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AndrewBlum_2012G-_因特网，究竟是什么_
I've always written primarily about architecture , about buildings, and writing about architecture is based on certain assumptions. [00:13]
primarily:adv.首先;主要地,根本上; architecture:n.建筑学;建筑风格;建筑式样;架构;
An architect designs a building, and it becomes a place, or many architects design many buildings, and it becomes a city, and regardless of this complicated mix of forces of politics and culture and economics that shapes these places, at the end of the day, you can go and you can visit them. You can walk around them. [00:20]
architects:n.建筑师;设计师;创造者;(architect的复数); regardless:adj.不管的; v.不顾后果地; complicated:adj.复杂的;难懂的;v.使复杂化;(complicate的过去分词和过去式) politics:n.政治;钩心斗角;政治观点;v.(贬)从事政治活动;(politic的第三人称单数)
You can smell them. You can get a feel for them. [00:36]
You can experience their sense of place. [00:38]
But what was striking to me over the last several years was that less and less was I going out into the world, and more and more, I was sitting in front of my computer screen. [00:42]
And especially since about 2007, when I got an iPhone, [00:51]
especially:adv.尤其;特别;格外;十分;
I was not only sitting in front of my screen all day, but I was also getting up at the end of the day and looking at this little screen that I carried in my pocket. [00:55]
And what was surprising to me was how quickly my relationship to the physical world had changed. [01:02]
physical:adj.[物]物理的;身体的;物质的;符合自然法则的;n.体格检查;
In this very short period of time, you know, whether you call it the last 15 years or so of being online, or the last, you know, four or five years of being online all the time, [01:08]
our relationship to our surroundings had changed in that our attention is constantly divided. You know, we're both looking inside the screens and we're looking out in the world around us. [01:16]
surroundings:n.周围的环境;环境;(surrounding的复数) constantly:adv.不断地;时常地;
And what was even more striking to me, and what I really got hung up on, was that the world inside the screen seemed to have no physical reality of its own. [01:25]
If you went and looked for images of the Internet, this was all that you found, this famous image by Opte of the Internet as the kind of Milky Way , this infinite expanse where we don't seem to be anywhere on it. [01:35]
images:n.印象;声誉;形象;画像;雕像;(image的第三人称单数和复数) Milky Way:na.[天]银河; infinite:adj.无限的,无穷的; n.无限; expanse:n.宽阔;广阔的区域;苍天;膨胀扩张;
We can never seem to grasp it in its totality . [01:46]
grasp:n.抓住;理解;控制;v.抓住;领会; totality:n.[天]全食;全体;总数;
It's always reminded me of the Apollo image of the Earth, the blue marble picture, and it's similarly meant to suggest, [01:48]
reminded:v.提醒;使想起;(remind的过去分词和过去式) Apollo:n.阿波罗(太阳神);美男子; marble:n.大理石;大理石制品;弹珠;adj.大理石的;冷酷无情的; similarly:adv.同样地;类似于;
I think, that we can't really understand it as a whole . [01:55]
as a whole:总的来说;
We're always sort of small in the face of its expanse. [01:57]
in the face of:面对;
So if there was this world and this screen, and if there was the physical world around me, I couldn't ever get them together in the same place. [02:01]
And then this happened. [02:10]
My Internet broke one day, as it occasionally does, and the cable guy came to fix it, and he started with the dusty clump of cables behind the couch , and he followed it to the front of my building and into the basement and out to the back yard, and there was this big jumble of cables against the wall. [02:13]
occasionally:adv.偶尔;有时候;偶然; dusty:adj.落满灰尘的; clump:n.丛;笨重的脚步声;土块;v.形成一丛;以沉重的步子行走; cables:n.缆绳;钢索;电缆;电报;v.发电报;(cable的第三人称单数和复数) couch:n.睡椅,长沙发;床;卧榻;v.蹲伏,埋伏;躺着; jumble:n.混乱;杂乱的一堆东西;vi.混杂;搀杂;vt.使混乱;搞乱;
