現實生活中揮之不去的數字化習慣

I was shaving one Saturday morning with BBC Radio 5 Live’s Danny Baker Show playing in the background. It is a reflection of Mr Baker’s infectious hilarity that he attracts radio’s funniest callers.

一個週六的早晨，我在刮鬍子的時候聽着英國廣播公司(BBC)第五臺(Radio 5 Live)的《丹尼•貝克秀》(Danny Baker Show)節目。貝克節目中打來電話的人是廣播節目中最逗的，這反映出貝克的笑料極富感染力。

The programme’s theme was something like: “Mistakes that can never be corrected.” A guy phoned in to tell how, in the days of VHS, he accidentally recorded Match of the Day over a tape of his daughter’s wedding.

這次節目的主題是類似於“無法糾正的錯誤”這樣的話題。有人打進電話來，提到在錄像機流行的時代，他一不小心在錄《英超當日集錦》(Match of the Day)時擦掉了女兒婚禮的錄像。

I was only half listening but thought: “That’s not a problem. All he has to do is press ‘control’ and ‘Z’.”

我漫不經心地聽着，心裏想：“那算什麼問題。他只要同時按Ctrl鍵和Z鍵就可以了。”

Control Z is my secret sauce. I am amazed how few people know it. It works on any PC keyboard in Microsoft Word and other programs, and reverses mistakes. Clumsily deleted a paragraph? Control Z and it magically reappears.

Ctrl-Z是我的祕密武器。我驚歎於知道它的人如此之少。在微軟(Microsoft)的Word和其他許多程序裏，這個組合都管用，它可以逆轉你的差錯。保存文件之前錯手刪了一段話？按一下Ctrl-Z，這段話就會魔術般地重現了。

I have reincarnated pages of writing that way — you can carry on control Z-ing, reversing action after action, if the mistake you made was a few minutes ago.

通過這種辦法，我曾讓很多頁文字重獲新生。你甚至可以多次輸入Ctrl-Z，一步一步地撤銷操作——如果你的錯誤是在幾分鐘前犯下的話。

In a previous column I touched on technology habits that seem to have subtly altered our internal programming. I mentioned the occasional desire to turn down loud people in restaurants with an imaginary remote, or touch a nonexistent hyperlink in a printed magazine in the hope that it will, as on an iPad, take me to a different page.

在以往的一篇專欄文章裏，我曾提及這類技術習慣似乎已微妙改變了我們的內在“程序”。我提到，我偶爾曾想通過想象中的遙控器，調低餐館裏大嗓門人士的音量，還曾想點擊印刷版雜誌上不存在的超鏈接，期待它會像在iPad上那樣，把我帶到不同的頁面。

Since articulating this, I have been making notes on my own and others’ crossover technology habits that have leaked into the wrong sphere of activity.

自打明確提到這事以來，我一直在留意自己和他人誤入錯誤場合的跨界技術習慣。

These quirks stem from being of the generation that has moved from analogue rather than having been born digital. If I were cleverer, I would think up one of those annoying, modish words such as “trope” or “meme” to describe my micro-phenomenon.

這些習慣源自我們是從模擬時代轉爲數字時代的一代人，而不是生來就置身於數字時代的一代人。如果我更聰明一些，我或許會想出一個類似“修辭”(trope)或“文化基因”(meme)之類、惱人而又時髦的詞彙，來描述這類微觀現象。

Here is my list:

下面是我列出的清單：

• You still make notes by hand in meetings. After a couple of pages of scribbling, you become uneasy about not having saved your work to make sure the writing, um, stays on the page.

• 還在會議中手動記筆記的你，在塗鴉了幾頁之後，開始擔心沒有保存自己的勞動，想要確保自己的筆記留在頁面上。

• Faced with a multi-page printed document, you are impatient to get to the bit that concerns you. You instinctively dive to the search box. Where is that darned search box?

• 面對一份多頁打印文檔，你不耐煩地要去看與自己相關的部分。你本能地去找搜索框。這該死的搜索框在哪呢？

• The same lengthy document. You try to scroll down . . . before realising you cannot scroll down stapled sheets of paper.

• 同樣一份冗長的文檔。你試圖向下滾動……結果發現沒法滾動用訂書機訂成一本的多頁紙張。

• You’re driving a car without satnav. Maybe it’s rented, maybe you forgot to bring your TomTom, or maybe you didn’t bother because you know the way. You get a frisson of irritation with the silence. “Why are you not saying anything?” The fact that cars can’t talk has momentarily escaped you.

• 你在沒有衛星導航的情況下開車。這也許是由於車是租的，也許你忘了帶你的TomTom，亦或是你由於熟悉路線而不想費事帶GPS。車中的沉默氣得你一激靈。“怎麼不說句話？”在那一瞬間，你忘了汽車無法說話的事實。

• There’s a photo in a book or newspaper and you want to zoom in to see a part of it. Your hand moves towards the page to do that thumb and forefinger expanding action before you realise it’s not a tablet.

• 書上或報紙上有張照片，你想使用放大功能看清照片的局部。你把手劃過紙面，拇指和食指做出放大動作，才意識到這不是平板電腦。

• You’ve lost your wallet somewhere in the house. Hold on, you think, I’ll call it and hear where the ring is coming from. Oops, no you won’t. It’s not a phone.

