Acomputer hacker named Virgil Griffith unleashed① a clever little program onto the Internet that he dubbed② the WikiScanner. It’s a simple application that trolls through the records of Wikipedia， the publicly editable Web-based encyclopedia， and checks on who is making changes to which entries. Sometimes it’s people who shouldn’t be. For example， WikiScanner turned up evidence that somebody from Wal-Mart had punched up Wal-Mart’s Wikipedia entry. Bad retail giant.
WikiScanner is a jolly little game of Internet gotcha， but it’s really about something more： a growing popular irritation③ with the Internet in general. The Net has anarchy in its DNA； it’s always been about anonymity④， playing with your own identity and messing with other people’s heads. The idea， such as it was， seems to have been that the Internet would free us of the burden of our public identities so we could be our true， authentic selves online. Except it turns out—who could’ve seen this coming—that our true， authentic selves aren’t that fantastic. The great experiment proved that some of us are wonderful and interesting but that a lot of us are hackers and pranksters⑤ and hucksters， which is one way of explaining the extraordinary appeal of Facebook.
Facebook， in Silicon Valley lingo， is a “social network”： a website for keeping track of your friends and sending them messages and sharing photos and doing all those other things that a good little Web 2.0 company is supposed to help you do. It was started as a tool for meeting—or at least discreetly ogling—other students， and it still has a reputation as a hangout for teenagers and the teenaged-at-heart Facebook is really about making the Web grow up.
Whereas Google is a brilliant technological hack， Facebook is primarily a feat of social engineering. Facebook’s appeal is both obvious and rather subtle. It’s a website， but in a sense， it’s another version of the Internet itself： a Net within the Net， one that’s everything the larger Net is not. Facebook is cleanly designed and has a classy， upmarket feel to it—a whiff of the Ivy League still clings. People tend to use their real names on Facebook. They also declare their sex， age， whereabouts， romantic status and institutional affiliations. Identity is not a performance or a toy on Facebook； it is a fixed and orderly fact. Nobody does anything secretly： a news feed constantly updates your friends on your activities. On Facebook， everybody knows you’re a dog.
① unleashv. 解除……的束缚
② dubv. 授予……称号；把……叫做；给……取绰号
③ irritationn. 激怒，恼怒，生气[U][(+at/with)]
④ anonymityn. 匿名者，无名者
⑤ prankstern. 爱开玩笑的人；恶作剧的人
Facebook代表网络未来
一个名为维吉尔·格里菲特的黑客在网络上发布了一个聪明的小程序，这个小程序被命名为WikiScanner。它是一个简单的应用程序，可以通过浏览跟踪收集维基百科（公共的可以修改的网络百科全书）的记录并查出谁在修改哪些条目。有时候那些修改是错误的。比如WikiScanner就查出沃尔玛公司的某个员工曾经修改了沃尔玛的维基条目。真是个奸诈的零售业巨头。
WikiScanner虽然只是一个很小的程序，但它却反映出一些深层次的东西：即人们对因特网的愤怒与日俱增。网络本就处于无政府状态，到处都是匿名信息，人们可以随时改变身份或者冒充他人。似乎网络能够将我们从现实的身份重负中解放出来，因此我们可以在网络上表现出最真实可信的自我。然而事实证明并非如此，真实可信的自我常常充满幻想。有实验表明，网络上的确有很多妙趣横生的人，但更多的是黑客、恶作剧者和行为卑劣者。这也就解释了为什么Facebook具有独特的吸引力。
Facebook用IT业的行话来说，就是一个社群网，一个与朋友保持联系、互发信息以及共享图片和做其它任何Web2.0能够帮你实现的事情的网站。Facebook的本意是作为召开会议的工具，后来吸引了大量学生以及其他年轻人，逐渐发展成青少年的网络聚集地。Facebook确实推动了网络的发展。
Google公司是世界闻名的技术巨头，而Facebook是一个卓绝的社群网。Facebook的吸引力明显而又微妙。它是一个网站，但在某种意义上，它也是另一个版本的因特网：一个网中网。Facebook有清晰的设计理念，给人一种优等、高层次的感觉，是常春藤联盟所散发的一股特有香气。人们倾向于在Facebook上使用真名。他们的性别、年龄、地址、婚姻和身份也都是真实的。在Facebook上，身份是一件很严肃的事情。它是固定而明确的事实。 没有人会偷偷做些什么，新闻feed可以一直更新你朋友的行踪。在Facebook上，每个人都对你的行动了如指掌。