【挑战TIME】12期：WhyFacebookIstheFuture

【 Analysis 】

Marked with green color ----- New Words(analysis in section 2)

Underlined with green line ----- Good Sentences(analysis in section 3)

Marked with red color -- Good usage of words or phrases (analysis in section 2 or 3)

On Aug. 14 a computer hacker named Virgil Griffith unleash ed a clever little program onto the Internet that he dubbed WikiScanner. It's a simple application that troll s through the records of Wikipedia, the publicly editable Web-based encyclopedia , and checks on who is making changes to which entries. Sometimes it's people who shouldn't be. For example, WikiScanner turned up evidence that somebody from Wal-Mart had punch ed up Wal-Mart's Wikipedia entry. Bad retail giant.

窗体底端

WikiScanner is a jolly little game of Internet gotcha , but it's really about something more: a growing popular irritation with the Internet in general. The Net has anarchy in its DNA; it's always been about anonymity , playing with your own identity and messing with other people's heads. The idea, such as it was , seems to have been that the Internet would free us of the burden of our public identities so we could be our true, authentic selves online. Except it turns out--who could've seen this coming?--that our true, authentic selves aren't that fantastic. The great experiment proved that some of us are wonderful and interesting but that a lot of us are hackers and pranksters and hucksters . Which is one way of explaining the extraordinary appeal of Facebook.

Facebook is, in Silicon Vall--ese, a "social network": a website for keeping track of your friends and sending them messages and sharing photos and doing all those other things that a good little Web 2.0 company is supposed to help you do. It was started by Harvard students in 2004 as a tool for meeting-- or at least discreetly ogling --other Harvard students, and it still has a reputation as a hangout for teenagers and the teenaged-at-heart. Which is ironic because Facebook is really about making the Web grow up.

Whereas Google is a brilliant technological hack , Facebook is primarily a feat of social engineering. (It wouldn't be a bad idea for Google to acquire Facebook, the way it snaffle d YouTube, but it's almost certainly too late in the day for that. Yahoo! offered a billion for Facebook last year and was rebuff ed.) Facebook's appeal is both obvious and rather subtle. It's a website, but in a sense, it's another version of the Internet itself: a Net within the Net, one that's everything the larger Net is not. Facebook is cleanly designed and has a classy , upmarket feel to it--a whiff of the Ivy League still clings. People tend to use their real names on Facebook. They also declare their sex, age, whereabouts, romantic status and institutional affiliation s. Identity is not a performance or a toy on Facebook; it is a fixed and orderly fact. Nobody does anything secretly: a news feed constantly updates your friends on your activities. On Facebook, everybody knows you're a dog.

Maybe that's why Facebook's fastest-growing demographic consists of people 35 or older: they're refugee s from the uncouth wider Web. Every community must negotiate the imperative s of individual freedom and collective social order, and Facebook constitutes a critical rebalancing of the Internet's founding vision of unfettered electronic liberty. Of course, it is possible to misbehave on Facebook--it's just self-defeating . Unlike the Internet, Facebook is structured around an opt-in philosophy; people have to consent to have contact with or even see others on the network. If you're annoying folks, you'll essentially cease to exist, as those you annoy drop you off the grid .

Facebook has taken steps this year to expand its functionality by allowing outside developers to create applications that integrate with its pages, which brings with it expanded opportunities for abuse. ( No doubt Griffith is hard at work on FacebookScanner.) But it has also hung on doggedly to its core insight: that the most important function of a social network is connecting people and that its second most important function is keeping them apart.

【 Section one 】 Vocabulary

1.       unleash: [VN] ~ sth (on / upon sb/sth) to suddenly let a strong force, emotion, etc. be felt or have an effect: The government's proposals unleashed a storm of protest in the press

2.       troll: troll trolls trolling trolled
If you troll through papers or files, you look through them in a fairly casual way. (mainly BRIT, INFORMAL) :Trolling through the files revealed a photograph of me drinking coffee in the office.

3.       encyclopedia: [ en ˌsaikləuˈpi:diə ] a book or set of books giving information about all areas of knowledge or about different areas of one particular subject, usually arranged in alphabetical order; a similar collection of information on a CD-ROM: a children's encyclopedia ◆ an encyclopedia of music

4.       punch: verb [VN] ~ sb/sth (in / on sth) to hit sb/sth hard with your FIST (= closed hand): He was kicked and punched as he lay on the ground. ◆ She punched him on the nose. ◆ He was punching the air in triumph.

