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Come on, admit it -- you like living at breakneck speed.
好了，承認(rèn)吧――你就喜歡忙得團(tuán)團(tuán)轉(zhuǎn)。
Life in the Fast Lane
人在快車道
James Gleick
詹姆斯·格利克
We are in a rush. We are making haste. A compression of time characterizes many of our lives. As time-use researchers look around, they see a rushing and scurrying everywhere. Sometimes culture resembles "one big stomped anthill," say John P. Robinson and Geoffrey Godbey in their book Time for Life.
我們東奔西忙。我們急急匆匆。時(shí)間緊迫是我們?cè)S多人的生活特點(diǎn)。時(shí)間利用研究者環(huán)顧四周，只見人人忙亂，處處步履匆匆。有時(shí)文明就像是“一個(gè)被踩癟的大蟻冢”，約翰·P·魯賓遜和杰弗里·戈德比在《生活時(shí)間》一書中寫道。
Instantaneity rules. Pollsters use electronic devices during political speeches to measure opinions on the wing, before they have been fully formed; fast-food restaurants add express lanes. Even reading to children is under pressure. The volume One-Minute Bedtime Stories consists of traditional stories that can be read by a busy parent in only one minute.
即時(shí)行為主宰著一切。人們發(fā)表政治演說時(shí)，聽眾尚未形成看法，民意調(diào)查人員就利用電子裝置進(jìn)行當(dāng)場(chǎng)測(cè)定；快餐店增設(shè)了快速通道。甚至給孩子念故事也得趕時(shí)間。《一分鐘臨睡前的故事》一書收的都是讓忙碌的家長(zhǎng)僅用一分鐘就能講完的老故事。
There are places and objects that signify impatience. The door-close button in elevators, so often a placebo used to distract riders to whom ten seconds seems an eternity. Speed-dial buttons on telephones. Remote controls, which have caused an acceleration in the pace of films and television commercials.
許多場(chǎng)所和物件都表明人們有急躁情緒。電梯里的關(guān)門按鈕常常起心理安慰作用，好讓那些連秒鐘都覺得漫長(zhǎng)難捱的乘梯人分散注意力。還有電話機(jī)的快撥鍵。還有可使影片和電視廣告快速播放的遙控器。
Time is a gentle deity, said Sophocles. Perhaps it was, for him. These days it cracks the whip.() We humans have chosen speed, and we thrive on it -- more than we generally admit. Our ability to work and play fast gives us power. It thrills us.
時(shí)間之神溫雅從容，索福克勒斯如是說。他那時(shí)或許如此。當(dāng)今社會(huì)時(shí)間揚(yáng)鞭催人。我們?nèi)祟愡x擇了速度，憑借著速度而繁榮興旺――其程度超過人們所普遍承認(rèn)的那樣。我們快節(jié)奏工作、娛樂的本領(lǐng)賦予我們力量。我們?yōu)榇伺d奮不已。
And if haste is the accelerator pedal, multitasking is overdrive. These days it is possible to drive, eat, listen to a book and talk on the phone -- all at once, if you dare. David Feldman, in New York, schedules his tooth flossing to coincide with his regular browsing of online discussion groups. He has learned to hit PageDown with his pinkie. Mike Holderness, in London, watches TV with captioning so that he can keep the sound off and listen to the unrelated music of his choice. An entire class of technologies is dedicated to the furtherance of multitasking. Car phones. Bookstands on exercise machines. Waterproof shower radios.
如果匆忙是加速器的踏板，一心多用就是超速檔。如今，完全可能做到邊開車邊吃東西邊聽錄音書籍邊打電話--要是你敢這么做。紐約的大衛(wèi)·費(fèi)爾德曼把用潔牙線清潔牙縫安排在日常瀏覽網(wǎng)上討論之時(shí)。他已經(jīng)學(xué)會(huì)用小手指敲擊下行鍵。倫敦的邁克·霍爾德內(nèi)斯看帶字幕的電視節(jié)目，這樣他就能把音量調(diào)低到聽不見，好欣賞自己喜歡的與電視節(jié)目無關(guān)的音樂。有一整套的技術(shù)專門用來促進(jìn)一心多用。如汽車電話。如健身器材上的擱書架。如防水的淋浴間收音機(jī)。
Not so long ago, for most people, listening to the radio was a single task activity. Now it is rare for a person to listen to the radio and do nothing else.
不久以前，對(duì)大多數(shù)人而言，聽收音機(jī)是一項(xiàng)單一的活動(dòng)。如今極少有人在聽收音機(jī)時(shí)，別的什么也不干。
Even TV has lost its command of our foreground. In so many households the TV just stays on, like a noisy light bulb, while the life of the family passes back and forth in its shimmering glow.
就連我們生活中占據(jù)重要地位的電視機(jī)也失去了控制力。在許多家庭里，電視機(jī)就一直開著，如同一個(gè)發(fā)出噪聲的燈泡，人們?cè)谄湮⑷醯拈W光里日復(fù)一日地過著他們的家庭生活。
A sense of well-being comes with this saturation of parallel pathways in the brain. We choose mania over boredom every time. "Humans have never, ever opted for slower," points out the historian Stephen Kern.
