在互联网出现之前，文字主要存在于印刷品之中。人们在自己的文字中想要引用他人文字的时候，会注明出处 —— 通常包括书名、作者姓名以及引用内容的页码等等。
Before the advent of the Internet, the written word existed primarily in print. So when people wanted to quote someone else’s text in their own, they would cite the source — usually including the book’s title, the author’s, the page number of the quotation, and so on.
也就是说，那时候，文本之间的链接，其实是虚拟的。
That is, at that time, the links between texts were, in fact, virtual.
想要从一个文本之中 “跳” 到另外一个被引用的文本，要参照一段文字 —— 即，那个引用说明 —— 而后，所发生的一切 “实际动作”，都是阅读者自己动手做的：根据书名和作者，找到那本书，翻到那一页……
To “jump” from one text to the quoted text, one has to refer to a text — the description of the source, i.e., citation — and then, the “actual actions” are done by the reader himself: finding that book and turning to that page according to that title and author ……
突然之间，“超链接” 出现了。屏幕里的文字之中，有一些文字下方有下划线 —— 说明那里有超链接”用鼠标点击那些带有下划线，即，含有超链接的文字，读者就可以 “跳” 到另外一个文本之中 —— 无论那个文本在哪里。突然之间，那个链接是一个实在的东西了，而不再是个虚拟的东西了。
Then came the “hyperlinks”. Among the text on the screen, some are underlined，indicating they are hyperlinked. By clicking an underlined text containing a hyperlink, readers can “jump” to another text, wherever that text might be. All of sudden, “links” became pretty natural rather than virtual.
如果文字工作者认真一点的话，一个超链接可以包含很多信息，例如，有些超链接是这样的：当你把鼠标悬停在含有超链接的文字上方的时候，会有附加信息显示出来。这就使得读者多了一个判断，“要不要现在就 ‘跳’ 到另外一个文本上去呢？”
A hyperlink can contain a lot of information if the copywriter is careful. For example, some hyperlinks are such that additional information would be displayed when you hover over the text containing the hyperlink, which leaves the reader with a further judgment, “Should I ‘jump’ to another text now?”
太好了！
Wonderful！
原本，每一篇文字都有个无形的边界，曾经被印刷着它们的纸张明确界定。就好像每篇文章、每本书，都被一个无形的柏林墙围住了一样。可现在，所有的边界都消失了，所有的墙不是被推到了，而是就那样忽然间消失了，就好像它们从来就没有存在过一样。
Every text once had an invisible boundary, clearly defined by the paper on which they were printed. Then, it was as if every article, every book, was enclosed by an invisible Berlin wall. But now, voilà！all walls have disappeared, not collapsed, but just suddenly vanished, as if they never existed.
别高兴得太早…… 因为还有很多很多的墙是如此坚固如此高耸乃至于几十年过去了，它们还在那里。
Don’t get too excited… Because many walls are so high and strong that decades have passed, and they are still there.
电子书里没有超链接！电子书里的超链接都是部分残疾的，它们只能用来在某一本书里跳那么一两下。
No actual hyperlink in the e-book! Hyperlinks in eBooks are all partially disabled, and by clicking them, readers could only jump so far within a particular book.
书籍 —— 不是哪一本，而是 “全部的高质量书籍” —— 才是真正的知识的海洋，与此同时，令人遗憾的是，绝大多数可以让读者们自由访问并在其中跳来跳去的文章，质量极低，如果不把它们称为垃圾（信息）的话。
Books - not just any sigle one, but “all qualified books” - are in effect the ocean of knowledge. Meanwhile, unfortunately, the vast majority of articles that readers can freely access and jump around with are of almost no quality if they are not complete junk (information).
这就是特别诡异的地方：
互联网发展了那么多年，解决了那么多的问题，却在最重要的一个问题上束手无策：
人们可以在垃圾堆里腾挪闪跃，却无法在知识的海洋里任意遨游……
What is particularly bizarre about is:
The Internet has developed for so many years and solved so many problems, yet it is helpless on the most important one of all:
People can freely move around in the garbage, but can’t swim in the ocean of knowledge at will …
那些看不见却又无所不在的墙，叫做 “支付墙”（Paywalls）。
Those invisible yet ubiquitous walls are called “Paywalls”.
