等待时：阅读的消亡（来自《全球故事》）

这个BBC播客由英国境外的广告支持。

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside The UK.

如果新闻报道是历史的初稿，那么当这份初稿有瑕疵时会发生什么？

If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed?

1999年，四座俄罗斯公寓大楼遭到轰炸，数百人丧生。

In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed.

但即使到现在，我们仍不确定究竟是谁干的。

But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it.

这起谜案引发了令人毛骨悚然的猜测。

It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories.

我是海伦娜·梅里曼，在BBC的新系列节目中，我将采访最初报道这一事件的记者们。

I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story.

他们第一次报道时遗漏了什么？

What did they miss the first time?

历史档案馆、普京与公寓炸弹案。

The History Bureau, Putin and the Apartment Bombs.

请在 bbc.com 或您收听播客的任何平台收听。

Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

你好，In Out Time 的听众们。

Hello, In Out Time listeners.

我是来自 BBC 新推出的每日播客《Global Story》的特里斯坦。

I'm Tristan from the Global Story, a new daily podcast from the BBC.

《In Our Time》由米莎·格伦尼主持的最新一季将于下周上线。

The latest season of In Our Time with Misha Glennie will be available from next week.

但在此期间，我们为你准备了一集我们觉得你会喜欢的节目。

But in the meantime, here's an episode of our show that we think you'll enjoy.

我们采访了作家詹姆斯·马里奥特，探讨他所说的“阅读的消亡”。

We interviewed the writer James Marriott on what he's calling the death of reading.

詹姆斯认为，我们正进入一个后识字时代，这可能对教育、文化和民主本身产生巨大影响。

James believes that we're now entering a post literate age, and that could have huge consequences for education, culture, and democracy itself.

这是一场引人入胜的对话，希望你们会喜欢。

It's a fascinating discussion that we hope you'll enjoy.

如果你喜欢并想看更多，你可以在每天工作日，通过你常用的BBC播客平台收听《全球故事》的节目。

If you do and want more, you can listen to episodes of The Global Story every weekday wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

再见。

Cheerio.

你上一次打开一本书并能全神贯注地阅读是什么时候？

When was the last time you opened a book and you were able to really concentrate on it?

连续五到十分钟不受任何打扰。

No interruptions for more than five or ten minutes.

在段落之间不要刷手机。

No scrolling on your phone between paragraphs.

对我们许多人来说，这种深度沉浸式的阅读正在逐渐消失。

For many of us, that kind of deep, immersive reading is being lost.

作家尼尔·波兹曼有一句名言：乔治·奥威尔担心的是有人会禁书。

There's this quote from the writer Neil Postman, and he says, what George Orwell feared were those who would ban books.

而奥尔德斯·赫胥黎担心的是，根本没有人想读书，也就没人需要禁书了。

What Aldous Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book because there would be no one who wanted to read one.

我们第一次看到这句话，是在我们今天的嘉宾詹姆斯·马洛里撰写的一篇文章中。

We first came across this quote in a piece written by our guest today, James Marriott.

他担心奥尔德斯·赫胥黎的观点可能是对的，并在Substack上发表了一篇广为传播的文章，探讨了后阅读社会的兴起——也就是如果人们彻底不再读书，会发生什么。

He's worried that Aldous Huxley might be right, and he's written an essay on Substack that's gone viral about the dawn of a post literate society, which basically means what happens if people stop reading books altogether.

这篇文章如此引人入胜，以至于我们决定打破常规格式，深入探讨它。

This essay was so gripping that we wanted to break away from our usual format to explore it.

来自BBC，我是华盛顿特区的阿斯玛·哈利德。

From the BBC, I'm Asma Khalid in Washington DC.

我是伦敦的特里斯坦·雷德曼。

And I'm Tristan Redman in London.

今天在《全球故事》节目中，我们探讨为什么阅读的消亡不仅仅是一种文化怪象，更可能是一场比我们想象中更深远的世界性变革。

And today on the global story, why the death of reading isn't just a cultural quirk, but a shift that might reshape our world more than we think.

我是詹姆斯·马洛里。

I'm James Marriott.

我是《泰晤士报》的专栏评论员，主要关注文化、社会与思想议题。

I am an opinion columnist at the times, mainly covering culture, society, ideas.

詹姆斯，你提到《泰晤士报》，但为了明确一下，你指的是伦敦的《泰晤士报》。

And, James, you said the times, but just to be abundantly clear, you were talking about the times of London.

是的。

Yes.

更好的时代。

The better times.

不是《纽约时报》。

Not the New York Times.

只是确认一下。

Just making sure.

美好的时代。

The good times.

旧时代。

The old times.

几乎是最初的那些时代。

The original times, almost, you might say.

是的

Yeah.

原始的比老旧的更好。

Original better than old.

说得通。

Fair enough.

我的意思是，我不确定你写的所有东西都一定很肤浅，因为我们今天在这里讨论的是你写的一篇明显不肤浅的论文，主题是阅读的终结，以及我们是否实际上生活在一个后识字社会。

So, I mean, I'm not sure that everything you write is necessarily very fluffy, because we are here today to talk about an essay that you've written that is decidedly unfluffy, which is about the end of reading and whether or not we live in in in effect a post literate society.

你能跟我们讲讲，你是何时意识到人们可能已经停止阅读的吗？

Could you tell us a little bit about your moment of realization that we might be in a place where people have stopped reading?

好问题。

Good question.

可能并没有一个顿悟的时刻。

There probably wasn't a moment of realization.

我一直以来都热爱阅读。

I've always loved reading.

从我小时候起，阅读就是我最主要做的事情。

Since I was a kid, it's been the main thing that I've done.

我一直都是个书虫。

I've always been a bookworm.

