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（本文发表于时报观点与评论版面。作者是Cal Newport。） Smartphones are our constant companions. For many of us, their glowing screens are a ubiquitous presence, drawing us in with endless diversions, like the warm ping of social approval delivered in the forms of likes and retweets, and the algorithmically amplified outrage of the latest “breaking” news or controversy. They’re in our hands, as soon as we wake, and command our attention until the final moments before we fall asleep. 智能手机是我们忠实的伴侣。对于我们中的很多人来说，它亮着光的屏幕无处不在，无休止地转移我们的注意力，比如那些温暖的提示音，代表着社交认可，以喜欢和转发的形式送达，还有最新的“突发”新闻或争论中被算法放大的愤怒。一醒来，它们就在我们手中，博得我们的注意，直到入睡前的最后时刻。 Steve Jobs would not approve. 史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)不会赞成。 In 2007, Mr. Jobs took the stage at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco and introduced the world to the iPhone. If you watch the full speech, you’ll be surprised by how he imagined our relationship with this iconic invention, because this vision is so different from the way most of us use these devices now. 2007年，乔布斯在旧金山莫斯克尼会议中心(Moscone Convention Center)登台，向全世界介绍iPhone。如果你看了完整的演讲，他对我们与这个标志性发明之间关系的想象会令你惊讶，因为他的愿景与现在我们大多数人使用该设备的方式截然不同。 In the remarks, after discussing the phone’s interface and hardware, he spends an extended amount of time demonstrating how the device leverages the touch screen before detailing the many ways Apple engineers improved the age-old process of making phone calls. “It’s the best iPod we’ve ever made,” Mr. Jobs exclaims at one point. “The killer app is making calls,” he later adds. Both lines spark thunderous applause. He doesn’t dedicate any significant time to discussing the phone’s internet connectivity features until more than 30 minutes into the address. 在讲话中探讨这款手机的界面和硬件之后，乔布斯花了很长时间展示该设备如何利用触摸屏，然后详细介绍了苹果工程师改进过去电话拨打流程的多种方式。“这是我们做过的最好的iPod，”乔布斯感叹道。“拨打电话是最为惊艳的应用，”他后来又补充说。这两句话都引发了雷鸣般的掌声。在讲话的前30分钟内，他都没有花任何重要时间来讨论手机的互联网连接功能。 The presentation confirms that Mr. Jobs envisioned a simpler and more constrained iPhone experience than the one we actually have over a decade later. For example, he doesn’t focus much on apps. When the iPhone was first introduced there was no App Store, and this was by design. As Andy Grignon, an original member of the iPhone team, told me when I was researching this topic, Mr. Jobs didn’t trust third-party developers to offer the same level of aesthetically pleasing and stable experiences that Apple programmers could produce. He was convinced that the phone’s carefully designed native features were enough. It was “an iPod that made phone calls,” Mr. Grignon said to me. 这场发布会证实，比起我们在十多年后所实际拥有的，乔布斯憧憬的是一种更简单、更具约束力的iPhone体验。比如，他不太侧重应用程序。iPhone最初推出时没有应用商店，而且原本就是这样设计的。iPhone团队最初成员安迪·格里尼翁(Andy Grignon)在我研究这个问题时告诉我，乔布斯当时不信任第三方开发商能提供与苹果程序员同等的美感和稳定体验。他确信，这款手机精心设计的原生应用已足够。它是“一款能打电话的iPod”，格里尼翁对我说。 Mr. Jobs seemed to understand the iPhone as something that would help us with a small number of activities — listening to music, placing calls, generating directions. He didn’t seek to radically change the rhythm of users’ daily lives. He simply wanted to take experiences we already found important and make them better. 乔布斯似乎将iPhone理解为能帮我们处理少量活动的玩意儿——听音乐、打电话、导航。他并不追求大大改变用户的日常生活节奏。他只想选取我们已经认为重要的体验，让它们变得更好。 The minimalist vision for the iPhone he offered in 2007 is unrecognizable today — and that’s a shame. 他在2007年推出的iPhone的极简主义愿景到今天已面目全非——这很可惜。 Under what I call the “constant companion model,” we now see our smartphones as always-on portals to information. Instead of improving activities that we found important before this technology existed, this model changes what we pay attention to in the first place — often in ways designed to benefit the stock price of attention-economy conglomerates, not our satisfaction and well-being. 在我所称的“忠实陪伴模式”之下，如今，我们将智能手机视为持续开启的信息通道。这一模式没有改进我们在该技术存在之前便认为重要的活动，反而改变了我们最初关注的方向——它通常旨在抬高注意力经济巨头们的股价，而不是增进我们的满足感和福祉。 We’ve become so used to the constant companion model over the past decade that it’s easy to forget its novelty. As a computer scientist who also writes about the impact of technology on culture, I think it’s important to highlight the magnitude of this shift, as it seems increasingly clear to me that Mr. Jobs probably got it right the first time: Many of us would be better off returning to his original minimalist vision for our phones. 