科技改变生活，翻书不如点点iPad？

大多数电子产业界人士都意识到，他们正在做的革命性技术研发工作，已经永久改变了我们的生活方式。 他们对此感到自豪吗？…你可以这么说。 他们愿意负起全部责任吗？…他们应该要，但首先让我们在此检验一下其中现实。 我们之中的大部分恐怕很难想象某天会收不到任何一封电子邮件，或是无法用手机打电话；几乎每一天，我们都会收到来自亲朋好友的手机短信，或是那些我们认识、甚至完全不相干的人所发出的，稍微有趣或是索然无味的新浪微博(或是人人网、腾讯微博)讯息。 你今天可能还没上脸书(Facebook)更新近况，但绝对可肯定在你的朋友名单中，有人“每天早上起床第一件事”就是上脸书首页，而不是去洗手间。 那些自认方向感无敌的人，一旦开车到不熟悉的道路上，也会将GPS视为唯一的依靠；我们每天用悠游卡、无线感应卡通过各种闸门，甚至出国旅游时拿出的护照里面也有RFID技术。 无论好或坏，今日的生活是无所不在的、与世界上几乎所有人与所有地点的连结(或是相互纠缠)──包括实质上以及电子上的；越是如此，我们越选择过那样的生活。 着眼于近十几二十年来的“社会进步”，我们所有人都对工程师社群亏欠良多；那些实际在做繁重工程师工作的朋友们总是安安静静，他们很少会去吹嘘自己的成就。 就连像是德州仪器(TI)这样的公司，曾在2009年尝试以一系列“感谢工程师(Thank an engineer)”的视频短片(参考连结)表彰工程师们的努力，看着那一群通常无名的劳动者如此赤裸裸地曝光在镜头前，感觉却是小怪、小尴尬。 但是我对于工程师社群所推动的“社会进步”，却有着完全不同的观点；我最近看到一段视频短片，它揭露了我们下一代人类基本行为的变化──而且主要是由新科技所驱动。 本文下一页：被科技改变的人们 本文授权编译自EE Times，版权所有，谢绝转载

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• 圣诞礼物清单大调查，平板电脑高居榜首lOtesmc

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被iPad制约的小baby lOtesmc

这段影片的主角是个年约1岁的小女娃、已经很习惯偶尔玩玩爸妈的iPad；然后我们看到她在接触实体印刷杂志时的挫折，因为纸本书籍的图片不会响应她小小手指的滑动、放大缩小指令，在上面点击也不会出现互动效果。 以前我曾经听过，已经习惯用手机打短信的年轻一代人，在按门铃的时候会自然地倾向使用大拇指，而不是我们传统会用的食指(这是TI某发言人所分享的故事)。 我还记得在大约20年前曾遇过一个工程师，说他两岁女儿被爸爸的Mac洗 脑，有好几个月时间都会在与她的人类同伴面对面展开语言对话时，先点击两下自己的胸膛。 当时听来颇感震惊，但现在，我们的下一代恐怕会认为，如果Playboy杂志插页图片上的人物不会接受指令站起来、或是走过页面…那应该就是一台坏掉的iPad ！ 能改变一种普遍的社会行为是件了不起的成就，但也是令人害怕而不可预测的，伴随着意外的后果；就像是一个小婴儿在不知不觉之间，已经为了一只神奇手指卖掉了她的想象力。 而更可怕的，是被要求为这样的事情负起责任。 编译：Judith Cheng 本文授权编译自EE Times，版权所有，谢绝转载 参考英文原文：If it’s not an iPad, is Vanity Fair?，by Junko Yoshida

相关阅读：
• 日本震后大力发展节能“智能家庭”（多图）
• Kindle Fire威力持续发酵，iPad 2价格骑虎难下
• 圣诞礼物清单大调查，平板电脑高居榜首lOtesmc

{pagination} If it’s not an iPad, is Vanity Fair? Junko Yoshida MADISON, Wis. – Most people in the electronics industry today are aware of the revolutionary job they’ve done in developing technology that has changed forever the way we live. Are they proud? You betcha. Are they ready to take full responsibility? They should. But first, let us examine the reality here. Most of us can’t imagine a day when we receive not a single e-mail or make no cell phone calls. Not a day goes by without getting text messages from our kids, or finding mildly interesting or totally irrelevant tweets from someone we may or may not know that well. We may make no new entries in Facebook today, but we sure know someone among our circle of friends and relatives, whose “first-thing-in-the-morning ritual” is checking her Facebook page before even going to the bathroom. Even for those of us who trust no one for street directions, GPS has become our mainstay when we drive in unfamiliar territory. We zip through tolls using our E-Zpass (RFID), and we travel abroad with an RFID-embedded passport. For better or worse, life today is ubiquitously connected (or entangled) – virtually and electronically – to almost everyone and everywhere in the universe, the moreso the more we choose it to be. While all of us owe a lot to the engineering community for the “social” progress we’ve made in recent decades, those who have done the actual heavy-duty engineering work often remain quiet. They rarely brag about what they’ve engineered and accomplished. Even when an outfit like Texas Instruments tried to honor ‘engineers’ with its “Thank an engineer” series of video clips in 2009, it felt a little odd, and a tad embarrassing, to watch these normally anonymous toilers so nakedly exposed. But the whole notion of “social progress” engineered by the engineering community has become entirely a different story for me. I recently came across a video which captured changes – primarily instigated by new technology – in the basic behavior of our next generation of human beings. The video shows a one-year-old girl accustomed to playing randomly with her parent’s iPad. We witness her frustration with a regular paper magazine, which refuses to respond as she touches, sweeps, squeezes and pushes the images on the inert, non-interactive paper pages. I’ve heard before that a younger generation accustomed to using its thumbs for texting is more naturally inclined today to use thumbs, instead of the traditional index finger, to ring a doorbell. (A TI spokesperson shared this story). I also remember meeting an engineer almost 20 years ago. He said his two-year old daughter – brainwashed by Daddy’s Mac – spent months double-clicking herself on the chest first before initiating verbal contact with her fellow carbon-based life forms (people). That was a little shocking then. Now, we’ve got a whole generation in danger of thinking that a Playboy centerfold who doesn’t stand up, walk off the page and shake her booty on command is nothing but a broken iPad! Changing widespread social behavior is an awesome accomplishment. But it’s also scary and unpredictable, fraught inevitably with unintended consequences, like perhaps a baby who has unwittingly traded her imagination for a magic finger. It’s even scarier to claim responsibility for this sort of thing.