逃離社交網絡
????我們得談談。
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????我在八月切斷了與Facebook、Twitter、Instagram、商務社交網站LinkedIn、Pinterest和MessageMe的聯系。如果你想在九月前聯系我，請往我的《財富》郵箱發郵件，或者最好打電話給我。我不知道是否會有比以前更多的時間來給你回電話。 ????簡單地說，我想知道自從2003年首次登錄Friendster以來，我究竟得到了什么，又失去了什么。我已經不記得在我擁有頭像照片之前的生活是什么樣子了。自從2005年在《商業周刊》（Business Week）上發表第一篇關于社交網絡的封面文章以來，我一直在撰寫關于社交網絡工具的文章——同時也很好地利用了這些工具。通過離開這一個月，我希望以全新的眼光來看待這些技術，同時撰寫一批有意思的文章，談談它們如何塑造人類的未來。 ????大家或許沒有注意到，逃離網絡在今年似乎已經成為一種趨勢。今年五月，保羅?米勒供稿The Verge網站，分享了遠離網絡一年期間的生活經歷。《紐約時報》（New York Times）刊文介紹了戒除數碼癮的訓練營，而《快公司》（Fast Company）的封面故事也是關于一個離開網絡25天的男人。說真的，這個故事還挺吸引人。 ????我相信，之所以會出現這種趨勢，是因為美國的網絡用戶已經達到了最大量的社會過載。我把它歸功于一系列完美的新型工具——智能手機、平板電腦、Up bands、Fitbits，噢——甚至是谷歌眼鏡（Google Glass），以及一系列人們認為不可或缺的新型服務，即使Facebook這樣的老式服務依然扮演了中流砥柱的角色。每天早上醒來，我都會按照以下順序逐一翻看：短信、工作郵箱、Gmail、雅虎、Instagram、Facebook、Twitter，之后是我iPhone通知面板上的其他信息。 ????就像對待其他技術一樣，我們需要搞清如何讓社交服務融入我們的生活（我廣義地將包括電子郵件和短信在內的、所有核心內容依附于社交網絡的服務定義為社交服務）。還記得我們在上世紀90年代中期開始使用手機的時候嗎？幾年間，我們就讓它們在餐館和電影院中響起，還因為接電話而中斷了彼此的交談，直到后來我們制定了一系列文化準則，規范了如何使用它們。而由于這些社交服務本身進化得如此迅速，這一系列文化準則也更難約束它們。 ????這幾年來，每年春天，我都在尋求逃離網絡的一次國際度假，從而讓自己擺脫每次感到震動都會把手伸進口袋的條件反射。在匈牙利、克羅地亞和土耳其，躲在小窗后的孤獨生活讓我覺得頗有滋味，不過即便是這些遙遠的地區也與網絡聯系緊密。（幾年前，我關掉手機，挎起背包，徒步去往土耳其南部海岸一家提供住宿和早餐的旅館，不料卻在那里碰上婚宴。人們正隨著這樣一首流行的土耳其歌曲熱烈地舞蹈：“Facebook！Facebook！我在Facebook上遇到了一個女孩！”） ????同樣，“度假”這個詞的定義是離開常規的日常生活。 |
????I'm signing off Facebook for the month of August. And Twitter. And Instagram. And LinkedIn, Pinterest, & MessageMe. If you'd like to reach me before September, please send an email to my @fortune address or better yet, call me. I suspect I'll have a bit more time than usual to call you back. ????Put simply, I want to find out what I've gained -- and what I've lost -- since I first logged on to Friendster back in 2003. I don't remember what my life was like before I had a profile pic. I've been writing about -- and making efficient use of -- social networking tools since I authored the first business cover story on social networking for Business Week in 2005. By stepping away for a month, I hope to see these technologies with new eyes -- and to write smarter stories about how they will shape our future. ????In case you haven't noticed, it seems to have become a trend this year. In May, Paul Miller wrote about his experience living one year Internet-free for The Verge. The New York Times has written about digital detox camps, and Fast Company ran a cover story about a guy who unplugged for 25 days. Seriously, that was the conceit of the story. ????I believe this is happening now because we American Internet users have reached a point of maximum social overload. I credit a perfect storm of new tools -- smartphones, tablets, Up bands, Fitbits, and hell, even Google (GOOG) Glass -- and new services that all feel necessary even as the old services (like Facebook) remain staples. Each morning when I wake, I check (in this order): Text messages, work email, Gmail, Yahoo (YHOO), Instagram, Facebook (FB), Twitter, and then anything else on my iPhone notifications panel. ????Much as with any other technology , we need to figure out how to integrate social services (and here I am defining social broadly as including email and text as all of these services now have a social network at their core) into our lives. Remember when we all got cell phones in the mid-90s? For several years, we let them ring in restaurants and movie theaters and answered them mid-conversation before we developed a set of cultural norms around how to use them. This set of culture norms is harder to pin down with social services since the services themselves are evolving so quickly. ????For several years, I've sought the refuge of an international vacation each spring in order to wean myself off the Pavlovian response to reach for my pocket every time I feel a vibration. I've enjoyed small windows of solitude in Hungary and Croatia and Turkey, but even these far-flung destinations are hyper-connected. (A couple of years ago, I shut off my phone, donned a backpack and hiked to a bed-and-breakfast on the south coast of Turkey only to come across a wedding party dancing to the popular Turkish pop song lyrics: "Facebook! Facebook! I met a girl on Facebook!") ????Also, a vacation is, by definition, a break from routine.. |
