【英语社会】世界属于Facebook一代

Last Wednesday at breakfast, my generation discovered that our time is up. I got wind of the news on Tuesday by reading it online but, like most people my age, I never entirely believe something until I see it printed on a large sheet of paper, anachronistically delivered to my door by the paper boy. So for me, the penny did not drop until Wednesday morning that the world now belongs to the generation below mine.

At the bottom of the front page of the Financial Times it said that Facebook is now bigger than Google. In the US, more people now visit the social networking site to write on each other's walls and swap pictures of drunken japes at parties than turn to Google to get travel directions, check the spelling of “definitely” or search for internet porn.

Social networking, it seems to me, is the biggest separator of the young from the not-so-young. In most other respects there is not much to choose between people of 50 and of 15, apart from a bit of experience and a great many wrinkles. Everyone wears jeans. More or less everyone (quite) likes Florence and the Machine. But 15-year-olds live on Facebook, while 50-year-olds don't understand it at all.

This isn't a small thing: it's a ginormous non-meeting of minds between two generations over what is not just a different way of communicating, but a different way of living.

Google is natural for old people because we were taught how to look things up at primary school. It is like a library only a lot better: you don't have to get on a bus, and the thing you want is never out on loan to someone else. E-mail is natural for us, too. We might still grapple with the right stylistic flourishes for this flat medium, but we understand the principle perfectly. One person communicates with another, only it happens faster than a postman takes to drop a letter through a door.

My generation can even do Twitter, at a pinch. Twitter is just a sort of showing off, and we are just as good at that as anyone born a decade or two after us.

But Facebook remains deeply alien. For us, the point about communicating is that it is a consensual activity between two people. I like to talk to one friend at a time, which allows you to vary the tone and content to suit the person to whom you are talking. When we deal with more than one or two friends at a time, we get in a flap. Think of the kerfuffle that goes into deciding who to invite with whom to a dinner party.

By contrast, the idea that communication becomes a random broadcast to 500 “friends” about what you were up to last night is perfectly incomprehensible. As is the thought that you park yourself for hours on end in front of a screen gawping at the random communications of your unmanageably large group of friends and commenting on them.

This gap between the Facebook/non-Facebook generation is wider than the gap between my generation and our parents. My dad liked Verdi, I liked the Rolling Stones. He thought mine was noise, I thought his was weird. But it was the same 12in circle of vinyl going round on the turntable, and listening to it involved sitting on the same sofa. My mother would not throw any food away, and while I did not admire the half a roast potato sitting in the fridge, I understood that she had lived through rationing and was therefore constitutionally incapable of chucking it out.

I have asked my children to explain Facebook to me, but I'm none the wiser. They can't explain it because they don't understand what I'm asking. The scale of my puzzlement makes no sense to them.

Whether or not we see the point of it, my generation is going to have to sign up in time. A friend of my daughter's recently complained that because her grandfather wasn't on Facebook, she couldn't wish him a happy birthday. The thought of picking up the phone, let alone buying a card, had not occurred to her. Last week's news makes it clear. If in the future we want to get birthday cards (or communicate with anyone under 40) we are going to have to join Facebook whether we understand it or not.

There is only one risk to the site, as far as I can see. Last week, I read that 36m US mothers had signed up to keep an eye on their children. Having your mother as your Facebook “friend” would surely put as much of a damper on the whole jag as being chaperoned at the disco by your father.

3月17日在吃早餐时，我们这代人突然发现自己已经是过去时了。之前一天，我就在网上扫到了这则消息，但与大多数同龄人一样，我从不彻底相信一件事，除非看到它白纸黑字地印在报纸上——报纸还得以很老土的方式由报童送到我门前。因此，对我而言，直到17日那个早晨我才肯相信，世界如今已经属于我的下一代了。

当日英国《金融时报》头版底部的一则报道称，目前Facebook的访问量已超过谷歌(Google)。如今在美国，更多的人是在访问这个社交网站，互相留言，交换聚会上醉酒后开玩笑的照片，而不是上谷歌搜索旅游指南，核对“definitely”的拼写，或者搜索互联网上的色情内容。

在我看来，社交是年轻人与不那么年轻的人之间最大的分水岭。在其它大多数方面，50岁与15岁的人之间几乎没多大差别，前者只不过多了一点点经历和一大堆皱纹。人人都穿牛仔裤。差不多人人都（特别）喜爱Florence and the Machine乐队。但15岁的年轻人活在Facebook的世界里，而50岁的人则对其一无所知。

这不是件小事，而是两代人对Facebook看法的一道巨大鸿沟。Facebook不仅是一种不同的沟通方式，更是一种不同的生活方式。

老年人很容易接受谷歌，因为我们在小学就学会了如何查找东西。谷歌就像一座图书馆，只不过要强很多：你不必搭乘巴士才能去，你要找的资料永远不会被其他人借走。我们也很容易接受电子邮件。我们或许仍得想办法为这种单调的沟通媒介配上极为有型的花体签名，但我们完全清楚其工作原理。这无非是一个人与另一个人传递信息，只不过比邮差把信扔到门里快一些。

必要时，我们这代人甚至能上Twitter。Twitter不过是一种卖弄，在这方面，我们与小我们一、二十岁的人一样擅长。

但Facebook仍属异类。对我们而言，沟通是两个人之间一种两厢情愿的行为。我喜欢每次只和一位朋友交谈，因为这能让你变换语气和内容，以配合谈话对象。而如果我们每次与一两位以上的朋友交谈，那就会乱做一团。想一想在决定邀请谁与谁搭伴前来参加宴会时出现的那种混乱场面吧。

相比之下，那种“交流即是随机向500位‘好友'播报昨晚都干了些什么”的想法，委实令人费解。同样令人无法理解的是：人们连续几个小时坐在屏幕前，直瞪瞪地看着一大群朋友信手发布的信息，并对此评头论足。

“Facebook一代”与“非Facebook一代”之间的代沟，比我们与我们父辈之间的代沟还要大。我父亲喜欢威尔第(Verdi)，而我喜欢滚石(Rolling Stones)。他认为我听的是噪音，我却认为他听的很怪异。但我们是坐在同一张沙发上，听的同是唱机转盘上旋转的12英寸唱片。我母亲不会扔掉任何食物，我尽管不喜欢冰箱里摆着半只烤土豆，却理解母亲——她曾经历过粮食配给的年代，因此在心底里就不愿丢掉它。

我曾让我的孩子们给我解释一下Facebook，但我现在依然不懂。他们解释不了，因为他们不明白我在问什么。他们完全不理解我为何如此困惑。

无论我们是否明白其意义所在，我们这一代人迟早都要上Facebook。我女儿的一个朋友最近抱怨称，由于她的祖父不上Facebook，她都无法祝他生日快乐。她从未想过打个电话，更别提买张贺卡了。Facebook超越谷歌的新闻清楚地说明了这一点。如果今后我们想收到生日贺卡（或者与40岁以下的人交流），就必须加入Facebook，不管自己懂不懂。

在我看来，该网站只面临一种风险。不久前我读到一则消息，说美国有3600万母亲为监督自己的子女而加入了Facebook。有妈妈在Facebook的“好友”名单上，无疑像去迪厅时有爸爸陪伴一样令人扫兴至极。

译者/陈云飞