How many times a day do you check your email? When you wake up? Before bed? A dozen times in between? If you\'re like many of us, the red blinking light of a BlackBerry is the first thing you see each morning—you\'ve got mail!—and the last glimpse of color to fade out before bedtime. It\'s constant and nagging—yet most of us say we can\'t live without it. Add Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of our social-media obsessions to the mix, and the technology that was supposed to simplify our lives has become the ultimate time-suck: the average teen spends more than seven hours a day using technological devices, plus an additional hour just text-messaging friends.
每天你检查email有多频繁？甫一醒来的时候？入睡之前？其间还有不少次么？如果你跟我们大多数人毫无二致，那黑莓手机闪烁的红光该是你每天早上第一眼所见——你有新的邮件！——亦是入眠之时眼前消逝的最后一抹色彩。email源源不断，叨扰不休——然而我们大多数人都声称自己的生活离不了它。再加上对Twitter、Facebook及其他社交媒体的痴迷，那些本应便利我们生活的科技却成了终极时间杀手：青少年平均每天使用科技设备达到7个多小时，而且仅是用来发消息给好友还要另花1个小时。 
The advantage to all that gadgetry, of course, is connectedness: email lets us respond on the go, and we are in touch with more people during more hours of the day than at any other time in history. But is it possible we\'re more lonely than ever, too? That\'s what MIT professor Sherry Turkle observes in her new book, Alone Together, a fascinating portrait of our changing relationship with technology. The result of nearly 15 years of study (and interviews with hundreds of subjects), Turkle details the ways technology has redefined our perceptions of intimacy and solitude—and warns of the perils of embracing such pseudo-techno relationships in place of lasting emotional connections.
当然，电子设备的优势在于连通性：email让我们百忙之中还能作出回应，我们每天从未在如此多的时间内与如此多的人保持联系。但或许我们也从未如此孤独？这正是麻省理工学院教授Sherry Turkle在她的新书《一起孤独（Alone Together）》中所观察到的，该书对我们因科技而改变的人际关系作了引人入胜的刻画。在这一将近15年的研究结晶（包括与数百位研究对象的访谈）里，Turkle细述了科技是如何重新定义我们对亲密与孤独的观念——并且警告说，接纳此类伪技术关系以替代持久的情感联系是极其危险的。
Turkle talks to high-school students who fear having to make a phone call, and elementary- school children who become distraught when their toy robot pets \"die.\" She wonders how her daughter will remember their relationship 40 years from now, if every long-distance communication between them happens via text message. But for Turkle, a psychologist by training, the biggest worry is what all this superficial engagement means for us developmentally. Is technology offering us the lives we want to live? \"We\'re texting people at a distance,\" says the author, the director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. \"We\'re using inanimate objects to convince ourselves that even when we\'re alone, we feel together. And then when we\'re with each other, we put ourselves in situations where we feel alone—constantly on our mobile devices. It\'s what I call a perfect storm of confusion about what\'s important in our human connections.\"
Turkle与那些害怕必须打电话的高中生交谈过，也与那些玩具机器宠物“死了”时会心烦意乱的小学生交谈过。她想弄明白若是每次与女儿的长途联系都是通过短消息，那女儿如何还会记住她们之间的关系40年之久。不过对Turkle这位训练有素的心理学家而言，最大的担心还是所有这些肤浅交往对我们身心发展的影响。科技能提供给我们想要的生活吗？“我们在远处发消息给他人，”Turkle解释道，她同时也是麻省理工学院“科技与自我倡议”的指导者。“我们借助无生命的对象来说服自己：我们感觉在一起，即便当我们独处的时候。然后当我们彼此共处时，我们却将自己置身于孤独的环境中——总在使用着移动设备。我称之为对我们人际关系什么更重要混淆不清的一场大劫数。”
What can\'t be denied is that technology, no matter its faults, makes life a whole lot easier. It allows us to communicate with more people in less time; it can make conversation simple—no small talk required. It can be therapeutic: robots are now used to help care for the elderly; in Japan, they\'re marketed as a way to lure addicts out of cyberspace. But it can also be seductive, providing more stimulation than our natural lives make possible—our days suddenly an interconnected chain of messages and connections and constant stimulation. (Compared with a hundred retweets and a flurry of text messages, a single conversation over dinner seems awfully boring.) \"The adrenaline rush is continual,\" Turkle says of our wired lives. \"We get a little shot of dopamine every time we make a connection.\" One high-school student she spoke with put it simply: \"I start to have some happy feelings as soon as I start to text.\"
不可否认，无论科技存在怎样的过失，它确实让生活变得简单多了。它让我们花更少的时间却能与更多人通信；让交谈变得简单直接——省去了寒暄之语。它还具有治疗功能：机器人如今可用来帮助照看老年人；在日本，机器人出售用来诱使网瘾者脱离网络空间。但是科技也具有诱惑性，相比我们的自然生活，它提供了更多刺激感——我们的日子里突然出现了一系列的信息、连接与持续性刺激。（与一百个转推和大量短消息相比，一次餐桌谈话似乎太过乏味。）“肾上腺素快速分泌频频发生，”Turkle这样评论我们的连线生活。“每次连线，我们就注入了一小针多巴胺（译注：一种神经传导物质，用来帮助细胞传送脉冲，由脑内分泌，主要负责大脑情欲、感觉，传递兴奋及开心的信息，与上瘾有密切关系）。”她访谈过的一名高中生直截了当地说：“一开始发消息，我就按捺不住心头的喜悦。”
But are any of those feelings on par with the kind we feel when engaged in real, face-to-face intimacy? Online, you can ignore others\' feelings. In a text message, you can avoid eye contact. A number of studies have found that this generation of teens is less empathetic than ever. That doesn\'t spell disaster, says Turkle—but it does mean we might want to start thinking about the way we want to live. \"We\'ve gone through tremendously rapid change, and some of these things just need a little sorting out,\" she says. If she has her way, the dialogue will start here—and not just on somebody\'s computer.
但是这些感觉中有一种能与我们实际生活中面对面的亲近等同吗？在网络上，你可以忽略他人的感受。在短信里，你可以回避眼神的交流。不少研究发现这一代青少年最缺乏同情心。Turkle说，虽然这并不意味着灾难，但确实意味着我们或许应开始思考我们想要的生活方式。“我们经历了许许多多的急速转变，有些只是需要进行一番梳理分类。”她如是说道。倘若她言之有理，那此次对话将从这里开始——而不仅是在某人的电脑上。
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