In the fall of 2007, my parents gave me an unforgettable gift for my sixteenth birthday: a first-generation iPhone.

在2007年秋天，我的父母为我16岁生日给了我一个难忘的礼物：第一代iPhone。

I still clearly remember watching the keynote in which Steve Jobs announced the first Apple-branded phone a few months earlier. As a teenager attending high school in my hometown of Vicenza, Italy, I tuned into the livestream just before dinner, carefully listening to every word he said. That evening, Jobs started announcing a “widescreen iPod with touch controls”, a “revolutionary mobile phone” and a “breakthrough Internet communications device”–theatrically pausing before confessing that he was actually talking about one single device: the iPhone. Thousands of miles away from me, you could hear attendees exploding cheerfully through the live feed. Jobs went on demoing this amazing invention that, a decade later, would end up changing much more than the mobile phones market: it directly or indirectly impacted our society through mobile web, app stores, changing work-life balance, and social media.

我仍然清楚地记得看过几个月前史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)宣布首款苹果品牌手机的主题演讲。 当我十几岁的时候在我的家乡意大利维琴察(Vicenza)上高中时，我正好在晚餐前收听直播，仔细听他说的每个字。 那天晚上，乔布斯开始宣布“带触摸控制的宽屏iPod”，“革命性的移动电话”和“突破性的互联网通信设备”，在承认自己实际上是在谈论单个设备：iPhone之前，戏剧性地暂停了播放。 在距我数千英里的地方，您可以听到与会者在现场直播中欢快地爆炸。 乔布斯继续演示了这一惊人的发明，十年后，它最终将带来比移动电话市场更大的变化：它通过移动网络，应用程序商店，不断变化的工作与生活平衡以及社交媒体直接或间接地影响了我们的社会。

October came, and so did the day I finally got my iPhone. I was really excited as I was the first one in my social circle with one. Every other teenager (and adult!) that saw my phone reacted in awe and with lots of curiosity. More than a few were also secretly envious, something I secretly did not mind. To add to the novelty, at the time the iPhone was only available for sale in the US.

10月到了，我终于拿到iPhone的那一天也到了。 当我成为社交圈中的第一个朋友时，我感到非常兴奋。 看到我的手机的每个其他少年(和成人！)都表现出敬畏和好奇心。 也有许多人暗中嫉妒，我暗中不介意。 更新颖的是，当时iPhone仅在美国发售。

To get an iPhone for me, my father had to ask a friend traveling to New York on a business trip to bring one back on the plane with her. That was not the end of it, however, as all phones were locked to the AT&T network. In order for me to be able to use my iPhone in Italy, I had to unlock it.

为了给我买一部iPhone，我父亲不得不请一个出差去纽约的朋友带她回到飞机上。 但是，这还没有结束，因为所有电话都被锁定在AT＆T网络上。 为了使我能够在意大利使用iPhone，我必须将其解锁。

That process required learning a variety of tools and techniques developed by hackers in the community, then documented in various blogs and forums. The first step was to jailbreak the phone, which gave you full access to the system and allowed you to run third-party apps. Then you’d have add one of those “hacking” apps to your phone, which patched the bootloader to remove the lock the US carrier had put on it. Despite sounding like a mouthful, the iPhone hacking community had worked hard on the User Experience (UX), making this entire process relatively easy for most people with basic tech skills.

该过程需要学习社区黑客开发的各种工具和技术，然后在各种博客和论坛中进行记录。 第一步是让手机越狱，这使您可以完全访问系统，并可以运行第三方应用程序。 然后，您需要在手机中添加其中一个“黑客”应用程序，从而对引导加载程序进行了修补，以取消美国运营商对其施加的锁定。 尽管听上去很不切实际，但iPhone黑客社区在用户体验(UX)方面一直很努力，这使整个过程对于大多数具有基本技术技能的人来说都相对容易。

I really loved my shiny, new iPhone, and I was so excited about it that I was willing to accept many of its original limitations. It only supported slow 2G networks, didn’t have copy/paste, couldn’t transfer files via Bluetooth to my friends, and famously didn’t support Adobe Flash, which was ubiquitous on the web at the time.

