微软发文祝贺乔·拜登赢得总统大选

Building new bridges: Our thoughts on the U.S. election

架设新桥梁：我们关于美国大选的想法

In 2016, as the United States emerged from a close and contentious national election, we published a blog on the need to find new ways for the country to move forward together. As we reflected that year on the election of Donald Trump, we started with a straightforward proposition, saying:

2016年，随着一场激烈而有争议的全国大选水落石出，我们发表了一篇博客，内容是需要为国家共同前进寻找新途径。当我们在那一年对唐纳德·特朗普当选做回应时，我们提出一个直截了当的命题：

“Every president-elect deserves our congratulations, best wishes and support for the country as a whole. The peaceful transition of power has been an enduring and vital part of our democracy for over two centuries, and it remains so today.”

“每一位当选总统都值得我国作为一个整体来祝贺，施以最良好的祝愿和支持。两个多世纪以来，权力的和平过渡一直是我们民主的一个持久和至关重要的部分，今天仍然如此。”

Four years later, these words are no less important. As we did in 2016, we offer today our congratulations to the new President- and Vice-President-Elect: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

四年后，这些话同样重要。正如我们在2016年所做的，我们今天向新的总统和副总统当选人：乔·拜登和卡马拉·哈里斯表示祝贺。

Election Day this year turned into a very long and tense election week, with many Americans glued to their screens anxiously awaiting the outcome. It has been commonplace to hear pundits speculate that we have seldom seemed such a divided country. If true, this also makes a different proposition even more self-evident. If we are to move forward as a nation, we must build new bridges to close the gaps that divide us.

今年的选举日变成了一个漫长而紧张的选举周，许多美国人焦急地盯着屏幕等待选举结果。我们已经习惯听到专家推测，我们很少见到国家变得如此分裂。如果此言不虚，这也使得另一个命题更加不言自明：如果我们还想作为一个国家向前迈进，我们必须建造新的桥梁，以弥合使我们分裂的差异。

At Microsoft, we believe that Americans share more common ground than many pundits acknowledge, particularly when it comes to technology issues. On many of these matters, there is an OPPOrtunity to separate policies from politics so we can make a real difference in people’s lives. Consider the following:

在微软，我们相信美国人的共同点比许多专家承认的要多，尤其是在技术问题方面。在许多此类问题上，我们有机会将政策与政治分开，这样我们才能真正改变人们的生活。请考虑以下事项：

A clear lesson from Covid-19 is that access to technology has become indispensable in an increasingly digital world. This starts with digital devices, but quickly extends to high-speed internet access. Broadband has become the electricity of the 21st century, vital for everything from patients needing telehealth consultations to children who are attending school from home. Today, too many rural families find there is no broadband service available, while too many underprivileged urban families find no broadband service that is affordable. A nation that would not tolerate millions of Americans living without electricity should no longer accept millions of families without broadband.

新冠疫情的一个明确教训是，在日益数字化的世界中，我们要保证人人都享用技术成果。首先要给低收入群体电脑、手机等数字设备，但接下来就是给他们提供高速互联网接入。宽带已经成为21世纪的电力，从需要远程医疗咨询的患者到在家上学的儿童，宽带对这一切至关重要。今天，我们发现太多的农村家庭没有宽带服务，而太多的贫困城市家庭发现负担不起宽带服务。美国作为一个不能容忍数百万人缺电的国家，不应该再接受数百万没有宽带的家庭。

Technology-fueled automation increasingly impacts all of our jobs. Digital tools, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) have the potential to make almost all of us in every job category more successful – but only if we have easier access to the new digital skills that are increasingly indispensable to the jobs of the future. This has become vital for first-line as well as knowledge workers, creating benefits for those in vital positions that range from health care to manufacturing to the nation’s retailers. Yet we enter the 2020s following two decades of declining and then stagnating employer investments in workforce training, and post-secondary education that has left too many students confronting debt without a degree. We need to make digital skills available to everyone.

以技术推动的自动化日益影响我们所有的工作。数字工具、数据分析和人工智能有可能使各行各业的几乎所有人都更加成功，但前提是我们更容易获得新的数字技能，这些技能对于未来的工作越来越不可或缺。这对于一线和知识工作者来说都变得至关重要，为那些处于前线（从医疗保健。到制造业，到零售）的人创造了福利。然而，20年来雇主对劳动力培训，以及中学后教育的投资下降并停滞不前，2020年代有太多学生没有大学学位，却依然负债累累。我们需要向所有人提供数字技能。

Across the political spectrum, Americans share not just a commitment to, but a reverence for, democracy. Yet the health of democracy today relies not just on individual acts of voting. It requires constant vigilance and an effective collective defense against cyber-based attacks on candidates and voting systems, and disinformation campaigns against the public itself. At Microsoft, this led us this election cycle to work across the political aisle to protect Republican and Democratic candidates alike. We conclude this election year even more convinced of the importance of using technology to protect not just the democratic process, but our fundamental freedoms. More than ever, we need ongoing technology innovation and stronger partnerships across the public and private sectors to better defend democracy.

