The smartphone era created an attention crisis. Slowtech is fixing it

智能手机时代引发了注意力危机，“慢科技”（Slowtech）正在解决它

When Tony Fadell entered New York City’s 28th Street Subway Station, he did not expect to come face-to-face with an advertisement for a product he designed over 20 years ago. But there it was: a five-by-four-foot poster promoting the iPod Shuffle, luring passersby with the promise of “Zero screen time.” 当托尼·法德尔（Tony Fadell）走进纽约市第28街地铁站时，他没想到会撞见一则他20多年前设计的产品广告。广告就在那里：一张5英尺乘4英尺的海报宣传着iPod Shuffle，以“零屏幕时间”（Zero screen time）的承诺吸引着路人。

“The first thing was, I thought, ‘Wait a second, did somebody not change the ad?’” Fadell, known as the father of the iPod, told TechCrunch. “For somebody like me who knows that thing intimately, it’s like seeing your kid’s picture.” “我的第一反应是，‘等一下，难道没人换掉这则广告吗？’”被誉为“iPod之父”的法德尔告诉TechCrunch。“对于像我这样对它了如指掌的人来说，这就像看到了自己孩子的照片。”

As Fadell stood in the train station, he was surrounded by people wearing wireless Bluetooth headphones to stream music on their phones, effortlessly accessing music libraries with over 100 million songs. This technology that we take for granted makes Steve Jobs’ early iPod tagline — “one thousand songs in your pocket” — sound antiquated. 当法德尔站在地铁站里时，周围的人们戴着无线蓝牙耳机，用手机在线听歌，轻而易举地访问拥有超过1亿首歌曲的音乐库。这种我们习以为常的技术，让史蒂夫·乔布斯（Steve Jobs）早期为iPod设计的标语——“口袋里的千首歌”——听起来显得过时了。

The postage-stamp-sized iPod Shuffle, which relied heavily on shuffle playback and offered little control compared to today’s streaming apps, should not appeal to a modern audience. But we have become so entrenched in technology that our various devices, apps, and algorithms mediate our every experience, from grocery shopping to dating. We’ve built smartphones that can do almost anything, but we’ve also created a constant connectedness that has become more exhausting than enriching. 邮票大小的iPod Shuffle主要依赖随机播放，与今天的流媒体应用相比几乎没什么控制功能，本不该吸引现代用户。但我们已经深陷于技术之中，以至于各种设备、应用程序和算法介入了我们生活的方方面面，从买菜到约会。我们制造了几乎无所不能的智能手机，但也创造了一种持续的连接状态，这种状态带来的疲惫感远超其带来的丰富性。

“People are very oversaturated and overstimulated, and they really want to have a more mindful approach to what they’re doing with their tech,” Joy Howard, CMO of Back Market, an online marketplace for refurbished tech, told TechCrunch. “There’s this fatigue that we have with the need to optimize every single aspect of our life.” “人们已经过度饱和、过度刺激了，他们真的希望以一种更专注的方式来使用科技，”二手电子产品在线交易平台Back Market的首席营销官乔伊·霍华德（Joy Howard）告诉TechCrunch。“我们对优化生活方方面面的需求感到疲惫。”

Howard and her team were responsible for the iPod Shuffle ad that Fadell was so shocked to encounter. But Howard says that demand is growing for this supposedly obsolete tech — if these devices weren’t driving sales, the company wouldn’t have shelled out for a premium ad placement in a hectic New York City subway station. 霍华德和她的团队正是那则让法德尔感到震惊的iPod Shuffle广告的幕后推手。但霍华德表示，人们对这些所谓的“过时技术”需求正在增长——如果这些设备不能带动销量，公司就不会花大价钱在繁忙的纽约地铁站购买黄金广告位。

For younger generations who have never known a world without social media and smartphones, there’s a certain magic to wired headphones, retro gaming consoles, CDs, and digital point-and-shoot cameras. They crave experiences that aren’t trying to monopolize their attention. Old-school cameras can’t upload photos to your Instagram story, retro games don’t spam you with gambling ads, and iPods can’t automatically play music that you’re algorithmically destined to enjoy. That’s the whole point of this movement, which Howard calls “slowtech.” 对于从未经历过没有社交媒体和智能手机世界的年轻一代来说，有线耳机、复古游戏机、CD和数码卡片相机有一种独特的魔力。他们渴望那些不会试图垄断他们注意力的体验。老式相机无法将照片上传到Instagram快拍，复古游戏不会向你推送垃圾博彩广告，iPod也不会自动播放算法为你“量身定制”的音乐。这就是霍华德所称的“慢科技”运动的核心所在。