我真的很喜欢我闪亮的新iPhone，对此我感到非常兴奋，以至于我愿意接受它的许多原始限制。 它仅支持慢速2G网络，没有复制/粘贴，无法通过蓝牙将文件传输给我的朋友，并且著名的是不支持Adobe Flash(当时在网络上无处不在)。

However, there was one thing I really couldn’t stand: the Messages application could only store 1,000 texts (SMS).

但是，我确实无法忍受一件事：“消息”应用程序只能存储1,000个文本(SMS)。

That was 2007 — before the days of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, etc. Instant messaging was something people did on their PCs only, with things like Windows Live Messenger (née MSN Messenger) or AIM.

那是2007年-在WhatsApp，Facebook Messenger，Telegram等时代之前。即时消息仅是人们在PC上所做的事情，例如Windows Live Messenger(即MSN Messenger)或AIM。

For a high schooler like me, text messaging was the main way I kept in touch with my friends daily (what was I supposed to do, call them?). With my carrier giving me a whopping 100 free texts per day (seriously, we had to pay for them), between sent and received texts it would take less than a week to reach the storage limit of 1,000.

对于像我这样的高中生来说，短信是我每天与朋友保持联系的主要方式(我应该怎么做，称呼他们？ )。 由于承运商每天给我提供多达100篇免费文本(严重的是，我们必须付费)，因此在发送和接收文本之间，不到1000个星期即可达到1,000个存储限制。

That’s when it all started.

那就是一切开始的时候。

Because my iPhone was already “hacked” (jailbroken), as a requirement for unlocking it and use it in Italy, I had full system access already. That allowed me to c extract any document I wanted, including my phone’s text message database.

由于我的iPhone已被“黑客入侵”(越狱)，这是在意大利解锁和使用它的要求，因此我已经拥有完整的系统访问权限。 这样一来，我就可以提取所需的任何文档，包括手机的短信数据库。

It wasn’t even a month since I got my iPhone that I had already built a small “app” running on my laptop to archive my text messages forever. I would manually extract the SMS database from my iPhone, copy it to my laptop, then use a set of scripts written in PHP (the only programming language I knew at the time) to store the messages in a local database, and finally display them using a web-based interface.

自从我得到iPhone以来，甚至还不到一个月，我已经在笔记本电脑上运行了一个小型“应用程序”，用于永久存储我的短信。 我会从iPhone中手动提取SMS数据库，将其复制到笔记本电脑中，然后使用一组用PHP编写的脚本(当时我所知道的唯一编程语言)将消息存储在本地数据库中，最后显示它们使用基于Web的界面。

This thing I put together worked just fine for me, but I immediately realized the “business potential” of what I had just created. Just like myself, I assumed many others had the same annoyance. I could have used what I learned to help them too, and maybe make some pocket change in the process. As a matter of fact, I did consider myself an enterprising teenager.

我放在一起的东西对我来说很好，但是我立即意识到我刚刚创造的“商业潜力”。 就像我一样，我认为许多其他人也有同样的烦恼。 我本可以用我学到的东西来帮助他们，也许在此过程中做些零花钱。 事实上，我确实认为自己是一个进取心的少年。

The idea had potential, and the “app” I built for myself already provided solid foundations, so I just needed to do a bit more work to turn it into a commercially-viable project.

这个想法很有潜力，我为自己开发的“应用程序”已经奠定了坚实的基础，因此我只需要做更多的工作就可以将其变成具有商业可行性的项目。

The biggest challenge was making the solution more accessible to others, including those who were not particularly tech-savvy. That’s when I started learning about app development for iPhone.

最大的挑战是使解决方案更易于其他人使用，包括那些不是特别精通技术的人。 从那时起，我开始学习iPhone的应用程序开发。

Famously, Apple did not want the iPhone to support third-party apps at the beginning, saying developers should build web apps instead. That policy didn’t last long, and with the iPhone OS 2 update, launched in mid-2008, the official App Store came to life: the rest, as they say, is history.

