考博英语翻译---咖啡中的网络世界

The internet in a cup
咖啡中的网络世界
Coffee fuelled the information exchanges of the 17th and 18th centuries
咖啡促进17世纪及18世纪的信息交流
Dec 18th 2003 | from the print edition
2003年12月18日 | 来自印刷版

WHERE do you go when you want to know the latest business news, follow commodity prices, keep up with political gossip, find out what others think of a new book, or stay abreast of the latest scientific and technological developments? Today, the answer is obvious: you log on to the internet. Three centuries ago, the answer was just as easy: you went to a coffee-house. There, for the price of a cup of coffee, you could read the latest pamphlets, catch up on news and gossip, attend scientific lectures, strike business deals, or chat with like-minded people about literature or politics.
当你想知道最新的商业讯息，紧跟商品价格，追踪政治流言，寻找他人对新书的观点，或者跟上最新的科学技术发展，你会去哪儿呢？今天，答案显而易见：到互联网上搜索即可。300年前，答案也很简单：去咖啡馆。在咖啡馆里，用一杯咖啡的钱，你可以阅读新出版的手册，了解新闻和八卦，参加科技讲座，谈妥生意，或者与观点类似的人谈谈文学或政治。

The coffee-houses that sprang up across Europe, starting around 1650, functioned as information exchanges for writers, politicians, businessmen and scientists. Like today's websites, weblogs and discussion boards, coffee-houses were lively and often unreliable sources of information that typically specialised in a particular topic or political viewpoint. They were outlets for a stream of newsletters, pamphlets, advertising free-sheets and broadsides. Depending on the interests of their customers, some coffee-houses displayed commodity prices, share prices and shipping lists, whereas others provided foreign newsletters filled with coffee-house gossip from abroad.
约在1650年，咖啡馆兴起于欧洲大陆，曾作为作家、政治家、商人和科学家交换信息的场所。就像今天的网络、博客和论坛一样，咖啡馆内也是生机勃勃，经常是一些不实信息的发源地，尤其是特殊话题或政观点。这里是新闻通讯，时论册子，报纸广告和版面新闻的批发点。依据顾客的喜好，一些咖啡店还会列出商品价格，股票价格还有船运名单，另一些咖啡馆还会提供外国时事消息以满足咖啡馆内人们多国外八卦的好奇。

Rumours, news and gossip were also carried between coffee-houses by their patrons, and sometimes runners would flit from one coffee-house to another within a particular city to report major events such as the outbreak of a war or the death of a head of state. Coffee-houses were centres of scientific education, literary and philosophical speculation, commercial innovation and, sometimes, political fermentation. Collectively, Europe's interc

onnected web of coffee-houses formed the internet of the Enlightenment era.
谣言，新闻，小道消息也在各个咖啡馆间传播。有时，像战争爆发或国家元首暴毙这样的事件会想长了腿一样从一个城市的咖啡馆传到另一个咖啡馆。咖啡馆是科学教育、文学哲学思想、商业创新的中心，有时也是孕育政治的摇篮。总的来说，欧洲相互关联的咖啡馆网络形成了启蒙运动时期的互联网络。

The great soberer
Coffee, the drink that fuelled this network, originated in the highlands of Ethiopia, where its beans were originally chewed rather than infused for their invigorating effects. It spread into the Islamic world during the 15th century, where it was embraced as an alternative to alcohol, which was forbidden (officially, at least) to Muslims. Coffee came to be regarded as the very antithesis of alcoholic drinks, sobering rather than intoxicating, stimulating mental activity and heightening perception rather than dulling the senses.
伟大的清醒者
作为这一网络中的燃料，咖啡是一种起源与埃塞俄比亚的饮品。咖啡豆因其提神醒脑的作用而使用，其食用方法最开始是咀嚼而非研磨冲泡。咖啡在15世纪传入穆斯林世界，穆斯林将咖啡视为另一种酒，因此被（至少是官方）严禁食用。咖啡慢慢被人认为是与酒类不同的饮料，使人清醒而非沉醉，刺激大脑活动，提高理解能力，而非减缓反应速度。