• 你的錢包落在屋中某處了。等一下，你想道，我會呼它一下，聽聽聲音從哪裏來。但是，你不會這麼做的。錢包可不是手機。

• A more extreme case of wallet loss. You’re so distracted that you think for a fraction of a second of googling to find where you left it. Or hitting Control F to find it.

• 還有一個有關錢包丟失的更極端例子。有那麼一眨眼的功夫，心煩意亂的你想用谷歌(Google)找出自己把錢包丟哪了，或者試圖按下Ctrl-F找到它。

• Spectacle wearers only. You’re stumbling around in the morning looking for your glasses. You put them on. Aha, you think. Now we are in HD.

• 這個感覺只有戴眼鏡的人才會有。你在清晨跌跌撞撞地找眼鏡。最後你把眼鏡戴上。啊哈！你心裏想，現在我們有高清屏了。

Technology has a habit of moving on. The “pinch-to-zoom” tablet gesture, for example (more accurately unpinch to zoom), did not exist before the iPad came out in 2010.

技術有不斷演變的習慣。比如，在2010年iPad誕生之前，“掐手指放大”（更準確地說是分手指放大）的平板電腦手勢還不存在。

Already our brains have internalised it, and there is a generation growing up who have never not known it. A YouTube video of children who believe magazines are broken iPads has had nearly 5m views.

我們的大腦已經內化了這種動作，而從出生起就知道這種動作的一代人正在長大。有一個YouTube視頻片段顯示孩子們以爲雜誌是壞了的iPad，這段視頻獲得了近500萬次點擊。

I have discussed my crossover technology phenomenon with Adam Gazzaley, a professor of neurology, physiology and psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.

我把這種技術習慣跨界的現象與亞當•加扎利(Adam Gazzaley)討論了一下，他是加州大學舊金山分校(University of California, San Francisco)的神經學、生理學和精神病學教授。

Prof Gazzaley and Larry Rosen, professor emeritus of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, have a book coming out called The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World.

加扎利教授和加州州立大學多明戈斯山分校(California State University, Dominguez Hills)心理學名譽教授拉里•羅森(Larry Rosen)著有《分心的頭腦：高科技世界中的古代頭腦》(The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World)一書。

“This is fascinating,” he says. “Really interesting. I think it’s probably quite common and is probably related to phantom vibration, when you believe a mobile phone is ringing on silent. Yes, a visual and auditory version of the same blurring of the lines between what’s real and imagined.”

他說：“這個問題扣人心絃。真的很有意思。我認爲這現象可能十分常見，也許和震動幻覺(phantom vibration)有關，這種幻覺是指人們相信手機正在振動狀態下響鈴。沒錯，同時在視覺和聽覺上混淆了真實和想象現實的界線。”

So what will be the pinch-to-zoom gestures of the near future, the habits we will be trying to carry into everyday life — but with the wrong technology — in, say, 2036?

那麼，在不遠的將來（比如在2036年），哪些習慣會是新的“掐手指放大”手勢呢，也就是我們會錯誤地試圖用到日常生活中的技術習慣？

If I may stick my neck out, I will propose a few.

如果我可以冒昧設想一下，我會提出以下幾條：

• You hear someone speaking in a foreign language and become irritated that you cannot understand them because you don’t have your translating earbuds in. The idea that your native ears (legacy ears, for techies) cannot translate languages will, for a second or two, be really annoying.

• 你聽到某人在講外語，因爲聽不懂而心煩意亂，原因是你沒有戴上翻譯耳塞。有那麼一兩秒鐘，那種你天生的耳朵（技術控稱爲“遺留耳朵”）無法翻譯外語的想法讓你相當煩惱。

• You forget to wear your connected glasses or put in your internet contacts (the descendants of today’s joked-about Google Glass internet spectacles) and experience a flash of fury at, say, a conference, when your unaided eyes do not recognise colleagues’ faces and fail to discreetly brief you on who they are.

• 你忘了戴聯網眼鏡（這是如今被人當笑話的谷歌眼鏡(Google Glass)的後代產品）或者忘了把互聯網通訊錄裝入眼鏡。這讓你在一個大會上突然產生一股無名之火，因爲沒有輔助的雙眼認不出同事的面孔，更沒法悄悄提醒你他們是誰。

• You are so accustomed to using your hands to make air gestures, to control the TV and other devices, that you carry it over into everyday life. At least once a year, when listening to someone droning on at a meeting, you absentmindedly make the air gesture for fast forward. They will continue being boring. Unless they see the gesture, perhaps. Which may be a different kind of crossover error.

• 對於用手在空中做手勢控制電視機和其他設備，你已經如此習慣，以至於你會將手勢帶入日常生活。每年至少有那麼一次，當聽到某人在會議上說着單調的內容時，你下意識地做出快進的手勢。他們卻會繼續說着無聊的話，或許除非他們看到你的手勢——然而這又是另一種不同類型的跨界技術習慣。

Let me think about that for a decade or two.

對於這個問題，讓我再考慮一二十年吧。