2018.6.29纽约时报：如何摆脱对手机屏幕的狂热迷恋？

We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air.

如何摆脱对手机屏幕的狂热迷恋？

Smartphones were once the best thing to happen to the tech industry — and for a while, it seemed, to all of us, too. In the 11 years since the iPhone made its debut, smartphones have subsumed just about every other gadget and altered every business, from news to retail to taxis to television, ultimately reordering everything about how we understand media, politics and reality itself.

智能手机曾经是科技行业的福音——曾经有那么一段时间，它也是我们所有人的福音。在iPhone首次亮相11年后，智能手机几乎纳入了其他所有的小设备，改变了从新闻、零售到出租车、电视等所有业务，并最终彻底改变我们对媒体、政治和现实本身的理解。

But now that smartphones have achieved dominance, revolution is again in the air.

但是如今智能手机已经取得了统治地位，变革的硝烟再起。

Global smartphone sales are plateauing for a very obvious reason: Pretty much anyone who can afford one already has one, and increasingly there are questions about whether we are using our phones too much and too mindlessly. At Google’s and Apple’s recent developer conferences, executives took the stage to show how much more irresistible they were making our phones. Then each company unveiled something else: Software to help you use your phone a lot less.

全球智能手机销量趋于稳定的原因非常明显：基本上买得起手机的人都人手一个，而且渐渐的也有越来越多的人质疑我们是否在过度使用手机，且过于盲目。在谷歌和苹果最近的开发者大会上，舞台上的高管们展示了他们正在把我们的手机制作得多么令人难以抗拒。然后，每家公司都公布了另外一个东西：帮助你大幅减少手机使用时间的软件。

There’s a reason tech companies are feeling this tension between making phones better and worrying they are already too addictive. We’ve hit what I call Peak Screen.

在制造更好的手机和对手机已经过于成瘾的担心之间，科技公司感受到了这种紧张关系是有原因的。我把这称之为，我们已达到了“屏幕顶峰”。

For much of the last decade, a technology industry ruled by smartphones has pursued a singular goal of completely conquering our eyes. It has given us phones with ever-bigger screens and phones with unbelievable cameras, not to mention virtual reality goggles and several attempts at camera-glasses.

在过去十年的大部分时间中，被智能手机统治的技术行业所追求的目标一直是完全占领我们的眼睛。它向我们供应越来越大的屏幕，难以置信的摄像头，更别提虚拟现实眼镜和有过多次尝试的摄像头眼镜。

Tech has now captured pretty much all visual capacity. Americans spend three to four hours a day looking at their phones, and about 11 hours a day looking at screens of any kind.

科技现已基本上俘获了我们全部的视力。美国人每天会花三到四个小时盯着手机，看各类屏幕的时间则是11个小时。

So tech giants are building the beginning of something new: a less insistently visual tech world, a digital landscape that relies on voice assistants, headphones, watches and other wearables to take some pressure off our eyes.

因此，科技巨头正在打造某种新的开头：一个不总是视觉的科技世界，一个依靠声音辅助、耳机、手表以及其他可穿戴设备减轻眼睛负担的数字图景。

This could be a nightmare; we may simply add these new devices to our screen-addled lives. But depending on how these technologies develop, a digital ecosystem that demands less of our eyes could be better for everyone — less immersive, less addictive, more conducive to multitasking, less socially awkward, and perhaps even a salve for our politics and social relations.

这可能是个噩梦，我们可能只会把这些新的设备加入我们沉迷屏幕的生活当中。但一种不需那么费眼的数码生态可能对大家都好，具体取决于这些科技将如何发展——少一些浸没、少一些沉迷，更有助于处理多项任务，减少社交尴尬，甚至或许还能拯救我们的政治和社会关系。

Who will bring us this future? Amazon and Google are clearly big players, but don’t discount the company that got us to Peak Screen in the first place. With advances to the Apple Watch and AirPods headphones, Apple is slowly and almost quietly creating an alternative to its phones.

谁会带给我们这样的未来？亚马逊(Amazon)和谷歌显然是主要玩家，但不要小瞧了那些最初让我们陷入“屏幕顶峰”境地的公司。随着苹果手表和AirPods耳机的进步，苹果公司正在慢慢地、几乎悄无声息地为自己的手机创造一个替代品。

If it works, it could change everything again. As I argue below, there are many ways that screens have become too dominant in our lives. The sooner we find something else, the better.

如果成功了，它可能会再次改变一切。正如我接下来论述的，屏幕在我们生活的很多方面占据了过于主导的地位。我们越早找到替代品越好。

Screens are insatiable. At a cognitive level, they are voracious vampires for your attention, and as soon as you look at one, you are basically toast.