This reputation accompanied coffee as it spread into western Europe during the 17th century, at first as a medicine, and then as a social drink in the Arab tradition. An anonymous poem published in London in 1674 denounced wine as the “sweet Poison of the Treacherous Grape” that drowns “our Reason and our Souls”. Beer was condemned as “Foggy Ale” that “besieg'd our Brains”. Coffee, however, was heralded as
...that Grave and Wholesome Liquor,
that heals the Stomach, makes the Genius quicker,
Relieves the Memory, revives the Sad,
and cheers the Spirits, without making Mad.
带着这样的名声，咖啡在17世纪传入欧洲，最开始被视为一种药物，后来成为阿拉伯的传统交际饮品。1674年发表的一首无名诗中，公开谴责酒是一种“背叛的葡萄藤的甜蜜毒药”，这种“毒药”会把“理智和灵魂”淹没。啤酒被贬为“起雾的爱尔兰酒”，它会“围困我们的大脑”。然而，咖啡被誉为
这伟大又神奇的液体/医治胃痛，加速思维运转/解除痛苦，缓解抑郁/使灵魂愉悦，却不至疯狂

The contrast between coffee and alcoholic drinks was reflected in the decor of the coffee-houses that began to appear in European cities, London in particular. They were adorned with bookshelves, mirrors, gilt-framed pictures and good furniture, in contrast to the rowdiness, gloom and squalor of taverns. According to custom, social differences were le

ft at the coffee-house door, the practice of drinking healths was banned, and anyone who started a quarrel had to atone for it by buying an order of coffee for all present. In short, coffee-houses were calm, sober and well-ordered establishments that promoted polite conversation and discussion.
欧洲城市兴起的咖啡厅，尤其是在伦敦，其内部装饰反映出咖啡和酒类饮料的对立。相比于酒馆的拥挤、昏暗和肮脏，书架、镜子、镶着金边的画作，以及优良的家具为咖啡厅增色不少。根据习惯，咖啡厅内并没有文化差异，喝健康饮料的行为被禁止，任何在咖啡厅吵架的人要为在场的所有人买一杯咖啡赔罪。简言之，咖啡厅是镇静、清醒、有序的场所，这里推崇文明的交流和讨论。

With a new rationalism abroad in the spheres of both philosophy and commerce, coffee was the ideal drink. Its popularity owed much to the growing middle class of information workers—clerks, merchants and businessmen—who did mental work in offices rather than performing physical labour in the open, and found that coffee sharpened their mental faculties. Such men were not rich enough to entertain lavishly at home, but could afford to spend a few pence a day on coffee. Coffee-houses provided a forum for education, debate and self-improvement. They were nicknamed “penny universities” in a contemporary English verse which observed: “So great a Universitie, I think there ne'er was any; In which you may a Scholar be, for spending of a Penny.”
在国外哲学和商业的理性主义的氛围中，咖啡是一种理想的饮品。她的流行主要归功于日益壮大的中产阶级中的对信息量需求较大的工人，包括文员、进出口批发商，还有生意人——在办公室做着脑力工作，而非在室外从事体力劳动，并发现咖啡能够使其思维敏锐。一些人还没有富裕到在家中享受奢华的生活，但是却足够每天花上几便士买呗咖啡消遣。咖啡馆提供了一个教育，争论和自我提高的公众论坛。他们将咖啡馆昵称为“便士大学”，在那时的英语中是这样解释的：如此伟大的一所大学/我觉得从未有过/在这里你可以成为学者/只要你花上一个便士

“At the Café de Foy someone said that the king had taken a mistress...that she was a beautiful woman, the niece of the Duc de Noailles,” reads one report from the 1720s
据18世纪20年代的一个报道说，“在福伊咖啡馆，有人说国王找了一个新的情人，那是个漂亮女人，还是诺爱勒斯公爵的侄女。”

