時刻保持聯繫是一種暴政

Everything I know about the Internet, I learned from my 87-year-old mother.

我對於互聯網的瞭解，都是來自於87歲的老媽。

Like, the harder you hit “Send,” the faster the email travels. If you want wholly to colonize your reader’s subconscious, just end your email or text right in the middle of the. If you’re still not sure your reader is fully invested, simPLY LEAN ON YOUR CAPS LOCK TO IMBUE YOUR MISSIVE WITH A THROBBING IMMEDIACY.

比如，點“發送”鍵點得越用力，郵件就發送得越快。如果你想完全佔據收件人的潛意識，那麼把the寫到一半就結束郵件或短信。如果你仍不能確定收信人是否全情投入，只需在一個單詞沒寫完就切換成大寫，讓你的信件充滿令人震撼的緊迫性。

But Mom’s larger message is that the Internet and cellphones have created a kind of tyranny of connectedness: Even those of us who don’t have small children or jobs with the State Department, it seems, now need to be accessible at all hours of the day. It’s as if we’re doctors on call.

不過，媽媽對互聯網和手機更宏觀的理解是，它們製造出一種相互聯繫的暴政：如今，連我們這些沒有小孩或不在國務院工作的人也似乎需要能夠全天候保持聯繫。好像我們是隨時待命的醫生。

Like Madonna confessing that during her marriage to Guy Ritchie each kept a BlackBerry tucked under their pillows at night, we have to keep up standards. If you go to the theater and discover your phone has died, you better borrow a seat mate’s phone and pre-emptively call the last five people you spoke to; if there’s a glitch in Gmail, you better start checking all your other portals with an assiduousness that verges on the robotic.

麥當娜(Madonna)承認，在她和蓋伊·裏奇(Guy Ritchie)的婚姻期間，晚上兩人枕頭底下都放着一部黑莓手機。我們也要達到標準。如果去劇院發現手機沒電了，最好借鄰座的手機，先給最近通話的五個人打電話說一聲。如果Gmail郵箱出了點小故障，最好馬上查看其他所有的門戶網站，在這方面應該像機器人一樣勤勉。

In my own effort to stay afloat the data surf, I subscribe to two policies. First, if it takes me more than 24 hours to respond to an email, I’ll apologize to the sender; after a day, the failure to respond betrays disinterest, concern or alcohol poisoning.

爲了在數字世界裏立於不敗之地，我給自己定了兩條規矩：第一，如果超過24小時沒有回覆郵件，我會給發信人道歉。因爲超過一天不回覆，對方會以爲我沒興趣、不關心或者酒精中毒了。

Second, in the intimacy-based communications hierarchy (with a face-to-face meeting or a phone call being at the top, and tying a message to a rock and then burying the rock in the dirt being at the bottom), I try always to meet the incoming vehicle at its level or higher. You can’t answer a phone call with a message on FarmVille.

第二，在以親密關係爲基礎的交流等級中（面對面溝通或打電話屬於最高級別，用石頭來傳遞信息屬於最低級別），我總是努力以同等或更高的交流級別回覆對方。對方要是打電話，你就不能在FarmVille上發消息回覆。

My methods seem to work well enough. But daily I see others struggle. “I was in the recording studio the other day,” the producer and jazz trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis said. “I’d hired five musicians. We were in the studio for seven or eight hours. One of the musicians was 100 percent committed, no interruptions. He will be hired again. By contrast the bassist stayed on his phone throughout the session, doing social media. He will only be hired again if I can’t find someone else.”

