十年前的乔布斯打开了一个怎样的世界？
苹果公司(Apple)联合创始人史蒂夫•乔布斯(Steve Jobs)喜欢使用夸张的修辞手法，但10年前当他推出第一代iPhone时，他对它的颂词是准确的：“每隔一段时间，就会出现一种革命性的产品，它将改变一切。”
Google was just an internet search engine then, but one of its offspring unveiled plans this week to make an entire platform — software and hardware — for driverless cars. Without the iPhone revolution, it is hard to imagine a technology company entering the transport industry, or designing a device that can steer cars around while receiving and transmitting streams of data.
当时的谷歌(Google)还只是一家互联网搜索引擎，但从它拆分出的一家公司本周公布了为无人驾驶汽车打造完整平台——软件及硬件——的计划。若没有iPhone带来的变革，很难想象一家科技公司可以进入运输业、或设计出可以驾驶汽车四处行驶同时接发数据流的设备。
For a long time, Jobs was a lone voice in the wilderness in preaching the power of uniting hardware and software, while Microsoft made a fortune by dominating software alone. Even he did not predict the potential of integrating everything from software and mobile hardware to data storage and artificial intelligence. Yet this is his legacy: the omniscient tech company.
在很长一段时间里，乔布斯都是倡导硬件和软件结合的旷野上孤独的声音，而微软(Microsoft)通过只主导软件就赚得了巨额财富。就连他当时也未预测到将从软件和手机硬件、到数据存储和人工智能的一切事物结合起来所激发的潜力。不过，这是他的遗产：全知型科技公司。
It was difficult in 2007 to imagine what such an enterprise could be worth. Only Microsoft was among the world’s 10 most valuable companies, not Amazon, Apple, Facebook or Google. The latter ranked 51st in the FT Global 500 in the first quarter of 2007; Apple was 85th, Amazon did not make the list and Facebook was still five years away from its initial public offering.
在2007年，很难想象这样一家企业的价值有多高。当时只有微软在全世界最具价值的10大公司之列，亚马逊(Amazon)、苹果、Facebook和谷歌都不在其中。在2007年第一季度英国《金融时报》全球500强排行榜(FT Global 500)中，谷歌位列第51位;苹果排名第85位，亚马逊没进入榜单，而那时Facebook距离首次公开发行(IPO)还有5年之久。
These five companies, with Google renamed Alphabet, are all in the top 10 now. Information technology has become the dominant source of corporate value, displacing finance, telecoms, and energy. “Mastery of data is like the steam engine of our age,” says Annabelle Gawer, professor of digital economy at the University of Surrey.
这5家公司(谷歌已更名为Alphabet)如今都在市值最高的10大公司之列。信息技术已经取代金融、电信和能源，成为了公司价值的主要来源。“掌握信息就像是掌握了我们时代的蒸汽机，”萨里大学(University of Surrey)数字经济学教授安娜贝勒•加韦(Annabelle Gawer)表示。
Its impact on other industries is obvious in transport. Carmaking was once vertically integrated: Henry Ford controlled the raw materials that went into his cars, along with their assembly and distribution. The industry’s scope has since narrowed, and technology is steadily dismantling it.
信息技术对其他行业的影响，在运输行业表现得十分明显。汽车制造业曾经是纵向一体化的行业：亨利•福特(Henry Ford)控制着制造汽车的原材料、以及装配和分销。自那以来，汽车业的范围已经收窄，技术逐渐拆解了这个行业。
Waymo, Alphabet’s driverless car company, this week displayed its new sensors on Chrysler minivans: Sergio Marchionne, Fiat Chrysler’s chief executive, does not think that carmakers should try to beat technology companies at their own game.
Alphabet旗下的无人驾驶汽车公司Waymo，本周展示了应用在克莱斯勒(Chrysler)小型货车上的新型传感器：菲亚特-克莱斯勒(Fiat Chrysler)首席执行官塞尔吉奥•马尔基翁内(Sergio Marchionne)认为，汽车制造商不应该试图在科技公司的地盘打败它们。
Ford is letting Amazon put Alexa, the artificial intelligence software that powers its Echo home assistant, into Ford cars.
福特(Ford)正准备让亚马逊把Alexa(操控亚马逊Echo家庭管家的人工智能软件)应用于福特的汽车上。
The impact is also clear in retailing. Amazon’s relentless rise — its market capitalisation has grown from $16bn at the time of the iPhone launch to $380bn — is squeezing bricks-and-mortar retailers.
