(单词翻译:单击)
中英文本
In the long term, the implications of this will probably be as profound as the invention of statistics was in the late 17th century. The rise of "big data" provides far greater opportunities for quantitative analysis than any amount of polling or statistical modelling. But it is not just the quantity of data that is different. It represents an entirely different type of knowledge, accompanied by a new mode of expertise.
长期来看,其影响可能会像17世纪后期统计技术的发明一样深远
First, there is no fixed scale of analysis (such as the nation) nor any settled categories (such as "unemployed"). These vast new data sets can be mined in search of patterns, trends, correlations and emergent moods. It becomes a way of tracking the identities that people bestow upon themselves (such as "ImwithCorbyn" or "entrepreneur") rather than imposing classifications upon them. This is a form of aggregation suitable to a more fluid political age, in which not everything can be reliably referred back to some Enlightenment ideal of the nation state as guardian of the public interest.
首先,它没有固定的分析尺度(比如国家),也没有固定的分类(比如“失业”)
Second, the majority of us are entirely oblivious to what all this data says about us, either individually or collectively. There is no equivalent of an Office for National Statistics for commercially collected big data. We live in an age in which our feelings, identities and affiliations can be tracked and analysed with unprecedented speed and sensitivity – but there is nothing that anchors this new capacity in the public interest or public debate. There are data analysts who work for Google and Facebook, but they are not "experts" of the sort who generate statistics and who are now so widely condemned. The anonymity and secrecy of the new analysts potentially makes them far more politically powerful than any social scientist.
其次,我们大多数人完全没有注意到这些数据对我们个人或集体的影响
A company such as Facebook has the capacity to carry quantitative social science on hundreds of millions of people, at very low cost. But it has very little incentive to reveal the results. In 2014, when Facebook researchers published results of a study of "emotional contagion" that they had carried out on their users – in which they altered news feeds to see how it affected the content that users then shared in response – there was an outcry that people were being unwittingly experimented on. So, from Facebook's point of view, why go to all the hassle of publishing? Why not just do the study and keep quiet?
像脸书这样的公司有能力以极低的成本为数亿人提供定量的社会科学,但它将结果公开的动机少之又少
词语解释
1.bestow upon 赐予
The most precious gift that one person can bestow upon another is gentle encouragement.
一个人能给予别人最珍贵的礼物就是温柔的鼓励
2.impose upon 强加于
We will never impose upon others the kind of sufferings we once experienced.
我们绝不会把自己曾经遭受欺凌的苦难加之于人
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