As with modern websites, the coffee-houses you went to depended on your interests, for each coffee-house attracted a particular clientele, usually by virtue of its location. Though coffee-houses were also popular in Paris, Venice and Amsterdam, this characteristic was particularly notable in London, where 82 coffee-houses had been set up

by 1663, and more than 500 by 1700. Coffee-houses around the Royal Exchange were frequented by businessmen; those around St James's and Westminster by politicians; those near St Paul's Cathedral by clergymen and theologians. Indeed, so closely were some coffee-houses associated with particular topics that the Tatler, a London newspaper founded in 1709, used the names of coffee-houses as subject headings for its articles. Its first issue declared:
就像现在的网络一样，你去那家咖啡馆取决于你的兴趣和爱好，因为每个咖啡馆都会吸引特定的顾客群，通常是由位置决定的。尽管咖啡馆在巴黎、威尼斯、阿姆斯特丹都很流行，但是伦敦的咖啡馆最为著名。1963年伦敦建立了82家咖啡馆，到1700年就达到500家。在黄家商品交易中心周围的咖啡馆充斥着商人，光顾圣詹姆斯公园和威斯敏斯特特附近的咖啡馆的客人常是政客，而圣保罗大教堂附近的咖啡馆的客人常是牧师和神学家。咖啡馆与特定话题的关系是如此密切，1709年创办的《闲谈者》城市与咖啡馆的名字作为专栏的题目，在它第一版中这样说道：

All accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, and Entertainment shall be under the Article of White's Chocolate-house; Poetry, under that of Will's Coffee-house; Learning, under...Grecian; Foreign and Domestick News, you will have from St James's Coffee-house.
所有关于风流韵事、娱乐消遣的文章都会在白巧克力咖啡馆一栏，诗歌会在威尔咖啡馆一栏，学习会在希腊咖啡馆一栏，而在圣詹姆斯咖啡馆一栏中你能找到国内和国际消息。

Richard Steele, the Tatler's editor, gave its postal address as the Grecian coffee-house, which he used as his office. In the days before street numbering or regular postal services, it became a common practice to use a coffee-house as a mailing address. Regulars could pop in once or twice a day, hear the latest news, and check to see if any post awaited them. That said, most people frequented several coffee-houses, the choice of which reflected their range of interests. A merchant, for example, would generally oscillate between a financial coffee-house and one specialising in Baltic, West Indian or East Indian shipping. The wide-ranging interests of Robert Hooke, a scientist and polymath, were reflected in his visits to around 60 coffee-houses during the 1670s.
《闲谈者》的编辑理查德?斯迪尔使用希腊咖啡馆的邮编，因为他把那个咖啡厅当作自己的办公室。在街道用门牌号标识或者正式的邮政服务出现之前，用咖啡馆的邮编作为邮寄地址是普遍的现象。咖啡厅的常客可能一天会出现一到两次，听听新鲜的新闻，检查是否有待收的邮件。这就是说，大多数人会常去好几家咖啡厅，他们的选择反映出他们的喜好。例如，一个买卖人可能会在两种咖啡厅之间来回走动，一类

是谈论金融的咖啡厅，另一类就是谈论在波罗的海、西印度和东印度船运的咖啡厅。17世纪70年代，科学家和博学家罗伯特?胡克的光顾60多家咖啡馆，这反映出他广泛的兴趣和爱好。

As the Tatler's categorisation suggests, the coffee-house most closely associated with science was the Grecian, the preferred coffee-house of the members of the Royal Society, Britain's pioneering scientific institution. On one occasion a group of scientists including Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley dissected a dolphin on the premises. Scientific lectures and experiments also took place in coffee-houses, such as the Marine, near St Paul's, which were frequented by sailors and navigators. Seamen and merchants realised that science could contribute to improvements in navigation, and hence to commercial success, whereas the scientists were keen to show the practical value of their work. It was in coffee-houses that commerce and new technology first became intertwined.
就像《闲谈者》的分类建议，大多数的希腊咖啡馆与科学有着紧密的联系，这些咖啡馆受到皇家学会和英国先进的科学组织成员的青睐。曾经，在这样的前提下，包括牛顿和哈雷的一群科学家解剖了一只海豚。科学讲座和实验也会在咖啡馆进行，例如在圣保罗附近的海洋咖啡馆，这里是水手和航海家经常光顾的地方。船员和商人意识到科学对航海的推动作用，继而可以获得商业成功，因此科学家致力于展示其研究工作的实际价值。就是在咖啡馆里，商业和科技第一次紧密的交织在一起。