And then he saw a squirrel running along the wire, and he said, "There's your problem. [02:27]
squirrel:n.松鼠;
A squirrel is chewing on your Internet." (Laughter) [02:32]
And this seemed astounding . The Internet is a transcendent idea. It's a set of protocols that has changed everything from shopping to dating to revolutions . [02:37]
astounding:adj.令人震惊的;使大吃一惊的;v.使震惊;使大惊;(astound的现在分词) transcendent:adj.卓越的;超常的;出类拔萃的;n.卓越的人;超绝物; protocols:n.协议; v.拟定议定书; revolutions:n.革命,转数(revolution的复数形式);
It was unequivocally not something a squirrel could chew on. (Laughter) [02:47]
unequivocally:明确地;
But that in fact seemed to be the case. [02:53]
A squirrel had in fact chewed on my Internet. (Laughter) [02:55]
And then I got this image in my head of what would happen if you yanked the wire from the wall and if you started to follow it. Where would it go? [02:58]
yanked:v.猛拉;猛拽;(yank的过去分词和过去式)
Was the Internet actually a place that you could visit? [03:04]
Could I go there? Who would I meet? [03:07]
You know, was there something actually out there? [03:09]
And the answer, by all accounts, was no. [03:12]
This was the Internet, this black box with a red light on it, as represented in the sitcom "The IT Crowd." [03:15]
black box:黑箱;(装在飞机上记录飞行情况等的)密封仪器; represented:v.代表; (represent的过去式和过去分词)
Normally it lives on the top of Big Ben, because that's where you get the best reception, but they had negotiated that their colleague could borrow it for the afternoon to use in an office presentation . [03:21]
Normally:adv.正常地;通常地,一般地; negotiated:adj.商谈的;v.谈判,协商(negotiate过去式和过去分词形式); colleague:n.同事,同僚; presentation:n.展示;描述,陈述;介绍;赠送;
The elders of the Internet were willing to part with it for a short while, and she looks at it and she says, "This is the Internet? The whole Internet? Is it heavy?" [03:34]
They say, "Of course not, the Internet doesn't weigh anything." [03:43]
And I was embarrassed . I was looking for this thing that only fools seem to look for. [03:47]
embarrassed:adj.尴尬的;窘迫的;v.使...局促不安;(embarrass的过去分词和过去式)
The Internet was that amorphous blob , or it was a silly black box with a blinking red light on it. [03:52]
amorphous:adj.无定形的;无组织的;[物]非晶形的; blob:n.一滴;一抹;v.弄脏;把…做错;得零分; blinking:adv.讨厌,可恶;v.眨眼睛;闪烁;(blink的现在分词)
It wasn't a real world out there. [03:57]
But, in fact, it is. There is a real world of the Internet out there, and that's what I spent about two years visiting, these places of the Internet. I was in large data centers [03:59]
that use as much power as the cities in which they sit, and I visited places like this, 60 Hudson Street in New York, which is one of the buildings in the world, [04:08]
Hudson:n.哈得孙河;
one of a very short list of buildings, about a dozen buildings, where more networks of the Internet connect to each other than anywhere else. [04:15]
And that connection is an unequivocally physical process . [04:22]
process:v.处理;加工;列队行进;n.过程,进行;方法,adj.经过特殊加工(或处理)的;
It's about the router of one network, a Facebook or a Google or a B.T. or a Comcast or a Time Warner , whatever it is, connecting with usually a yellow fiber-optic cable up into [04:25]
router:n.[计]路由器;刳刨者; Google:谷歌;谷歌搜索引擎; Warner:n.警告者;报警器; fiber-optic:纤维光学;
the ceiling and down into the router of another network, and that's unequivocally physical, and it's surprisingly intimate . [04:32]
surprisingly:adv.令人惊讶地;出乎意料地 intimate:n.知己; v.暗示; adj.亲密的;
A building like 60 Hudson, and a dozen or so others, has 10 times more networks connecting within it than the next tier of buildings. [04:40]
