The internet as you know it it is under attack and it's more fragile than you might think.
如您所知,互联网正受到攻击 它比你想象的更脆弱。
(Dial-up sounds)
(拨号音)
In the earlier, nerdier, screechier days of the net the possibilities seemed endless. "Information wants to be free," said the Web 1.0 pioneers. They envisioned a free internet where countless independent nodes would sustain a worldwide system of instant communication, entirely decentralized and therefore immune to central control or sabotage.
在网络的早期、更书呆子、更尖叫的时代 可能性似乎无穷无尽。 “信息希望是免费的”, Web 1.0 先驱者说道。 他们设想了一个自由的互联网, 其中有无数独立的节点 将维持全球即时通讯系统, 完全去中心化,因此 不受中央控制或破坏的影响。
Cut to today, and ehh, I think they got it about half right. So much for independent, it now seems like the internet and its infrastructure are owned by the same three American dudes. In a world of mega-platforms, attention-sapping algorithms and mass surveillance, we aren't wondering if information is free, we're wondering if we are.
切到今天,呃,我认为他们猜对了一半。 对于独立来说就这么多了, 现在看起来就像互联网及其基础设施 属于同一个美国三个家伙。 在大型平台的世界中, 分散注意力的算法和大规模监视, 我们不怀疑信息是否免费, 我们想知道我们是否是。
Now with all the doom and gloom aside, I should say I love the internet. It's where I spend most of my time. The best thing about my pandemic has been watching the rest of you get reduced to my level.
现在抛开所有的厄运和忧郁, 我应该说我喜欢互联网。 这是我度过大部分时间的地方。 关于我的流行病最好的事情 一直看着你们其他人沦落到我的水平。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
It's accelerated the digital world's invasion of the material one. That meeting that could have been an email is now an email. Malls are being shut by search bars. Fortnite tournaments are filling national stadiums and JPEGs are selling for the price of a da Vinci. Whatever happens next, we're all going to be spending more time online. So how do we protect what makes it great and change what makes it terrifying?
它加速了数字世界对物质世界的入侵。 那次会议本来可以是一封电子邮件 现在是一封电子邮件。 购物中心被搜索栏关闭。 《堡垒之夜》锦标赛在国家体育场举行 JPEG 的售价相当于达芬奇的价格。 无论接下来发生什么, 我们都会花更多的时间上网。 那么我们如何保护它的伟大之处 并改变它的可怕之处呢?
Well, first of all, I think we need an update. Internet access is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity for economic and individual development. For developing countries, increased access is a pathway out of poverty and enables smoother access to essential services like education and health care.
嗯,首先,我认为我们需要更新。 上网不再是一种奢侈。 这是经济和个人发展的必要条件。 对于发展中国家来说, 增加获取机会是摆脱贫困的途径 并能够更顺利地获得基本服务 比如教育和医疗保健。
As millions in the Global South have logged on, the way the world accesses the Internet has completely changed. In 2011, mobile internet use accounted for just 5% of total traffic. Today, it sits comfortably at 56%. Cheap phones and 4G have made the internet truly global, but it also means that most of us only access it through a handful of applications. The internet is in all of your pockets and this is a TED Talk, so it's probably on most of your wrists. Not mine. I've got a calculator.
随着南半球数百万人登录, 世界访问互联网的方式已经彻底改变。 2011年,移动互联网 使用量仅占总流量的5%。 如今,这一比例稳居 56%。 廉价手机和 4G 使 互联网真正全球化, 但这也意味着我们大多数人 仅通过少数应用程序访问它。 互联网就在你的口袋里 这是一场 TED 演讲,所以 大多数人的手腕上都可能有它。 不是我的。我有一个计算器。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Keeps me humble. That’s where we access it, but we wouldn’t be able to if it weren't for unassuming, securely guarded buildings like this one. Internet exchange points where bandwidth is actually produced. If these places cease to operate, then the internet is down and not even the sweatiest guy in your IT department can do anything about it.
