現今高科技的使用者會拒絕或是成為機器的奴役呢?
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14億人口使用電子郵件。
每一天有2,470億封電子郵件被寄送。
300百萬人使用臉書。
每一天全球使用臉書耗費的時間是80億分。
上個月有28.5百萬個獨特的訪客到flickr。
至今年底 預計有18 百萬人使用推特。
3.9百萬人追隨好萊塢演員艾希頓庫奇，
艾希頓庫奇是世界上最受歡迎的推客。
來源:《衛報》英國自由主義日報
國家書評圈主席、現任葛瑞塔新主編Freeman表示，當今通訊工具看似使我們更易聯繫但實際上卻
讓我們加深隔閡。電子郵件、即時通、發送簡訊、與社群網站都主張成為法國哲學家Guy Debord "
孤寂社群” 的代號而非與全球共同體更親密。
與及時性。
And as the usage of digital communication has increased exponentially, our efficiency has paradoxically
declined: We spend so much time checking our inboxes or refreshing our Twitter pages that, Freeman said:
“Our attention spans are fractured into a thousand tiny fragments.”
或更新推特的網頁，Freeman 說道：我們的注意力已斷裂成細碎千絲。
We are, it seems, a society in the grip of information overload. Last year in the UK we spent 537 percent more time on Facebook than in 2007 and sent approximately 40 text messages a month. By 2011, it is estimated, there will be 3.2 billion e-mail users worldwide.
且一個月發送大約40 封簡訊 。到2011年估計全世界有32億位郵件使用者。
玩吃角子老虎是被賭徒的天性驅使一樣。
“You never know when something is going to land in your inbox, so there is that tingle of excitement every
time you check,” Stafford said. “There’s something about being in the process that’s really immersive. We’re engaged while it’s happening. It looks like it is convenient, but it’s not: you are distracted for the
next half hour, asking yourself if someone has answered.”
這驛動的過程，並融入其中。這看似便捷但並非如此 自問：若有人回應了， 你是否在下半個小時
內感到意亂情迷。
Researchers at Loughborough University found that it took an average of 64 seconds for a person to recover
their train of thought after interruption by e-mail: Those who check their e-mail every five minutes waste 8.5 hours a week in this way.
拉夫伯勒大學研究人員發現一個人被郵件中斷後須花64秒恢復思緒的連貫。 那些每五分鐘確認郵
件的人在一星期中浪費8.5小時。
“There is no doubt that people use it as an avoidance tactic,” said Yoram Kalman, a post-doctoral researcher in online communication at the Open University of Israel. “The modern office worker works
for an average of three minutes before an interruption occurs.”
“人們毫無疑問的用它來當迴避策略”一位在以色列開放大學做網路通訊博士後研究員
Yoram Kalman 說：現代的上班族在中斷發生前平均工作三分鐘。
Kalman said that although we believe online and mobile technologies help us to get things done more efficiently, the mental impact lasts far longer than hitting the “send” button. Once we dispatch an e-mail,
a text or an instant message into the ether, our minds go through a series of semi-conscious calculations about how soon the recipient will get back to us. We exist in a state of heightened anxiety until they reply, yet we could have got the answer by picking up the telephone or walking down the corridor to ask them in person.
Kalman 說：雖然我們相信線上和行動科技能幫助我們更有效率的完成工作，但其對精神上的影響卻
比按鍵發送訊息更久。當我們發送一封郵件、簡訊、即時通給別人，我們的思緒就沉浸在收件者究竟多快將會回覆的恍惚狀態中。儘管我們可以直接拿起電話或走到室外走道去詢問他們得到答案，但我們卻寧願處在這高亢的焦慮中直到對方回覆。
“Face-to-face communication has always been a little awkward,” Freeman said. “How long do you
hold eye contact? Where do you put your hands? Your breath might smell or you might have worn that sweater which makes your neck disappear. All this anxiety is erased over e-mail, but along with it we lose quite a lot of the awareness that there is another person there. There’s no body language or look of abject terror in someone’s eyes to slow us down when we’re about to blunder. So we type things we would never say in person.”