屏幕贪得无厌。在认知层面上，它是你注意力的贪婪吸血鬼，只要你看它一眼，基本上就会被它俘获。

There are studies that bear this out. One, by a team led by Adrian Ward, a marketing professor at the University of Texas’ business school, found that the mere presence of a smartphone within glancing distance can significantly reduce your cognitive capacity. Your phone is so irresistible that when you can see it, you cannot help but spend a lot of otherwise valuable mental energy trying to not look at it.

有些研究证明了这一点。德克萨斯大学(University of Texas)商学院的营销学教授阿德里安·沃德(Adrian Ward)领导的一个团队发现，哪怕只是视野范围内有一部智能手机，就会显著降低你的认知能力。你的手机具有难以抵抗的魅力，你一看到它，就要花费大量宝贵的精力努力不去看它。

When you do give in, you lose your mind.

当你屈服时，你会失去理智。

“What you get sucked into is not the one thing that caught your attention — your text message or tweet or whatever,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at the technology research firm Creative Strategies. Instead, you unlock your phone and instantly, almost unconsciously, descend into the irresistible splendors of the digital world — emerging 30 minutes later, stupefied and dazed.

“你陷入的不只是那件引起你注意的事——短信、推文什么的，”科技研究公司创意策略(Creative Strategies)的分析师卡罗琳娜·米拉内西(Carolina Milanesi)说。只要打开手机，你就会很快地、几乎是无意识地陷入数字世界不可抗拒的光芒之中——在里面沉浸了30分钟后，你会变得昏昏沉沉，头晕目眩。

“You open this irresistible box, and you can’t fight it,” she said.

“只要打开这个难以抗拒的盒子，你就输了，”她说。

Tech companies understand this power, of course; our inability to resist screens explains why phone screens keep getting bigger.

科技公司当然理解这种力量，屏幕的难以抗拒可以解释为什么手机屏幕越来越大。

Apple once argued that increasing the iPhone’s screen size would make for a phone that would be too awkward for your hands. “No one’s going to buy that,” Steve Jobs predicted of big-screen phones in 2010.

苹果曾认为，增加iPhone的屏幕尺寸会让手机显得笨拙。“没人会买那个，”史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)2010年在预测大屏幕手机的前景时说。

He was wrong. Rivals, led by Samsung, found that big-screen phones sold very well. The eyes won out over the hands. Eventually Apple joined the party, making iPhones with bigger and then still bigger displays. The largest-screen iPhones now account for half of Apple’s sales and the majority of its profits.

他错了。以三星为首的竞争对手发现，大屏手机的销量非常好。眼睛打败了手。最终，苹果也加入了这个阵营，生产屏幕越来越大的iPhone。目前，屏幕最大的iPhone占苹果销量的一半，是它大部分的利润来源。

But screens have now become a crutch for technologists, a lazy, catchall way to add digital experiences to every product.

但如今，屏幕已成为技术人员的拐杖，是给每一种产品增加数字体验的偷懒、笼统的办法。

We have seen this in cars for years. By placing interior controls on touch screens rather than tactile knobs and switches, carmakers have made vehicles much more annoying and dangerous to interact with. The Tesla Model 3, the most anticipated car on the planet, takes this to an absurd level. As several reviewers have lamented, just about every one of the car’s controls — including adjustments for the side mirrors — requires access through a screen.

我们已经在汽车上看到它很多年了。汽车制造商们把内部控制功能转移到屏幕上，而不是通过触摸旋钮和开关，这让与汽车的互动变得更加恼人和危险。特斯拉Model 3是世界上最受期待的汽车，它已经把这个问题提升到了荒谬的程度。正如几位汽车评论员所哀叹的，汽车的每一种控制——包括对侧镜的调整——都需要通过屏幕进行。

Or look at augmented reality, the technology that allows you to see digital imagery superimposed on the real world. In a few specific uses — turning your face into a dog’s on Snapchat — this can be fun. But too often, A.R. feels gimmicky. Rather than commingling the digital and the real, it simply uses a screen to usurp the world around you.

或者看看增强现实技术，它能让你看到叠映在现实世界上的数字图像。在某些特定用途上，比如在Snapchat上把你的脸变成狗的脸，可能还挺有趣的。但太多的时候，增强现实只是一个噱头。它不是把数字世界和现实世界结合起来，而是用屏幕篡夺你周围的世界。

At Apple’s developer conference this month, Martin Sanders, a Lego executive, showed off a new A.R. Lego set. When he pointed his iPad at a Lego structure, his screen filled with digital fireworks, superheros, sports cars — a whole bustling Lego town that he didn’t have to build with his hands or imagine with his head.

在本月的苹果开发者大会上，乐高(Lego)的高管马丁·桑德斯(Martin Sanders)展示了一组新的增强现实乐高套装。他把iPad指向一个乐高建筑，屏幕上满是数字烟火、超级英雄和跑车——一整座喧闹的乐高城，他无需用双手去搭建或用头脑去想像。

“There’s so much to do here!” Mr. Sanders exclaimed as he and an assistant stood completely still, staring at animated Legos through a piece of digital glass. It was bizarre. The whole point of Lego is physical interaction, but thanks to A.R., he had turned Lego into just another video game.