让我保持谦虚。 这就是我们访问它的地方, 但我们无法 如果不是像这样不起眼、 戒备森严的建筑。 实际产生带宽的互联网交换点。 如果这些地方停止运营, 那么互联网就会瘫痪 甚至 IT 部门中最出汗的人也不是 可以做任何事情。
In 2011, the Egyptian government shut down one of the country's two main exchange points, the Ramses Exchange in Cairo. The internet was being used to organize protests as users were galvanized by sharing videos of ongoing violence in real time. For days, only a few government ministries and the stock market were connected to the internet. It was a threat to the crumbling regime. And when the government did fall, the internet got the lion's share of the credit. Protests were organized without appointed leaders and with unprecedented speed. And this is what the internet does that no other technology has ever come close to achieving: decentralized mass organization.
2011年,埃及政府 关闭该国两个主要交换点之一, 开罗的拉美西斯交易所。 互联网被用来组织抗议活动 因为用户通过实时分享 持续暴力的视频而受到激励。 连日来,只有少数政府部门和股市 已连接到互联网。 这是对摇摇欲坠的政权的威胁。 当政府倒台时, 互联网获得了最大的功劳。 抗议活动是在没有指定 领导人的情况下组织的 并且以前所未有的速度。 这就是互联网的作用 没有其他技术能够接近实现: 分散的群众组织。
Since then, though, regimes have gotten a lot better at harnessing the internet's power for themselves. In 2019, both Iran and Iraq faced potentially destabilizing protest movements, and both governments reacted by pulling the national router.
但从那时起,政权已经好多了 善于利用互联网的力量为自己谋利。 2019年,伊朗和伊拉克 面临潜在破坏稳定的抗议运动, 两国政府的反应是取消国家路由器。
These blackouts, though, are costly. Iraq's 11-day shutdown was estimated to cost their economy over 2 billion dollars. Iran's only lasted eight days, but the communication blackout was used to imprison organizers and murder protesters in the hundreds. Video of violence made its way online once access was restored, but by then, the protest movement had lost all momentum.
然而,这些停电的代价高昂。 伊拉克11天的停摆预计 将给其经济带来损失 超过20亿美元。 伊朗只持续了八天, 但通讯中断却被用来囚禁组织者 并谋杀了数百名抗议者。 一旦恢复访问,暴力 视频就会在网上传播, 但到那时,抗议运动 已经失去了所有动力。
This year, the frontline fight for the free internet has been in Myanmar. The military junta seized power in February and enacted nightly internet shutdowns to hinder protest and hide human rights abuses. Social media was banned for months, but activists have been successfully skirting restrictions using VPNs to access restricted services and to document state violence.
今年,免费互联网 的前线斗争发生在缅甸。 军政府于二月夺取政权 并颁布了每晚关闭互联网的规定 阻止抗议并掩盖侵犯人权的行为。 社交媒体被封禁数月 但活动人士已经成功地 利用 VPN 规避了限制 获得受限服务并记录国家暴力。
This is guerrilla cyberwarfare in action and it has real world casualties. Mobile phones might be empowering the resistance, but they are also facilitating data-driven mass surveillance. Use the wrong platform and the government can monitor your private messages and automatically delete them before they reach their intended recipient. To me, this is like halfway between the government censoring your mail and your thoughts.
这是正在进行的游击网络战 它有现实世界的伤亡。 手机可能会增强抵抗力, 但它们也在促进数据驱动的大规模监控。 使用错误的平台 政府可以监控你的私人消息 并自动删除它们 在它们到达预定的接收者之前。 对我来说,这就像政府审查 你的邮件的中间过程 和你的想法。
But it's not hopeless. Just before the junta took over, their arrival was documented in this viral video by a fitness influencer.
但这并非没有希望。 就在军政府接管之前, 这段病毒视频记录了他们的到来 由健身影响者。
(Upbeat music)
(欢快的音乐)
That is the junta's top brass arriving in the background to depose the democratically elected leader.