“面對面的溝通總是有點尷尬” Freeman 說：眼神應交流多久? 手應放在哪 ?
你的呼吸可能有氣味或你那件會遮住你脖子的毛衣可能有磨損。所有這些焦慮都可被抹去但隨之
我們喪失有他人在的警覺性。當我們接近出錯時沒有肢體語言或從他人看起來極端恐懼的眼神來
使我們減緩速度。所以我們標示著不可能親自說的事。
The popularity of modern forms of communication has also led to a decline in more traditional ways
of keeping in touch. A 2005 study by the British government’s Department for Education and Skills
found that a third of girls aged 16 to 19 had never written a letter, with the figure rising to more than
half among boys. Current postal strikes bear testament to a mail service in decline: There has been
a 10 percent annual fall in the number of letters and parcels delivered by Royal Mail, largely attributable to increased use of e-mail. Compare this with the Victorian era, when letter writing was both a form of entertainment and a necessary means of keeping in touch — Henry James had more than 1,000 correspondents, while William Makepeace Thackeray wrote 15 letters every morning.
在現代普及化的交流方式，也導致一些以傳統保持聯繫的方式式微。英國政府在2005年對教育與
技能的一份研究中顯示，16 to 19歲的女孩有三分之一不曾寫過一封信，同類研究在男孩中數量則
超過一半 現行的即時郵通方式打擊日益下滑的郵務服務系統。因電子郵件的日益使用，交付英國
皇家郵政的信件和包裹的數量每年下降百分之十。
把這與維多利亞時代比較，當時撰寫書信成為一種兼具娛樂和保持聯繫的形式， 亨利詹姆斯寫超過1000封信，同時英國小說家william克皮斯薩克雷每天早上寫15封信。
But there are less quantifiable effects. Psychiatrist Edward Hallowell said the stress of trying to process information as rapidly as it arrives is reducing us to quivering wrecks of indecision and demoralization. As e-mail becomes easier and quicker to use, we are finding it increasingly difficult to sift the relevant information.
但有少數的效果。精神病學家愛德華哈洛韋爾稱，試圖處理信息盡快到達的壓力是減少我們因猶豫
不決和氣餒的顫抖。隨著電子郵件更簡易和便利使用，我們發現越來越難以篩選有關資料。
Hallowell believes that the modern workplace, with its dependence on Internet discussion forums and reply-to-all e-mail circulars, induces an “attention deficit trait” that has been aggravated by the introduction of the BlackBerry, a gadget that ensures we now have continuous access to our inboxes and social networking feeds. In 2006 the Wall Street Journal coined the term “BlackBerry orphans” to denote the scores of children who felt neglected by their parents’ obsessive compulsion to check their electronic messages.
哈洛韋爾認為，現代的工作場所，依賴有附網上討論論壇和答覆對所有電子郵件通告的機制，因引
進一種精巧的機械”黑莓機”，可確保我們現在能繼續存取接收我們的收件箱和社交網絡供應的工
具而促使其“注意力缺陷多性狀”更形惡化。 2006年，華爾街日報提出了“黑莓孤兒”來標記那些
因其父母強迫似迷戀檢查他們的電子訊息而感到被忽視的兒童。
“It’s proved impossible to completely drop out of e-mail contact,” Freeman said. “It’s become fundamentally embedded in just about every kind of work, especially journalism. I think people should use it less, and try thinking of attention as an ecology worth preserving in small acts like writing a letter
or a postcard.”
這證明不可能完全脫離電子郵件的聯繫，”弗里曼說。 “特別是報章雜誌業，這已成每種工作基本
嵌入要件。我認為人們應該減少使用它，並藉由一個如寫一封信或明信片的小動作來保持我們思考
的注意力。
“The other big problem is that text is mutable. We might think we said what we meant, but there are
so many ways to interpret language, and many forms of humor don’t translate well into text alone. So
a huge percentage of e-mails are misunderstood,” he said.