腦海中充斥的這種種并行不悖的情況帶來的是一種幸福感。每次我們都寧可大干一番而不愿厭倦懈怠。“人類從未，也永遠(yuǎn)不會(huì)選擇放慢速度，”歷史學(xué)家斯蒂芬·克恩說。
We catch the fever -- and the fever feels good. We live in the buzz. "It has gotten to the point where my days, crammed with all sorts of activities, feel like an Olympic endurance event: the everydayathon," confesses Jay Walljasper in the Utne Reader.
我們?nèi)旧狭丝駸屺D―感覺竟然還不錯(cuò)。我們生活在忙亂中。“程度已經(jīng)如此嚴(yán)重，我的生活排滿了各種各樣的活動(dòng)，感覺就像是在進(jìn)行奧運(yùn)會(huì)耐力項(xiàng)目比賽：每日馬拉松賽，”杰伊·沃加斯?jié)娫凇蹲x者》上坦言。
All humanity has not succumbed equally, of course. If you make haste, you probably make it in the technology-driven world. Sociologists have also found that increasing wealth and increasing education bring a sense of tension about time. We believe that we possess too little of it. No wonder Ivan Seidenberg, an American telecommunications executive, jokes about the mythical DayDoubler program his customers seem to want: "Using sophisticated time-mapping and compression techniques, DayDoubler gives you access to hours each and every day. At the higher numbers DayDoubler becomes less stable, and you run the risk of a temporal crash in which everything from the beginning of time to the present could crash down around you, sucking you into a suspended time zone."
當(dāng)然，并非人人同染此病。如果你奔忙不停，很可能你是奔忙在由技術(shù)所驅(qū)動(dòng)的社會(huì)中。社會(huì)學(xué)家也發(fā)現(xiàn)，富裕程度和教育程度的提高帶來時(shí)間的緊迫感。我們認(rèn)為自己時(shí)間太少。難怪美國(guó)一位電信公司經(jīng)理伊凡·塞登伯格拿子虛烏有、用戶們卻似乎頗為心儀的"一天變兩天"程序開玩笑：“‘一天變兩天’運(yùn)用先進(jìn)的時(shí)間安排、壓縮技術(shù)，使你天天擁有48小時(shí)。時(shí)間比較多了，該程序就不很穩(wěn)定，你會(huì)面臨時(shí)間崩潰的危險(xiǎn)，從有時(shí)間起到當(dāng)前所有的一切都會(huì)傾倒在你身旁，把你吞入一個(gè)暫時(shí)不起作用的時(shí)區(qū)。”
Our culture views time as a thing to hoard and protect. Timesaving is the subject to scores of books with titles like Streamlining Your Life; Take Your Time; More Hours in My Day. Marketers anticipate our desire to save time, and respond with fast ovens, quick playback, quick freezing and fast credit.
我們的文化把時(shí)間看做可囤積、保護(hù)之物。省時(shí)是眾多書籍的主題，如《提高生活效率》、《悠著點(diǎn)》、《我的一天不止24小時(shí)》。商人預(yù)見到我們一心省時(shí)的欲望，于是推出快速烤爐、快速回放裝置、快速解凍以及快速貸款作為應(yīng)對(duì)。
We have all these ways to "save time," but what does that concept really mean? Does timesaving mean getting more done? If so, does talking on a cellular phone at the beach save time or waste it? If you can choose between a 30-minute train ride, during which you can read, and a 20-minute drive, during which you cannot, does the drive save ten minutes? Does it make sense to say that driving saves ten minutes from your travel budget while removing ten minutes from your reading budget?
我們有那么多“節(jié)省時(shí)間”的方法，可省時(shí)這個(gè)概念真正意味著什么呢？省時(shí)是否意味著做得更多？如果是這樣，那么在海灘用手機(jī)通話是節(jié)省還是浪費(fèi)時(shí)間？如果你有兩個(gè)選擇：乘坐30分鐘火車，其間你可以看書；開車20分鐘，其間你不能看書。那開車是否算是省下10分鐘？
These questions have no answer. They depend on a concept that is ill formed: the very idea of timesaving. Some of us say we want to save time when really we just want to do more -- and faster. It might be simplest to recognise that there is time and we make choices about how to spend it, how to spare it, how to use it and how to fill it.
這些問題并沒有答案。它們?nèi)Q于一個(gè)很不明確的概念，即省時(shí)這一觀念本身。有些人說想節(jié)約時(shí)間，其實(shí)是想多做些事，而且要做得更快。也許，最簡(jiǎn)單的是要認(rèn)識(shí)到，時(shí)間就在這兒，我們可以選擇如何花時(shí)間，如何節(jié)約時(shí)間，如何利用時(shí)間，如何填補(bǔ)時(shí)間。
Time is not a thing we have lost. It is not a thing we ever had. It is what we live in.
時(shí)間不是我們遺失的東西。時(shí)間不是我們?cè)鴵碛械臇|西。我們生活在時(shí)間之中。