著名的是，苹果不希望iPhone一开始就支持第三方应用，而是说开发人员应该开发Web应用。 这项政策并没有持续很长时间，随着2008年中推出的iPhone OS 2更新，正式的App Store变得栩栩如生：正如他们所说，剩下的就是历史了。

However, the hacking community had already found a way to sideload apps and had even developed an “app store” called Cydia where you could find games, apps, and even mods to enhance the capabilities of the operating system itself. Cydia came preinstalled on every jailbroken iPhone, which meant potentially hundreds of thousands of people had access to it.

但是，黑客社区已经找到了一种旁载应用程序的方法，甚至开发了一个名为Cydia的“应用程序商店”，您可以在其中找到游戏，应用程序甚至Mod来增强操作系统本身的功能。 Cydia预先安装在每台越狱的iPhone上，这意味着可能有成千上万的人可以使用它。

Everyone could build apps that would be published on Cydia, as long as you knew how to–something that was not remotely as easy to do as it is with today’s tools. As an enterprising teenager with quite a bit of free time on my hand during those winter afternoons and evenings, I took on that challenge.

只要您知道如何做，每个人都可以构建将在Cydia上发布的应用程序-远不如今天的工具那么容易做到。 作为一个勇于进取的少年，在那些冬天的下午和晚上，我有很多空闲时间，所以我接受了这一挑战。

The first version of YouArchive.It came out in January 2008.

YouArchive的第一个版本于2008年1月发布。

Today, you would describe YouArchive.It as a cloud service to store iPhone text messages. You could store all your messages in there, then read and search them using a web-based application.

今天，您将把YouArchive描述为一种存储iPhone短信的云服务。 您可以将所有消息存储在此处，然后使用基于Web的应用程序阅读和搜索它们。

There’s still a video left on YouTube showing the application in action (this was the third, and last, version):

YouTube上还有一个视频，显示正在运行的应用程序(这是第三个也是最后一个版本)：

With YouArchive.It came an iPhone application too. Published on the Cydia app store, it allowed importing messages into the “cloud service” directly from the phone.

有了YouArchive，它也提供了iPhone应用程序。 发布在Cydia应用商店上，它允许直接从手机将消息导入“云服务”。

YouArchive.It was free to use with a limit of 80,000 text messages. Because personal communications can be sensitive, all messages were stored encrypted. With a one-time payment of just €5 (about $6), you could become a VIP, remove any limit and enjoy unlimited storage.

YouArchive。它是免费使用的，最多可发送80,000条短信。 由于个人通信可能很敏感，因此所有消息均以加密方式存储。 只需支付5欧元(约合6美元)的一次性付款，您就可以成为VIP，消除任何限制并享受无限的存储空间。

For the next year and a half, YouArchive.It continued to grow organically. A few blogs and websites dedicated to iPhone “hacking” and to the underground app stores wrote about the app. Even a small radio program in the US featured it

在接下来的一年半中，YouArchive继续有机增长。 一些专门针对iPhone“黑客”和地下应用商店的博客和网站都写了有关该应用的文章。 甚至美国的一个小型广播节目都以它为特色

I continued developing the app as a side project while in high school. I was also providing tech support and maintaining the infrastructure.

高中时，我继续开发该应用程序作为附带项目。 我还提供技术支持和维护基础架构。

Listening to users’ feedback, I would periodically add new features. YouArchive.It started displaying emojis as soon as the iPhone supported that (outside of Japan, it required downloading an app to enable them). Users asked for and got the ability to restore texts in another iPhone, before iCloud was available. I also implemented other privacy features such as requiring a password to open the mobile app.

我会听取用户的反馈，定期添加新功能。 YouArchive：一旦iPhone支持，它就开始显示表情符号(在日本以外的地区，需要下载一个应用程序才能启用它们)。 在iCloud可用之前，用户要求并能够在另一部iPhone中还原文本。 我还实现了其他隐私功能，例如要求密码才能打开移动应用程序。

What I didn’t realize at the time, however, is that I had, unknowingly and unwillingly, built a spying tool, and a really convenient and efficient one.