那是军政府的高层在幕后到达 废黜民主选举产生的领导人。
Now I love this video. It's simultaneously absurd and tragic, which I feel like are the twin moods of the internet at the moment. But it also shows that even when the entire national infrastructure of the internet is controlled by a repressive regime, information still wants to be free.
现在我喜欢这个视频。 这既荒谬又悲惨 我觉得这是目前互联网上的两种情绪。 但这也表明 即使整个国家的互联网基础设施 受到专制政权的控制, 信息仍然希望是免费的。
In the West, though, some of us are worried that information has gone a bit too free. In some cases, fact-free. Disinformation and misinformation on social media are testing the boundaries of free speech.
然而,在西方,我们中的一些人担心 这些信息有点过于免费了。 在某些情况下,与事实无关。 虚假信息和错误信息 在社交媒体上 正在测试言论自由的界限。
The World Health Organization has called the pandemic an infodemic, with their official updates sharing a timeline with posts telling you to cure coronavirus by drinking bleach. In the UK, a conspiracy theory linking 5G to coronavirus spread so quickly that it led to over 30 arson attacks on cell towers in March 2020 alone. Absurd. Tragic, once again. But it's easy to see there's a problem.
世界卫生组织将这种 流行病称为信息流行病, 他们的官方更新共享时间表 帖子告诉你通过喝 漂白剂来治愈冠状病毒。 在英国,将 5G 与冠状病毒 联系起来的阴谋论 蔓延速度如此之快,导致 30 多 起针对手机信号塔的纵火袭击 仅2020年3月。 荒诞。悲剧了,再一次。 但很容易看出有问题。
Combating disinformation is tricky when mega-platforms have become so enormous that they're nearly impossible to effectively moderate. When Facebook attempted to use machine learning to identify and remove dangerous posts, it often couldn't tell the difference between government guidance and posts meant to mimic it. Imperfect machines ultimately create imperfect machines.
打击虚假信息很棘手 当大型平台变得如此庞大时 他们几乎不可能有效地调节。 当 Facebook 尝试 使用机器学习时 识别并删除危险帖子, 它通常无法区分政府指导意见 以及旨在模仿它的帖子。 不完美的机器最终 会创造出不完美的机器。
So this is a very human problem and it obviously outdates the internet. There's always been demand for disinformation. It's based on what people want to believe. And where there is demand, there is opportunity to supply. Facebook themselves will tell you that most disinformation on their platform is financially incentivized. Malicious actors who own small websites crammed with ads, who will pay to advertise on Facebook first to get the ball rolling. Platforms might not be able to moderate everything we say and I don’t think they should, but they are more than capable of disrupting and regulating who pays them.
所以这是一个非常人性化的问题, 而且它显然已经过时了。 对虚假信息的需求一直存在。 它基于人们愿意相信的东西。 哪里有需求,哪里就有供应机会。 Facebook 自己会告诉你 他们平台上的大多数 虚假信息都是出于经济动机。 拥有塞满广告的小网站的恶意行为者, 谁会先付费在 Facebook 上做 广告才能让事情顺利进行。 平台可能无法审核我们所说的一切 我认为他们不应该 但他们不仅有能力 扰乱和规范支付者。
Of course, mega-platforms resist any regulation of their advertising because it's where they make most of their money. We all know they aren't selling us a service. They're selling access to our eyeballs.
当然,大型平台会抵制 对其广告的任何监管 因为这是他们赚大部分钱的地方。 我们都知道他们不是在向我们出售服务。 他们正在出卖我们的眼球。
There's now a widespread distrust of the unregulated Internet. In the UK, there has been popular public campaigns and subsequent government proposals to connect social media accounts to government-issued identification, getting rid of the anonymity and holding people accountable for all the naughty things they say online.
现在人们对不受监管 的互联网普遍不信任。 在英国,开展了受欢迎的公共活动 以及随后政府提出的连接 社交媒体帐户的建议 政府颁发的身份证明, 摆脱匿名并追究人们的责任 对于他们在网上所说的所有顽皮的话。
This is well-meaning, but it's a fucking terrible idea. Marginalized groups and political dissidents rely on anonymity to protect their free speech, and having your government ID connected to your social media account would leave you extremely vulnerable to phishing scams and identity theft.