The more literary-minded, meanwhile, congregated at Will's coffee-house in Covent Garden, where for three decades the poet John Dryden and his circle reviewed and discussed the latest poems and plays. Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary on December 3rd 1663 that he had looked in at Will's and seen Dryden and “all the wits of the town” engaged in “very witty and pleasant discourse”. After Dryden's death many of the literatured shifted to Button's, which was frequented by Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, among others. Pope's poem “The Rape of the Lock” was based on coffee-house gossip, and discussions in coffee-houses inspired a new, more colloquial and less ponderous prose style, conversational in tone and clearly visible in the journalism of the day.
与此同时，更多的文学思想集中在考文特花园的威尔咖啡馆中，三十年来，约翰?德莱顿和他的小圈子在这里评论探讨最新的诗歌和戏剧。萨缪尔?佩皮斯在1663年12月3日的日记中记录道，他在威尔咖啡挂见到德莱顿和“所有镇里的智慧的人”正在进行“充满智慧的讨论且气氛愉悦”。德莱顿逝世之后，许多文学家就转移到了纽扣咖啡馆，这里是蒲柏，乔纳森?斯威夫特还有另外一些文学家经常光顾此地。蒲柏的诗作《卷发

遇劫记》就是在咖啡馆的八卦传言的基础上创作的，在咖啡馆的讨论激发了新颖，口语化，不呆板的诗歌形式，以及交谈式口吻及清晰明了的杂志形式。

It was in coffee-houses that commerce and new technology first became intertwined
就是在咖啡馆里，商业和新技术第一次开始融合
Other coffee-houses were hotbeds of financial innovation and experimentation, producing new business models in the form of innumerable novel variations on insurance, lottery or joint-stock schemes. The best-known example was the coffee-house opened in the late 1680s by Edward Lloyd. It became a meeting-place for ships' captains, shipowners and merchants, who went to hear the latest maritime news and to attend auctions of ships and their cargoes. Lloyd began to collect and summarise this information, supplemented with reports from a network of foreign correspondents, in the form of a regular newsletter, at first handwritten and later printed and sent to subscribers. Lloyd's thus became the natural meeting place for shipowners and the underwriters who insured their ships. Some underwriters began to rent booths at Lloyd's, and in 1771 a group of 79 of them collectively established the Society of Lloyd's, better known as Lloyd's of London.
一些咖啡馆是金融创新和试验的温床，这一孕育了新型的商业模式，包括无数新型的保险、彩票和股份组织形式。最有名的例子是在17世纪80年代末，由爱德华?劳埃德开办的咖啡馆。这里成为船长，船主和商人的聚会场所，他们来这里听听最新的海事消息，参加船只及货物拍卖。劳埃德开始收集总结这些信息，以国外的通讯消息作为补充，并且以时事通讯的形式有规律的发布，首版采用手写，再版均采用印刷形式发往各个订阅者。因此劳埃德咖啡馆自然地成为船主和为船只保险的保险人的会面场所。一些保险人开始租用劳埃德咖啡馆的站台，1771，其中的79个人联合组成了劳埃德学会，被称为伦敦劳埃德保险社。

Similarly, two coffee-houses near London's Royal Exchange, Jonathan's and Garraway's, were frequented by stockbrokers and jobbers. Attempts to regulate the membership of Jonathan's, by charging an annual subscription and barring non-members, were successfully blocked by traders who opposed such exclusivity. So in 1773 a group of traders from Jonathan's broke away and decamped to a new building, the forerunner of the London Stock Exchange. Garraway's was a less reputable coffee-house, home to auctions of all kinds and much dodgy dealing, particularly during the South Sea Bubble of 1719-21. It was said of Garraway's that no other establishment “fostered so great a quantity of dishonoured paper”.
同样地，两家伦敦皇家交易所的咖啡馆——乔纳森咖啡馆和加洛伟咖啡馆是股票经纪人和批发商经常光顾的地方。有人为了管理