我一直觉得，这种爱好在某种程度上并不寻常。

And I think I've always been aware that that's been somewhat unusual.

但随着年龄增长，我越来越意识到，阅读其实并不流行。

But the older I've got, the more I've realized that reading is really not a popular thing.

我觉得自从我搬到伦敦，开始乘坐地铁和公交车以来，即使在这短短十年间，书籍就已经从公交车和地铁车厢里消失了。

I think since I moved to London and since I've started going on the tube and going on the bus, even in that time, I think, which has only been about ten years, books have disappeared from buses and tube carriages

是的。

Mhmm.

取而代之的是手机。

And been replaced by phones.

詹姆斯，如果你不介意的话，我想问一下你多大了？

James, how old are you if you don't mind me asking?

我33岁。

I'm 33.

好的。

Okay.

因为你还

Because you're

没那么老。

not that old.

所以

So

你知道的。

You know?

相对而言。

Relatively speaking.

我感觉自己比实际年龄老，而且看起来也比实际年龄老。

I'm older than I feel, and I think also older than I look.

我一直以来都长得特别年轻。

I've always been quite baby faced.

所以，是的。

So but, yeah.

所以我只是隐约注意到这一点，而且我知道，当我这么说时，听起来就像报纸专栏作家常会说的话，老掉牙极了。

So it's something that I sort of noticed ambiently, and I'm aware that when I say it, it sounds like exactly the kind of fuddy duddy thing that newspaper columnists come along and say.

但我确实觉得，在

But I do think that in the

最近的？你能为我们美国的听众解释一下‘fuddy duddy’是什么意思吗？

last Could you explain what fuddy duddy means for our American

‘fuddy duddy’对于美国的听众来说意味着什么？

Fuddy duddy for American

对于那些将因此丰富人生的美国听众来说，这个词是什么意思？

listeners who are going to enrich their lives?

它是不是有点儿过时的意思？

What does it mean sort of old fashioned?

好的。

Okay.

所以告诉我

So tell

那你为什么不是个老古董呢？

us why you're not being a fuddy duddy then.

我的观点是，你们知道，听众们可能不同意，就是那种‘没人再读书了’的说法，这种观点自上世纪九十年代以来就在我们的文化中流传，人们开始谈论这个。

Well, my case, and you you know, listeners listeners may disagree, is that this idea that nobody's reading anymore, which has been floating around in in our culture since probably the nineteen nineties, people began to talk about this.

嗯。

Mhmm.

还有一种观点认为，这是一种道德恐慌。

And there's been a school of thought that says, this is a moral panic.

你过度担心了。

You're over worrying.

这根本不是个问题。

This isn't a thing.

在过去的几年里，我们越来越有说服力的证据表明，阅读在我们的社会中急剧下滑，尤其是在二十一世纪。

In the last few years, we've had increasingly convincing evidence that reading has really fallen off a cliff in our society, especially in the twenty first century.

以前也有这种情况，但我认为自2007年iPhone发布、智能手机在2010年代初广泛普及以来，社会上的阅读量已大幅下降。

Also before, but I think certainly since the invention of the smartphone in 2007 when the iPhone was launched and since smartphones became widespread in the early twenty tens, reading has dramatically declined in society.

今年年初，美国有一项研究发现，40%的美国成年人已经停止了休闲阅读。

There was a study I think early this year in America that found 40 of American adults had stopped reading for pleasure.

英国也有一项类似的研究发现，大约三分之一的英国成年人表示，他们曾经享受阅读，但现在不再这样做了。

There was a similar study in The UK that found, I think, about a third of British adults said they once read for pleasure and no longer did.

是的。

Mhmm.

是的。

Mhmm.

这在人们如何度过闲暇时间的历史上，是一件非常重大的变化。

And this is a really dramatic thing in the history of how people spend their free time.

要知道，从来不是每个人都会阅读，但书籍和阅读一直是文化中相当核心的支柱。

Know, it's never been the case that everybody's read, but books and reading have always been a pretty central pillar of our culture.

詹姆斯，你最近写了一篇题为《后识字社会的黎明》的文章。

Well, James, you recently wrote this essay called the dawn of the post literate society.

你能为我们解释一下，你说的‘后识字’到底是什么意思吗？

Can you just describe to us what you actually mean when you say post literate?

你指的是什么？

What are you referring to?

这个观点是，在过去三百年里，我们文化中的主要交流方式，以及我们作为社会成员行事的手段，一直是印刷文字。

The argument is that for the last three hundred years, the central mode of communication in our culture and the means through which we've conducted ourselves as a society has been print.

我们通过杂志、报纸和书籍来讨论政治、历史以及我们是谁。

We've had these conversations about politics and about history and about who we are through magazines, through newspapers, and through books.

而如今，这种塑造了我们社会、塑造了我们自我认知、塑造了我们彼此交流复杂思想方式、塑造了我们的政治辩论和政治体制的识字世界，正在被一个以口头和视觉为主的世界所取代，这对我们的社会而言是一场巨大的变革。

And what's happening is that that literate world that structured our society, that structured the way that we thought about ourselves, that structured the way we communicated complex ideas to each other, that structured our political debates, that structured our politics is being replaced by a world that is oral and visual, and that is a huge transformation for our society.

我认为这将改变我们童年时期和成长过程中所熟知的整个二十世纪世界。

And I think will change, I think, almost everything about the world of the twentieth century that we knew from our from our childhoods and from growing up.

不过我想说，我们此刻正在一个音视频平台上进行这场对话。

I do wanna say we're having this conversation in an audio visual platform, though.

我知道。

I know.

嗯，你问我，我们应该

Well, I accused you asked me, we should

我们本该通过邮件进行这次对话的。

we should be doing this over email.

