In the past few decades, Wall Street has made finance a central feature of both the global economy and of our everyday lives – a process often described as “financialisation”. Silicon Valley, almost contemporaneously, has done the same for digital media technologies. That process, too, has a fancy name: “mediatisation”.

过去几十年里，华尔街让金融成为全球经济和我们日常生活的核心特征——这一过程通常被称为“金融化”。几乎在同一期间，硅谷也让数字媒体技术做到了这一点。这一过程也有一个充满想象力的名称：“媒体化”。

With reports that Facebook is seeking to buy a drone-manufacturing company, ostensibly to connect the most remote corners of the globe, the days of blessed disconnection seem firmly behind us.

有报道称，Facebook正寻求收购一家制造无人机的公司，表面看来这会让全球最遥远的角落接入互联网，没有网络连接的美好日子似乎正离我们远去。

Understandably, many social critics find this troublesome, blaming technology for invading our lives. But it is a false target: mediatisation is actually financialisation in disguise. Having disrupted Madison Avenue, the likes of Google and Facebook – armed with better data, better engineers and better databases – will disrupt Wall Street next.

可以理解的是，许多社会评论家发现这让人很烦，并指责技术侵扰了我们的生活。但他们瞄错了靶子：媒体化实际上是伪装的金融化。在颠覆麦迪逊大道（Madison Avenue，美国广告业中心，这里指代广告业，译者注）之后，谷歌(Google)和Facebook等公司接下来将会颠覆华尔街——这些公司拥有更可靠的数据、更优秀的工程师以及更全面的数据库。

Silicon Valley companies sit on a trove of data about our most banal daily pursuits. And the kind of data that they gather will only grow more diverse, as the Faustian bargain that we first accepted in our browsers – letting strangers monitor what we do online in exchange for nominally free services – will be accepted in many other domains, especially as the rise of the “internet of things” makes daily interaction with sensors, screens and other data-capturing devices unavoidable.

硅谷企业掌握了大量关于我们最平凡日常事务的数据。它们搜集的此类数据只会越来越多样化，我们最初在浏览器上接受了“魔鬼交易”——让陌生人监控我们的网络活动以换取名义上免费的服务——接下来我们还将在其他许多领域接受这种交易，尤其是随着“物联网”(internet of things)的兴起，人们与感应器、显示屏等数据收集设备的日常交流不可避免。

There is much to like here. A fridge that not only knows that you are running out of milk but can do something about it sounds empowering. Yet in the longer term there is a more consequential side: sensors and internet connectivity are also turning “dumb” gadgets into powerful vehicles of prediction and speculation. The data they capture can be integrated with data from other gadgets and databases to create new information commodities whose value might eclipse the value of the gadgets used to generate the underlying data. Soon, the devices might even be given away for free.

这里有很多例子。一台电冰箱不仅知道你没牛奶了，而且知道还能为此做些什么，这听起来很给力。但更长期而言，影响更大的是，感应器和互联网连接也在将“沉默的”设备转变为强大的预测和猜测设备。它们收集的数据可以与来自其他设备和数据库的数据整合在一起，从而创造出新的信息商品，这些产品的价值可能远远高于那些生成基础数据的设备的价值。在不久的将来，这些设备甚至可能被免费赠送。

Consider your toothbrush. Armed with a sensor that knows when you are using it, it can detect behaviour patterns – how often you use it (or not use, as the case might be) – that help determine when you should see the dentist. That prediction would be more accurate if some other sensor-equipped gadget – say, a smart fork – knew how much sugar you consumed. The more data-tracking devices are hooked to the network, the more accurate the predictions.

想想你的牙刷。在牙刷上装上一个传感器，这样它就能知道你何时刷牙，从而可以监测你的行为模式——你使用牙刷的频率（或者不使用牙刷的频率，视情况而定），这有助于决定你何时应该去看牙医。如果另一种安装了传感器的设备（比如说智能叉子）能够监测你吃糖的数量，这种预测就会更为准确。联网的数据收集设备越多，预测就越准确。

Needless to say, there is always someone eager to pay for this – and ubiquitous connectivity will also mean ubiquitous and instantaneous data markets. Perhaps there would even be several bidders for such data so that an ad hoc online auction, along the lines Google uses to sell its adverts, is called for.