乔纳森的会员，向会员收取年费并限制非会员入内，此种做法被反对排外思想的贸易者成功抵制。因此，1773年，一群贸易商脱离了乔纳森咖啡馆，撤到一座新的地点，他们就是伦敦股票交易所的先驱。加洛伟咖啡馆的声誉并不怎么好，特别是1719 - 1921年间的南海骗局事件期间，它是所有拍卖以及狡诈交易的家园。据说，没有任何一个公司能比加洛伟咖啡馆中签订的无良合约再多了。

Far more controversial than the coffee-houses' functions as centres of scientific, literary and business exchange, however, was their potential as centres of political dissent. Coffee's reputation as a seditious beverage goes back at least as far as 1511, the date of the first known attempt to ban the consumption of coffee, in Mecca. Thereafter, many attempts were made to prohibit coffee and coffee-houses in the Muslim world. Some claimed it was intoxicating and therefore subject to the same religious prohibition as alcohol. Others claimed it was harmful to the health. But the real problem was the coffee-houses' alarming potential for facilitating political discussion and activity.
最具争议的不是咖啡馆作为科学、文学和商业交换中心的功能，而是咖啡馆有成为政治反对派聚集的中心。咖啡作为一种有煽动情绪功能的饮料，其名声可以追溯到1511年，那是麦加第一次公开尝试禁止咖啡的时间。此后，销售穆斯林世界做过许多尝试去禁止咖啡和咖啡馆的存在。一些人认为咖啡使人沉醉，因此应该想宗教禁酒一样禁止食用咖啡。另一些人则认为咖啡对身体健康有害。但是真实的问题是咖啡馆对促进政治讨论和活动的潜在警示性。

This was the objection raised in a proclamation by Charles II of England in 1675. Coffee-houses, it declared, had produced
very evil and dangerous effects...for that in such Houses...divers False, Malitious and Scandalous Reports are devised and spread abroad, to the Defamation of His Majestie's Government, and to the Disturbance of the Peace and Quiet of the Realm.
以下是1675年英国国王查尔斯二世发布的一篇反对咖啡的公告。公告说：咖啡馆制造了“邪恶和危险的影响，错误、恶意、谣言性质的报道在这样的环境下产生，并传播到国外，对国家政府进行诽谤，破坏国家的和平和稳定”

The result was a public outcry, for coffee-houses had become central to commercial and political life. When it became clear that the proclamation would be widely ignored and the government's authority thus undermined, a further proclamation was issued, announcing that coffee-sellers would be allowed to stay in business for six months if they paid ￡500 and agreed to swear an oath of allegiance. But the fee and time limit were soon dropped in favour of vague demands that coffee-houses should refuse entry to spies and mischi

ef-makers.
这一公告导致了公众的强烈抗议，因为咖啡馆已经成为商业和政治生活的中心。就在这份公告明显被公众忽视，政府的权威也随之削弱的时候，政府又发表了一份公告，声明如咖啡售卖者缴纳500英镑并同意宣誓效忠，政府允许其从事为期六个月的咖啡售卖生意。但是在模糊的需求的支持下，对于自由和时间的限制很快就被放弃了，这种模糊的要求就是咖啡馆应该拒绝间谍和挑拨离间人入内。

Dark rumours of plots and counter-plots swirled in London's coffee-houses, but they were also centres of informed political debate. Swift remarked that he was “not yet convinced that any Access to men in Power gives a man more Truth or Light than the Politicks of a Coffee House.” Miles's coffee-house was the meeting-place of a discussion group, founded in 1659 and known as the Amateur Parliament. Pepys observed that its debates were “the most ingeniose, and smart, that I ever heard, or expect to heare, and bandied with great eagernesse; the arguments in the Parliament howse were but flatte to it.” After debates, he noted, the group would hold a vote using a “wooden oracle”, or ballot-box—a novelty at the time.
造谣和辟谣交织起伦敦咖啡馆的生活，但是这同时是非正式政治论坛的中心斯威夫特这样评论：他“还不相信有任何渠道能比咖啡馆更加真实轻松的谈论政治”。1659年建立的米尔斯咖啡馆是讨论的集会地，被誉为业余议会。佩皮斯注意到，讨论“大多是新颖，机智的，就我所听到的而言，或者是我想听到的内容，都是伟大思想的交换；议会中的论点也只是奉承这里的观点而已”。讨论之后，他指出，成员应该使用“木质的文书”或者选票箱进行投票，这一想法在那时还是很新奇的。