tier:n.层,排;行,列;等级;vt.使层叠;vi.成递升徘列;
There's a very short list of these places. [04:47]
And 60 Hudson in particular is interesting because it's home to about a half a dozen very important networks, which are the networks which serve the undersea cables that travel underneath the ocean that connect Europe and America and connect all of us. [04:49]
in particular:尤其,特别; undersea:adj.水下的;海面下的; underneath:prep.在…的下面;在…的支配下;n.下面;底部;adj.下面的;底层的;
And it's those cables in particular that I want to focus on. [05:01]
If the Internet is a global phenomenon , if we live in a global village , it's because there are cables underneath the ocean, cables like this. [05:05]
phenomenon:n.现象;杰出的人;非凡的人(或事物); global village:n.地球村(指整个世界作为一个由电子通信系统连接的单一集体);
And in this dimension , they are incredibly small. [05:13]
dimension:n.方面;[数]维;尺寸;次元;容积vt.标出尺寸;adj.规格的; incredibly:adv.难以置信地;非常地;
You can you hold them in your hand. They're like a garden hose . [05:16]
hose:n.塑料管;(旧时的)男式紧身裤;v.用软管输水冲洗(或浇水);
But in the other dimension they are incredibly expansive , as expansive as you can imagine. [05:19]
expansive:adj.广阔的;扩张的;豪爽的;
They stretch across the ocean. They're three or five or eight thousand miles in length, and if the material science and the computational technology is incredibly complicated, the basic physical process [05:25]
stretch:v.伸展;延伸;伸出;舒展;n.伸展;弹性;舒展;一片;adj.有弹力的; computational:adj.计算的; technology:n.技术;工艺;术语;
is shockingly simple. Light goes in on one end of the ocean and comes out on the other, and it usually comes from a building called a landing station that's often [05:36]
shockingly:adv.怕人地,非常地;不正当地;
tucked away inconspicuously in a little seaside neighborhood , and there are amplifiers that sit on the ocean floor that look kind of like bluefin tuna, and every 50 miles [05:46]
tucked:v.塞进,折叠,卷起;把…藏入;收藏;(tuck的过去分词和过去式) inconspicuously:adv.难以觉察地;不显著地; neighborhood:n.附近;地区;街坊;adj.附近的; amplifiers:n.[电子]放大器,增强剂(amplifier的复数);功放; bluefin:n.(蓝鳍)金枪鱼;作生鱼片的精品鱼肉;
they amplify the signal, and since the rate of transmission is incredibly fast, the basic unit is a 10-gigabit-per-second wavelength of light, maybe a thousand times your own [05:54]
amplify:vt.放大,扩大;增强;详述;vi.详述; transmission:n.传输;传染;播送;发射;广播;传动装置; wavelength:n.[物]波长;
connection, or capable of carrying 10,000 video streams, but not only that , but you'll put not just one wavelength of light through one of the fibers , but you'll put maybe [06:04]
capable:adj.能干的,能胜任的;有才华的; only that:只是;要不是; fibers:n.纤维(fiber的复数);
50 or 60 or 70 different wavelengths or colors of light through a single fiber, and then you'll have maybe eight fibers in a cable, four going in each direction. [06:13]
wavelengths:n.[物]波长(wavelength的复数);
And they're tiny. They're the thickness of a hair. [06:21]
thickness:n.厚度;层;浓度;含混不清;
And then they connect to the continent somewhere. [06:25]
continent:n.大陆,洲,陆地;adj.自制的,克制的;
They connect in a manhole like this. Literally , this is where the 5,000-mile cable plugs in. [06:27]
manhole:n.人孔;检修孔; Literally:adv.按字面:字面上:确实地: plugs:n.[电]插头; v.插入,塞住;
This is in Halifax , a cable that stretches from Halifax to Ireland. [06:32]
Halifax:哈里法克斯(财富500强公司之一,总部所在地英国; n.哈利法克斯港或哈利法克斯市; stretches:v.拉长; n.一片; (stretch的第三人称单数和复数)
And the landscape is changing. Three years ago, when I started thinking about this, there was one cable down the Western coast of Africa, represented in this map by Steve Song as that thin black line. [06:37]
landscape:n.景观;乡村风景画;(文件的)横向打印格式;v.对…做景观美化;美化…的环境;
Now there are six cables and more coming, three down each coast. [06:48]