而且，詹姆斯，我真的是音频力量的坚定支持者。

And I mean, look, James, I am I am really, really a strong proponent in the power of audio.

所以我很想听你说，但也要说，口头叙事、广播和音频已经存在多年了。

So I do wanna hear you out, but also say that, like, oral storytelling and and radio and audio has been around for years.

是的。

Yes.

我同意，这是一个很好的观点。

And I and I agree, and it it's a good point.

我的观点并不是说每个播客都很糟糕。

My case is not that every podcast is terrible.

好的。

Okay.

我的观点甚至不是说每个TikTok视频都很糟糕，我们根本不该参与这些内容。

My case is not even that every TikTok video is is terrible, and we shouldn't be engaging with these with these things at all.

嗯哼。

Mhmm.

我想我的论点更多是关于某些传播媒介所固有的特定偏见和智力偏见。

I I guess the argument is more about the particular biases and the particular intellectual biases that inherent in certain media of communication.

关于这个问题，有一本极具预见性的书，叫《娱乐至死》，由尼尔·波兹曼撰写，于上世纪八十年代末出版，当时文化正日益被电视主导。

There's a really prophetic book about this whole issue, Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman that came out at the end of the nineteen eighties at a time when culture is increasingly dominated by television.

他提出了一个很好的类比，我认为这对理解这一切的运作方式以及我所提出的论点很有帮助。

And he makes a great analogy, which I think is useful for understanding how all this works and the argument that I'm making.

他说，如果一个社会只能通过烟信号交流，而没有其他沟通方式，这可能会限制他们能够产生的思想类型。

He says that if you had a society that only communicated through smoke signals and they had no other no other way of talking to each other, it would probably limit the kinds of thoughts they were able to have.

而阅读、写作和识字能力的一个作用，就是扩展了我们可思考的思想范围。

And one of the things that reading and writing and literacy does is that it expands our range of available thoughts.

所以我在文章中试图这样解释：想象有人写了一本长长的哲学著作。

So the way I tried to explain it in the essay was to imagine somebody writing a long philosophy book.

我随意选择了康德的《纯粹理性批判》，因为我觉得这是我能想到的最长、最艰深的哲学著作，适合作为例子。

I kind of arbitrarily picked Immanuel Kant's critique of pure reason because I thought it sounded like the longest and most difficult philosophy book that I could use as an example.

如果康德在十八世纪末某天早上醒来，决定口述《纯粹理性批判》，他是做不到的。

If Immanuel Kant had woken up one morning at the end of the eighteenth century and decided to speak the critique of pure reason, he couldn't have done it.

一本长达七百页、思想极为复杂的书，不可能仅仅通过口述完成。

A book that's 700 pages long and deeply intellectually complex can't simply be produced by speaking it.

如果你想创作如此复杂的哲学作品，就必须写下一句话，分析它，打磨它，回头重看，将它与下一句话连接，再反复推敲。

If you want to produce a work of philosophy that complicated, you have to write a sentence down, you have to analyze it, you have to refine it, you come back to it, you join it to the next sentence, you refine it.

有些复杂的思想本质上是与阅读和写作密不可分的。

And there are certain kinds of complex thoughts that are basically inseparable from reading and writing.

言语一旦说出就消失了，你无法固定它，无法修改它，也无法回头重听。

Speech disappears as soon as you say anything, and you just can't fix it, and you can't refine it, and you can't go back over it.

这看起来像是一个微不足道的观点，但我认为它至关重要。

It seems like a trivial point, but I think it's quite fundamental.

好的。

Okay.

所以，我的意思是，如果我们正如你所担心的那样，正步入一个后识字社会，你在文章中讲述了一个我从未听过的精彩故事，关于全民识字社会的开端——那时每个人开始阅读。

So, I mean, if we are if we are, as you fear, moving into a post literate society, you tell this extraordinary story that I had never heard before in your essay about the beginning of the fully and popularly literate society, this moment when everybody started reading.

你能给我们讲讲这个故事吗？

Could you tell us that story?

那是在什么时候？在你看来，它为何如此重要？

When was it, and why was it so significant in your view?

是的。

Yeah.

这个故事讲述的是某些历史学家所称的‘阅读革命’，它发生在18世纪中期。

So this is the story of what some historians call the reading revolution, which happened at the beginning in the middle of the eighteenth century.

在人类历史的整个进程中，直到那时，识字能力一直是由社会中一个非常小且排他性的精英群体所垄断的，最初仅限于抄写员和可能的上层阶级受教育者。

Literacy for the entire history of the human species until that point had been the preserve of generally a pretty small and exclusive elite in society, limited to initially scribes and perhaps educated members of the upper classes.

当然，随着15世纪初印刷术的发明，这种情况开始扩大。

That began to expand obviously with the invention of the printing press at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

然而，在印刷术发明后的头几百年里，阅读仍然是一种相对精英化的活动。

Nevertheless, for the first few hundred years after the invention of printing, it was still a fairly elite activity.

这种被称为阅读革命的现象，指的是18世纪初，随着教育普及和书籍价格下降，阅读首次成为普通民众中广泛开展的活动。

This phenomenon, the reading revolution, refers to the fact that in the early years of the eighteenth century, as education began to expand and books became a bit cheaper, this is pretty much the first time that reading has become a widespread activity among ordinary people.

人们真切地感受到，这在文化上是一场巨大的变革。

And there's a real sense that this was something dramatic happening in culture.

有些人对此表示抱怨。

Some people complained about it.

也有些人惊叹于，你去德国的借阅图书馆，会看到普通士兵在读书，或者去英格兰乡村的农舍里。

Some people were kind of marveling that you would go to a lending library in Germany and there would be ordinary soldiers reading books, or you would go to a peasant's hut in rural England.