Sweet smell of sedition
甜蜜的诱惑
The contrast with France was striking. One French visitor to London, the Abbé Prévost, declared that coffee-houses, “where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government”, were the “seats of English liberty”. Coffee-houses were popular in Paris, where 380 had been established by 1720. As in London, they were associated with particular topics or lines of business. But with strict curbs on press freedom and a bureaucratic system of state censorship, France had far fewer sources of news than did England, Holland or Germany. This led to the emergence of handwritten newsletters of Paris gossip, transcribed by dozens of copyists and sent by post to subscribers in Paris and beyond. The lack of a free press also meant that poems and songs passed around on scraps of paper, along with coffee-house gossip, were important sources of news for many Parisians.
伦敦与法国的差别十分显著。一位法国游者普雷沃神父来到伦敦，他公开说道：“在哪儿你都有阅读反对政府

的报纸，这就是英国的自由所在。”咖啡馆在巴黎也很流行，1720年共建立了380家咖啡馆。就像在伦敦一样，巴黎的咖啡馆与特定的话题或生意有着密切联系。但是由于对出版自由的控制和国家审查机构的官僚主义作风，相对与英国，荷兰和德国，法国的资源要少的多。这种情况导致了巴黎小道消息都采用手书的形式。由数名抄录人员抄写之后分发给巴黎和其他地方的订阅者。

Little wonder then that coffee-houses, like other public places in Paris, were stuffed with government spies. Anyone who spoke out against the state risked being hauled off to the Bastille, whose archives contain reports of hundreds of coffee-house conversations, noted down by informers. “At the Café de Foy someone said that the king had taken a mistress, that she was named Gontaut, and that she was a beautiful woman, the niece of the Duc de Noailles,” runs one report from the 1720s. Another, from 1749, reads, “Jean-Louis Le Clerc made the following remarks in the Café de Procope: that there never has been a worse king; that the court and the ministers make the king do shameful things, which utterly disgust his people.”
毫无疑问，就像巴黎其他的公共场所，咖啡馆里也充满着政府的间谍。任何发表反政府言论的人都会冒这被投入巴士底监狱的风险，那些被抓起来的人的档案中包含在咖啡馆中上百份由窃听人有记载下来的交谈记录。18世纪20年代的一个报道说“在福伊咖啡馆，有人说国王找了个名叫贡托的新情人，那是个漂亮女人，还是诺爱勒斯公爵的侄女。”另外一份1749年的报道说“让路易斯?克莱尔在普罗科普咖啡馆做了如下的评论：再也没有比这再糟的国王了，法院和大臣让国王做了可耻的事情，人民对此极端反感。“

Those “who assembled day after day in the Café de Procope saw, with penetrating glance, in the depths of their black drink, the illumination of the year of the revolution”
那些“第二天在普罗科普咖啡馆集会的人用极富洞察力的眼光看到，在黑啤酒之底，反射出那年的改革的光芒。”

Despite their reputation as breeding-grounds for discontent, coffee-houses seem to have been tolerated by the French government as a means of keeping track of public opinion. Yet it was at the Café de Foy, eyed by police spies while standing on a table brandishing two pistols, that Camille Desmoulins roused his countrymen with his historic appeal—“Aux armes, citoyens!”—on July 12th 1789. The Bastille fell two days later, and the French revolution had begun. Jules Michelet, a French historian, subsequently noted that those “who assembled day after day in the Café de Procope saw, with penetrating glance, in the depths of their black drink, the illumination of the year of the revolution.”
尽管咖啡馆背负着不满滋