这是一个善意的想法, 但却是一个糟糕的主意。 边缘化群体和政治异见人士 依靠匿名来保护他们的言论自由, 并将您的政府身份证件 连接到您的社交媒体帐户 将使您极易遭受网络 钓鱼诈骗和身份盗窃。
I don't share my name online or anywhere publicly, not because I'm shy, but because I'm just curious to see how long I can keep it up. Gaining notoriety but retaining anonymity is a unique privilege of the information age, so why not take advantage of it?
我不会在网上或任何 地方公开分享我的名字, 不是因为我害羞 但因为我只是好奇我能坚持多久。 名声大噪但仍保持匿名 是信息时代独有的特权, 那么为什么不利用它呢?
The internet is difficult to tame because it was built that way. This is Jon Postel, a man who once held the unofficial title of “God of the internet.” Here he is posing in front of a hand-drawn map of it in 1998. The US government had contracted Jon to run the root authority of the Domain Name System, the closest thing the internet's infrastructure has to the top of its hierarchy. Basically when you type in twitter.com or paymytaxes.gov, the root authority is what makes sure you get there. That's an oversimplification, but what you need to understand is that whoever controls the root authority controls access to every website and theoretically could delete all of them.
互联网很难驯服, 因为它就是这样构建的。 这是乔恩·波斯特尔, 曾经拥有“互联网之神” 这一非官方头衔的人。 图中是他在 1998 年 手绘的地图前摆姿势。 美国政府已与乔恩签约 运行域名系统的根权限, 互联网基础设施最接近的东西 到其层次结构的顶部。 基本上当你 输入 twitter.com 时 或 paymytaxes.gov, 根权限是确保您到达那里的保证。 这是一种过于简单化的说法 但你需要了解的是 就是谁控制了root权限 控制对每个网站的访问 理论上可以全部删除。
So when the US government asked Jon to hand control over, he said no. And this one act of resistance would lead to the creation of ICANN, an international multistakeholder group that ensures the global internet can't be controlled by a single company or government.
所以当美国政府 要求乔恩交出控制权时, 他说不。 这一抵抗行为 将导致 ICANN 的创建, 国际多利益相关方团体 确保全球互联网无法被控制 由单一公司或政府。
Naturally, some governments have resisted this. Notably, the Chinese government have been advocating for what they call internet sovereignty since 2013. This is the idea that each country has the right to control a separate version of the internet within their own borders. Of course, China's internet has worked this way for decades, but it's increasingly an attractive option to others. Iran booted up their own version in 2018, and Russia are quietly testing theirs out.
当然,一些政府对此表示抵制。 值得注意的是,中国政府一直倡导 自 2013 年以来,他们一直 在维护所谓的互联网主权。 这是每个国家都有权利的想法 在自己的边界内控制单独版本的互联网。 当然,中国的互联网 几十年来都是这样运作的, 但它对其他人来说越来越有吸引力。 伊朗在 2018 年 启动了自己的版本, 俄罗斯正在悄悄地进行测试。
And these national firewalls are used to restrict unwanted information, but their main priority is to crush organization that happens outside of a party political structure. And frankly, if it is disinformation that we're worried about, governments are the last group we should trust with regulating it.
这些国家防火墙用于限制不需要的信息, 但他们的首要任务是粉碎组织 这发生在政党政治结构之外。 坦率地说,如果我们担心的是虚假信息, 政府是我们最不应该 信任对其进行监管的群体。
In 2018, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg claimed that the company deleted over 1.3 billion fake accounts in just six months. A few hundred million of them were probably cooked up here, in the old Saint Petersburg office of the Internet Research Agency, a private company owned by a close friend of Vladimir Putin and a state-funded troll army. Their job is to spread disinformation and sow discord online with a phantom army of puppet accounts and conspiracy theories. Their job isn't to bolster the argument of one side, but to inflame debate and make all sides look equally ridiculous. But this nihilistic genre of propaganda is incredibly weak when it's confronted with the sincerity of outsiders.