在熏肉架上，竟然插着一本小说。

And in the bacon rack, there's a novel stuck up there.

至此，历史上第一次，普通民众真正地接触到了书中所包含的知识。

And at this point, for virtually the first time in history in a serious way, ordinary people have access to the kinds of knowledge contained in books.

我认为，这最终会带来具有革命性的社会影响，并在接下来的几百年里逐渐在社会中显现出来。

And this has, I think, really revolutionary social implications eventually that work themselves out in society over the next over the next couple of hundred years.

你知道吗，詹姆斯，我们即将迎来美国独立革命二百五十周年，而你所描述的十八世纪时间线——也就是18世纪中期——正是美国发生大量这类讨论的时期。

You know, James, we're nearing the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the American revolution, and the timeline you're describing of the eighteenth century, this is, the mid seventeen hundreds, is precisely when a lot of those conversations were happening in The United States.

因此，我很好奇，从你的角度来看，阅读革命对政治、对实际的革命产生了怎样的影响？

And and so that makes me wonder what effect, from your vantage point, the reading revolution had on on politics, on, like, physical actual revolutions?

直到十八世纪中期，政策讨论、外交政策、国内政策以及税收等问题，都只是在权贵和上层社会的圈子里进行的。

So until the middle of the eighteenth century, policy discussions and foreign policy and domestic policy and taxes, these were all things that were discussed in the corridors of power among aristocrats and the social elite.

阅读革命最重要的作用，就是让普通民众也能接触到这些关于政治与政策的信息。

And the important thing that the reading revolution does is that it gives access to these kinds of information about politics and policy to ordinary people.

已经有一些有趣的研究，探讨了法国大革命前所谓的‘禁书畅销书’。

There's been there have been interesting studies of what what have sometimes called the forbidden bestsellers of pre revolutionary France.

这些书被官方禁止，却在海外印刷，并且极为流行，详细揭露了当时政权的权力滥用行为。

Books that were officially banned, were printed overseas, and were immensely popular detailing abuses of power in the regime.

突然之间，人们得以接触到有关国家如何滥用权力的真实信息。

And suddenly people had a real access to information about the way that the state was abusing its power.

这最终产生了深远的革命性影响，因为一个原本能够塑造自身为光荣、不可战胜、强大且公正形象的政权，突然被泄露出来并被街头百姓阅读的信息所动摇。

And this eventually had really revolutionary implications because a state that had been able to present an idea of itself as glorious and impervious and powerful and just was suddenly undermined by information that was leaking out of it and being read by ordinary people in the street.

这是一个非常重要的民主时刻，因为这些正是十八世纪和十九世纪欧洲和美国民主革命的根源。

This is a really important democratic moment because these are the roots of the democratic revolutions that took place in in Europe and America through the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries.

如果没有人们获取知识以及理解和批判权力的能力，这些革命是不可能发生的。

You can't get those revolutions without people having access to knowledge and the ability to understand and criticize power.

我们已经基本达成共识，阅读是一种有益心智、丰富精神的活动，是一件好事。

We've kind of established that reading is a healthy mind enriching activity, it is a good thing.

但让我们快进到现在，你称之为‘反革命’，如果拿它和十八世纪的阅读革命相比的话。

But let's fast forward to where we are now, which is you've called it the counter revolution, if you compare it to the reading revolution of the eighteenth century.

你能向我们具体解释一下，现在正在发生什么，正在 undoing 所有那些良好的成果吗？

Can you explain to us exactly what is happening now that is undoing all of that good work?

我的意思是，现在发生的事情其实很简单。

I mean, what's happening now is is pretty simple.

我们知道，自2007年智能手机问世以来，尤其是2010年代初期智能手机开始普及后，阅读量就开始显著下降。

We we know that since the invention of the smartphone in 2007, and especially since the early twenty tens when smartphones began to become widespread, reading has really begun to fall.

我们知道，阅读量已经大幅减少。

We know that reading has declined significantly.

去年年底，经合组织发布了一份报告，发现大多数发达国家的识字率正在下降或停滞，这一发现非常引人注目。

There was a report that came out at the end of last year published by the OECD, which found that literacy was declining or stagnating in most developed countries, which is a really remarkable thing to find.

我想，过去如果一位社会科学家看到这样的统计数据，可能会认为一定发生了某种极其重大的事件。

I think once upon a time, a social scientist looking at a statistic like that might've thought that it meant something really dramatic had happened.

比如教育体系崩溃了，或者爆发了内战、自然灾害——只有如此重大的变故，才可能导致一个拥有先进教育体系的发达国家出现识字率下降。

Like the education system had collapsed or there'd been a civil war or a natural calamity or would take something really big for literacy to decline in a developed country with a advanced education system.

伴随着阅读量的下降，越来越多的研究关注到学龄儿童和成年人在专注力和推理能力方面的衰退。

Along with those declines in reading, there has been increasingly interesting research about the declining ability of school children adults to concentrate, to reason.

有一些证据表明，自2010年代中期以来，智商分数可能已经开始下降。

There is some evidence that IQ scores may have begun falling since the mid twenty tens.

据我了解，美国高中生在数学、科学和识字方面的技能现已降至历史最低水平。

My understanding is that American high school students skills in math, science, and literacy are the now at their lowest level on record.

各种衡量推理能力的指标似乎都在下滑。

There have been various measures of reasoning ability that seem to be falling.

PISA评分——作为全球高中学生能力评估的权威国际测试标准——自2010年代中期以来持续下降，似乎各种人类推理与智力的衡量指标都已开始下滑。

PISA scores, the global I guess, insofar as there's a gold standard international test scores for high school students have been falling since about the mid twenty tens, and it seems to be the case that various measures of human reasoning and intelligence have begun to decline.