这种影响在零售业也很明显。亚马逊无情的崛起——其市值从iPhone面市时的160亿美元增长到了3800亿美元——正不断挤压着实体店零售商的生存空间。
Sears and Macy’s, the US retail chains, unveiled further store closures last week; both have invested in technology to increase online sales but are struggling to beat Amazon.
上周，美国零售连锁店西尔斯(Sears)和梅西百货(Macy's)公布了进一步关闭店铺的计划;两家公司均投资技术以增加网络销售额，但很难打败亚马逊。
The new breed of tech company has three competitive advantages (leaving aside tax and regulatory arbitrage). The first is scale: they employ thousands of engineers and operate networks of server farms — and in Amazon’s case retail warehouses — that smaller rivals cannot match. Like other conglomerates, they have deep resources.
新一代的科技公司有3个竞争优势(不考虑税收优惠和监管套利)。第一个是规模：它们聘请了成千上万个工程师并且运营服务器集群网络——亚马逊则是运营零售仓库网络——这是小型竞争对手比不上的。像其他综合企业一样，它们拥有深层资源。
Second, less traditionally, they exploit network effects. No matter how many people buy Fords, its cars work the same. This is not true of Google’s search engine or Facebook’s social network and messaging applications. The more users they amass, the more data they can collect and the better the service becomes. It creates a virtuous circle.
第二个优势是它们利用网络效应，这是过去没有的。无论有多少人购买福特，汽车用起来都一样。而谷歌的搜索引擎或Facebook的社交网络或消息应用并非如此。它们积累的用户越多，它们便可以收集越多数据，进而改进服务。这创造了一个良性循环。
Last, they are becoming vertically integrated — the strategy that Jobs brought to Apple. They make hardware, from Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Pixel to Amazon’s Echo, and are finding new ways to put sensors in other devices, such as driverless cars. By analysing the data these capture, they can develop products tailored to every user.
最后一点，它们正在进行纵向一体化——这是乔布斯给苹果制定的战略。它们制造硬件——从苹果的iPhone、谷歌的Pixel、到亚马逊的Echo——同时正在寻找把传感器用于无人驾驶汽车等其他设备的新方法。通过分析收集来的数据，它们可以为每位用户量身定制产品。
This raises the question of whether such huge power must be curbed. Their handling of data has to be regulated since it is easily abused — safeguards are needed, such as Waymo’s effort to stop vehicles being hacked. Are they already so dominant that antitrust authorities should break them up?
这提出了一个问题——如此强大的能力是否必须受到约束?由于数据很容易被滥用，它们对数据的处理必须受到监管——保障措施是必需的，比如Waymo努力防止汽车被黑客攻击。它们的主导地位是否已经到了反垄断机构应该将其拆分的地步?
Not yet, I think. It is easy to forget how recent — dating back only a decade — their emergence is. Their story is still playing out: Waymo’s technology is still being developed and Amazon’s success with the Echo only partly makes up for its failure with the Fire phone. Silicon Valley is littered with companies that once appeared all powerful but later stumbled, including Yahoo.
我认为，还没有。人们很容易忘记它们是不久前——仅仅10年前——才出现的。它们的故事仍在展开：Waymo的技术仍然处于研发中，亚马逊在Echo上的成功只能部分弥补Fire手机的失败。硅谷到处都是一度所向披靡但随后一败涂地的公司，其中包括雅虎(Yahoo)。
In another decade, things could be different: they may lose focus in trying to mimic each others’ strengths, as conglomerates often do. Companies tend to be good at some things and bad at others: a corporate software giant does not design the most exciting consumer devices. Microsoft spanned many businesses with patchy results before focusing on cloud computing.
再过十年，情况可能会不同：它们可能会在试图模仿他人优势的过程中失去重心，正如综合企业通常的表现。企业往往擅长某些事而不擅长其他事：一家企业软件巨头不会设计出最激动人心的消费者设备。在专注于云计算之前，微软曾横跨多个行业，但结果参差不齐。
But vigilance is needed. The combination of forces that fuelled the rise of such companies has no exact historical precedent: a technology revolution has created new economies of scale. Apple’s Jobs outflanked Microsoft with the iPhone but his rival remains strong; the power of others could yet grow.
但我们必须提高警觉。推动这类企业崛起的力量组合，并没有确切的历史先例：技术革命创造了新的规模经济。苹果的乔布斯以iPhone智胜微软，但他的竞争对手仍然强大;其他人也可能越来越强。