每一个出版商都要保护自己每一本书的权益（相信我，有相当数量的作者并不在意自己的版税 —— 或者，起码在一段时间之后就不太在意了……），出版商想要每出售一份拷贝就获取一份利益……
Every publisher wants to protect the rights of each of their books (and believe me, a significant portion of authors don’t care about their royalties — or, at least, don’t care that much after a while…), and publishers want to get a share of every copy sold benefit…
我作为读者买了一本书回来之后发现质量很差，读完绝对是浪费生命…… 怎么办？我只需要一本书中的一小部分，怎么办？我需要的甚至不是阅读，只不过是 “核实验证” 而已怎么办？书籍里有错误，怎么办？一本好书里有少许印刷错误，我想帮忙改一下，怎么办？出版商并不关心，反正，它已经赚到了属于它的那一份。
As a reader, I bought a book and only found out the quality was so poor that it was an absolute waste of life to read on… So What? What if I only need a small part of a book? What if what I need is not even reading, but just “verification”? What about books with errors? What about a good book that has a few typos, and I want to help correct them? Publishers doesn’t care. They have earned their shares anyway.
…… 更不用提我们作为读者的那个迫切需求：想要无所不达。
… Not to mention the urgent need we have as readers: the desire to reach everything.
还有更头疼的，由于巴别塔终究没有建成，按照上帝的意愿，地球上的几十亿人口使用无数种语言…… 比如，我的母语就是中文而非英文。
More headaches persist, as the Tower of Babel was not built after all, according to God’s will, billions of people on earth speak countless languages… For example, my native language is Chinese instead of English.
尤其是在中文文本中看到人名、地名、书名的时候，必然产生无法解决的疑惑。斯蒂夫和史蒂夫可能并非两个人，巴别塔和巴比塔可能是同一个东西…… 再加上译文之中通常没有超链接，又，即便有超链接也是残疾的又怎样？
Especially when readers see the names of people, places and books in the Chinese text, unresolved doubts are bound to arise. Two different names might not refer to two different people, or two identical names might not refers to the same. What’s more, there are usually no hyperlinks in the translation, and again, even if there are hyperlinks, they are mostly disabled, so what?
过去的 “引用” 和现在的 “超链接”，最重要的作用就在于，它们可以用来 “溯源”。思想通常不是凭空产生的，它们总有来历，总有来由。有时候，重要的思想，哪怕仅仅一个重要的概念，如果脱离了源头，就有可能生成要么毫无意义，要么危害无穷的 “衍生思想”。
The most important role of past “references” and present “hyperlinks” is that they can be used to “trace back” to their origins. Ideas don’t usually come out of thin air; they always came out from somewhere with some reasons. Sometimes, important ideas, even just one important concept, can generate “derivative ideas” that are either meaningless or harmful if they are divorced from their source.
例子太多。为了节省篇幅，只讲一个。比如，“封建” 这个概念，就是一个在中国极为流行的 “忘记了来由所以随处误用进而危险难以衡量” 的概念。
Examples are endless. To save space, only one example mentioned here. The concept of “feudalism” is an extremely popular concept in China, which is “misused everywhere because of its forgotten origin and is therefore too dangerous to measure its impact”.
中国人口中的 “封建”，大多等同于 “落后、不够现代”，而后，最经常被应用的场景是 “对婚姻观念、男女关系或者家庭关系的描述”。“一个人很封建” 的意思与此人的社会角色毫无关系 —— 因为中国历史上就没有过与西方等同的封建制度。
Most Chinese equates “feudal” with “backward or not modern enough”, and then, the most frequently applied scenario is “the description of the concept of marriage, man-woman relationship or family relationship “. The meaning of “a person is feudal” has nothing to do with his or her social role — because China has never historically had a feudal system equivalent to that of the West.
在娱乐八卦文章中，“来历” 不重要，甚至必须无所谓，否则就失去了传播的乐趣。可当我们面对知识的时候，显然并非如此。
In entertainment gossip articles, the “origin” does not matter, or even must not matter, otherwise what’s the point of communication? But when confronted with knowledge, it is clear that this is not the case.
除了书籍之外，知识的海洋里有更重要的海域，学术论文 —— 支付墙的重灾区。
Besides books, there are more important seas in the ocean of knowledge, the Academic papers — the hardest hit by the “paywall”.
Алекса́ндра Аса́новна Элбакя́н，1988 年 6 月出生。你应该认识她 —— 我是说，如果在此之前你不知道她是谁，那么，你应该花一点时间去了解，她是位英雄。或者起码去 Google 一下 “How Sci-Hub breaks the paywall”。
Алекса́ндра Аса́новна Элбакя́н, born in June 1988. You should know her — I mean, if you didn’t know who she was before then, you should take a little time to find out, she’s a hero. Or at least Google “How Sci-Hub breaks the paywall”.
