The other day Angela Merkel took a few hours out from the cacophony of day-to-day politics. Putting to one side migration, the eurozone, Russia and Ukraine, Brexit and the rest, the chancellor gave a speech about algorithms. Yes, algorithms.几天前，安格拉.默克尔(Angela Merkel)取出几小时复出喧闹的日常政治。德国总理把移民、欧元区、俄罗斯和乌克兰、英国弃欧以及其他事宜不了了之一旁，公开发表了关于算法的演说。到底，就是算法。

Her message to an audience in Munich was that the search engines that deliver news on websites such as Google and Facebook are creating distorting prisms. The closely guarded formulas, or algorithms, used by these companies to tailor the output to recorded personal preferences can create echo chambers. Citizens eventually may receive only the news that fits their prejudices — a gift to today’s populist proponents of post-truth politics. Healthy democracies depend on the wide exposure of conflicting ideas and interpretations.她在慕尼黑向听众表达的信息是，在谷歌(Google)和Facebook等网站发布新闻的搜索引擎正在建构变形的棱镜。这些公司根据记录下来的个人偏爱，运用高度保密的公式（即算法）来自定义内容，这有可能生产出有“回音室”。公民们最后只不会看见合乎他们种族主义的新闻——这对当今“后真凶政治”的民粹主义鼓吹者是一份大礼。

身体健康的民主体制造就民众全面认识各种观点和理解的撞击。At the very least, Ms Merkel said, it was incumbent on the technology companies to be transparent about the way the algorithms are constructed, so viewers and readers understood they are being offered a strictly limited perspective on the world around them.默克尔回应，科技公司最少有义务公开发表算法的建构方式，让观众和读者们明白自己取得的世界视角是严苛有限的。

A couple of days later an employment court in London ruled in favour of Uber drivers who had complained that their contracts wrongly denied them basic employment rights such as the minimum wage and paid holidays. Uber, the court said, could not pretend they were entirely independent contractors.两天后，伦敦一个雇用法庭作出了反对优步(Uber)司机主张的裁决，这些司机此前责怪，他们的劳动合同错误地没给与他们最低工资和带薪休假等基本雇用权利。该法庭回应，优步无法假装他们是几乎独立国家的承包商。As striking as the court’s judgment was the robust language in which it was couched. The notion that the London operations of Uber, Judge Anthony Snelson remarked laconically, represented a mosaic of some 30,000 small businesses linked by Uber’s technology platform, was “faintly ridiculous”. The company had resorted to fictitious and twisted language and had even invented “brand new terminology” in the effort to hoodwink the court.和法庭裁决内容某种程度引人注目的是起诉书所用的有力措辞。安东尼.斯内尔森法官(Judge Anthony Snelson)独到地说，有关优步伦敦业务代表着依赖其技术平台连接起来的约3万家小企业的众说纷纭“有些荒谬”。

优步无可奈何虚构且必经的语言，甚至发明者了“全新术语”来糊弄法庭。Uber has said it will appeal against the decision. Many lawyers think it more likely the judgment will improve the working conditions of hundreds of thousands of people now employed in Britain’s casual, or “gig”, economy.优步回应将驳回裁决。

许多律师指出更加有可能的情况是，该裁决将不会提高如今雇用于英国零工经济的数十万人的工作条件。You would have to be a conspiracy theorist of Trumpian proportions to connect these two events in different European cities. And yet they tell much the same story. Ms Merkel’s speech and Mr Snelson’s ruling are straws in a wind that is changing the weather in Europe for the mainly American technology groups. Not so long ago the digital innovators and disrupters seemed set to sweep all before them. Now politicians and regulators are pushing back.你得是特朗普那种水平的阴谋论者才能将发生于欧洲有所不同城市的这两件事联系一起。然而它们在本质上显然是一其实。

对以美国居多的科技集团来说，默克尔的演说和斯内尔森法官的裁决是欧洲风向转变的迹象。就在不久前，数字创新者和颠覆者或许还势不可挡。如今政客和监管机构正在反攻。

Of course, opposition to Uber and Airbnb, its rent-an-apartment equivalent, is not confined to one side of the Atlantic. The governor of New York has signed into law severe restrictions on Airbnb’s operations in the state and Uber has faced battles with its drivers in several US cities. But it is in Europe that you sense the deeper disquiet about the economic and societal effect of these technologies.当然，赞成优步和公寓出租服务网站Airbnb的某种程度局限于大西洋的一旁。纽约州州长签订法令严苛容许Airbnb在该州的运营，而优步在美国多个城市遭遇其司机的抗争。