但是，当时我没有意识到的是，我在不知不觉中并且不情愿地构建了一个间谍工具，并且确实是一个便捷而有效的工具。

Enough users were paying the fee to become VIP that I could cover the costs of running the service–this was before everyone was using Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, so I was renting a co-located physical server which wasn’t cheap–and keep some pocket cash. Not much, but enough to pay for some hobbies and outings with friends.

足够多的用户支付了成为VIP的费用，我可以支付运行该服务的费用-这是在每个人都使用Amazon Web Services或Microsoft Azure之前，因此我租用了一个并不便宜的主机托管物理服务器，并且保留一些零用钱。 数量不多，但足以支付与朋友的一些爱好和郊游费用。

Most importantly, building YouArchive.It gave me a lot of satisfaction and the opportunity to learn a lot of things about software development, business, dealing with customers and listening to their feedback.

最重要的是，构建YouArchive。它给了我很多满足感和机会，使我有机会学习有关软件开发，业务，与客户打交道以及倾听客户反馈的许多知识。

When I finally shut the service down, in June 2010, YouArchive.It had about 32,000 registered users who stored over 76 million messages.

当我最终关闭该服务时，2010年6月，YouArchive拥有约32,000个注册用户，存储了超过7,600万条消息。

The first, and stated, reason for the deprecation was a technical one: YouArchive.It’s iPhone app required using private APIs, which meant it could not be published on the App Store (and it still couldn’t to this day), limiting it to jailbroken phones only.

第一个被拒绝的原因是技术上的原因：YouArchive。它是需要使用私有API的iPhone应用，这意味着它无法在App Store上发布(并且至今仍无法发布)，因此受到限制只能越狱的手机。

The second reason however was the most important to me, even though I have not revealed it until now.

然而，第二个原因对我来说是最重要的，尽管到目前为止我还没有透露。

About a year before the app closed, in April 2009 I implemented a new feature that was requested by many users: the ability to upload texts automatically, in background, without user intervention. For paying “VIP” users only, the mobile app could automatically send all new text messages to YouArchive.It, as often as every 15 minutes.

在该应用关闭前大约一年，我于2009年4月实现了许多用户要求的一项新功能：能够在后台自动上传文本，而无需用户干预。 仅适用于付费“ VIP”用户，该移动应用程序可以每15分钟自动将所有新短信发送到YouArchive。

Automatic upload was an incredible convenience for many users that wanted to hoard their texts like me, to keep them forever, search within them, print or export them, or just liked having a backup.

对于许多想要像我一样收藏自己的文本，永久保存它们，在其中搜索，打印或导出它们，或者只是喜欢备份的用户而言，自动上传给他们带来了难以置信的便利。

What I didn’t realize at the time, however, is that I had, unknowingly and unwillingly, built a spying tool, and a really convenient and efficient one.

但是，当时我没有意识到的是，我在不知不觉中并且不情愿地构建了一个间谍工具，并且确实是一个便捷而有效的工具。

Thanks to background uploads, people could install the YouArchive.It app on another person’s iPhone, set it up, maybe even hide it (something possible on a jailbroken iPhone), and then watch as the text messages come in, almost real-time. Jealous partners, stalkers and the likes could install this tool on an unknowing victim’s phone with relative ease.

借助后台上传功能，人们可以在另一个人的iPhone上安装YouArchive.It应用程序，进行设置，甚至将其隐藏(在越狱的iPhone上可能如此)，然后几乎实时地观看短信的传入。 嫉妒的伴侣，缠扰者等可以相对容易地在不知情的受害者的电话上安装此工具。

I can’t remember how I discovered that — it might have been a support request from a user or a post in a bulletin board. I also can’t know how many people were using YouArchive.It for their own archiving rather than to spy on others. Realizing what my users were doing, however, made me feel really uncomfortable and I did not want any part of that anymore.