我的意思是，另一个令人沮丧的现象是，越来越多的大学报告称，即使是教授英语文学的教授，即便在顶尖大学，也放弃了给学生布置书籍阅读，或者即使布置了，也不指望学生能读完这些书。

I mean, the other really depressing thing is increasing reports from universities that professors even teaching English literature and even at prestigious universities are giving up on assigning their students books or will assign their students books and not expect their students to be able to finish those books.

我有一些朋友是学者，他们说这种情况确实正在发生。

I've got friends who are academics, they say this is absolutely happening.

这对我们的文化来说是一个非常重要的时刻，因为许多在英语文学或历史课程中讲授的书籍，已经代代相传了数百年。

It's a really significant moment for our culture because a lot of these books that are being taught on English literature courses or on history courses have been handed down from generation to generation for hundreds.

在某些经典著作的情况下，如果你攻读古典学专业，这些书已经传承了数千年，而我们现在似乎正处在一个无法再将这些书籍和其中的知识传递下去的节点上。

In the case of some classics, if you're doing a classics degree for thousands of years, and we're reaching a point where it seems like we're no longer able to hand on those books and hand on that knowledge.

《金融时报》上有一篇精彩的文章，由记者约翰·伯恩·默多克撰写，题为《人类是否已达到智力巅峰？》，全面阐述了这些问题。

There's a great essay laying all this out in the Financial Times by a journalist called John Burn Murdock called Have Humans Reached Peak Brainpower.

他认为，智能手机是否真的让我们变笨，这一点尚无定论。

And he argues that smartphones, it's moot whether they're literally making us stupider.

这是一个相当强烈的主张。

That's quite a strong assertion.

但它们无疑正在削弱我们实现全部智力潜能的能力。

But they certainly seem to be impairing our ability to realize our full intellectual potential.

如果你无法集中注意力，就很难真正地推理解决问题。

If you can't concentrate, it's very hard to really reason through a problem.

如果你每五秒就看一眼手机，就很难发挥出你全部的创造力。

It's very hard to be as fully creative as you can be if you're checking your phone every five seconds.

如果你无法专注于一个观点，也无法对其进行逻辑推理，就很难认真参与政治辩论。

If you can't concentrate on a point and you can't reason through a point, it's very hard to engage seriously in a political debate.

因此，这似乎正在削弱我们作为社会在智力上运作的能力。

So this seems to be impairing our ability to function intellectually as a society.

如果新闻是历史的初稿，那么当这份初稿有缺陷时，会发生什么？

If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed?

1999年，四座俄罗斯公寓大楼遭到轰炸，数百人丧生。

In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed.

但即使到现在，我们仍无法确定究竟是谁干的。

But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it.

这个谜团引发了令人不寒而栗的猜测。

It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories.

我是海伦娜·梅里曼，在BBC的新系列节目中，我采访了最初报道这一事件的记者们。

I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story.

他们第一次报道时遗漏了什么？

What did they miss the first time?

历史局、普京与公寓爆炸案。

The history bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs.

请在bbc.com或您收听播客的平台收听。

Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

詹姆斯，我们想和你详细探讨一下你所描述的识字率下降所带来的后果。

James, we'd like to break down with you the consequences of this decline in literacy as you describe it.

你已经稍微提到过的第一点是教育。

So the first that you've touched on there slightly already is education.

第二点是它对我们的民主究竟造成了什么影响。

The second would be what's it actually doing to our democracy.

是的。

Yeah.

我认为，这一点对我来说最为重要。

I I think for me, this is the most important point.

我认为，人们很容易产生一种想法，觉得进入二十一世纪是顺理成章的事。

I think there's a way of thinking that it's very easy to get into the twenty first century.

我们生活在民主社会中已经很久了，因此你可能会开始认为，民主是一种从天而降、凭空出现的抽象美德，而且它总会存在于某个地方。

We've lived in democratic societies for a very long time, and I think you can begin to think that democracy is this kind of abstract virtue that has just fallen out of the sky into our laps from nowhere, and it will probably always exist somewhere.

我们对它太习以为常了。

We're just so used to it.

但更难认识到的是，我们所熟知的现代民主是一种历史偶然的现象，它是在特定的时代、特定的地点和特定的文化中发展起来的。

I think what is harder to recognize is that modern democracy as we know it is a historically contingent phenomenon that grew up in a particular time and a particular place and a particular culture.

而这种文化，正是十八世纪和十九世纪高度识字的社会。

And that culture was the highly literate societies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

在阅读普及之前，欧洲存在的封建专制等级社会非常依赖图像。

The feudal autocratic hierarchical society that existed in Europe before the invention of reading was very image based.

君主和贵族通过壮观的视觉展示、焰火表演、游行和宏伟的建筑来巩固他们的权力。

Monarchs and aristocrats enforced their power through impressive visual display, firework displays, parades, enormous buildings.

整个论点都充满情感且令人敬畏。

The whole argument was an emotional and awe inspiring one.

识字带来的一个重要变化是，它使知识民主化，让人们能够看穿那些令人印象深刻的情感展示。

And one of the important changes that literacy introduced was that it democratized knowledge and it gave people a way of seeing behind those impressive emotional displays.

人们开始思考：好吧，宫殿确实很壮观，但为什么国王要比农民更有权力呢？

People would begin to go, okay, well, the palace is very impressive, but why should a king be more powerful than a peasant?

所以我认为，我们现在正回归到一个更加视觉化、更依赖情感诉求的世界。

So I think what's happening now is that we're returning to a world that is much more visual, that is much more based on emotional appeals.

