聯網經濟一樣，它讓一種錯誤理念正常化：即科學進步可以培養一種免費資源的聚寶盆，而不會有相關成本，也不會失去自由。

That fallacy ended abruptly in 1985.

這種謬誤在1985年轟然倒塌。

A spate of economic crises, consumer shortages and regional instabilities, including the re-emergence of nationalistic sentiments, revealed that the centralised, cross-subsidised economy of the Soviet Union was bankrupt and had to be reformed.

當時一連串經濟危機、消費品短缺及地區不穩定（包括再度高漲的民族主義情緒）揭示出，中央集權、交叉補貼的蘇聯經濟模式已經破產，不得不進行改革。

What followed was the era of perestroika and glasnost, meaning restructuring and openness respectively.

隨之到來的是改革(perestroika)和開放(glasnost)的時代。

By that point, however, it was too late to save the Soviet system.

然而，那時要挽救蘇聯體制已經太晚。

Its internal imbalances had become too large.

其內部失衡過於嚴重。

In 1991, the USSR collapsed under the weight of its own failing economy.

1991年，蘇聯在經濟每況愈下的重壓下解體。

Yet, in the wake of that collapse, something else happened.

但在蘇聯解體後，又出現了新情況。

The removal of subsidies from those who had grown so hopelessly dependent on the system that they could not fend for themselves outside it led to a backlash.

對於那些已經無可救藥地依賴於蘇聯體制、沒有這個體制就無法養活自己的人，取消補貼引發了強烈抵制。

Many yearned for the return of the old system, no matter the totalitarian cost.

許多人渴望迴歸舊體制，無論極權政權的代價有多高。

Political freedom, it turned out, was in some cases just too costly.

事實證明，有時候政治自由的代價實在太大。

Imagine what the outcome would be if the digital economy experienced a similar adjustment.

想象一下，如果數字經濟經歷類似的調整，會有什麼樣的結局。