我的原則似乎收到了不錯的效果。但是我每天都能看到其他人的掙扎。“有一天，我在錄音棚裏，”製作人、爵士樂長號手戴爾菲尤·馬薩利斯(Delfeayo Marsalis)說，“我僱了五位樂手。我們在錄音棚裏待了七八個小時。其中一位樂手全神貫注，沒有受到任何干擾。下次我肯定還會僱傭他。相比之下，那位貝斯手在錄音過程中一直看手機，玩社交媒體。以後我只會在找不到其他人的情況下，纔會僱傭他。”

Asked what dark, tangled forces may have prompted the bassist’s behavior, Mr. Marsalis said: “There’s a fear that: ‘Hey, I’m doing this session with you, but another guy might call me and give me a gig that pays $10 an hour. I can’t miss that call.’ ”

當被問及那位貝斯手是出於什麼陰暗複雜的考慮才做出那種行爲時，馬薩利斯說，“我覺得他是這樣想的：‘嘿，這次我是和你一起錄音，但是別人可能會給我打電話，提供每小時10美元的現場演出機會。我不能錯過那樣的電話。’”

When she was a sophomore at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2011, Elisabeth Chramer and her communications class were asked by their professor to refrain from any cellphone or electronic use for 72 hours.

2011年，伊麗莎白·克拉默(Elisabeth Chramer)在亞拉巴馬大學伯明翰分校上大二。當時，通訊課的教授要求班上的學生72小時不使用手機或其他任何電子設備。

“There were a few students who could not complete the assignment,” she said. “They just could not isolate themselves.” Ms. Chramer, who now operates her own customized embroidery company, added that one of the huge challenges of communicating with members of her generation is their varied response time: “It’s either instantaneous or it’s a week later. People go from platform to platform. You have to catch them while they’re on a certain platform, or you wait a week.”

“有幾位同學無法完成老師佈置的這項任務，”她說，“他們就是無法把自己與其他人隔離起來。”克拉默現在經營自己的訂製刺繡公司。她補充說，跟她這一代人溝通的一個巨大挑戰是，每個人的回覆時間不同：“有的是立即回覆，有的是一週後回覆。人們在不同的溝通平臺之間切換。你必須在他們在某個平臺上時聯繫上他們，否則就得等一星期。”

The more messaging platforms and types of social media that we welcome into the world, the more our communication skills are scattered and made diffuse; every year, we have ever-sophisticated ways to approach the microphone and mumble, “’Sup?” Thus it’s interesting to see the workarounds that people use to keep their interactions from dissolving into a meaningless spray of pixels.

我們接受的信息平臺和社交媒體種類越多，我們的溝通方式就變得越分散。每年，我們對着麥克風咕噥“什麼事？”時所藉助的平臺變得越來越複雜多樣。所以，有趣的是，人們開始使用各種變通方式，防止相互交流變得太過分散，失去意義。

The entrepreneur and philanthropist John Paul DeJoria, a founder of the Patrón Spirits Company and the Paul Mitchell line of hair care products, does not use email even though he presides over a multibillion-dollar empire.

企業家、慈善家約翰·保羅·德約里爾(John Paul DeJoria)是培恩烈酒公司(Patrón Spirits Company)和寶美奇(Paul Mitchell)護髮產品公司的創始人。儘管他管理着一個價值數十億美元的帝國，但他從不使用電子郵件。

“I would be so inundated that I wouldn’t be able to get off the computer,” he said. “My executive director only brings me messages that are important. I teach the people around me to pay attention to the vital few and ignore the trivial many.”

“否則我將被郵件淹沒，無法從電腦前脫身，”他說，“我的執行理事只把重要消息轉達給我。我教導我身邊的人只關注少數至關重要的事，忽略很多無關緊要的事。”

Mr. DeJoria added: “A personal phone call to someone means the world. Or if somebody writes me a letter and there’s enough room on that letter, I will handwrite my answer on the letter and either mail it back or, if they have a fax, fax it to them.”

德約里爾補充說，“親自打電話意義重大。或者，要是有人給我寫了一封信，信的下方還有足夠的空間，我會在空白處回覆，然後把信寄回去，或者要是對方有傳真，就傳真過去。”

Mr. Marsalis, who wrote a children’s book “No Cell Phone Day” about a father and daughter who spend the best day of their lives when they temporarily put aside mobile technology, said that he often imposes restrictions on his 14-year-old daughter and her friends.