2018年,Facebook首席 运营官谢丽尔·桑德伯格 声称该公司删除了 超过13亿个虚假账户 在短短六个月内。 大概有几亿是在这里煮出来的, 在互联网研究机构旧圣彼得堡办公室, 弗拉基米尔·普京的 密友拥有的一家私人公司 以及一支国家资助的巨魔军队。 他们的工作是在网上 传播虚假信息并挑拨离间 拥有一支由傀儡账户 和阴谋论组成的幽灵军队。 他们的工作不是支持一方的论点 而是煽动争论,让各方都显得同样可笑。 但这种虚无主义的宣传风格 非常虚弱 当它面对外人的真诚时。
That's why I think Alexei Navalny is the most interesting person on the internet today. If you don’t know who he is, he’s a lot of things: a dissident, lawyer, criminal and YouTuber who took on the Russian government. His video on Putin's palace got 120 million views, which inspires professional awe and jealousy in me. And aside from some high-budget drone shots, there is very little new information in this video. It's a compilation of previously available sources, sometimes decades-old information. But unlike these old sources, this video reached 25 million people in 24 hours and delivered this information in an exciting, hilarious and inclusive way.
这就是为什么我认为阿列克谢·纳瓦尔尼 是当今互联网上最有趣的人。 如果你不知道他是谁,他有很多东西: 一位持不同政见者、律师、 罪犯和 YouTube 用户, 曾挑战俄罗斯政府。 他关于普京宫殿的视频 获得了 1.2 亿观看次数, 这激发了我对职业的敬畏和嫉妒。 除了一些高预算的无人机拍摄之外, 该视频中的新信息很少。 它是以前可用资源的汇编, 有时是几十年前的信息。 但与这些旧资料不同的是, 该视频在 24 小时 内吸引了 2500 万人 并传递了此信息 以一种令人兴奋、搞笑和包容的方式。
After surviving an assassination attempt and being sentenced to a penal colony, Navalny is still leading resistance online. The Kremlin have duly blocked access to this video and have blocked access to Smart Voting websites, which Navalny has been propagating. We might be frightened of mega-platforms, but they are empowering individuals and giving outsiders an audience that dwarfs the one offered by legacy media establishments that dominated the information market during the last century.
在一次暗杀行动中 幸存并被判入流放地后, 纳瓦尔尼仍在网上领导抵抗运动。 克里姆林宫已正式阻止对该视频的访问 并阻止访问智能投票网站, 纳瓦尔尼一直在宣传这一点。 我们可能会害怕大型平台, 但他们正在赋予个人权力 并为局外人提供观众 这使传统媒体机构提供的服务相形见绌 在上个世纪主导了信息市场。
And I know it feels like we're spending our lives flicking between the same four apps, and that's because we are. Around 80% of internet traffic is captured by only a handful of companies and we're spending progressively more time with them. Thanks to lockdown and home working, internet use in the UK doubled in just one year. And all of those Netflix binges are putting a strain on the internet's infrastructure.
我知道这感觉就像我们 正在度过我们的一生 在相同的四个应用程序之间滑动, 那是因为我们就是这样。 约 80% 的互联网流量 仅被少数公司捕获 我们花在他们身上的时间也越来越多。 由于封锁和在家工作, 英国的互联网使用量 在短短一年内翻了一番。 以及所有 Netflix 的狂欢 给互联网基础设施带来了压力。
This is a hyperscale data center. There's around 600 of them worldwide and over half of them are owned by either Amazon, Microsoft, Google or Apple. The number of these computer cabinet labyrinths has doubled in the last five years to keep up with our ever-increasing demand. And this has upset internet service providers who claim that these bandwidth-hogging companies aren't paying their fair share. And maybe they aren't.