不用说，始终有人迫切愿意购买这些数据，无处不在的互联网连接也将意味着无处不在且瞬时传递的数据市场。或许还会有多人竞购此类数据，因此有必要举行一场临时的网络拍卖会，这有点像谷歌用来销售广告的方法。

If Amazon can already study your history, predict your purchases and ship them before you even place an order – the online retailer’s “anticipatory shipping” technique – imagine what predictions other data-heavy companies could make.

如果亚马逊(Amazon)已经能够研究你的购物记录，预测出你将购买何种商品，甚至在你下单前就已发货（这就是这家网络零售商的“预先送货”），那么想象一下其他掌握大量数据的公司可能做到什么吧。

For example, in a year or two, Google will be present in your car (thanks to its self-driving vehicles but also to the Android operating system that will power other models); in your bedroom (thanks to its acquisition of Nest, which manufactures smart thermostats and smoke detectors); in your pocket (through Android-powered smartphones); and in your entire visual field (via Google Glass, the wearable camera and screen).

例如，一两年内，谷歌将会在出现在你的汽车里，这不仅归功于其无人驾驶汽车，而且还得益于在其他车型上使用的安卓操作系统；出现在你的卧室里，这归功于它收购了生产智能调温器和烟雾检测器的Nest；它可以通过运行安卓系统的智能手机出现在你的口袋里；最后它还会通过“谷歌眼镜”(Google Glass)、可穿戴摄像机和显示屏出现在你的整个虚拟世界里。

In knowing your routes, your daily patterns and your contacts, Google has a far better picture of risk – for example, the odds that you will have an accident or default on a mortgage – than any insurance company or bank. And, in having unmediated access to you via your phone, Google can also sell you insurance or make you an offer for your personal data on the go, using a price point that you are most likely to accept.

谷歌知道你的出行路线、日常行为模式和交际圈子，因此它比任何保险公司或银行都了解你的风险状况，比如你发生意外或抵押贷款违约的可能性。谷歌还可以不经由任何中介，直接通过你的手机与你联系，向你销售保险或者报价购买你的个人数据，提出一个你最可能接受的价格点。

That the financial value of your personal data is unstable, fluctuating based on your location, health and social status, means the spirit of speculation will not just invade our everyday life but will also make self-surveillance of our “data portfolios” highly appealing. We will resemble the confused analysts of the US National Security Agency: unsure of the future value of the data we generate, we will opt to store them for posterity. And, unsure of how to maximise that value, we will keep adding data streams in the vain hope that the value of our data portfolio (the sum total of our life) will rise.

你的个人数据的金融价值是不稳定的，它会根据你所处位置、健康状况和社会地位的不同而有所波动，这意味着，猜测精神不仅侵入我们的日常生活，而且还会让我们醉心于“数据组合”的自我监测。我们将会像美国国家安全局(NSA)困惑的分析师那样：由于不清楚自身所生成数据的未来价值，而选择把数据储存起来留给后代。此外，由于不清楚如何实现数据价值最大化，我们将会一直增加数据流，幻想自己的数据组合价值（我们一生生成的数据总和）将会上升。

The hope that such precarious data entrepreneurship can mitigate the problems of automation or ease our growing reliance on debt is the utopian conceit of the digital elites. Just because the World Economic Forum argues that personal data are emerging as a new asset class, that does not make it a natural or irreversible development. Nor is this development driven solely by technological innovation: like financialisation, mediatisation is primarily a failure of regulation.

寄望这种危险的数据企业家精神可能缓解自动化问题，或者减轻我们对债务的日渐依赖，只是数字精英们乌托邦式的幻想。正因为世界经济论坛(World Economic Forum)上有观点称，个人数据正在成为一种新的资产类别，媒体化才没有成为一种自然或者不可逆转的发展。媒体化也并非仅仅技术创新的结果：与金融化一样，它主要是监管失败的结果。

Silicon Valley might, indeed, succeed in disrupting Wall Street. Alas, it has shown no real interest in disrupting its long-term agenda of making our lives tick in sync with the speculative logic of finance.

实际上，硅谷可能会成功颠覆华尔街。唉，华尔街的长期议程是让我们的生活与金融界的猜测逻辑同步运行，可硅谷没有表现出任何兴趣来颠覆这种议程。