本篇阅读材料“社交媒体和后隐私社会”选自《卫报》(原文标题：Social media and the post-privacy society 2012.04.03)，如果大家觉得比较简单，就当作泛读材料了解了解，认识几个新单词或新表达方式也不错。如果大家觉得这些材料理解上有难度，不妨当做挑战自己的拔高训练，希望大家都有进步
While having a meal with his wife in his home town of Utica in 2007, the pollster John Zogby struck up a conversation with his 20-year-old waitress about privacy, social networking and YouTube. He asked what limits she set on what she would reveal online.
struck up 使开始;建立起
set limits on 对……加以限制
reveal 展现;显示;揭露
"My boobs," she said. "but only on Halloween, and only for my friends."
"Well," answers Zogby, in account from his book The Way We'll Be. "I'm your friend today, but tomorrow I might not be. Can you stop me from sharing your, um, breasts, with the rest of the world, or with the company you're hoping will hire you?"
"No," she replies, "but so many of us do this in one form or another that employers are just going to have to adjust or they won't have anyone to hire."
As Spring Break draws to a close, the question of what belongs in the public realm and whom it affects becomes agonisingly pertinent to thousands of undergraduates across the country. Spring Break is the annual, formal Bacchanal: the riotous, alcohol-drenched recess that launches scores of "Girls Gone Wild" videos, clogs toilets with condoms and beachside boardwalks with vomit and updates millions of Facebook pages.
Spring Break 春假
public realm 公共领域
pertinent adj. 切题的;中肯的
recess n. 1. [C,U]休息;休会;休庭 2. [C,U]【美】学校的假期;课间休息 v. [T] 1. 把...放在隐蔽处 2. 使凹进，使有凹进处
But five years after Zogby's conversation, people seem to be recalibrating their limits. A report in the New York Times last month suggested an inhibition descending on Spring Break this year. "They are very prudish," said one bartender in Key West. "They are so afraid everyone is going to take their picture and put it online. Ten years ago, people were doingfilthy, filthy things, but it wasn't posted on Facebook." It's a shame they are not having as much as they did or would like to (I'm assuming here that "filthy" is also fun), but if the price for having "filthy fun" is that it is broadcast to anyone who wants to see it, and many who don't, then it's clearly not a price worth paying.
recalibrate v. 重新刻度;再校准
prudish adj. 古板的;装正经的;过分规矩的
assume vt. 1. 以为;假定为;(想当然地)认为 2. 承担;就任;取得 vi. 1. 装腔作势 2. 多管闲事
There are limits to how much candour we can take or expect. With the exception of those in the most intimate parts of my life, I don't really want to know everything that people think about me. Nor do I want to know everything I think about them, or share it. A certain amount of artifice is necessary if we're all going to get through the day.
candour n. 率直;正直;公平
artifice n. 技巧;巧妙;诡计
Increasingly, however, it feels as though those limits are being constantly breached, either voluntarily, accidentally, by force or by cunning. With blogs, tweets, webcams, Facebook and YouTube, there is always a mic or camera somewhere and it is always running. Our personal diaries have become an open book. The era in which we might reasonably expect to enjoy a conversation that is both discrete (separate, apart and autonomous) and discreet (cautious, unobtrusive and delicate) has passed. For the moment at least, we are all living our lives in public.
breach n. & v. 违反;破坏
The personal fallout from all of this is clear and go beyond mere embarrassment. Take Tyler Clementi, the 18-year-old Rutgers student who committed suicide after his roommate, Dharun Ravi, set up a camera in his room to watch Tyler in a gay sexual encounter. Later, Ravi would try the same again and tweet about it to his 150 followers. In the past, such homophobia would have gone no further than malicious gossip – vicious, hurtful and wrong, certainly. But in all likelihood, it would not have been as devastating to Clementi's self-respect – and possibly with less fatal consequences. Throughout the western world, teenagers – particularly, young women – are routinely humiliated by having their indiscretions recorded and sent out to the world.
go beyond 超出;胜过
devastating adj. 毁灭性的;破坏性的
fatal adj. 致命的;毁灭性的
But there are political ramifications, too, even if the consequences of these are less clear-cut. On the one hand, it forces elites out into the open where their deliberations and pronouncements might be judged against their actions. There are clearly benefits to this. The truly awful thing about the incident between then UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Gillian Duffy shortly before the last election was not just that he referred to her as "that bigoted woman" when he was in his car and didn't know the microphone was on. It was that only minutes before, he had told her she was "a very good woman [who had] served the community" when he did know they were on. That gave credence to the popular perception that the political class held voters in contempt. The problem wasn't that he got caught, it was that he did it in the first place.
hold in contempt 对……不屑一顾;轻视
Left there, however, and what we have is not more openness, but more gaffes. Obama and Sarkozy deriding Binyamin Netanyahu, and Obama blabbing his post-election strategy for Russia, or Tony Blair's cringeworthy "Yo, Blair" encounter with George Bush at the G8. Entertaining and illustrative, certainly, but rarely more than that.
But on-mic embarrassment is not the whole story: the revelation of serious information that our rulers would rather we did not have can be compelling. WikiLeaks provides a good example. By redistributing information from the US government to the world, it gave the public an unprecedented insight into US diplomacy. Interestingly, most of what it revealed we might have guessed. But once it was out there, it was difficult for officialdom to deny it and one could argue that these were not their secrets to keep.
redistribute vt. 重新分配;再分配