很多人误以为艾尔巴克燕（Элбакя́н, or Elbakyan）是个盗版传播分子。其实不然。问题就摆在那里 —— 支付墙阻碍了科学研究的进展 —— 版权世界里的 “封建制度” 就是应该被推翻，而她只是按照自己的方式做了而已。
Many people mistakenly believe that Elbakyan (Элбакя́н, or Elbakyan) is a pirate distributor. She’s not. The problem is there - the paywall is blocking the progress of scientific research - and the “feudalism” in the world of copyright should be overthrown, she just did it in her own way.
当然，免费和自由不是一回事儿。即免费又自由，经济上就很难持续 —— 事实上，这并不是盗版的问题，而是经济模型的问题。
Of course, free of charge and that of restriciton are not the same thing. Anything free of charge and of restrction, is not economically sustainable — in fact, it’s not a problem of piracy, but of economic models.
（等着吧，早晚有一天，连空气都可能不一定是是免费和自由的 —— 新冠病毒可能提供了一个这样的线索……）
(Sooner or later, even the air may not always be free of charge and of restriction — the Covid virus may provide a clue to this annoying outcome…)
真正的解决方案大抵上应该是改变图书售卖模式。比如，用图书馆的模式，而不是单本售卖的模式。能想到的出版商之间的利润分配方式可能是 “按阅读时间” 或者 “按引用数量” 或者它们的组合，当然，还可以有其他方式加入进来进行组合。
The real solution, by and large, should be to transform the book-selling model. Use the library model, rather than the single book sale model. The profit-sharing options among publishers that come to mind might be “by reading time” or “by numbers of citations” or a combination of the two or even more factors that would follow.
一个面向地球上所有人的图书馆。收藏所有图书、论文…… 且都被多语翻译。
A library for everyone on the planet. All books and papers in the collection are available… and have been translated into as many languages as possible.
由于历史原因，英语成为了当今最主要的 “知识语言”。然而，异常明显的是，如果真正有用知识在用英语表达之后，在足够短的时间里被翻译成多种语言，会有更多的人加入 “对话” —— 我相信总是有很多异常聪明的人并不说英文。现在的机器辅助翻译已经成熟到一定程度，说任何语言的人都可以只多花一点点时间就可以理解任何其他语言。很多时候，我们并不需要 “马上”，“几天之内” 已经足够。
English now has become the dominant “language of knowledge” for historical reasons. However, it is extraordinarily obvious that if useful knowledge is translated into multiple languages in a short enough time after it is expressed in English, more people will join the “conversation” — and I’m sure there will always be plenty of extraordinarily intelligent people out there who don’t speak English. Machine assisted translation has now matured to the point where people who speak any language can understand any other language with just a little more time. More often than not, we don’t need “right away”, “within a few days” is enough.
也就是说，在这样一个图书馆里，“超链接” 可以跨越的，不仅仅是单本书籍或者单篇论文的边界，还可以跨越的是不同语言之间的那堵已经累计建造了几千年甚至上万年的墙。
In other words, in such a library, “hyperlinks” can cross not only the boundaries of a single book or a single paper, but also the walls among different languages that have been built cumulatively for thousands or even tens of thousands of years.
谁能做这样的事情？亚马逊有足够的资源，但它不会做 —— 要做早就做了，它的资源在十多年前就足够做这事儿的了，但，它就是不做。为什么？因为对它来说没必要。它是 “版权封建制度” 的受益者，所以，只能是它的保护者。
Who could do something like this? Amazon has enough resources, but it won’t do it — it would have done it long ago, and it had enough resources to do it more than a decade ago, but it just won’t do it. Why? Because it’s not necessary for it. It is the beneficiary of the “copyright feudalism”, so it can only be its protector.
真的希望有人能跳出来做这样的事情。作为一个这样的图书馆的 “馆长”，可比地球上所有的大学校长厉害多了…… 绝大多数大学的 “校长” 其实只不过是房地产公司的总经理而已。
Really wish someone would jump in and do something like this. Being a “director” of such a library is much more powerful, and, especially, meaningful than all the university presidents on the planet, vast majority of whom are actually nothing more than a CEO of a real estate company.
早晚会的。
Sooner or later, someone will.
注：图片引用自网络，https://bit.ly/3pamiRm