我的意思是，这可能是关于我认为印刷品所起作用的一个关键点：当你面对面交流，或通过TikTok视频甚至播客交流时——虽然我不太喜欢播客——你拥有一整套沟通和说服手段，这些手段未必完全合乎逻辑。

I mean, this is maybe a crucial thing to say about what I think print does, which is that when you communicate in person or when you communicate in the medium of a TikTok video or even a podcast, low those I am to criticize podcasts, you have a whole range of means of communication and persuasion at your disposal that are not necessarily perfectly logical.

所以，如果我现在和你交谈，想说服你，那么——

So if I'm talking to you in a conversation as I am now and I want to persuade you Well,

你说你是个政客。

you say you are a politician.

如果我是个政客——你现在在和我对话。

If I'm a politician- you're talking to me.

或者在播客或TikTok上与你交谈时，我想说服你，我可以对你大喊大叫，也可以开始哭泣，或者我非常有魅力，能用我的魅力让你接受我的观点。

Or a podcast and I'm talking to over TikTok and I want to persuade you of a point, I could shout at you if I wanted to, or I could start crying, or perhaps I'm very charming and I could really charm you around to my way of thinking.

我们是人类，很容易被这些情感和社会性的沟通方式所说服。

And we're human beings and we are very inclined to be persuaded by these emotional and social ways of communication.

我认为印刷术最重要的一点——或许是最关键的一点——在于它重塑了我们的政治话语，移除了我们接触这些非理性沟通形式的途径。

And I think a really important thing, perhaps the most important thing that print did in the way that it restructured our political discourse was that it removed our access to those illogical forms of communication.

我是一名专栏作家，每周都会写一篇专栏。

I I'm an opinion columnist and I write a column every week.

我从不认为印刷文字是完全合乎逻辑的。

I would never say that print is perfectly logical.

我从未说过我写的所有内容都完全合乎逻辑，但你确实会感觉到，你能依赖的说服手段被大大限制了。

I've never said everything I've written is perfectly logical, but you really feel that you have a much more restricted range of persuasive techniques to rely on.

你被迫更多地依赖逻辑。

You're forced much more to fall back on logic.

在印刷媒介中，你唯一能做的就是一句话接一句话地写下去，努力构建一个合乎逻辑的论证。

All you can do in print is just fit a sentence after a sentence after a sentence after a sentence and try and build a logical argument.

在对话中，大家都注意到，如果一个人非常高大、英俊且自信，他们可能比那些知识渊博但缺乏魅力的人更能有效地表达观点。

Everyone's noticed in the conversation that if there's someone who's, like, very tall and good looking and confident, they might get their point across much more effectively than someone who's well informed but less charismatic.

是的，你就是。

Well, you are

高大又英俊。

tall and and good looking.

不是。

No.

我个子矮，也不自信，你这么说我很受用。

I'm I'm I'm short I'm short and unconfident, and it's nice for you to say that I'm charming.

嗯，詹姆斯，我想说，在过去几年的美国政治中，人们普遍觉得治理方式和民主制度变得精英化了。

Well well, James, I would say here in the last several years in American politics, there has been a sense that the way of governing and that democracy has been elitist.

也就是说，这在很大程度上解释了唐纳德·特朗普竞选和执政的兴起。

I mean, that was sort of the rise in many ways of Donald Trump's campaign and then his presidency.

我明白你所说的每一句话。

And I hear everything you're saying.

但我一直有一个主要问题，詹姆斯，你多次谈到阅读如何使知识民主化，使信息获取更加平等。

But one one one major question I've had, James, is you've talked a lot about how reading democratized knowledge, that reading democratized access to information.

在很多方面，人们可能会说，互联网进一步 democratized 了信息的获取。

And in many ways, I think people would say, well, the Internet has further democratized that access to information.

我的意思是，社会经济不平等依然存在。

I mean, there's a lot of socioeconomic inequality.

但对很多人来说，互联网的伟大之处在于，许多人突然能够接触到他们原本可能无法获得的信息。

And the great thing, I think, to many people about the Internet was that a lot of people could suddenly access information that they might not otherwise have had access to.

你知道，在这个国家，进入顶尖大学是非常昂贵的。

You know, it's very expensive to go to the best universities in this country.

我不认为互联网上的信息获取是坏事。

And I don't know that I think access to information on the Internet is bad.

在很多很多方面，我认为它确实增加了信息的获取，互联网 democratized 了机会和信息获取。

In many many ways, I think that it has increased access to information, that the Internet has democratized opportunity and access to information.

至于你如何利用它，那取决于你自己，但它确实像你描述的18世纪阅读革命一样，极大地提高了信息的可获得性。

Now what you do with it, you know, is up to you, but it is certainly increased the availability of information in much the same way that you describe the seventeen hundreds with the advent of the reading revolution.

是的

Yeah.

我经常听到这种说法，我认为它表面上看是正确的。

I I I hear that case a lot, and I I I think it's superficially true.

在印刷时代，如果你想写一本书或一篇杂志文章，仍然存在相当高的门槛。

So in the age of print, if you wanted to write a book or a magazine article, there was still pretty high bar to get over that.

你可能需要接受过教育。

You had to probably have an education.

你可能还需要在报社找到一份工作，并受雇于报社。

You probably have to find a job at a newspaper and be employed by a newspaper.

社交媒体所做的，是彻底消除了所有这些障碍。

What social media has done is it's completely removed all those barriers.

任何人都可以在推特上发帖，任何人都可以将自己的信息传播出去。

Anybody can post on Twitter, and anybody can get their information out there Mhmm.

把自己的故事讲出来。

Get their story out there.

现在，显而易见，这听起来像是一个极其民主的举措。

Now, obviously, this sounds like an incredibly democratic thing.

至少表面上看，更多人能够发声了。

At least superficially, more people can talk.

这其中确实有道理。

And there is truth in that.

但我认为另一方面，其影响远没有表面看起来那么民主。

I think the other side of it is that the effect of it has been much less democratic than it seems.