我不记得我是怎么发现的-它可能是用户的支持请求或公告板上的帖子。 我也不知道有多少人在使用YouArchive，这是他们自己存档而不是监视他人的档案。 但是，意识到用户正在做的事情，让我感到非常不舒服，因此我不再想要任何事情。

As a senior in high school, barely eighteen years-old, I realized for the first time how technology can have a dark side, and how it’s often in our hands, as developers or other creators of technological solutions, to account for unintended consequences.

作为一名只有18岁的高中生，我第一次意识到技术会带来阴暗的一面，以及作为技术解决方案的开发人员或其他创造者，在我们手中如何经常承担责任，以应对意想不到的后果。

They say that software is eating the world. That was how Marc Andreessen started his famous essay in 2011, and as we read this nine years later, it is something that should resonate with most people.

他们说软件正在吞噬世界。 这就是马克·安德森(Marc Andreessen)于2011年发表他的著名论文的方式，在我们阅读这9年后的今天，这应该引起大多数人的共鸣。

If you never read it, or if you haven’t read it recently, I recommend you pick up Andreessen’s article now. Written in one of the most flourishing times for technology, it is an ode to the utterly enthusiastic and optimistic culture that was shaping Silicon Valley and that brought us the tech giants on which we depend on daily: Google, Facebook, Uber, Twitter, Apple, etc (some of these companies had been around for decades, but started expanding significantly again during those years). In Andreessen’s mind, just like in the minds of many others in the same environment and time, a software-controlled future was not only happening and imminent (as history proved him right), but also idyllic. Technology was to be the great force that solved all of the world’s problems, and Silicon Valley was to be the place where that would begin.

如果您从未阅读过它，或者您最近从未阅读过它，建议您立即阅读Andreessen的文章。 它是在技术最繁荣的时期之一写的，这是对正在塑造硅谷的热情而乐观的文化的颂歌，它为我们带来了我们日常赖以生存的科技巨头：Google，Facebook，Uber，Twitter，Apple等等(其中一些公司已经存在了几十年，但在那几年又开始显着扩张)。 在安德森(Andreessen)的脑海中，就像在同一环境和同一时间的许多其他人的脑海一样，软件控制的未来不仅正在发生和迫在眉睫(历史证明他是正确的)，而且还是田园诗般的。 技术将成为解决世界所有问题的强大力量，而硅谷将成为解决这一问题的起点。

As tech companies were “moving fast and breaking things” while working towards “making the world a better place”, they were disregarding the potential side effects of their innovations. Just like me when I created my text message archival app, they failed to consider how their products and services could be misused by some individuals, or negatively impact groups of people, or even cause large-scale socioeconomic shifts.

随着科技公司在“快速发展，打破常规”的同时努力“使世界变得更美好”，他们忽略了创新的潜在副作用。 就像我创建我的短信存档应用程序一样，他们没有考虑到某些人可能会滥用他们的产品和服务，或者对人群产生负面影响，甚至导致大规模的社会经济变化。

Perhaps few examples of how unintended consequences caused harm to real people, sometimes even up to death are as strong as what we see with social media.

也许很少有例子能像我们在社交媒体上看到的那样，说明意想不到的后果如何造成对真实人的伤害，有时甚至导致死亡。

There are already countless essays arguing how companies like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter have failed us all, us humans, and have invoked for them to be shut down; this article isn’t one of them. I do think that generally social media has the potential to do good things: personally, I appreciate how Facebook and Instagram let me keep in touch with my family in another continent.

已经有无数的文章争论诸如Facebook，Instagram，Twitter之类的公司如何使我们所有人，我们人类失败，并呼吁将其关闭。 本文不是其中之一。 我确实认为，一般而言，社交媒体有潜力做一些好事：就我个人而言，我很欣赏Facebook和Instagram如何让我与另一大陆的家人保持联系。

I have no doubt that the people building those platforms are good people, with positive intentions. If anything, their only sin is an excess of optimism and trust in the fact that humans always have the best intentions at heart. While that’s true for most of the people, most of the time, sadly it isn’t always the case.

