旧金山科技圣地的生死与自由（节选）

    2011年11月12日晚上8点，一位名叫托尼•赖的旧金山企业家收到一个电话，但他并不认识那个号码。托尼刚刚从好市多（Costco）买完派对用品回来——他和一位朋友计划当晚共同举办一场生日晚会。他把购物袋放在过道上，然后按了手机上的接听键。电话另一端是一把恐慌和害怕的声音。过了会，托尼把电话挂掉，走到旁边的房间，他的一位室友盖特纳•比克福德正躺在床上看书。

    “打电话的是伊利亚的妈妈，”托尼说。“她找不到伊利亚。”

    托尼之前从事律师行业，讲起话来语气温和，当时就居住在这栋位于教会区（Mission）特里特大道（Treat Avenue）摇摇欲坠的房子的3楼。这个地方被称为“蜂房”（Hive），长期以来都有无拘无束的编程员和创新者搬进搬去，其中有很多人来到旧金山是为了逃离硅谷那极其单调、却被人尊崇的气氛。“蜂房”的居住者通常比较年轻，一般都是男性，鄙视传统的初创企业发展路线——创办企业，出售，循环往复。

    “在这个社区，一切都和意外之财无关，”教会区一位居民说。“如果你可以创造某些有价值、同时还能帮助他人的东西——如果你做出点有影响的事——就会获得尊敬。”

    托尼和三个朋友共住一个套间，分别是Adobe公司的程序员比克福德、刚刚从斯坦福大学（Stanford）毕业的学生大卫•凯特勒和Diaspora公司创始人伊利亚•兹托米尔斯基。Diaspora是一个开源社交平台，很多人认为它最终将打倒Facebook。尽管这四人成为室友只有短短几个月的时间，相互间的关系却已经非常亲密，他们因为对“数字权利与自由文化” （一场寻求把信息从大型才传媒企业的掌控中解放出来的运动）的共同兴趣而走到了一起。

    兹托米尔斯基是四人当中最年轻的一个，从很多方面来说，也是最理想主义的一个。他的室友们猜想，他现在可能正在手提电脑前面，梳理Diaspora的测试版。

    比克福德说：“我们敲敲门吧。”

    但是没有人回应，门把手被锁住了。比克福德用指甲拨开了门把按锁。兹托米尔斯基仰面躺在床上，一只黑色的袋子套在他头上。一条管子将这只袋子与放在地上的一只圆柱形氦气罐连接在一起。

    附近贴着一张便利贴，上面写着：“感谢大家一直以来的关心。这是我一个人的决定。”

    自杀的意义就在于切断生命的同时带走所有的秘密。但是在他死后的几个月里，兹托米尔斯基亲友们始终未能找出这起悲剧发生的原因。他一直是科技行业里真正的摇滚明星——一位朋友称他为“自由文化领域的马克•扎克伯格”。他拥有若干仰慕者和一家受全球瞩目的初创企业。但是他遭受抑郁、忧虑的困扰，感到自己的目标从某些方面看来与硅谷“现金第一”的风气格格不入。他的公司Diaspora最后以失败告终¬——它的诞生基础成为了它的最大弱点，对于一家拒绝为了营利采集用户个人数据的社交网络，你又能如何追求商业化？

    At 8 p.m. on Nov. 12, 2011, a San Francisco entrepreneur named Tony Lai received a call from a number he did not recognize. Lai had recently returned from a trip to Costco to pick up party supplies -- he and a friend had planned a joint birthday bash that night -- and he set down his bags in the hallway and pressed the answer button on his phone. The voice on the other end was panicked, afraid. After a while, Lai hung up and walked to the next room, where one of his roommates, Gardner Bickford, was lying in bed, reading.

    "That was Ilya's mom," Lai said. "She can't reach Ilya."

    Lai, a soft-spoken former lawyer, was then living on the third floor of a shambling house on Treat Avenue in the Mission. The Hive, as the place is known, has long played host to a rotating cast of free-spirited programmers and innovators, many of whom come to San Francisco to escape what they regard as the stultifying atmosphere of Silicon Valley proper. The residents of the Hive tend to be young and male, and disdainful of the traditional startup route: build, sell, repeat.

    "In this community it's not about the windfalls," says one Mission resident. "If you can create something of value that helps other people -- if you can make an impact -- that's what garners respect."

    Lai shared his apartment with three friends: Bickford, a coder at Adobe (ADBE); David Kettler, a recent graduate of Stanford; and Ilya Zhitomirskiy, the co-founder of Diaspora, an open-source social network that many believed could eventually topple Facebook (FB). Although they had been roommates for only a few short months, the four men had become extremely close, bonding over their interest in digital rights and free culture, a movement which seeks to "liberate" information from the grips of big media companies.

    At 21, Zhitomirskiy was the youngest of the group and in many ways the most idealistic. Perhaps he was now parked in front of his laptop, his roommates reasoned, hammering on the beta build of Diaspora.

    "Let's just knock," Bickford said.

    But there was no answer, and the doorknob wouldn't budge. Bickford used his fingernail to pop the pushbutton lock. Zhitomirskiy lay on his back on the bed, a black bag pulled over his head. A line of tubing connected the bag to a cylindrical helium canister on the floor.

    Nearby was a Post-it note, which read, "Thanks everyone for everything. This was my decision alone."

    The meaning of any suicide is the secret stolen with the life lost. And yet in the months following his death, Zhitomirskiy's inner circle struggled to make sense of the tragedy. Zhitomirskiy had been a genuine rock star in tech circles -- the "free culture equivalent of Mark Zuckerberg," to quote one friend. He had a cadre of admirers and a startup the world was watching. And yet he struggled with depression and anxiety and with the sense that his goals were in some way incompatible with the cash-first ethos of Silicon Valley. His company, Diaspora, eventually foundered -- its very premise turned into its greatest weakness, for how do you monetize a social network that refuses to mine for profit the personal data of its users?

    Zhitomirskiy worked very hard but always felt he wasn't working hard enough. And in a place filled with dreamers, where success is measured in venture capital funding and user bases, he eventually lost his way.