馬薩利斯寫過一本童書，名叫《無手機日》(No Cell Phone Day)，講述的一對父女暫時拋開移動技術，度過了人生中最美好的一天。他說，他經常對14歲的女兒和她的朋友們在使用手機方面加以約束。

“I won’t allow cellphones in the car,” he said. “When her cousins come to visit, I tell their parents, ‘Your child will not be available to you for the next four hours.’ ” Mr. Marsalis said the parents’ reaction is usually rhapsodic.

“我不允許在車裏使用手機，”他說，“她的堂（表）兄弟姐妹來我家玩時，我會對他們的父母說，‘在接下來的四個小時裏，你們將跟孩子聯繫不上。’”馬薩利斯說，那些父母們的反應通常是狂喜。

But workarounds, of course, can work around in the other direction, too.

當然，也有其他一些變通方式。

When Washingtonian magazine published an article in January about Green Bank, ., where wireless Internet is outlawed because the town is host to a high-tech government telescope “so sensitive that it can pick up the energy equivalent of a single snowflake hitting the ground,” the magazine also reported that, according to one seventh grader, many children in the area connect to home Wi-Fi networks and then use the texting functions in Facebook and Snapchat to talk to their friends.

今年1月，《華盛頓人》(Washingtonian)雜誌發表了一篇文章，講述的是西弗吉尼亞州的綠岸(Green Bank)。在那裏，無線網絡是非法的，因爲該鎮是一架政府的高科技望遠鏡的所在地，這架望遠鏡“非常靈敏，連雪花觸地大小的能量都能捕獲”。該雜誌還報道說，據一位七年級學生說，該地區的很多孩子連上家裏的無線網絡，然後用Facebook和Snapchat上的短信功能與朋友交談。

Genaro Cortez, a lawyer in San Antonio, said that he once told all his clients that he was going to a criminal law conference in San Diego, and then set up an automatic Out of the Office email to the same effect. Nevertheless, during the conference, one of his clients texted him about a hearing scheduled for the following week. Mr. Cortez said that in this instance he responded because the question posed was legitimate and didn’t inconvenience him.

赫納羅·科爾特斯(Genaro Cortez)是聖安東尼奧市的一位律師。他說，有一次，他告訴所有的客戶，他要去聖迭戈參加一個刑法大會，他還給郵件設置了“不在辦公室”的自動回覆。儘管如此，在大會期間，他的一個客戶還是給他發短信，告訴他一場聽證會安排在接下來的一週舉行。科爾特斯說，在這種情況下，他回覆了，因爲那位客戶提出的問題是合理的，沒有給他帶來不便。

“But it’s a matter of degree,” he said, “so long as the person texting or emailing doesn’t abuse the issue by contacting multiple times on frivolous matters.”

“但是，這有一個度的問題，”他說，“只要發短信或郵件的人沒有就無關緊要的事情多次聯繫就行。”

In the end, it may be all but impossible to keep ourselves from scattering our online attentions to the point of meaninglessness.

說到底，我們幾乎不可能不分散在網上的注意力，甚至達到毫無意義的地步。

Eschewing the Internet altogether is an option. My mother estimates that about half the seniors in her retirement community aren’t online. “A lot of them are scared to death by the whole idea, by the infernal machine,” she told me. “You know the pathetic fallacy, where you ascribe human qualities to nonhuman things? It’s that. They ascribe human qualities to the computer. Like the computer is going to reach out and grab them.”

完全避開互聯網也是一種選擇。我媽媽估計，在她的退休社區裏，約有一半老年人不上網。“他們很多人對互聯網這個概念感到害怕，覺得它像定時炸彈，”她對我說，“你知道感情誤置吧？就是把人的特質投射到無生命的東西上。就是這種情況。他們把人的特質投射到電腦上。好像電腦會伸出手抓住他們。”

They’re entirely right.

他們沒錯。