因为我认为，自互联网问世以来，普通人获取可靠信息的机会已经急剧下降。

Because I think the average person's access to reliable information has fallen off a cliff since the invention of the Internet.

尽管过去通过报纸和BBC等机构获取信息的体系表面上看似精英主义，但其中却蕴含着某种深层次的民主性，因为这意味着每个人都能接触到关于世界的准确和可靠的知识。

And although the old system of information production, when we got our information through institutions like newspapers and the BBC, superficially seemed elitist, was there actually something deeply democratic about that because that meant everybody had access to accurate and reliable knowledge about the world.

随着那些备受憎恨的信息把关人失去对信息流动的控制，本应被视为社会重大民主进步的变革，实际上却成了深刻的反民主现象，因为人们获取关于世界可靠信息的途径正越来越局限于少数人。

As those much hated gatekeepers have lost their control of the flow of information, What should seem like a really democratic change in our society has been a profoundly anti democratic one because access to reliable information about the world is being restricted to smaller and smaller minority of people.

我们之所以知道这一点，是因为我们可以观察到，公众对疫苗和科学的信念正变得越来越缺乏科学依据，而能够获取关于科学和新闻的准确信息的人群，正日益局限于那些负担得起报纸订阅、能够参与传统媒体信息生态的富裕且受过良好教育的人。

And we know this because we can see that beliefs about vaccines and science are becoming less and less scientific among the population and the people who have access to accurate information about science and accurate information about the news, that kind of accurate information is increasingly restricted to wealthy, educated people who can afford newspaper subscriptions and can afford to participate in that old fashioned media information ecosystem.

所以我明白，表面上看这似乎更民主了，因为更多人能发声，对于那些原本没被报社雇佣的人而言，确实如此。

So I get that it seems more democratic than people can speak, and it is more democratic for the people whose voices are heard, who might not have been employed by a newspaper.

但悲剧的是，它实际上剥夺了很多人获取关于世界可靠信息的机会。

The tragic effect is that it has really taken access to reliable information about the world away from a lot

我理解这一点。

of understand that.

我明白这一点。

I understand that.

不过，詹姆斯，我想我们也学到了一些以前根本不可能看到的东西。

I think we've also learned things, though, James, that we never would have seen other otherwise.

对吧？

Right?

我的意思是，至少在美国，种族问题上的批评是，像乔治·弗洛伊德被杀这样的事件，传统媒体和信息把关人根本不会报道，事实上，这些事在美国几十年来一直不为人知。

I mean, that's the criticism, at least racially, here in The United States, is that certain things like George Floyd's murder would have never been known by traditional gatekeepers and media outlets, and and they weren't known, frankly, for decades here in The United States.

是的。

Yeah.

当然。

Of of course.

这完全正确，而且从来没有人说旧媒体的做法是完美的。

And that's totally true, and the case is never that the that old media way of doing things was perfect.

显然不是。

It clear it clearly wasn't.

我认为我们能讨论的只是我们文化中的总体影响。

I think all we can talk about is general effects in our culture.

我认为，如果你想让人们在民主社会中基于对世界的可靠信息做出决策，那么之前的系统为我们带来了更好的结果。

And I think if you want people to make decisions in a democracy based on reliable information about the world, I think the previous system got got us better outcomes.

关于信息被民主化的这个观点，还有一件非常重要的事情要说：是的，世界上任何人都可以发推文，但并不是每个人都能让自己的帖子或推文被看到。

The other thing that's really important to say about the idea that information has been democratized is, yes, anybody in the world can tweet, not everybody in the world will find their post or their tweets.

我想你的在X平台（我们现在这么叫）上的帖子会被算法选中并推广。

I guess your post on x, we now call it, will be picked up and promoted by the algorithm.

感觉很民主，因为任何人都可以这么做。

Feels democratic because anybody can do it.

实际上，发生的情况是，把关人仍然存在，但他们不再是BBC和《泰晤士报》那些通常关心世界准确信息的把关人。

Actually, what's happened is the gatekeepers are still there, but the gatekeepers aren't the gatekeepers at the BBC and the Times who care pretty generally about accurate information about the world.

现在的把关人是坐在硅谷的人，他们唯一的目的是增加你使用手机和屏幕的时间，因为他们能追踪你的线上行为，以便向你推送更精准的广告。

The gatekeepers are now people sitting in Silicon Valley whose only aim is to increase the amount of time that you spend on your phone and you spend on your screen because they can track your movements online just to show you better ads.

整个商业模式正是基于这一点。

And that is what the whole business model is based on.

而要做到这一点，就是推广更具愤怒性、更情绪化、更充满

And the way to do that is to promote content that is angrier, that is more emotional, that is more full

愤怒的内容。

of outrage.

那么你的意思是，为了社会的利益，我们应该改用功能机吗？

Are you saying then that we should be switching to dumb phones for the good of society?

嗯，我几年前就扔掉我的智能手机了。

Well, I I got rid of my smartphone a couple of years ago.

我不认为每个人都会这么做，这不现实。

I don't think it's realistic that everyone will do that.

我认为对很多人来说，拥有智能手机变得几乎成了强制性的，我觉得这非常阴险。

I think for a lot of people having a smartphone, I find this really pretty sinister, has become virtually compulsory.

我有个朋友，必须用智能手机扫描办公室门才能进入工作。

I've got a friend who needs a smartphone to scan the door of his office to get into his job.

越来越难在没有智能手机的情况下正常生活。

Increasingly, it's very hard to function without a smartphone.

我建议你思考一下智能手机对你的生活究竟带来了多少积极影响，并考虑一下你是否能承受放弃它的代价。

I would say it's worth thinking about how much of a positive impact your smartphone is having in your life and thinking about whether you can afford to get rid of it.

