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When I finished journalism school, more than a few years ago, I was given a certificate entitled “Training for Truth”. There has long been a strongly held — but, to many, overblown — belief that the media is the fourth estate. Its purpose is to speak truth to power.
多年前从新闻学院毕业时，我获得了一份标题为“为真理而学”的证书。长期以来，有一种根深蒂固（但对于很多人而言有些夸张）的观点：媒体是第四权(fourth estate)。其宗旨是不畏权势讲真话。
We could endlessly debate how well the media has performed that function. It might take us even longer to agree a satisfactory definition of truth. But for most of the postwar era, the mainstream media in the Anglo-American world has helped shape the political debate by creating a common national narrative.
对于媒体在履行这项职能方面表现如何，我们可以无休止地一直辩论下去。要给真理下一个令人满意的定义可能需要更长时间。但对于战后多数时期而言，英美主流媒体通过创建一种共同的国家叙事帮助塑造了政治辩论。
Now, we are told, the atomisation of traditional media and the spread of social networks has meant we all live in our own “filter bubbles”. Technology has eaten the truth. We live in a post-truth world in which we can ignore the facts we do not like and tap into any personalised narrative that we desire.
如今，我们被告知，传统媒体原子化以及社交网络的蔓延意味着，我们都生活在我们自己的“过滤泡沫”中。科技吃掉了真理。我们生活在一个后真理世界，在这个世界里，我们可以忽视自己不喜欢的事实，转向我们喜欢的个性化叙事。
Yet if there is no agreed basis of truth then it is hard to arrive at democratically settled conclusions. As we have seen during the debate on Brexit and in the US presidential campaign, much political argument consists of simply talking past your opponent to appeal to your own data-determined electoral demographic. Experts are dismissed as frauds. Demonstrable lies have no impact or consequence.
然而，如果没有约定的真理基础，就很难通过民主过程得出结论。正如我们在英国退欧辩论以及美国总统竞选中看到的那样，很多政治争论在本质上只是不理会对手的主张，迎合你自己的、由数据决定的选民群体。专家被斥为骗子。可证明的谎言没有任何后果。
Yet the strange paradox of our times is that the truth — however defined — has never been easier to unearth or disseminate. Data are ubiquitous. Life is on the record. Claims and counterclaims can instantly be checked. Technology should at least hold part of the solution.
然而，我们这个时代的奇怪矛盾是，发现和传播真理（不管多么定义）从来没有像现在这样容易。数据无处不在。生活得到全程记录。声称和反声称可以在瞬间得到检查。科技应至少在一定程度上提供解决方案。
Exhibit A supporting the hope that technology can help societies recreate an accepted truth is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. Its mission is to give everyone on the planet free access to the sum of human knowledge in their own language.
人们希望科技能帮助社会重建受到公认的真理，支撑这种希望的一号证据便是在线百科全书维基百科(Wikipedia)。其使命是让地球上的所有人自由获取以本国文字编写的人类知识。
Wikipedia has become such a routine part of our online lives that it is hard to believe it was founded only 15 years ago. Its growth has been remarkable. The non-profit-making collective of tens of thousands of active Wikipedians has created more than 40m articles in 250 languages. With 500m unique users a month, it is one of the top five most visited websites in the world.
维基百科已成为我们在线生活中习以为常的部分，以至于我们很难相信它是在短短15年前创建的。它发展迅猛。这个由几万活跃的维基百科编辑组成的非盈利组织创造了250种文字的4000万篇条目。每月独立用户为5亿，它是全球访问人数最多的5大网站之一。
Its volunteer contributors stick to a neutral point of view and agree among themselves what constitute reliable sources. Academic studies have found that Wikipedia is generally as accurate as professionally edited encyclopedias and has massively more articles.
维基百科的志愿贡献者严守中立观点，并约定什么是可靠来源。学术研究发现，维基百科与专业编辑的百科全书一样准确，而条目多得多。
Check out the entries on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and you will find them to be studiously neutral with more than 1,200 footnoted references between them.
看一看与唐纳德.特朗普(Donald Trump)和希拉里.克林顿(Hillary Clinton)有关的条目吧，你会发现其内容被严格保持中立，总计有超过1200个参考文献注脚。
Wikipedia does, though, possess some glaring flaws. Its contributor base is 85 per cent male, leading to some skewed subject selection and other biases. Entries on male authors tend to be longer than those on female authors, for example.
然而，维基百科确实具有一些明显的缺点。其贡献者85%为男性，这导致出现了一些不公平的主题选择和其他偏见。例如，有关男性作家的条目篇幅往往长于女性作家。
Those devious enough to do so can game the system by poisoning the sources on which Wikipedia relies. The constant re-editing of some entries also means that they can forever remain a work in progress: US President George W Bush’s entry has been edited more than 45,000 times. Truth on Wikipedia is always a malleable commodity.
那些足够狡猾的人可以通过毒化维基百科所依赖的来源来操纵这个系统。一些条目的重新编辑也意味着，它们可能永远是一项进行中的工作：美国前总统乔治•W•布什(George W Bush)的条目被编辑了逾4.5万次。维基百科上的事实永远是一种可塑的商品。
At a recent FT125 Forum event, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, said that one of the “super fascinating” aspects of the community was how it tended to bring people together when there were serious disagreements rather than forcing them apart.
在最近的英国《金融时报》125(FT 125 Forum)论坛上，维基百科创始人吉米.威尔士(Jimmy Wales)表示，维基社区“超有趣”的一面是当出现严重分歧时，它往往会把人们聚在一起，而不是迫使他们分开。
For instance, Ukrainian and Russian Wikipedians, who have written radically different interpretations of the conflict between their two nations, recently met in Kiev to understand their respective views. “It will take some time before they come to a consensus view but we are trying,” he said.
例如，乌克兰和俄罗斯的维基百科编辑（他们对于两国之间冲突的解读截然不同）最近在基辅会面，以交换观点。他表示：“他们要达成共识需要一段时间，但我们正在努力。”
Mr Wales said the site was relatively impartial because it had shunned advertising. Wikipedians wrote entries according to the subject’s interest rather than from any impulse to chase clicks. “We all know that the DNA of any organisation tends to follow the money.”
威尔士表示，这个网站之所以相对不偏不倚，是因为它没有广告。维基百科编辑根据主题的兴趣（而不是追求点击量的驱使）去编写条目。“我们都知道所有组织骨子里都倾向于向钱看。”
Wikipedia’s model has enabled it to create a “temple of the mind”, says its founder but it has resulted in a “terrible, terrible business”, dependent on voluntary contributions. Can others invent more robust platforms?
维基百科创始人表示，它的模式令其能够创建一个“思想殿堂”，但结果是一家“很糟糕的企业”，依赖自愿捐赠。其他人能发明出更稳健的平台吗？
It is said that there are only two forms of innovation: unbundling an industry and rebundling it. The mainstream media has been unbundled but Wikipedia has shown a different way to rebundle our collective intelligence.
据说，只有两种创新形式：拆散一个行业和对其再捆绑。主流媒体已被拆散，但维基百科展示出了一种不同的重新打包人类集体智慧的方式。
The truth is out there. The bigger question is: do we want to hear it?
真理就在那里。更重要的问题是：我们想听吗？