我毫不怀疑，建立这些平台的人是善良的人，有着积极的意愿。 如果有的话，他们唯一的罪过就是过度乐观和信任，因为人类始终具有最佳的意图。 尽管对于大多数人来说都是如此，但在大多数情况下，可惜并非总是如此。

The “like” button, in its various declinations, was meant as a fun way to engage with content our friends posted online. Its unintended consequences included creating a world in which everyone is compelled to always portray themselves under the best possible light, and living a life full of beautiful objects, exotic trips, intriguing adventures. These fun distractions turn into comparing our own life with what we perceive as other people’s perfect existences and make us feel anxious and depressed.

“喜欢”按钮的形式各不相同，是一种有趣的方式来与我们的朋友在线发布的内容进行互动。 它带来的意想不到的后果包括创造一个每个人都必须始终在最好的光线下进行自我描绘的世界，并过着充满美丽物品，充满异国情调的旅行，有趣的冒险的生活。 这些有趣的分心使我们将自己的生活与我们认为他人的完美生活相提并论，使我们感到焦虑和沮丧。

To start, we need to abandon the assumption that technological innovation is always, necessarily good.

首先，我们需要放弃这样的假设，即技术创新始终是必然的。

On social media, people tend to create “echo chambers”, in which people surround themselves only with those who think alike. This causes increased ideological polarization, with consequent political destabilization of societies, as well as more unhappiness. Facebook’s solution to the privacy scandals of 2016, including the Cambridge Analytica situation, was to double-down on their groups feature, which are just amplifying reinforcement biases and polarization of thinking.

在社交媒体上，人们倾向于创建“回声室”，在该回声室中，人们仅与有相同想法的人包围。 这导致意识形态两极分化加剧，随之而来的是社会政治动荡，以及更多的不幸。 Facebook解决2016年隐私丑闻(包括Cambridge Analytica情况)的解决方案是加倍其小组功能，这只是在放大强化偏见和思维分化。

One of the biggest virtues of social media is their ability to support free speech. A constitutionally-protected right in every country around the world, at least in democratic ones, its defense is a noble cause. However, they also provided a platform to spread misinformation, foreign state-sponsored propaganda, disproved conspiracy theories, and lies that can be outright harmful to people, such as false and unproven medical treatment. Italian writer, philosopher, and Nobel Prize laureate Umberto Eco famously called social media “the invasion of the idiots”.

社交媒体的最大优点之一是其支持言论自由的能力。 世界上每个国家，至少在民主国家中，都有一项受宪法保护的权利，其辩护是一项崇高的事业。 但是，它们还提供了一个平台，以传播错误信息，外国政府赞助的宣传，被证实的阴谋论以及可能完全对人有害的谎言，例如虚假和未经证实的治疗。 意大利作家，哲学家和诺贝尔奖获得者翁贝托·埃科(Umberto Eco)都将社交媒体称为“白痴的入侵” 。

What’s worse is that the algorithms that control what we see on websites like Facebook and YouTube feed us with content that is more and more extreme and polarizing and provide free amplification to a lot of harmful content. Those algorithms were designed to recommend content based on what users seem to enjoy consuming, with the ultimate goal of driving more user engagement: if you watch lots of aviation-related videos, you’ll see more stuff about airplanes; likewise, if you follow lifestyle bloggers/vloggers, you’ll see more of that content. However, over time certain actors mastered techniques to game the way algorithms work, and push content to users that drives their own agenda; a clear example is RT, or Russia Today, a channel affiliated with the Russian government that spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories on YouTube.

更糟糕的是，控制我们在Facebook和YouTube等网站上看到的内容的算法为我们提供了越来越极端和两极分化的内容，并免费放大了许多有害内容。 这些算法旨在根据用户似乎喜欢的消费来推荐内容，其最终目标是提高用户参与度：如果您观看许多与航空有关的视频，您将看到有关飞机的更多信息； 同样，如果您关注生活方式博客/ vlogger，您将看到更多这些内容。 但是，随着时间的流逝，某些参与者会掌握一些技巧来玩算法的工作方式，并将内容推送给用户来驱动他们自己的议程。 一个明显的例子是RT(即俄罗斯今日)，这是与俄罗斯政府有关联的频道，可在YouTube上传播错误信息和阴谋论。

It does not have to be as grim as it looks.

