社交网络遗迹 编辑本段回目录
看得懂本文的，说明你已经老了。沉舟侧畔千帆过，病树前头万木春。互联网的发展总是日新月异，作者用充满怀旧和忧伤的笔触从个人的角度缅怀了社交网络的前身——电子公告牌的历史，同时也提出了一个问题，如今风光的FACEBOOK是否也一如BBS及Myspace一般，终究只剩下一片废墟？
大约在20年前，我第一次发现了电话线和计算机连到一起能干些什么事情。它们创造了一个虚拟世界。在我们需要为那块古董Zenith机械表艰难地在手册里爬格子的时侯，我已经发现了一个能够接通一本地电子公告牌系统的电话号码，并找到了拨入的方法。我发现了新大陆，一个比在C:/提示符下敲敲命令要有趣很多很多的新大陆。
Bulletin board systems were one forerunner to today's social networks. You could post messages and photos, play games, and download all kinds of apps. On the small ones I knew, one or two of us could dial in at a time, and most were from the same area code and prefix as you were because otherwise you had to pay long distance charges. (This now sounds as strange as a description of handcranking a car to start it.) So, the BBS was actually a hyperlocal social network.
电子公告牌系统（BBS）是今日的社交网络的先驱者之一。在上面你可以发布消息和照片，玩玩游戏，并可以下载各种应用程序。在我所知道的少数几个BBS上面，我们当中的一两个人总能够在某个时间拨入，而且大多都是同一区号和前缀的，因为不那样的话你就得支付长途话费（这个现在听起来就像说用手摇来启动一辆汽车那样的奇怪）。因此，BBS实际上是一个超本地化的社交网络。
I messed around with Los Angeles BBSs, but I had other things to attend to like catching lizards and playing street hockey with the neighborhood homies. But then in '92, my family moved to rural Washington state. Suddenly I was stranded way out at the end of a gravel road in a drizzly little city. I had friends, but they were miles away, so at home, it was just me and Wired Magazine and our new 14.4 modem.
我终日混迹在洛杉矶的BBS上面，但是我还有其他的事情要办，像抓蜥蜴，跟邻里玩街头曲棍球等等。不过后来到了1992年，我家搬到了充满乡村风味的华盛顿州。突然之间，在一个毛毛细雨下个不停的小城市里，我发现自己迷失在了碎石路的尽头。我有自己的朋友，但他们都在数英里之遥，所以在家的时候，只有连线杂志和那台崭新的14.4K调制解调器陪伴我身。
I began to religiously dial in to Keith Buckbee's Country Computing, where I posted messages, played Legend of the Red Dragon, and generally whiled away valuable time I could have spent reading Wittgenstein or something.
我开始虔诚地拨入基思·巴克比（KeithBuckbee）的国家计算（CountryComputing），在那里我发帖子，玩《红龙传奇（Legendof the Red Dragon）》，通常还会竭尽自己之所能，把大好光阴浪费在阅读维特根斯坦的书或别的什么东西上。
The network was local, but I rarely tried to meet up with the denizens of Country Computing. Once, my mom drove me in our Mercury Sable station wagon to a barbecue for the users of the BBS. Everyone was shocked that out in the physical world, I was 11 and had nothing in common with any of them. Online, we were friends.
这个网络是本地的，但我很少想过要跟国家计算的居民打个照面。有一次，我妈妈开着我们那辆水星黑貂（MercurySable）旅行车把我送到了该BBS用户的一次野餐会上。大家都对外面真实世界的这个我感到惊讶无比，11岁的我跟他们没有一点的共同之处。而在线上，我们是朋友。
Another time, my dad drove me out to Keith Buckbee's house outside of La Center, Washington. He let me look at the banks of modems. I don't remember much of what Keith looked like, but I remember his house had a big antenna and a whole bank of modems. I was mesmerized by all those blinking lights. My parents were aware that I was out tromping around the wilds of cyberspace, but I liked to talk about growing up to run a technology company in those days, so they must have thought it was productive. I was learning! And even though I was far from Seattle, the whiff of Microsoft money had floated all the way down the I-5 corridor to us. (My big idea was to create a secure link between doctors and pharmacies, so you didn't have to wait for prescriptions.)
另一次，我老爸驱车送我到基思·巴克比在华盛顿LaCenter外面的家。他让我参观了modem池。基思长怎么样我已经记得不太清楚了，但我记得他家有一根硕大的天线，还有满满一屋子的modem。那些闪烁不停的信号灯令我着魔。我的父母意识到我已经被狂野的网络空间彻底征服，但是那些日子里我喜欢跟他们讨论长大后开一家技术公司的事情，因此想必他们已经被这种建设性说服。我这是在学习！甚至即便我离西雅图（译注：微软总部所在地）还很远，大家也已经嗅到了沿着I-5公路一路飘来的微软铜臭味。（我的一个伟大创意是在医生和药房之间创建一条安全链接，这样你就不用等开处方了）。
A year or two after the star-crossed BBQ, the local ISP, Pacifier Online, came along and my early-adopter dad purchased access to the Real Internet. The same hisses-and-pops that once connected me to a computer in La Center, Washington suddenly connected me to the world. I forgot all about Country Computing.