过去十年来，我们太过于习惯这个忠实陪伴模式，以致于很容易忘记它的新奇可贵之处。作为兼写一些科技如何影响文化类文章的计算机科学家，我认为有必要指出这一转变是多么巨大，而且有一点对我似乎越来越明确，即乔布斯很可能一开始就是对的：如果回归他最初设想的手机极简主义愿景，我们当中很多人都会过得更好。 Practically speaking, to be a minimalist smartphone user means that you deploy this device for a small number of features that do things you value (and that the phone does particularly well), and then outside of these activities, put it away. This approach dethrones this gadget from a position of constant companion down to a luxury object, like a fancy bike or a high-end blender, that gives you great pleasure when you use it but doesn’t dominate your entire day. 实际上，成为一名极简主义智能手机用户意味着，你要把这个设备用于少量你所珍视的事情（也是这个手机特别擅长的事情），除这些活动外，把它收起来。这一做法会使这个玩意儿摆脱忠实陪伴角色，成为奢侈品，就像别致的自行车或高端搅拌器一样，它能在使用时给你愉悦感，但不会主宰你的一整天。 To succeed with this approach, a useful first step is to remove from your smartphone any apps that make money from your attention. This includes social media, addictive games and newsfeeds that clutter your screen with “breaking” notifications. Unless you’re a cable news producer, you don’t need minute-by-minute updates on world events, and your friendships are likely to survive even if you have to wait until you’re sitting at your home computer to log on to Facebook or Instagram. In addition, by eliminating your ability to publish carefully curated images to social media directly from your phone, you can simply be present in a nice moment, free from the obsessive urge to document it. 为成功实现这种做法，第一个有用的步骤是移除智能手机上任何依靠你的注意力来赚钱的应用，包括社交媒体、引人上瘾的游戏和让屏幕塞满“突发”消息通知的新闻推送。除非从事有线新闻制作，否则你不需要每分每秒都知晓最新世界动态；就算你得等到回家才能用电脑登录Facebook或Instagram，你的友谊也应该能够保住。此外，摒弃直接用手机在社交媒体上发布精心编辑的照片这一能力，还可以让你活在美好的当下，摆脱非要把它记录下来不可的强迫冲动。 Turning our attention to professional activities, if your work doesn’t absolutely demand that you be accessible by email when away from your desk, delete the Gmail app or disconnect the built-in email client from your office servers. It’s occasionally convenient to check in when out and about, but this occasional convenience almost always comes at the cost of developing a compulsive urge to monitor your messages constantly. If you’re not sure whether your work requires phone-based email, don’t ask; just delete the apps and wait to see whether it causes a problem — many people unintentionally exaggerate their need to constantly be available. 将我们的注意力转移到专业活动中去，如果你的工作并非绝对要求你不在办公桌边也能通过电子邮件联系上，那就删除Gmail应用程序，或者断开办公室服务器和手机内置电子邮件客户端的连接。在外出时偶尔登录查看邮件很方便，但这种偶尔的方便几乎总以难以抑制自己不断监控信息的欲望为代价。如果你不确定自己的工作是否需要手机上的电子邮件功能，那就别去问；只需删除应用程序，等着看看这样是否会导致问题——许多人无意识地夸大了自己总能被联系上的必要性。 Once you’ve stripped away the digital chatter clamoring for your attention, your smartphone will return to something closer to the role originally conceived by Mr. Jobs. It will become a well-designed object that comes out occasionally throughout your day to support — not subvert — your efforts to live well: It helps you find that perfect song to listen to while walking across town on a sunny fall afternoon; it loads up directions to the restaurant where you’re meeting a good friend; with just a few swipes, it allows you to place a call to your mom — and then it can go back into your pocket, or your bag, or the hall table by your front door, while you move on with the business of living your real-world life. 一旦摆脱了吵着要求得到关注的数字聒噪，你的智能手机将回归到更接近乔布斯最初设想的角色。它将成为一个精心设计的物品，在一天中会偶尔出现，支持（而不是颠覆）你对美好生活的努力：它可以帮你找到一首完美适合在阳光明媚的秋日下午走过城镇时听的歌曲；它会储存前往餐厅会见好友的路线；只需几次滑动，它就可以让你给妈妈打个电话——然后它就可以回到你的口袋里、你的包里或者大门一侧的边桌上，而你则继续从事现实生活里的各种事情。 Early in his 2007 keynote, Mr. Jobs said, “Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.” What he didn’t add, however, was the follow-up promise that “tomorrow, we’re going to reinvent your life.” The iPhone is a fantastic phone, but it was never meant to be the foundation for a new form of existence in which the digital increasingly encroaches on the analog. If you return this innovation to its original limited role, you’ll get more out of both your phone and your life. 早在他2007年的主题演讲中，乔布斯就曾说，“今天，苹果将重塑手机。”然而，他没有进一步承诺说，“明天，我们将重塑你的生活。”iPhone是一款出色的手机，但它从来无意成为数字技术日益蚕食模拟技术这种新生活方式的基础。如果你让这种创新产品回归到其原本的有限角色，你将从手机和生活之中获得更多。 Cal Newport是乔治城大学一名研究计算机科学的副教授，即将出版《数字极简主义：在嘈杂的世界中选择专注的生活》(Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World)。 |
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