5.       jolly: adjective, adverb, verb
adjective (jollier, jolliest)
happy and cheerful: a jolly crowd / face / mood
(old-fashioned) enjoyable: a jolly evening / party / time
jollity noun [U] (old-fashioned): scenes of high-spirits and jollity
adverb (old-fashioned, BrE, informal) very: That's a jolly good idea. ◆ It was jolly lucky it didn't rain.
Idioms: jolly good! (old-fashioned, BrE, spoken) used to show that you approve of sth that sb has just said: 'I'll be there by ten o'clock.' 'Jolly good!'
jolly well (old-fashioned, BrE) used to emphasize a statement when you are annoyed about sth: If you don't come now, you can jolly well walk home!
verb (jollies, jollying, jollied, jollied) (BrE)
Phrasal Verbs: jolly sb along to encourage sb in a cheerful way
jolly sb into sth / into doing sth to persuade or encourage sb to do sth by making them feel happy about it
jolly sb/sth up to make sb/sth more cheerful: You need jollying up!

6.       gotcha   exclamation
(non-standard) the written form of the way some people pronounce 'I've got you', which is not considered to be correct Help Note: You should not write this form unless you are copying somebody's speech

7.       anonymity: noun n. 无名，匿名

8.         hacker: a person who spends a lot of time using computers for a hobby, especially to look at data without permission

9.         prankster: A prankster is someone who plays tricks and practical jokes on people. (OLD-FASHIONED)

10.  huckster: ˈhʌkstə ] a person who uses aggressive or annoying methods to sell sth

11.  discreetly---- discreet  adjective
careful in what you say or do, in order to keep sth secret or to avoid causing embarrassment or difficulty for sb

12.  ogle:    to look hard at sb in an offensive way, usually showing sexual interest

13.  hangout If a place is a hangout for a particular group of people, they spend a lot of time there because they can relax and meet other people there. (INFORMAL)

14.  Whereas conjunction
used to compare or contrast two facts: Some of the studies show positive results, whereas others do not. ◆ We thought she was arrogant, whereas in fact she was just very shy.

15.  snaffle [VN] (BrE, informal) to take sth quickly for yourself, especially before anyone else has had the time or opportunity

16.  rebuff (formal) an unkind refusal of a friendly offer, request or suggestion

17.  classy adjective
(classier, classiest) (informal) of high quality; expensive and/or fashionable: a classy player ◆ a classy hotel / restaurant

18.  upmarket adjective
[usually before noun] designed for or used by people who belong to a high social class: an upmarket brand / restaurant / store

19.  whiff noun [usually sing.]
~ (of sth) a smell, especially one that you only smell for a short time: a whiff of cigar smoke ◆ He caught a whiff of perfume as he leaned towards her.
~ (of sth) a slight sign or feeling of sth: a whiff of danger / fear / success

20.  affiliation noun [U, C] (formal)
a person's connection with a political party, religion, etc: He had been detained without trial because of his political affiliation.
one group or organization's official connection with another: Trade unions have a long history of affiliation to the Labour Party.

21.  . demographic  
In business, a demographic is a group of people in a society, especially people in a particular age group. etc: The station has won more listeners in the 25-39 demographic.

22.  uncouth adjective
(of a person or their behaviour) rude or socially unacceptabl

23.  imperative noun (formal) a thing that is very important and needs immediate attention or action: the economic imperative of quality education for all

24.  misbehave verb   ~ (yourself) to behave badly

25.  doggedly ad. 顽强地，固执地

【 Section two 】 Good phrases and sentences

1.      It's a simple application that trolls through the records of Wikipedia, the publicly editable Web-based encyclopedia , and checks on who is making changes to which entries.

2.      The idea, such as it was , seems to have been that the Internet would free us of the burden of our public identities so we could be our true, authentic selves online.

3.      On Facebook, everybody knows you're a dog.(On NET, nobody know you’re a dog)

4.      the most important function of a social network is connecting people and that its second most important function is keeping them apart.

练习：

1. Please translate the sentence into Chinese.
The Net has anarchy in its DNA; it's always been about anonymity, playing with your own identity and messing with other people's heads.

2.Try to understand and Explain this sentence:” Sometimes it's people who shouldn't be ” in paragraphI. ( shouldn’t be what? and why?)

3. Make a sentence using the one of the good usages(marked with red color) mentioned in Analysis section?

4. Have you ever loginned in websites like Facebook(such as 校内网 )? What do you think of them? Do you think they have bad effect on privacy?

参考答案：

1.网络”天生”的混乱;它通常具有匿名性,从中无法区别你和他人的身份.
2. ”I will try to explain in English:

WikiScanner can track who is making changes to Wikipedia entries, and sometimes we find out that those people who are editing/changing the entries should not be doing that. Because there might be a conflict of interest. The example is that "Walmart had been changing the Wal-mart's wikipedia entries", and as a result making the entries objective, and even biased.

If we try again...

On Aug. 14 a computer hacker named Virgil Griffith unleashed a clever little program onto the Internet that he dubbed WikiScanner. It's a simple application that trolls through the records of Wikipedia, the publicly editable Web-based encyclopedia, and checks on who is making changes to which entries. Sometimes it's {those} people who shouldn't be {making changes to the entries}. For example, WikiScanner turned up evidence that somebody from Wal-Mart had punched up Wal-Mart's Wikipedia entry. Bad retail giant.

Hope this clears things up a bit.”