那次倒霉的BBQ（野餐会）一两年之后，当地的ISPPacifier Online出现了，我那时髦的老爸购买了接入，我们连上了真正的互联网。还是那台曾经把我和LaCenter连接到一起的发出哔哔啵啵声音的家伙，突然之间就把我和世界连接到了一起。国家计算的一切都被我抛到脑后了。
I wasn't there to see its numbers of dials-ins dwindle, its board messages go unreplied to, and its community wither away. Keith, the old ham radio operator, must have sat in his basement, trying to decide when he'd pull the plug. Was one single user a day enough to keep the BBS alive? Two? Ten? When did he take the dog out back and put it out of its misery? I'm reminded of Clive Thompson piece from a few years ago detailing the end of massively multiplayer online game, Asheron's Call 2. "At one point, a non-player character assigned me a quest of killing all the burrowing beasts in a nearby canyon, to save her town," Thompson wrote. "I'm like, save the town? Lady, the whole damn world is about to end!"
我没有在现场，看不到拨号减少的数字，看不到公告牌上未回复的消息，也看不到群组的消失。但是，基思，这位老迈的业余无线电爱好者，一定正坐在他的地下室里，纠结于何时应该把线缆拔掉。一天一个用户是否足以令BBS存活？还是2个？10个？他什么时候会把那条狗放逐出去，然后结束其痛苦呢？我回想起克莱夫·汤普森（CliveThompson）几年前的一篇文章，里面详述了大型多角色在线游戏《阿瑟龙的召唤2》的灭亡。“一度有一个非玩家角色给我分配了一项任务，要我去杀掉附近一个峡谷的所有穴居动物，为了拯救她的城镇”，汤普森写道：“我好像是这样回答的，拯救小镇？女士，他妈的这整个世界都快要完蛋了！”
While people from AC2 saved screenshots and probably posted them to Flickr along with tributes and memorials, the ruins from my first virtual town have been washed away, lost like all the other electronic communities from the pre-Internet era.
随着《阿瑟龙的召唤2》的人把截屏保留起来，很可能还把它们跟供品和纪录一并发布到Flickr上面，我的第一个虚拟城镇的废墟也随之灰飞烟灭，就像所有其他前互联网时代的电子社区一样消失得无影无踪。
Unindexed, they must wander the phone lines like ghosts, knocking packets astray, crashing your browser just when your post was finished, shutting down Tumblr. They are caught between the old, tangible world of books and things, where legacy systems kept on keeping records in that Dewey-Decimal, county-records way and the new Internet indexed world where anything that is typed into a box can be found. They flowered for a brief moment in the space between in real life and on the Internet, offering hope they'd be united. Now, only this tiny community of people know they existed. They are kept alive by the weak force of casual remembrance, flickering into and out of existence like Marty's parents in the Polaroid from Back to the Future.
无序的它们一定像鬼魂一样地在电话线上游荡，撞击着数据包迷途不知返，你的帖子刚一完成浏览器就会崩溃，Tumblr也被关闭。只有在书刊和物品组成的古老的有形的世界里才能捕捉到它们的踪迹，在那里，遗留系统还在用杜威十进制代码以县志的方式保留着记录，而在新的有序的互联网世界里，一切输入到文本框的东西都能被找到。它们像鲜花一样点缀着真实生活和互联网之间的那块空间里曾经的短暂一刻，给它们以重新联合起来的希望。现在，只有这个微不足道的群组里面的人才知道它们的存在。只有微弱的偶尔回忆才能让它们保持鲜活，就像是《回到未来（Backto the Future）》里照片中的马蒂（Marty）父母，在存在和不存在之间飘乎不定、若隐若现。
Only a single webpage will testify that the Country Computing was real. Appropriately enough, all the "BBSes through history" page gives you is a pay-by-the-letter obituary of each board, an electronic headstone in a foggy graveyard that always extends to just beyond the short distance the eye can see.
只有 一个网页能够证明CountryComputing不是假的。恰如其分地说，“历史上的BBS”这个页面所能够给你的，只有每一个公告牌的的讣告，按字数付费的那种，以及在一个雾蒙蒙的墓地里的一块电子墓碑，它总是不断延伸，正好超出了肉眼所能够看到的范围。
Rest in Peace, Country Computing. Rest in Peace.
安息吧，CountryComputing。安息吧。
Country Computing
Country Computing
360-263-1117
360-263-1117
Keith Buckbee
基思·巴克比
1990-1996
1990-1996
In recent years, Jason Scott (@textfiles) has been documenting the history of the BBS. He's got a new project, too, called ArchiveTeam, which seeks to archive all kinds of digital artifacts (mostly websites) before they pass away into obscurity. Digital seems like it's forever because it's infinitely reproducible, but someone has to think to make that canonical copy or it's gone-gone.
最近几年，詹森·斯科特（JasonScott，@textfiles）一直在记录BBS的历史。他还有一个新项目，叫做ArchiveTeam，想在各种数字产品（大部分都是网站）变成过眼云烟之前将其档案留存。因此无限可再生性，数字化的东西似乎是永恒的，但必须有人想到要做出一个标准的复制品，否则的话它只有烟消云散，一去不复返。
Looking at the desolation that is Friendster or MySpace, I wonder how it's possible that digital objects can end up looking like ruins. But they do. Perhaps more interesting questions than "Will Facebook fade out like MySpace?" are "What would the ruins of Facebook look like? What would we put on its tombstone?"
目睹着Friendster或者MySpace的荒芜，我不禁在猜测，数字的东西怎么可能以看起来像一片废墟般的形式结束。但它们就是如此。也许比“Facebook会不会像Myspace一样消失？”更有趣的问题是“Facebook的遗迹会是什么样？我们又会在它的墓碑上写什么呢？”
Image: Textfiles.org
图片：Textfiles.org
This essay was adapted from a post I originally wrote for my personal blog.
本文改编自我原来在自己博客上写的一篇文章
ALEXIS MADRIGAL
亚历克西斯·麦吉格尔（ALEXIS MADRIGAL）