生的土壤的恶名，但是法国政府将咖啡馆作为追踪民意的一种手段，因此好像也容忍了咖啡馆的存在。但是就在福伊咖啡馆，在手拿两把手枪的站在桌子上的警方间谍的注视下，卡米尔?德穆兰鼓激励她的同乡，在1789年7月12日他发出了具有历史意义的呼喊——“同胞们，准备战斗吧！” 两天后巴士底狱被攻陷，法国革命开始了。法国历史学家米西列随后指出那些“第二天在普罗科普咖啡馆集会的人用极富洞察力的眼光看到，在黑啤酒之底，反射出那年的改革的光芒。”

Can the coffee-houses' modern equivalent, the internet, claim to have had such an impact? Perhaps not. But the parallels are certainly striking. Originally the province of scientists, the internet has since grown to become a nexus of commercial, journalistic and political interchange.
在现代与咖啡对等的因特网也能形成这样的影响吗？或许不能。但是因特网的作用一样显著。最开始互联网是科学家的地盘，因特网因此成长壮大并成为连接商业、通讯和政治和结合点。
In discussion groups and chatrooms, gossip passes freely—a little too freely, think some regulators and governments, which have tried and generally failed to rein them in. Snippets of political news are rounded up and analysed in weblogs, those modern equivalents of pamphlets and broadsides. Obscure scientific and medical papers, once available only to specialists, are just clicks away; many scientists explain their work, both to their colleagues and to the public at large, on web pages. Countless new companies and business models have emerged, not many of them successful, though one or two have become household names. Online exchanges and auction houses, from eBayto industry-specific marketplaces, match buyers and sellers of components, commodities and household bric-à-brac.
在群组和聊天室的环境下，流言蜚语自由传播——有点太自由了，想象有些监管者和公务员曾试图控制，但大都失败了。政治新闻的只言片语博客中聚拢分析，就像从前的小册子和公告板。曾经只有专业人士才能读懂的艰涩的科学和医药报告，现在只许轻点鼠标就可扫除障碍。许多科学家要在网页上同时向他们的同行和公众解释他们的工作。无数的新公司和商业模式涌现出现，尽管有一两家公司成为家喻户晓的公司，但是也不是所有的公司都获得了成功。在线交易、拍卖房屋，从eBay到特殊行业的交易市场，这些公司将零件、商品到家用排设的购买者和销售者精妙配合在一起。

Coffee, meet WiFi
The kinship between coffee-houses and the internet has recently been underlined by the establishment of wireless “hotspots” which provide internet access, using a technology called WiFi, in modern-day coffee-shops. T-Mobile, a wireless network operato

r, has installed hotspots in thousands of Starbucks coffee-shops across America and Europe. Coffee-shop WiFi is particularly popular in Seattle—home to both Starbucks and such leading internet firms as Amazon and Microsoft.
Such hotspots allow laptop-toting customers to check their e-mail and read the news as they sip their lattes. But history provides a cautionary tale for those hotspot operators that charge for access. Coffee-houses used to charge for coffee, but gave away access to reading materials. Many coffee-shops are now following the same model, which could undermine the prospects for fee-based hotspots. Information, both in the 17th century and today, wants to be free—and coffee-drinking customers, it seems, expect it to be.
当咖啡遇到无线局域网
最近，在现代的咖啡商店建立无线“热点”突出了咖啡厅和因特网的亲近关系。无线热点是指通过wifi技术提供无线网络接入。无线网络运营商德国电信公司已经在美国和欧洲的数千家星巴克咖啡商店安装了热点。带有wifi的咖啡商店在西雅图十分流行，这里是星巴克以及像亚马逊和微软这样的互联网公司的总部。这种热点可以允许笔记本电脑的使用者在喝咖啡的时候查收邮件、阅读新闻。但是历史为提供收费网络接入的运营商讲述了一个具有劝诫意义的故事。咖啡厅只对咖啡收费，却提供免费的阅读材料。许多咖啡厅都效仿这一模式，这逐渐破坏了基于收费的热点网络接入的前景。无论实在17世纪还是今天，信息应该自由获取——喝咖啡的人看来也有这样的期望。