Because once a country gets plugged in by one cable, they realize that it's not enough. If they're going to build an industry around it, they need to know that their connection [06:52]
plugged:v.堵塞;封堵;补充;供给;推广;(plug的过去分词和过去式)
isn't tenuous but permanent , because if a cable breaks, you have to send a ship out into the water, throw a grappling hook over the side, pick it up, find the other end, and then fuse the two ends back together and then dump it over. [07:00]
tenuous:adj.纤细的;稀薄的;贫乏的; permanent:adj.永久的,永恒的;n.烫发; ship out:na.坐船到国外去;送(某人上船)到海外去; grappling:v.扭打;搏斗;努力设法解决;(grapple的现在分词) hook:n.钩;挂钩;鱼钩;钓钩;v.挂住;箍住;钓(鱼);打曲线球; fuse:n.保险丝;导火线;v.(使)融合,熔断;熔接; dump:v.倾倒;抛售;抛弃;转存;n.垃圾场;转储;转存;废物堆;
It's an intensely , intensely physical process. [07:10]
intensely:adv.强烈地;紧张地;热情地;
So this is my friend Simon Cooper, who until very recently worked for Tata Communications, the communications wing of Tata, the big Indian industrial conglomerate . [07:15]
recently:adv.最近;新近; Tata:int.再见;n.散步;机关枪; industrial:adj.工业的,产业的; n.工业股票; conglomerate:vi.凝聚成团; n.[岩]砾岩; adj.成团的; vt.使聚结;
And I've never met him. We've only communicated via this telepresence system, which always makes me think of him as the man inside the Internet. (Laughter) [07:25]
via:prep.通过;经由;n.道路;[医]管道; telepresence:n.思科网真(一种通过结合高清晰度视频,音频和交互式组件,在网络上创建一种独特的"面对面"体验的新型技术);
And he is English. The undersea cable industry is dominated by Englishmen, and they all seem to be 42. [07:35]
dominated:v.支配;控制;左右;影响;(dominate的过去式和过去分词)
(Laughter) Because they all started at the same time with the boom about 20 years ago. [07:42]
at the same time:同时;另一方面;与此同时; boom:n.繁荣;吊杆;v.激增;繁荣昌盛;轰鸣;轰响;adj.(美)猛涨起来的;
And Tata had gotten its start as a communications business when they bought two cables, one across the Atlantic and one across the Pacific, and proceeded to add pieces [07:48]
Atlantic:adj.大西洋的;巨人阿特拉斯的;n.大西洋; proceeded:v.继续做;接着做;继而做;行进;前往;(proceed的过去分词和过去式)
onto them, until they had built a belt around the world, which means they will send your bits to the East or the West. [07:57]
belt:n.皮带;腰带;传动带;传送带;v.猛击;狠打;飞奔;飞驰;
They have -- this is literally a beam of light around the world, and if a cable breaks in the Pacific, it'll send it around the other direction. And then having done that, they started to look for places to wire next. [08:02]
beam:n.光线; v.发射(电波);
They looked for the unwired places, and that's meant [08:14]
unwired:adj.无金属丝的;
North and South, primarily these cables to Africa. [08:16]
But what amazes me is Simon's incredible geographic imagination . [08:19]
incredible:adj.难以置信的,惊人的; geographic:adj.地理的;地理学的; imagination:n.想象;想象力;创造力;想象的事物;
He thinks about the world with this incredible expansiveness . [08:23]
expansiveness:n.豪爽;广阔;可膨胀性;
And I was particularly interested because I wanted to see one of these cables being built. See, you know, all the time online we experience these fleeting moments of connection, [08:26]
particularly:adv.特别地,独特地;详细地,具体地;明确地,细致地; fleeting:adj.转瞬即逝的;短暂的;闪现的;
these sort of brief adjacencies , a tweet or a Facebook post or an email, and it seemed like there was a physical corollary to that. [08:34]
adjacencies:n.邻接(adjacency的复数); corollary:n.推论;必然的结果;
It seemed like there was a moment when the continent was being plugged in, and I wanted to see that. [08:42]
And Simon was working on a new cable, [08:46]
WACS, the West Africa Cable System, that stretched from Lisbon down the west coast of Africa, to Cote d'Ivoire, to Ghana, to Nigeria, to Cameroon . [08:48]
stretched:v.拉长;撑大;有弹性(或弹力);拉紧;(stretch的过去式和过去分词) Lisbon:n.里斯本(葡萄牙首都); west coast:n.美国西海岸(尤指加利福尼亚州); Cameroon:n.喀麦隆(西非国名);