它不必看起来很冷酷。

In fact, there’s a lot that the people who are creating new things can do: software developers, product managers, inventors, startup founders, hobbyists… Everyone who is driving the innovation can, and should, take action to ensure that technology has a positive impact on the world, not just on average but at a wholesome.

实际上，创造新事物的人们可以做很多事情：软件开发人员，产品经理，发明家，初创公司创始人，业余爱好者……每个推动创新的人都可以并且应该采取行动，确保技术具有积极意义。对世界的影响，不仅是平均的，而且是有益于健康的。

To start, we need to abandon the assumption that technological innovation is always, necessarily good.

首先，我们需要放弃这样的假设，即技术创新始终是必然的。

Just because something can be built, it doesn’t mean it should be built. We should begin by stopping and considering how the innovation we are working on could be misused, or how it could come with negative externalities. This is an exercise that software developers tend to be naturally good at, given that considering every possible scenario and every what-if’s around something is a necessity when writing code. A healthy amount of cynicism could be helpful in this case: starting with the assumption that if something could be misused, then it will be misused by some people.

仅仅因为可以构建某些东西，并不意味着应该构建它。 我们应该首先停止并考虑我们正在从事的创新如何被滥用，或者它如何带来负面的外部影响。 考虑到在编写代码时必须考虑每种可能的情况以及周围的各种假设，这是软件开发人员自然会擅长的一种练习。 在这种情况下，保持一定程度的愤世嫉俗可能会有所帮助：首先假设，如果某些东西可能被滥用，那么某些人就会滥用它。

Sometimes the potential for abuse is rather clear, or it should be. The creators of the anonymous messaging app Yik Yak, which for a bit was all the rage on college campuses, should have seen the wave of bullying and harassment coming. Likewise, it should have been fairly clear how the people-rating app Peeple was going to be misused, even by those who did not watch Black Mirror.

有时，滥用的可能性相当明显，或者应该如此。 匿名消息传递应用程序Yik Yak的创建者应该已经看到了欺凌和骚扰的浪潮， Yik Yak在大学校园里风行一时。 同样，即使没有看过《黑镜》的人，也应该很清楚人们评价应用Peeple是如何被滥用的。

Sometimes, instead, the potential for abuse more subdued, and careful thinking and planning is required to account for all unintended consequences. These are the situations in which “moving fast and breaking things” is actually your enemy. This way of working, the norm in many Venture Capital-funded startups, often causes creators to put growth before everything, and is the opposite of adopting a responsible amount of mindfulness.

有时，相反，滥用的可能性更加减弱，需要认真思考和计划以解决所有意料之外的后果。 在这些情况下，“快速行动和破坏事物”实际上是您的敌人。 这种工作方式是许多由风险投资资助的初创公司的常态，通常使创作者将增长置于一切之上，与采取负责任的正念相反。

Instead, you should instead validate your idea, discuss it with others, and while testing prototypes, define meaningful KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) that look at the impact outside of your business goals too. For example, if the sole KPI is user engagement, you could end up writing algorithms that promote polarizing content which tends to be more addicting, but not necessarily positive for the society.

相反，您应该验证您的想法，与他人讨论，然后在测试原型时，定义有意义的KPI(关键绩效指标)，这些指标也要考虑业务目标之外的影响。 例如，如果唯一的KPI是用户参与度，那么您最终可能会编写算法来促进两极分化的内容，这往往更容易上瘾，但不一定对社会有利。

Of course, there will be cases in which we’ll miss things, as hindsight only works backwards. To limit damage and prevent problems from spreading further than needed, creators should periodically re-assess how their solution is having an impact in the broadest sense. Keeping a humble and open mind, or in other terms assuming a “growth mindset”, helps continuously learning and finding surprising things. With constant learning, it’s possible to identify opportunities to course-correct and resolve the issues, real or potential, that could lead to our creations to be misused.