“这里有很多可做的事情！”桑德斯宣称。他和一名助手站在那里一动不动，透过一块数字玻璃盯着动画乐高。这挺奇怪的。乐高的全部意义在于实体互动，但有了增强现实，他把乐高变成了另一个电子游戏。

There are two ways we may break our fevered addiction to screens.

有两种方法可以让我们摆脱对屏幕的狂热迷恋。

First, we will need to try to use our phones more mindfully, which requires a combination of willpower and technology.

首先，我们需要更用心地使用手机，这需要意志力和技术的结合。

Help is on the way. For the last week, I’ve been using Screen Time, one of the new features in Apple’s next version of its mobile operating system. The software gives you valuable information about how much you are using your phone, and it can even block you from using apps that you deem unhealthy. I found Screen Time very well designed, and I suspect it will profoundly change how we use our phones.

援兵马上就到了。上周，我一直在使用屏幕时间(Screen Time)，它是苹果的下一代移动操作系统的一个新功能。这个软件可以提供有关手机使用情况的宝贵信息，甚至可以阻止你使用那些你认为不健康的应用程序。我发现屏幕时间设计得很好，我觉得它会深刻改变我们使用手机的方式。

But in addition to helping us resist phones, the tech industry will need to come up with other, less immersive ways to interact with digital world. Three technologies may help with this: voice assistants, of which Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant are the best, and Apple’s two innovations, AirPods and the Apple Watch.

但是，除了帮助我们抵制手机之外，科技行业还需要想出其他不那么容易让我们沉迷其中的与数字世界互动的方式。有三种技术也许可以帮助实现这个目标：语音助手——亚马逊的Alexa和谷歌助手是其中最好的——以及苹果的两个创新产品：AirPods和Apple Watch。

All of these technologies share a common idea. Without big screens, they are far less immersive than a phone, allowing for quick digital hits: You can buy a movie ticket, add a task to a to-do list, glance at a text message or ask about the weather without going anywhere near your Irresistible Screen of Splendors.

所有这些技术都有一个共同的想法。它们没有大屏幕，所以远没有手机那么容易让人沉迷，它可以让你快速完成数字任务：你可以买一张电影票，在待办事项清单上增加一项任务，浏览一条短信，或者询问天气情况——你做这一切都无需靠近你无法抗拒的华丽屏幕。

These are all works in progress. Voice assistants still cannot do everything for you, though Google and Amazon have thousands of engineers working to improve them. AirPods are fantastic — they have fewer connection issues than any other wireless headphones — and after years of refinement, the Apple Watch shows you just enough stuff from your phone to make it useful without becoming overbearing.

这些技术都还在完善中。语音助手还不能为你做所有的事，尽管谷歌和亚马逊安排了成千上万名工程师努力改进它们。AirPods很棒——它的连接问题比其他任何无线耳机都少——经过多年改进，Apple Watch能向你展示足够多来自手机的内容，它变得有用却又不会主导你的生活。

If Apple could only improve Siri, its own voice assistant, the Watch and AirPods could combine to make something new: a mobile computer that is not tied to a huge screen, that lets you get stuff done on the go without the danger of being sucked in. Imagine if, instead of tapping endlessly on apps, you could just tell your AirPods, “Make me dinner reservations at 7” or “Check with my wife’s calendar to see when we can have a date night this week.”

如果苹果能改进自己的语音助手Siri，那么苹果手表和AirPods就可以结合起来，变成一种全新的东西：一个没有大屏幕的移动电脑，它可以让你快速完成任务，而不会陷进去。想象一下，你不必在应用程序上不停地敲击，你可以对AirPods说：“预订晚上7点的餐厅桌位”或“查看我妻子的日程，看看这周哪天能搞个约会之夜”。

Apple declined to comment on its plans. There are enough reports, though, that suggest Apple is not blind to such a future. It has plans for improving AirPods, according to Bloomberg, and I’ve been impressed by how steadily the company keeps adding features to the Watch — including the ability, in its latest model, to use it away from your phone.

苹果拒绝就它的计划置评。不过，有足够多的报道表明，苹果并非对这样的未来视而不见。据彭博社(Bloomberg)报道，该公司计划改进AirPods。苹果一直在不断增加苹果手表的功能，这种稳步前进令人赞叹，其中包括它最新款的一个功能——可以远离手机使用它。

Apple has never been scared of disrupting its own best inventions. By rethinking screens, it may have a chance to do that once more.

苹果从来不怕打破自己最好的发明。通过重新思考屏幕，它可能有机会再次这样做。