And he said there was coming soon, depending on the weather, but he'd let me know when, and so with about four days notice, he said to go to this beach south of Lisbon, and a little after 9, this guy will walk out of the water. (Laughter) [08:56]
And he'll be carrying a green nylon line, a lightweight line, called a messenger line, and that was the first link between sea and land, this link that would then be leveraged into this 9,000-mile path of light. [09:10]
nylon:n.尼龙,[纺]聚酰胺纤维;尼龙袜; lightweight:n.轻量级选手;无足轻重的人;adj.重量轻的;平均重量以下的; messenger:n.报信者,送信者;先驱; leveraged:adj.杠杆的; v.举债经营; (leverage的过去式和过去分词);
Then a bulldozer began to pull the cable in from this specialized cable landing ship, and it was floated on these buoys until it was in the right place. [09:23]
bulldozer:n.推土机;欺凌者,威吓者; specialized:adj.专业的; v.专门研究(或从事); (specialize的过去式和过去分词) buoys:n.[水运]浮标; v.支撑;
Then you can see the English engineers looking on. [09:32]
And then, once it was in the right place, he got back in the water holding a big knife, and he cut each buoy off, and the buoy popped up into the air, and the cable [09:35]
dropped to the sea floor, and he did that all the way out to the ship, and when he got there, they gave him a glass of juice and a cookie, and then he jumped back in, and he swam back to shore, and then he lit a cigarette. (Laughter) [09:43]
And then once that cable was on shore, they began to prepare to connect it to the other side, for the cable that had been brought down from the landing station. [09:59]
And first they got it with a hacksaw , and then they start sort of shaving away at this plastic interior with a -- sort of working like chefs, and then finally they're working [10:08]
hacksaw:n.钢锯;可锯金属的弓形锯;vt.用钢锯锯断; shaving:n.刮胡子,修面;削;刨花;v.修面,剃(shave的现在分词); interior:n.内部;内陆;内地;里面;adj.内部的;里面的; finally:adv.终于;最终;(用于列举)最后;彻底地;
like jewelers to get these hair-thin fibers to line up with the cable that had come down, and with this hole-punch machine they fuse it together. [10:16]
jewelers:n.珠宝商;宝石匠;钟表匠;钟表商;
And when you see these guys going at this cable with a hacksaw, you stop thinking about the Internet as a cloud. [10:24]
It starts to seem like an incredibly physical thing. [10:30]
And what surprised me as well was that as much as this is based on the most sophisticated technology, as much as this is an incredibly new thing, the physical process itself has been around for a long time, and the culture is the same. [10:33]
sophisticated:adj.复杂的;老练的;见多识广的;水平高的;
You see the local laborers . You see the English engineer giving directions in the background. And more importantly, the places are the same. These cables still connect [10:45]
laborers:n.劳动者(laborer的复数);工人;
these classic port cities, places like Lisbon, Mombasa, [10:53]
classic:n.名著;优秀的典范;adj.最优秀的;第一流的;有代表性的;典型的;
Mumbai, Singapore, New York. [10:56]
And then the process on shore takes around three or four days, and then, when it's done, they put the manhole cover back on top, and they push the sand over that, and we all forget about it. [10:59]
And it seems to me that we talk a lot about the cloud, but every time we put something on the cloud, we give up some responsibility for it. [11:14]
We are less connected to it. We let other people worry about it. [11:20]
And that doesn't seem right. [11:24]
There's a great Neal Stephenson line where he says that wired people should know something about wires. [11:25]
And we should know, I think, we should know where our Internet comes from, and we should know what it is that physically, physically connects us all. [11:32]
Thank you. (Applause) [11:42]
(Applause) [11:44]
Thanks. (Applause) [11:47]