在整个政治光谱上，美国人对民主不仅有共同的承诺，而且保有共同的崇敬。然而，今天民主的健康度不仅取决于个人投票行为。它需要时刻保持警惕，对基于网络攻击候选人和投票系统，针对公众的造谣等进行有效的集体防御。我们微软在这个选举周期，跨党派保护共和党和民主党候选人。在今年选举结束时，我们更加深信，必须利用技术保护民主进程和我们的基本自由。我们比以往任何时候都更需要持续的技术创新和整个公共和私营部门的更强有力的伙伴关系，以便更好地捍卫民主。

During a time when our daily lives rely so heavily on digital devices, trust in technology has become an issue of paramount importance. People of all political backgrounds care deeply about the privacy of their data and the security of their internet services. The questions around trust in technology continue to become even more multifaceted, now also including digital safety and responsible practices for AI. Yet we continue to live with a national electronic privacy law enacted in the dial-up era of the 1980s, and when it comes to issues such as safeguards for facial recognition, we have no national law at all. We need new laws fit for the future.

在我们日常生活如此依赖数字设备的时候，对技术的信任已经成为一个至关重要的问题。各种政治背景的人都非常关心他们数据的隐私和互联网服务的安全性。围绕对技术的信任问题从四面八方涌来，现在还包括数字安全和负责任的人工智能实践。然而，我们的国家电子隐私法还是1980年代颁布的，至今仍未修订。当涉及到面部识别防护等问题时，我们没有任何全国性法律。我们需要适合未来的新法律。

Regardless of political party, people want our economy to prosper. The 20th century saw technology innovation not just spur productivity growth but spread its benefits broadly – to every state and to most industries, creating the foundation for a broadening middle class. As a company that provides so many productivity and other digital services for businesses of all sizes, we have a clear window into the need for a new and similar wave of broader productivity growth. We believe that technology innovation needs to create more business opportunities for every part of the economy as well as ushering in a new era for enhanced public sector services and efficiencies.

无论选哪个政党，我们都希望经济繁荣。20世纪，技术创新不仅刺激了生产力的增长，而且将效益广泛传播到每个州和大多数行业，为扩大中产阶级奠定了基础。作为一家为各种规模的企业提供这么多生产力和其他数字服务的公司，我们有一个明确的窗口，了解需要新的和类似的更广泛的生产力增长浪潮。我们认为，技术创新需要为经济的每个部分创造更多的商业机会，并开创一个加强公共部门服务和效率的新时代。

When we consider all these issues, it is apparent that there are opportunities to build new bridges between us and to strengthen the ties that bind us in common purpose. All these challenges are ripe for bipartisan collaboration and for government and industry cooperation.

当我们审视所有这些问题时，显然有机会为我们之间架起新的桥梁，加强把我们联系在一起的共同目标。所有这些挑战对于两党合作以及政府和行业合作来说都已经成熟。

This opportunity to build new bridges extends to the international arena as well. We live in a decade that has started with a virus that respects no border and carbon that moves in the atmosphere not just from country to country, but from continent to continent. More and more of the issues of our day require stronger collaboration between the United States and the rest of the world.

建造新桥梁的机会也延伸到国际舞台。这个10年始于一种无国界的，不论各国碳排放水平几何都一视同仁的病毒，这种病毒跨越国境，游走于大洲之间。我们的日常问题越来越需要美国和世界其他国家之间加强合作。

None of this means that the differences that divide Americans are unimportant. We live with different views on many fundamental issues. As a company, we have not shied away from controversies that we care about, whether they involve racial equity, immigration or climate change. Under each of the last two American presidents, we found that we were served best by efforts to partner where we can, while standing apart where we should. And we will continue with this approach.

这些都不意味着要忽视那些分裂美国人的分歧。我们在许多基本问题上有不同的看法。作为一家公司，我们并没有回避我们关心的争议，无论这些争议涉及种族公平、移民还是气候变化。在近期两届总统的任内，我们发现，在自己能够合作的地方，在应该的地点，我们得到最好的服务。我们将继续采用这种方法。

Along the way, we have learned that we have far more opportunities to partner across the political spectrum than most people recognize. But we need to move from debates about why we cannot succeed to conversations about how we can. The more bridges we can cross together, the more we likely will find that Americans of all backgrounds in every state and county share far more in common than we currently appreciate.

一路上我们了解到，有更多的机会在各政治派别中合作，比大多数人所认识到的要多。但是，我们需要从关于“为什么我们不能成功”的辩论转向关于“我们可以怎么走下去”的对话。我们一起跨越的桥梁越多，我们就越可能会发现，每个州和县所有背景的美国人的共同点都比我们目前所欣赏的要多。

As we look to the next four years, this should give us not only reason for hope, but cause for optimism.

当我们展望未来四年时，这不仅应该使我们有理由希望，而且应该引起乐观。