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The industry has suffered from an abrupt reversal of fortunes, explains Mark Mahaney of Evercore ISI, an investment bank.
投資銀行Evercore isi的Mark Mahaney解釋說，這個行業遭遇了命運的突然逆轉。
In recent years more than one factor gave tech a boost: the coronavirus pandemic pushed life and work online; government stimulus programmes further increased demand; and super-loose monetary policy made tech’s long-term growth more attractive to investors.
近年來，有多個因素推動了科技的發展:冠狀病毒大流行推動了生活和工作的網絡化;政府的刺激計劃進一步增加了需求;超寬松的貨幣政策也讓科技公司的長期增長對投資者更具吸引力。
Now people are turning away from screens and leaving home again; the war in Ukraine is creating paralysing uncertainty; and economies around the world are suffering from inflation and soon, perhaps, recession.
現在人們不再使用屏幕，再次離開家；烏克蘭戰爭正在制造令人喪失思考的不確定性；世界各地的經濟都在受到通貨膨脹的困擾，并且，可能很快就會陷入衰退。
Then there are rising interest rates.
然后是不斷上升的利率。
Besides possibly triggering a downturn, they reduce the present value of tech companies’ profits, most of which lie far in the future.
除了可能引發經濟低迷之外，它們還會降低科技公司的利潤現值，而這些利潤大多還需要很長時間才能兌現。
If inflation does not come down, central banks will pile on more rate rises, putting further pressure on risky tech stocks.
如果通脹不下降，各國央行將加大加息力度，給高風險科技股帶來進一步壓力。
How bad will things get?
情況會變得多糟糕？
Although stockmarkets have stabilised a bit in recent days, no one is ready to call the bottom.
盡管股市在最近幾天已經穩定了一些，但沒有人準備抄底。
Just as markets have overshot in the past few years, they can undershoot.
就像過去幾年市場漲得過高一樣，它們也可能跌得過低。
There is more of a consensus over what could happen when the dust has settled.
對于塵埃落定后會發生什么，人們達成了更多的共識。
According to Daniel Ives of Wedbush, another investment bank, the tech industry is at a “fork in the road”.
另一家投資銀行韋德布什的丹尼爾·艾夫斯表示，科技行業正處在“十字路口”。
As interest rates go up, he argues, investors will turn their back on more speculative growth stocks and focus on the quality names in tech.
他認為，隨著利率上升，投資者將拋棄更具投機性的成長型股票，轉而關注科技股中的優質股。
No prizes for guessing which ones.
哪些是優質股無需多猜。
Although the combined market value of America’s tech titans - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft - has dropped by nearly 25% since November and their latest results were less stellar than in earlier quarters, they remain safe bets.
盡管美國科技巨頭Alphabet、亞馬遜、蘋果、Meta和微軟的總市值自去年11月以來已經下跌了近25%，而且它們的最新業績也不如前幾個季度那么出色，但它們仍然是穩妥的賭注。
Together they booked $359bn in quarterly sales and $69bn in net profits.
這些公司總共錄得3590億美元的季度銷售額和690億美元的凈利潤。
Their core businesses are still growing - in particular cloud computing.
他們的核心業務仍在增長——尤其是云計算。
Collectively, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft, the world’s three biggest cloud providers, took in $43bn of sales for such services in the first three months of 2022, up by 33% from a year earlier.
全球三大云服務提供商Alphabet、亞馬遜和微軟在2022年第一季度共實現了430億美元的云服務銷售額，同比增長33%。
More unexpectedly, older tech and hardware stocks seem in decent nick, Mr Ives notes.
艾夫斯指出，更令人沒想到的是，老牌科技和硬件股似乎狀況不錯。
Intel, a veteran chipmaker, is down by a relatively modest 13% since November.
老牌芯片制造商英特爾自去年11月以來股價下跌了13%，是一個相對溫和的數字。
IBM, a software icon, is up by 12%.
軟件巨頭IBM股價上漲了12%。
Makers of business software with steady sales and high margins, such as Adobe, Oracle and Salesforce, may rebound fast.
銷售穩定、利潤率高的商業軟件制造商，如Adobe、甲骨文和Salesforce，可能會快速回彈。
Hard though it may seem given Coinbase’s crash on May 11th, so may payments and crypto platforms, which have joined the financial mainstream.
考慮到5月11日Coinbase的崩盤，這似乎看起來很困難，但已經加入金融主流的支付和加密平臺也是如此。
Cyber-security firms, such as CrowdStrike or Palo Alto Networks, could see their fortunes return thanks to fears of Russian and Chinese cyber-attacks.
由于擔心俄羅斯和中國的網絡攻擊，CrowdStrike或Palo Alto Networks等網絡安全公司可能會重新迎來機遇。
Geopolitical rifts may even lift Palantir, a secretive analytics firm that works with security services, whose share price plunged by 20% on May 9th after it disclosed slowing sales growth.
地緣政治分裂甚至可能提振Palantir，這是一家與安全服務部門合作的秘密分析公司，在5月9日公布銷售增長放緩后其股價暴跌20%。
Persistently unprofitable gig-economy firms look shakier.
長期不盈利的零工經濟公司看起來更加搖搖欲墜。
Uber, the ride-hailing and delivery champion which reported on May 4th that trips and users rose by nearly a fifth year on year in the first quarter, still lost nearly $6bn.
網約車和配送行業的領頭羊優步在5月4日報告稱，第一季度的出行次數和用戶數量同比增長近五分之一，但仍虧損近60億美元。
The heavy repricing of video-streamers, with multibillion-dollar content expenses and reversing (Netflix) or even steady (Disney) subscriber growth, may be permanent.
視頻流媒體的大幅重新定價可能是永久性的，因為流媒體的內容成本高達數十億美元，并且訂閱數的增長正在逆轉(網飛)，甚至穩定(迪士尼)。
The same may be true for second-tier firms in areas such as social media (Snap) or e-commerce (Shopify), which are dominated by Meta and Amazon, respectively.
社交媒體(Snap)或電子商務(Shopify)等領域的二線公司的情況可能也是如此，這兩個領域分別由Meta和亞馬遜主導。
It would be wrong to compare the current tech slump to the bursting of the dotcom bubble two decades ago.
將當前的科技行業低迷與20年前的互聯網泡沫破裂相提并論是不對的。
Back then companies had neither healthy balance-sheets nor promising business models.
當時的那些公司既沒有健康的資產負債表，也沒有前景美好的商業模式。
Nowadays many of them have both.
而如今這些公司中的許多家都兩者兼有。
The stomach-churning market gyrations are unpleasant to a generation of tech founders, workers and investors who have lived a long bull run.
對于經歷了長時間牛市的一代科技公司創始人、員工和投資者來說，令人反胃的市場波動是令人不快的。
But they are unlikely to stop digital technology eating the world.
但這些波動不太可能阻止數字技術吞噬世界。
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