Every so often in human history, something new comes along that warrants a celebration, and that deserves its own holiday. That’s why I propose we celebrate “Internet Freedom Day” later this month.
在人类的历史中，每当有新事物来临时总会伴随着庆祝声，因而也应该拥有它自己的节日。这也是为什么我建议在这个月晚些时候庆祝“互联网自由节”的原因。
We already know there’s pent-up demand for holidays, typified by the number of official – and unofficial – holidays out there. Take Super Bowl Sunday, which is more widely celebrated than most official holidays. Take Black Friday, our post-holiday celebration of another contact sport, of sorts: shopping. Take April Fool’s Day, a celebration of pranks and human gullibility. And then there’s Pi Day (March 14, or 3.14 – get it?), a celebration of circumferences, math, and store-bought cherry pie.
我们对于假日的渴望一直被压制着，从官方（和非官方）的假日的数量就可以看出。比如超级碗周日，这个节日过得人数比绝大部分法定假日还多；又比如说黑色星期五，另一项身体接触运动购物的节前狂欢；还比如说愚人节，一个充满恶作剧和人类轻信的愚昧的节日。还有圆周率节（3月14日，懂了吧？），庆祝的是圆周，数学和店里买的樱桃派。
So it’s shocking that we don’t already have an unofficial Internet Freedom Day, or even an official holiday like we do for the Fourth of July, given that the internet is one of the most revolutionarytechnologies the world has ever known. It has given us an entire universe of information in our pockets. It may connect us to spammers in Nigeria and cat videos, but it also connects us to our loved ones and people we only know from Twitter.
所以一想到我们没有非官方的互联网自由节，甚至连独立纪念日都不是法定假日就让人感到震惊，因为互联网是史上最具革命性的技术之一。这让我们仅靠一个口袋大小的设备就能通晓宇宙间万物，它不仅把我们和位于尼日利亚的垃圾邮件发送者或者猫咪视频联系起来，还在我们和我们爱着的人以及只是在Twitter上认识的人之间架起了桥梁。
We need to celebrate. Because before the internet, we were in a different sort of dark age: We had to wait to hear news on TV at night or in print the next day. We had to go to record stores to find new music. Cocktail party debates couldn’t be settled on the spot. We had to wait years for encyclopedia entries to be updated. And even wizards like Hermione Granger could only find what they needed in a library full of dusty parchment books.
我们需要庆祝，因为在互联网出现之前，我们身处另一形式的黑暗时期：我们要等到晚上电视上放新闻了或者第二天报纸付印之后才能获取新闻，我们需要到录像店搜寻新音乐，百科全书的词条更新要等上好几年，而像赫敏·格兰杰这样的巫师也只能在图书馆布满灰尘的羊皮书里找到他们需要的东西。
The internet swept through our lives and changed all of these things, and more. We hear about earthquakes before they even reach us. We can fix broken encyclopedia entries … ourselves. We can find reported news and sentiment instantly (even those of software millionaires on the run). We can share, comment, remix, create, even make – all with just a few clicks.
互联网横扫了我们的生活，改变了所有这些事情，当然还有更多。我们在地震波传到我们脚底下之前便知道了地震的消息，我们能自己修订错误地百科全书词条，我们能立即获取报道过的新闻和个人情绪（甚至是那些在逃的软件百万富翁的）。我们在弹指之间就能分享、评论、混搭、创作，甚至制作东西。
An unofficial holiday is especially fitting since the Internet also changed our culture. Ask Me Anything isn’t a game we would have played before; we were trained at childhood parties to take Dares over Truths. But now we can ask even President Obama anything. We wouldn’t love – or pretend to hate – the Justin Biebers of this world if it weren’t for agents discovering them on YouTube. People like Nate Silver weren’t TV-pundit-cool before the internet: now, wedefend his kind of data and the internet-enabled “wrath of the math.”
因而创一个非官方的节日是很适合的，因为互联网还改变了我们的文化。我们以前从不可能玩过Ask Me Anything，因为我们从小就被教育要学会敢问甚于知道真相，但我们现在甚至可以问奥巴马任何东西。如果不是星探在YouTube上发现了贾斯汀·比伯，我们也不会喜欢——或者假装厌恶——他的言论。在互联网出现之前，像内特·希尔这样的人也不会因为是电视上的评论员而被认为很酷：而今天我们还要为他的预测数据和以及因互联网而生的“数学之怒”（指他通过统计学模型预测总统大选结果？）辩护。
But it’s not just an Internet Day that I’m proposing; it’s Internet Freedom Day. Because The Internet isn’t just itself a revolution – it sometimes starts them, too.
但我所提议的不单单是互联网节，而是互联网自由节，因为互联网本身不是个革命性的事件——那些因互联网而起的东西才是，
Public participation helped create the internet, and it helps protect it. That’s worth celebrating and remembering. It’s also why I suggest January 18 to do this. We recently had a close call on internet freedom with the ITU treaty conference, so the time is ripe to remember to defend it now. And just one year ago on January 18, there was an internet blackout over SOPA and PIPA. Wikipedia, BoingBoing, and Reddit “went black”; over forty thousand people self-censored their WordPress blogs; Google symbolically censored its search engine; and over ten million people contacted their Congressmen to oppose the bills.
公众的参与促成了互联网的建设，也帮着在维护它，这是值得庆祝和纪念的。这也是为什么我提议在1月18日去做——最近由于国际电信联盟条约会议的召开互联网自由到了紧要关头，所以现在记着要保卫它的时机已经成熟。一年前的1月18日，一些网站为了抗议《禁止网络盗版法案》和《保护知识产权法案》而进行黑屏。维基百科、BoingBoing博客以及Reddit的网站都“变黑”了；超过4万人自我审查了他们的WordPress博客；谷歌则象征性地审查了下它的搜索引擎；还有超过1000万人联系国会议员抗议法案。
To honor this #InternetFreedomDay, I hope people will write blog posts, make videos, introduce other Twitter hashtags, and throw flash mob parties. Most Wired readers probably don’t need anyone to tell them to – or suggest how to – celebrate internet freedom. You’re probably the kind of person who edits your own encyclopedia, creates your own how-to videos, and 3-D prints your own paraphernalia.
为了向这个互联网自由节致敬，我希望人们能写博客日志、拍摄视频、介绍其他Twitter标签，或者进行快闪活动。绝大多数的《连线》读者大概不用任何人告诉他们——或建议他们——如何庆祝互联网自由。你大概是那种编辑自己的维基百科词条、创作指引性视频或者用3D打印机打印随身物品的那种人。
But please tell others — including your grandparents on Facebook — to join in a celebration of their daily freedom. If nothing else, you should call your Congress representatives on January 18 to remind them you still care about internet freedom.
但请你告诉其他人——包括在Facebook上告诉你的祖父母——让他们也加入进来庆祝他们的每日自由。如果没有其他事可干的话，你应该在1月18日致电国会代表，提醒他们你还关注互联网自由。
Let’s spread the message in true Internet Style.
让我们以互联网Style来散发这条消息吧。
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