另一個大問題是，文本是可變的。我們可能會認為，我們說的就是我們的意思，但語言有很多方式
可詮釋，許多幽默形式轉化成單獨文案卻變調。因此，電子郵件被人誤解佔很大比例，“他說
While our intentions can be misinterpreted without face-to-face contact, there is also the broader
danger that our over-reliance on technologies will have a negative impact on language itself.
儘管我們的意圖，在沒有面對面的接觸之下可能被曲解，但也有更廣泛的危險，就是我們過分依賴
工藝技術將使語言本身將產生負面衝擊。
Naomi Baron, a linguistics professor at American University in Washington, argues in her book
Always On that instant messaging, mobile phones and blogs are magnifying the casual “whatever” attitude towards formal writing among the younger generation.
在華盛頓美國大學一個語言學教授納米貝隆，在她的著作Always On裡抱怨在年輕的世代，
即時通訊、手機和博客其誇大的 “凡是都可”的隨性態度箝制了正式寫作。
Examination boards routinely report that “text speak ” has crept into school test papers. Whereas biographers or historians can draw upon a wealth of written archive material
from previous centuries, there will be substantially less preserved for the future because so much
of our cyberspace chatter is transient.
考試委員會的定期報告指出，“火星文”已經悄悄潛入學校的試卷。而傳記作家或歷史學家可以
運用前幾個世紀豐富的檔案資料，因為這麼多的網絡空間的傳訊是短暫的，在未來將大幅減少
保存。
“By its very nature, e-mail or text is not a convivial medium of communication,” said Tom Hodgkinson, editor of the Idler magazine and author of How To Be Idle. “Something about it makes people communicate in an unsatisfactory way with bad grammar, bad spelling and bad punctuation, in mostly terse sentences. It makes you hurry.”
本質上，電子郵件或文本不是一個友善的通信界面，” Tom Hodgkinson說， Idler雜誌的編輯，
和”如何閒置”的作者。在大部分精簡潔的句子中，夾雜著不良語法，不良的拼寫和錯誤的標點
符號未盡如意的進行溝通。它催促你快點。“
Hodgkinson attempted to give up e-mail two years ago, but his resolve lasted just two weeks.
“It was just impossible when I was trying to edit a magazine,” he said, “but I have started writing my books first in longhand, with an ink pen, and then transferring it to a computer. I find that my thoughts
flow much better that way.”
霍奇金森在兩年前試圖放棄電子郵件，但他的決定僅僅持續了兩個星期。
當我試圖編輯一本雜誌，這是不可能的，“他說，”但我已先開始用簽字筆書寫我的書，然後再
轉移到電腦。我覺得這種方式讓我的思想運轉得更好。
“Offices used to be very noisy and full of clatter. Now everybody sits in their own horrible bubble
on Facebook instead of actually talking to each other,” he said.
辦公室通常非常嘈雜，充滿了碎念。現在大家泡在自己的facebook，而不是實際互相交談，
“他說。
Still, it is not all bad. Freeman acknowledges that there are “enormous benefits” to modern forms
of communication.
然而，這並不全是壞事。Freeman承認，以現代化形式的溝通有“巨大的利益”。
“It’s made all kinds of work more convenient ... people have a desperate need to be in touch.
I’m just arguing that it needn’t always have to be at the speed that e-mail travels,” he said.
But Yoram Kalman sounds a cautionary note against using technology as a scapegoat.
它讓所有類型的工作更方便...人們對保持聯絡有迫切需求。我只是辯稱電子郵件傳送不一定在
於速度，“他說。但是，約拉姆卡爾曼人藉由使用科技做為替代罪羊以示警語。
“Usually, if you look behind the technology, you find culture, social behavior and you find people,” Kalman said. “Technology is neutral, it depends what you use it for.”
So perhaps, in the end, most of us want to be tyrannized.
“通常，如果你看看技術的背後，你會發現文化，社會行為，然後你會發現人性。”
卡爾曼(Kalman) 說。 “技術是中立的， 這取決於你怎麼用它。也許，最後，我們大部分都希望
被凌虐。
(尚未潤飾, 以上數據已有異動 請注意刊登時間)
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