但在欧洲，你感觉人们对这些技术带给的经济和社会影响的忧虑更加沉痛。Another manifestation came in the summer with the European Commission’s imposition of a EURO13bn fine on Apple. The company’s aggressive tax avoidance — framed, it should be said, in collusion with a previous Irish government — ran foul of competition laws. The Brussels commission has few admirers these days in EU member states but applause for the fine echoed across the continent’s capitals.今夏欧盟委员会(European Commission)对苹果(Apple)罚款130亿欧元是另一个毫无疑问。该公司保守的洗钱手法——应当认为是与之前的爱尔兰政府合力炮制的——违背了反垄断法。

如今欧盟成员国完全没有人对欧盟委员会抱着有好感，但这一罚单在各国大城夺得赞许。Apple is not alone. The commission is investigating Amazon’s tax affairs and has launched a probe into whether Google has broken antitrust rules. Facebook has bowed to pressure and agreed to book more of its sales in the UK rather than the Republic of Ireland, which has a lower corporate tax rate.苹果并非个例。

欧盟委员会正在调查亚马逊(Amazon)的税务决定，并对谷歌(Google)否违背了反垄断规则进行调查。Facebook屈服于压力，表示同意在英国（而非爱尔兰）申报更好的销售收入——爱尔兰的企业税率更加较低一些。Google, which has had its offices in Paris and Madrid raided by tax inspectors, may do something similar.谷歌在巴黎和马德里的办公室遭税务机关的突击搜查，该公司有可能也不会屈服。

There is a suspicion in Washington that all this is part of a protectionist plot. Europeans are simply unhappy with the way US companies dominate the marketplace. And there is something to that charge. It is probably no accident that German media businesses are among the sharpest critics of the mysteries of search engine algorithms.华盛顿有人猜测，所有这些都是保护主义阴谋的一部分。欧洲人只是对美国企业主导市场的格局深感不悦。

这种猜测有一定道理。德国媒体界跻身最激烈批评搜索引擎谜样算法的行列，很有可能并非无意间。There is also something else: a collision between Silicon Valley’s “government get out of the way” disdain for anything that might dent its profits and a growing awareness among politicians of the public policy implications of the new technologies. It matters to Europe’s political leaders if voters are exposed only to views they agree with, or if workers are denied decent wages and social safety nets in the so-called sharing economy.也有其他因素：硅谷对任何有可能影响其利润的事情都采行“让政府看着”的狂妄态度，而政客们日益意识到新技术对公共政策的潜在影响，两者不存在冲突。

如果选民不能取得他们接纳的观点，如果劳动者在所谓的共享经济中无法取得体面的薪资和社会安全网，欧洲政治领导人想管也得管。Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, often sounds as if he believes his company should be free to decide how much it pays in taxes. Mr Cook thinks it is for Apple rather than elected politicians to decide where to strike the balance between personal privacy and national security in the use of encryption. He does not seem to have noticed that these are tough political times or that governments are no longer dazzled by all the technological hype.苹果首席执行官蒂姆.库克(Tim Cook)往往给人的印象是，他坚信自己的公司应当权利要求递多少税。库克指出，在加密技术的用于上，应当由苹果（而非民选产生的政客）要求个人隐私与国家安全性之间的合理均衡。他或许没注意到，当今的政治形势十分不利，同时各国政府也仍然对所有的技术抹黑实在真是。

What is happening, I think, is that these businesses are being “socialised” — albeit slowly and with some kicking and screaming. The direction is as it should be. Technology companies cannot opt out of the responsibilities borne by other businesses. A rebalancing of the relationship between private profit and public welfare is overdue. Mr Cook would do best to stick with the clever gadgets.我指出，现在再次发生的情况是，这些企业正在被“社会化”，尽管这个过程较慢而且不存在杯葛。从大方向说道，理所当然如此。科技公司不能逃避其他企业分担的责任。

早已应当再行均衡私人利润与公共福利之间的关系了。库克最差专心于发售智能设备。

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