当然，在某些情况下，我们会错过某些事情，因为事后看来只会倒退。 为了限制损害并防止问题蔓延到超出所需的范围，创作者应定期重新评估其解决方案在最广泛的意义上如何产生影响。 保持谦虚开放的心态，或者换句话说，假设自己具有“成长型思维”，有助于不断学习和发现令人惊讶的事物。 通过不断的学习，可以找到机会纠正和解决实际或潜在的问题，这些问题可能导致我们的创作被滥用。

Sometimes that involve simple design changes, for example aimed at making users more in control: looking back, I could have limited the possibility of using my app from ten years ago as a spying tool by displaying a notification every time text messages were being uploaded. Recognizing how much of a cesspool the YouTube comment section can be, Google tried to force people to use real names when commenting on videos in 2013, but quickly reverted the change after facing significant backlash–possibly because the move was designed more as an imposition of their ill-fated Google+ social network than something to actually help the community grow healthier.

有时涉及简单的设计更改，例如旨在使用户更好地控制：回顾过去，我可以限制每次使用短信时都会显示通知，从而限制了十年前使用我的应用作为间谍工具的可能性。 如何认识一个粪坑YouTube的注释部分可以是多，谷歌试图迫使人们在2013年评论视频时使用实名，但很快就面临显著后恢复的改变反弹-可能因为此举的目的更多是为了拼版他们命运多Google的Google+社交网络远不能真正帮助社区变得更健康。

However, in other situations doing the most ethical thing might require taking painful actions too, such as pivoting an idea or shutting something down entirely. On this subject, the final episode of HBO’s Silicon Valley show was beautiful, by the way–but I won’t spoil it for you any more than this!

但是，在其他情况下，做最符合道德的事情可能也需要采取痛苦的行动，例如，提出想法或完全关闭某件事。 关于这一主题，顺便说一句，HBO的硅谷电视节目的最后一集很漂亮，但我不会为您宠坏它！

Thankfully, the topic of ethics is getting more and more relevant in software development, and it’s now something that’s taught in college campuses too. We need a new generation of creators that are more attentive to the issues that technology can cause, and not just those it can solve; this includes being more cautious and carefully account for unintended consequences.

值得庆幸的是，伦理学的话题在软件开发中变得越来越重要，现在在大学校园里也讲授了这一话题。 我们需要新一代的创造者，他们更关注技术可能引起的问题，而不仅仅是技术可以解决的问题。 这包括更加谨慎并仔细考虑意外后果。

The conversation is also getting more mainstream, as individuals are starting to keep tech companies more accountable for their actions. At the same time, governments are (slowly, but steadily) stepping in to regulate those companies’ behavior when they believe society is being harmed: examples include protection of labor and privacy rights.

随着个人开始让科技公司对其行为负责，这种对话也变得越来越主流。 同时，当政府认为社会受到损害时，政府正在(缓慢但稳步地)介入以规范这些公司的行为：例如保护劳工和隐私权。

Tech workers themselves are starting to wake up to the importance of their role, and are now speaking out, with ever-increasing frequency and passion. Employees at companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc, have raised their voices and staged walkouts to demand their organizations to do better at all kinds of things that matter to them, including: promoting diversity and inclusion in their workplace and in the world, protecting human rights globally, protesting the sale of their technology to the military or other organizations perceived as unethical, etc.

科技工作者本身已经开始意识到自己角色的重要性，并且现在以越来越高的频率和热情大声疾呼。 Google，Facebook，Microsoft等公司的员工表达了自己的声音，并进行了罢工，要求其组织在与他们有关的所有事情上做得更好，包括：在工作场所和世界范围内促进多样性和包容性；在全球范围内保护人权，抗议将其技术出售给被认为不道德的军事或其他组织，等等。

These good changes are hopefully the start of something bigger, a moment in which every creator is putting ethical considerations up and front.

希望这些良好的变化是更大的起点，每个创造者都将道德考虑放在首位。

At the end of the day, in fact, we are all just working to make the world a better place.

实际上，归根结底，我们都在努力使世界变得更美好。