这是一个超大规模数据中心。 全球约有 600 个 其中一半以上是拥有的 由亚马逊、微软、谷歌或苹果公司提供。 这些电脑柜迷宫的数量 过去五年翻了一番 以满足我们不断增长的需求。 这让互联网服务提供商感到不安 谁声称这些占用带宽的公司 没有支付他们应得的份额。 也许他们不是。
And while I do think it is concerning that so few companies control so much of the internet, I don't think their reign is assured. Internal projections at Facebook show that teenagers are abandoning their platform in their droves, so much so that their American user base could decrease by up to 45% in two years.
虽然我确实认为这令人担忧 很少有公司控制如此多的互联网, 我不认为他们的统治是有保障的。 Facebook 的内部预测 表明青少年正在成群结队 地放弃他们的平台, 以至于他们的美国用户群 两年内最多可减少 45%。
I'm not saying that the problem will solve itself. These platforms are powerful, but only in proportion to the time and attention that we give them. It's easy to forget that the internet is still in its infancy and new competitors are gathering in every corner.
我并不是说问题会自行解决。 这些平台功能强大, 但只与我们给予他们 的时间和注意力成正比。 人们很容易忘记互联网仍处于起步阶段 新的竞争者正在各个角落聚集。
Then there are competitors like the super apps. And these apps are interesting. They're mobile-only, mostly an Asian phenomenon so far. They are applications that position themselves as a one-stop shop for all your internet-based needs. Singapore has Grab, Indonesia has GoTo, but by far the most popular is China's WeChat.
然后还有像超级应用 程序这样的竞争对手。 这些应用程序很有趣。 它们仅限移动设备, 到目前为止主要是亚洲现象。 它们是将自己定位为 一站式商店的应用程序 满足您所有基于互联网的需求。 新加坡有Grab, 印度尼西亚有GoTo, 但迄今为止最受欢迎的是中国的微信。
With over 1.3 billion active daily users, WeChat has integrated itself into the fabric of normal social life in China. It's your driver's license, your debit card and your phone. It's where you pay your landlord, book flights, hotels and doctor's appointments. It has supercharged China's journey towards a cashless society, replacing coins with QR codes, with even the homeless forced to upgrade.
拥有超过 13 亿日活跃用户, 微信已经整合了 融入中国正常的社会生活。 这是您的驾驶执照、借记卡和手机。 您可以在这里向 房东付款、预订航班、酒店 和医生的预约。 它加速了中国迈向无现金社会的进程, 用二维码代替硬币, 甚至无家可归者也被迫升级。
And it is a brilliant tool. It has brought older generations and the industrial working class online and given them easier access to essential services. But it also conveniently bundles up all of your personal data, private messages and physical whereabouts for a government with backdoor access. The surveillance enabled by these super apps is threatening to turn privacy into a relic of the 20th century. Because when there's only one platform, there's nowhere left to hide.
这是一个出色的工具。 它让老一辈人和产业工人阶级上网 并使他们更容易获得基本服务。 但它也可以方便地捆绑 您的所有个人数据, 具有后门访问权限的政府 的私人消息和实际行踪。 这些超级应用程序启用的监视 正威胁着将隐私 变成 20 世纪的遗迹。 因为当只有一个平台时,就无处可藏。
The internet was built to be plural, to exist nowhere in particular and to be accessible everywhere. Internet culture is global culture, arguably the first ever instance of it, and we must ensure that everyone has equal access. No one in this room knows what the internet will look like in ten, 50 or 100 years, but we can be damn sure it'll be here. It's the greatest invention of all of our lifetimes, and we must ensure that it reflects the best of us. It must be open, enquiring, cooperative and suspicious of authority.
互联网的建立是为了复数, 存在于任何特别的地方 并可随处访问。 网络文化是全球文化, 可以说是有史以来的第一个例子 我们必须确保每个人都有平等的机会。 这个房间里没有人 知道互联网会是什么样子 十年、五十年或一百年后, 但我们可以肯定它会在这里。 这是我们一生中最伟大的发明 我们必须确保它反映了我们最好的一面。 它必须是开放的、探究的、合作的 并对权威产生怀疑。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)