The global village gossip
If cyberspace is a global village, watch out for the rumour-mongers, busybodies and snoops. These medieval forms of village life are flourishing on the internet - a world where everything we do is both public and permanent, and so easily used to destroy us.
That is the moral of the internet fairy tale of Heather Hamilton and how she lost her job over a blog. In cyberspace, there is nowhere to hide; even the water coolers have microchips.
Ms Hamilton, a web designer in Los Angeles, used the internet to broadcast a daily chronicle of early dotcom life. Her blog was a regular Bridget Jones experience: tightly written, self-deprecating and suffused with that most un-American of virtues, humour.
Ms Hamilton did largely what Lucy Kellaway does in the pages of this newspaper virtually every week: poke fun at her equals or betters in the workplace, without naming the names that would shame them.
But since humour was not Ms Hamilton's job, she was sacked for it (while Ms Kellaway got a book contract). Apparently, it had something to do with Ms Hamilton's online profiles of her boss, one of those harpies of the modern workplace known to thrive even outside California.
"When she talks with her hands she looks like she's molesting the air around her, sticking her fingers in holes and around forbidden curves. Often the air around her is the air around me, and my air doesn't appreciate it." Harpies are notoriously bad at taking that kind of joke.
Though Ms Hamilton's blog (dooce.com) was anonymous, her company was never named and her boss was not identified, she was sacked anyway. It all goes to prove the internet truism: your blog can cost you your job more surely than any old-world cocktail party indiscretion.
Most of the casualties of the blog wars have so far been from the worlds of technology or media: the Microsoft contractor fired for blogging a photograph of Macintosh computers delivered to the Redmond campus; the Houston Chronicle reporter who was sacked for writing about local politics online.
But blogging is no longer a niche pastime, the preserve of techies and hacks. Those who pretend to know these things say there are probably 5m blogs out there already, and there could be 10m by year-end. At that rate, even the machinist in Detroit should think about the job implications: we drones are free to say whatever we like about our bosses; but they are free to sack us if we do.
Even in America, free speech goes only so far: the constitution does not protect us from the wrath of the caricatured supervisor. Most Americans are employed "at-will", which means they can largely be dismissed at-whim.
There are some very limited exceptions: union organisers can complain about the bosses with impunity; whistleblowers are protected if they air grievous abuses in the workplace; and government employees have special protection from censorship.
But the rest of us probably need to muzzle it online, if only because of the megaphone effect of internet communications. If we grouse in the pub, who listens? If we rant on the net, the world is our audience.
It is not hard to understand why employers are worried. The breathless nature of the modern blog encourages thoughtless communication: where spontaneity is all, trade secrets may easily leak out. In the narcissistic passion of the moment, bloggers may not consider the harm they may do to corporate image, or to the morale of ridiculed co-workers. And blogging, like many other forms of internet life, can be harmfully addictive: if you are posting six times before lunch, it may be time for a day job.
But the issue is not just whether we are wasting time or bandwidth: the bigger question is about freedom. Politicians are far less free than normal people, says Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School's Berkman Centre for Internet & Society, because their every utterance is searched and scrutinised for infelicities. To satisfy that scrutiny, they must always be their public selves, without the luxury of lapsing into private bad behaviour.
Bloggers risk the same peculiar loss of privacy, he says: when every idiocy uttered is permanent - and searchable - individuals may have no choice but to present a sanitised public self in place of the real one. The result is much less freedom; only the man without a blog can be free to think as he pleases.
For blogs pose the paradox of the internet in its starkest terms. Though we know it is public, it just feels so private: most of our posts, in our off-work hours, are made in pajamas and bedroom slippers. It feels intimate, but it is not.
Ms Hamilton trusted that intimacy to protect her from her bosses, but also from her Mormon family, who reacted angrily when they discovered her anti-religious rants online. Complaining about your Mormon upbringing may be perfectly fine over a margarita where no one is listening. In cyberspace, it is much more unforgivable.
But should bosses react in the same manner as parents, in that over-sensitive way we all know so well? Or should we, conversely, be granted some kind of special dispensation to say whatever we want in blogs because, after all, no one really believes them?
We probably all need to calm down, just slightly. Bloggers should have no more freedom to maim than anyone else with a keyboard; but employers should recognise that deafness is still the better part of valour. Sticks and stone may break my bones, but blogs . . . well, you get the idea.
