評論
打印
Is This the Death of Telephone?
固定電話的消亡
The demise of the landline has gone almost unnoticed.
固定電話的消亡幾乎是無聲無息的。
After all, the din of mundane phone chatter is all around us-on the bus, at the next table in a restaurant.
畢竟，我們身邊仍然充斥著日常電話聊天的嘈雜聲-無論是在公交車上，還是在餐館的鄰桌處。
What difference does it make whether the cables lie underground or not?
電話線是否埋在地下對我我們來說又有什么區別呢？
A lot, actually.
實際上，有很大區別。
The death of the landline is a cultural shift that affects our personal and public lives.
固定電話的消亡是一場影響著我們個人和公共生活的文化變革。
It has freed us from our groupings-in the office,where email has disconnected us from what the people who sit three feet away do all day,and even more significantly, at home.
它將我們從群體中分解出來-在辦公室，電子郵件切斷了距離僅咫尺之遙的同事間的交流；但更為顯著的是它對家庭的影響。
In any household in the days before mobiles took over,the landline served as a switchboard for everyone's connections outside the home.
在手機一統天下之前，固定電話是家庭成員與外界交流的中轉站。
The phone rang, you answered it,you asked who was calling,and then you passed the phone over.
鈴聲響起，你拿起電話，詢問是誰，然后將話筒遞給對方要找的人。
Everyone knew who called you, and how long you spoke for.
每個人都會知道誰找了你，你們聊了多久。
Within families, couples, flatmates,it was a kind of invisible knowledge map about the state of everyone's romantic and social lives,and one we took for granted.
家人，夫妻和室友間存在著一張刻畫每個人的戀愛和社交生活的隱形認知地圖，我們曾經認為這一切都是理所當然的。
Now, we are all freelance operatives.
而如今我們都變成了獨立的操作員。
And devoted though we are to our mobiles,most of the time we aren't talking but typing.
盡管我們鐘情于手機，但大部分時間我們并不是在用它聊天，而是在打字。
Comic Relief this year heavily promoted the option to donate by text,to save you having to actually speak to anyone.
慈善機構Comic Relief今年大力推廣短信捐款，使你無須跟任何人交談。
Office culture has become increasingly silent.
辦公室文化變得愈發安靜。
As someone who learned how to do my job as a junior by listening to people around me-editors commissioning, writers interviewing-I wonder how today's young people learn the ropes.
在我剛入行時，我是通過聆聽周圍人來學會如果工作的-編輯怎樣分派任務，撰稿人怎樣采訪對象-這讓我不禁好奇，現在的年輕人是怎樣學會這些技巧的。
Now that the corner office is as retrospective as Mad Men,open-plan culture demands a level of quiet.
既然位于角落的豪華辦公室意見是屬于《廣告狂人》那個時代的古董了，開放的辦公隔間確實需要一定程度的安靜。
But it's odd, on a personal as well as a professional level.
但不論從哪個角度還是專業角度來說，這種安靜都是古怪的。
When I started work,you knew everything about the person who sat next to you,because they had no choice but to conduct their relationships with their lover,their mother, their bank manager from their desk phone,while you had no choice but to pretend not to listen.
在我剛開始工作的年代，你會了解坐在你旁邊的同事的一切。因為他們不得不使用桌上的固定電話打給自己的請人，媽媽和銀行經理，而你也不得不假裝什么都沒聽到。
These days, all you overhear is the clatter of typing,the lull while they wait for a response,and then the rapt concentration when the emailed reply appears.
如今，你無意中聽到的只有鍵盤的敲擊聲，他們等待回復時的沉寂，以及收到郵件回復時的專注。
