Our nomadic future我们的游牧未来
Apr 10th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Translation sunshine
Prepare to see less of your office, more of your family—and still perhaps be unhappy
准备好你们有更少的办公室和更多的家庭时光，但或许仍旧没有幸福感
Illustration by Belle Mellor
SOMETIMES the biggest changes in society are the hardest to spot precisely because they are hiding in plain sight. It could well be that way with wireless communications. Something that people think of as just another technology is beginning to show signs of changing lives, culture, politics, cities, jobs, even marriages dramatically. In particular, it will usher in a new version of a very old idea: nomadism.
有时候社会中最大的变化却很难被准确地发现，因为他们隐藏在平淡的外表下。无线通信即是如此。人们仅仅将它看作一项新技术，而它正开始现显露出影响人们的生活，文化，政治，城市，工作，甚至婚姻的种种征兆，而这种影响还日趋强烈。特别是它将给一个非常古老的概念——游牧，引出新的诠释。
Futurology is a dangerous business, and it is true that most of the important arguments about mobile communications at the moment are to do with technology or regulation—bandwidth, spectrum use and so on. Yet it is worth jumping ahead, as our special report does rather adventurously this week, and wondering what the social effects will be, for two reasons. First, the broad technological future is pretty clear: there will be ever faster cellular networks, far more numerous Wi-Fi “hotspots” and many more gadgets to connect to these networks. Second, the social changes are already visible: parents on beaches waving at their children while typing furtively on their BlackBerrys; entrepreneurs discovering they don't need offices after all (if you need to recharge something, you just go to Starbucks); teenagers text-dumping their boyfriends. Everybody is doing more on the move.
研究未来学是充满风险，确实，现在大多数针对移动通信的重要争论都与技术或规则有关——带宽和频谱技术应用等等。但我们值得向前跨越，正如这周我们的特别报道就冒险地分析了移动通信将带来的社会效应，其中有两个原因。第一，技术的广阔未来已十分明朗：将会有更加快捷的蜂窝网络，更多的无线“热点”和更多的接入这些网络的设备。第二，社会的变化已十分显著：海滩上的家长，一边向孩子们挥着手，一边暗中按着他们的黑霉手机；老板们发现他们根本不需要办公室了（如果想要给什么东西再充电，去星巴克就好了）；青年人可以发信息甩掉男朋友。每个人都越来越在移动世界中做事了。
Ancient nomads went from place to place—and they had to take a lot of stuff with them (including their livelihoods and families). The emerging class of digital nomads also wander, but they take virtually nothing with them; wherever they go, they can easily reach people and information. And the barriers to entry are falling. You don't have to be rich to be a nomad (wander round any American college campus if you doubt that). It is getting harder to find good excuses for being offline: this week the European Union allowed airlines to offer in-flight mobile-phone service, and several carriers have Wi-Fi. The gadgets, too, are getting ever smaller and more portable.
古代的游牧民族不断迁徙，他们必须带很多东西（包括他们的生活用品和家眷）。新兴的数码游牧一族同样也流浪，但他们实际上不带东西；他们无论到哪儿都能轻松地接触各种人和讯息。而进入的门槛日渐降低。你不必非得是富人才能流浪（如果你对此表示怀疑，可以到美国的高校校园逛逛）。而找一个不在线的好理由变得越来越难：这周，欧盟允许航空公司提供空中移动电话服务，很多飞机上都有无线网络。电脑，也变得更小和更便携。
A century ago some people saw the car merely as a faster horse, yet it led to entirely new cities, with suburbs and sprawl, to new retail cultures (megastores, drive-throughs), new dependencies (oil) and new health threats (sloth, obesity). By the same token, wireless technology is surely not just an easier-to-use phone. The car divided cities into work and home areas; wireless technology may mix them up again, with more people working in suburbs or living in city centres. Traffic patterns are beginning to change again: the rush hours at 9am and 5pm are giving way to more varied “daisy-chain” patterns, with people going backwards and forwards between the office, home and all sorts of other places throughout the day. Already, architects are redesigning offices and universities: more flexible spaces for meeting people, fewer private enclosures for sedentary work.
一个世纪以前，一些人认为汽车只是一匹更快的马，但它带来了全新的城市，同时也有郊区和它的延伸，带来了新的零售文化（购物广场，不用下车即可买东西的商店），新的依赖品（石油）和新的健康问题（懒惰和肥胖）。无线技术也同样如此，它决不仅仅是一个更好用的手机。汽车将城市分为工作区和生活区；无线技术可能会将他们重新融合，有更多的人在郊区工作和在城市中心生活。交通模式又将开始转变：上午9点到下午5点的高峰时段转变为更为多样的“链”型模式，人们整天来往于办公室，家和其他地方。建筑师已开始重新设计办公室和大学：会客地点更加灵活，需要长时间坐下工作的个人空间变得更少。
Will it be a better life? In some ways, yes. Digital nomadism will liberate ever more knowledge workers from the cubicle prisons of Dilbert cartoons①. But the old tyranny of place could become a new tyranny of time, as nomads who are “always on” all too often end up—mentally—anywhere but here (wherever here may be). As for friends and family, permanent mobile connectivity could have the same effect as nomadism: it might bring you much closer to family and friends, but it may make it harder to bring in outsiders. It might isolate cliques. Sociologists fret about constant e-mailers and texters losing the everyday connections to casual acquaintances or strangers who may be sitting next to them in the café or on the bus.
那将会是一个更好的生活吗？从某种程度上讲，是的。数码式的游牧将会解放禁锢在呆伯特卡通式的“牢笼”中的知识分子。但过去的地点主导变成现在的时间主导，“总是在线”的游牧者总是在精神上飘忽不定，总之心思不是在这里（不管这里是哪里）。对于朋友和家人，不掉线的移动联络能有同游牧一样的效果：或许它能让你和家人和朋友更加亲近，但它也许让你更不容易交到新朋友。也许会孤立各个朋友圈子。社会学家担心总是在发邮件和写文档的人会失去与朋友或在咖啡馆或公车上坐在身边的陌生人之间的联系。
As for politics, the tools of nomadism—such as mobile phones that double as cameras—can improve the world. For instance, they turn practically everybody into a potential human-rights activist, ready to take pictures or video of police brutality. But the same tools have a dark side, turning everybody into a fully equipped paparazzo. Some fitness clubs have started banning mobile phones near the treadmills and showers lest patrons find themselves pictured, flabby and sweaty, on some website that future Google searches will happily turn up. As in the desert, so in the city: nomadism promises the heaven of new freedom, but it also threatens the hell of constant surveillance by the tribe.
对于政治，“游牧”这种工具——例如同时又是照相机的手机，能让这个世界变得更加美好。比如他们能让每个人都变成潜在的人权主义者，时刻准备着拍下或录下警察的暴行。但这种工具也有其缺点，它让每个人都成了全副武装的狗仔队成员。一些健身俱乐部已经开始在脚踏车和淋浴室附近禁止使用移动电话，以免投资人发现他们松垮着肌肉，汗流浃背的样子被拍下来挂到网上，未来的谷歌肯定会很乐意挖掘这些网站的。跟在沙漠里一样，在城市里游牧主义许诺新的自由的天堂，但它同时也威胁有被部落随时监视的地狱。
①呆伯特（Dilbert），是美国漫画家兼作家史考特•亚当斯(Scott Adams)的著名职场卡通人物。热爱科技，憨厚老实的呆伯特在工作上经常被主管过份要求、亏待或利用。