Peter Cheek of the FT contributed research for this column
地球村闲话
如果网际空间是个地球村，那就请你警惕这里的谣言传播者、好事之徒，以及到处窥探的家伙吧。这些中世纪的村落生活方式正在互联网上兴旺发展。在互联网世界中，我们所做的一切都是公开且永久的，因此很容易被用来毁了我们自己。
有关希瑟?汉密尔顿(Heather Hamilton)及她如何因博客(blog)而失去工作的互联网故事，就包含了上述寓意。在网络世界中没有藏身之处，就连冷水器也有微芯片。
汉密尔顿女士是洛杉矶的一位网页设计师。她利用互联网来传播早期网站生活的日志。她的博客日记是布里奇特?琼斯(Bridget Jones)式日记：文风凝练、自嘲，且充满了最非美国式的美德：幽默。
汉密尔顿女士大体上做了金融时报专栏作家露西?凯拉韦(Lucy Kellaway)几乎每周所做的事：打趣工作场所中的同僚或上司，却并不指名道姓，以免使人难堪。
由于幽默并非汉密尔顿女士的工作，她为此被炒了鱿鱼(而凯拉韦女士却获得了一份著书合同)。很显然，这与汉密尔顿女士在网上勾划老板形象有关。她的老板是现代职场上凶狠的女魔头之一，据悉这些女魔头甚至已在加州之外兴旺发达起来。
“她说话时指手画脚，看来就像是在骚扰她周围的空气：把手指粗俗地乱戳，还围身体的禁止曲线指来指去。通常，她周围的空气就是我周围的空气，而我周围的空气不喜欢她那一套。”众所周知，女魔头们接受不了这样的玩笑。
虽然汉密尔顿女士的博客网站(dooce.com)是匿名的，上面从未出现过她公司的名字，也没有指明她的老板是谁，但她还是被解雇了。这完全证明了互联网上的至理名言：相比旧时鸡尾酒会上的任何失礼来，你的博客日记更有可能让你付出失业的代价。
迄今为止，博客大战中的受害者多数来自科技和媒体行业：一位微软公司的承包商因把一张送往微软总部的苹电脑照片贴在博客上遭解雇；《休斯敦纪事报》的一位记者因在网上撰写有关当地政治的文章被开除。
但是，写博客日记已不再是一种小范围的消遣活动，不再是技术人员和黑客的保留地了。那些自称知情的人说，现在可能已有500万个博客，到年底可能会有1000万个。以这样的速度，即使是底特律的机械师也该想想这对工作的影响了：我们这些有手好闲的人可以随心所欲地在博客上谈论我们的老板，但如果我们这样做的话，老板也可以自由地解雇我们。
即使在美国，言论自由也仅限于此：宪法并不保护我们免受遭我们嘲讽的上司的迁怒。多数美国人是被“任意”雇用的，这就意味着，他们也基本上能被“任性”开除。
有一些非常有限的例外：工会组织者们可以抱怨老板而不受惩罚；若能揭发工作场所的严重弊端，告密者会受到保护；政府雇员可以受到特殊保护而免遭审查。
但是，就凭互联网交流的扩音器效应，我们其他人可能也需要在网络上保持缄默。如果我们在酒吧里发牢骚，谁会去听？而如果我们在网络上大声嚷嚷，全世界都是我们的听众。
不难理解雇主们为何会担心。现代博客日记悄无声息的特性鼓励人们进行轻率的交流：在这上面，一切都是自发的，商业秘密可能会轻易泄露出去。在一时自我陶醉的激情下，博客们也许不会考虑他们对公司形象，或对受嘲笑同事的士气可能造成的损害。而写博客日志的行动，就像许多其它形式的互联网生活一样，可能会让人产生有害的瘾头：如果你闲得没事儿，在午饭前就贴六次帖子，那你可能该找份工作了。
问题不仅是我们是否在浪费时间或带宽：更大的问题是关于自由。哈佛法学院伯克曼网络和社会中心的乔纳森?齐特仁(Jonathan Zittrain)说，政客远远不如常人自由，因为政客的每句话都会被人搜寻、审查其中的不当之处。为满足这种审查，他们必须始终是他们的公共自我，而无法染上私下的不当行为。
博客也同样冒着失去个人隐私的风险，他说：当说出的每句蠢话都是永久的，而且可以被搜索到时，个人也许别无选择，只能呈现一个一尘不染的公众自我来取代真实的自我。其结果是自由大大减少；只有没有网络日记的人才能随意而为。
因为博客网站造成了互联网上最彻底的自相矛盾现象。虽然我们知道它是公共的，但却感到它是如此私秘：我们在非工作时间所写的帖子，大多数都是穿着睡袍和卧室拖鞋写下的。感觉上它是隐私的，但它不是。
汉密尔顿女士曾相信，这种隐秘性能保护她免受老板的伤害，同时也能免受信奉摩门教的家人的伤害。当她的家人发现她在网络上大声宣扬反宗教言论时，家人做出了愤怒的反应。在一个无人聆听的地方边喝玛格丽塔酒边抱怨你所受的摩门教教育，这完全没有问题。但在网络上，这就万万不可饶恕。
可老板们是否应该以同父母一样的方式做出反应，以那种我们都非常熟悉的过于敏感的方式？或者反过来说，我们是否应当被赋予某种特殊豁免权，可在博客网站上畅所欲言？因为毕竟没有人真的相信这些东西。
我们可能全都需要冷静一些，只要稍许冷静一些。与其他任何一个有键盘的人相比，博客都不该有更多的自由令他人受损，但雇主们应该认识到，装聋作哑才是真正的勇敢。棍棒和石头也许会打断我的骨头，但博客日记……好了，你知道我的意思。
《金融时报》的彼得?奇克(Peter Cheek)对本专栏的研究有所贡献。