这样做或许值得。

It might be worth doing.

我认为放弃智能手机大大改善了我的生活。

I think getting rid of my smartphone improved my life a lot.

我还觉得，随着我们的世界越来越依赖成瘾性的屏幕，如果我们能培养出一小部分人，形成一个利益群体，宣称我们不使用智能手机，不参与这种文化，那会很有意义。

I also think that as our world becomes ever more based on addictive screens, if we can build up a minority of people who will form a kind of interest group and say, we don't have smartphones, We're not participating in that culture.

不是每个人都会这么做，但我认为，如果有一群愿意和我一起行动的、声音响亮的少数人，哪怕只有几个人参与，也可能产生强大的影响。

Not everyone's gonna do it, but I think a vocal minority of people who are willing to join me, a few people doing it could be powerful.

嗯，詹姆斯，只要人们继续收听播客，尤其是像这样既有深度的播客，那就没问题。

Well, James, that's all fine as long as people carry on listening to podcasts, particularly podcasts like this one, which are both high minded Mhmm.

同时还要有吸引力。

And compelling at the same time.

没错。

Exactly.

我们这就放你们一马。

We're letting you guys off.

谢谢。

Thank you.

我有在听。

I am.

谢谢。

Thank you.

谢谢，詹姆斯。

Thanks, James.

非常感谢你，詹姆斯。

Thank you so much, James.

谢谢。

Thank you.

和你交谈很愉快。

Pleasure to talk with you.

谢谢。

Thank you.

谢谢。

Thank you.

刚才那位是《伦敦时报》的作家詹姆斯·马里奥特。

That was the writer James Marriott from the Times of London.

我觉得智能手机是一种工具，如何使用它取决于用户的判断。

And look, I think of smartphones as a tool, and how we use that tool is up to user discretion.

因为在我看来，人们会突然放弃这些在很多方面都非常有益且有用的工具，这似乎并不现实，特里斯坦。

Because I think the idea that folks will all suddenly give up these remarkably beneficial and useful tools in some ways just doesn't seem realistic to me, Tristan.

哦，嗯，这真的深深引起了我的共鸣。

Oh, well, I I think it really chimed with me.

我的意思是，部分原因是，我一整天都盯着手里那该死的小屏幕，脑子都快炸了。

I mean, partly because I'm just my brain hurts from staring at a stupid little screen all day in my hand.

当我读到他的文章时，我立刻想拿本书来读，想向他证明我依然能做到。

And when I read his piece, I immediately wanted to go and read a book to try and prove to him that I still could.

几年前，我发现自己感到沮丧，因为我不再读小说了。

I found myself a few years ago feeling frustrated that I just wasn't reading novels anymore.

于是我决定创办一个读书会。

So I decided to create a book club.

事实上，就在我们录制这次采访前几天，我刚在我家举办了我们最近一次的读书会活动。

And in fact, I just hosted, our recent book club gathering at my house a few days before we taped this interview.

而且说实话，我现在的阅读量还是不如以前多，但能和别人一起读书、让自己对这件我小时候非常热爱的事情负责，这种感觉让我非常满足。

And look, I'm not reading still as often as I did before, But to me, it feels so satisfying to have people to read a book with and to hold myself kind of accountable to doing something I really loved to do as a child.

我懂你的意思。

I I hear you.

我懂你的意思。

I hear you.

我的情况也差不多，虽然没那么有条理，但我发现如果在浴缸里看书，那是个没法分心的地方，手机够不着，这就逼着我不得不看书。

I mean, I have a similar thing that's maybe slightly less organized, but I find that if I read in the bath, it is a captive location to read, and I cannot reach my phone, and that forces me to read, basically.

这就是我的办法。

That's my solution.

好吧，问题就在这里。

Well, there we have it.

我的意思是，这两种方法适合那些想多读书、却又不想扔掉智能手机、过另一种生活的人。

I mean, these are two solutions for folks who maybe wanna read books more often but don't actually want to get rid of their smartphones and live in that alternative universe.

我能给在座的各位，阿斯玛，再分享一句尼尔·波兹曼的话吗？

Can I leave everyone, Asma, with another quote from Neil Postman?

因为我们的对话就是从这里开始的。

Because that's where we started.

他说，乔治·奥威尔担心真相会被掩盖，而奥尔德斯·赫胥黎则担心真相会被淹没在无关信息的海洋里。

So he says, George Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us, and Aldous Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

这对我来说也特别有共鸣，因为我觉得我们所有人从互联网上接收到的信息过载，有时就像一片无关紧要的汪洋大海。

And that also really chimed for me because I feel like the overload of information that we all get from the Internet feels sometimes like a sea of irrelevance.

好了，各位，今天的节目就到这里。

Well, folks, that is it for today's show.

如果你们有任何想法、意见或问题，欢迎给我们发邮件至 globalstory@bbc.com。

If you have any thoughts, ideas, questions for us, drop us a note at the globalstory@bbc.com.

一如既往，感谢大家的收听，我们明天再聊。

Thank you all as always for listening, and we'll talk to you again tomorrow.

再见了。

Cheerio.

如果新闻是历史的初稿，那么当这份初稿有缺陷时，会发生什么？

If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed?

1999年，四座俄罗斯公寓大楼被炸，数百人丧生。

In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed.

但即使到现在，我们仍不确定究竟是谁干的。

But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it.

这是一个引发了令人毛骨悚然猜测的谜团。

It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories.

我是海伦娜·梅里曼，在BBC的新系列节目中，我采访了最初报道这一事件的记者们。

I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story.

他们第一次采访时遗漏了什么？

What did they miss the first time?

历史局、普京与公寓炸弹事件。

The history bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs.

请在bbc.com或您收听播客的平台收听。

Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.