“The ‘fast tech’ up until now has been all about eliminating friction… [Now], people are seeing friction as a way to create boundaries for themselves,” Howard said. “It’s so stunning to me that now people are wanting to bring friction back into their lives, and see that as a feature, rather than a flaw.” “到目前为止，‘快科技’的核心一直是消除摩擦……（现在），人们开始将摩擦视为为自己设定界限的一种方式，”霍华德说。“令我震惊的是，现在人们想要把摩擦带回生活中，并将其视为一种功能，而不是缺陷。”

Around the same time that Fadell first pitched the iPod to Steve Jobs, Austin Murray founded JAMDAT, one of the first mobile gaming companies, which quickly went public and was sold to Electronic Arts for $680 million. “When we were pitching our company back in 2000, 2001, people were laughing at us, saying, ‘Why would anyone play games on their cell phone?’” Murray told TechCrunch. 大约在法德尔首次向乔布斯推介iPod的同一时期，奥斯汀·默里（Austin Murray）创立了最早的移动游戏公司之一JAMDAT，该公司很快上市，并以6.8亿美元的价格卖给了艺电（Electronic Arts）。“2000年、2001年我们推介公司时，人们嘲笑我们，说：‘为什么会有人在手机上玩游戏？’”默里告诉TechCrunch。

Now, investors are just as incredulous when he pitches them on his screen-time reduction app, MOQA, which he is building to counteract the very phenomenon he helped create. “It’s watching what happened to my kids and the people around me that hurts my soul the most,” Murray said. “When everyone is doing the same thing — meaning everyone, the average screen time is like five hours probably on a phone every day — it’s not a willpower problem. It’s a product design problem.” 现在，当他向投资者推介旨在减少屏幕时间的应用程序MOQA时，投资者的反应同样难以置信。他开发这款应用正是为了对抗他曾经参与创造的这种现象。“看着我的孩子和周围的人所经历的一切，最让我感到心痛，”默里说。“当每个人都在做同样的事情——我是说所有人，平均每天在手机上的屏幕时间大概有五个小时——这已经不是意志力的问题了，而是产品设计的问题。”

This desire to cut back on the time we spend using our phones, computers, and TVs has become ubiquitous — about 53% of American adults say they want to reduce their screen time. “At a certain point, I realized that willpower was insufficient to not waste time on my phone,” said writer Calvin Kasulke, whose novel “Several People Are Typing” imagines workers trapped inside a Slack workspace. He now pays for Opal and Freedom, two apps designed to limit his screen time and social media use. 这种减少使用手机、电脑和电视时间的愿望已经变得非常普遍——约53%的美国成年人表示他们希望减少屏幕时间。“在某个时刻，我意识到仅靠意志力不足以让我不在手机上浪费时间，”作家卡尔文·卡苏尔克（Calvin Kasulke）说，他的小说《几个人正在打字》（Several People Are Typing）构想了被困在Slack工作空间里的员工。他现在付费使用Opal和Freedom，这两款应用旨在限制他的屏幕时间和社交媒体使用。

“I don’t need to limit my time on iMessage — that’s people who I really know! But I certainly don’t want to be wasting my time doomscrolling.” “I want to be very clear… I don’t feel smug about this. It’s embarrassing to have two different apps to limit how I use this,” Kasulke said. “I don’t think screens are inherently bad. I just think the way I was using [my phone] was worse and dumb, and now it’s a little bit less dumb.” “我不需要限制我在iMessage上的时间——那是我真正认识的人！但我当然不想把时间浪费在无休止的刷屏上。”“我想说清楚……我对此并不感到自鸣得意。需要两个不同的应用程序来限制我的使用方式，这很尴尬，”卡苏尔克说。“我不认为屏幕本身是坏的。我只是觉得我之前使用（手机）的方式更糟糕、更愚蠢，而现在稍微没那么蠢了。”

Others have given up their iPhones altogether, opting instead for flip phones, e-ink devices that run Android software, or minimalist touch-screen hardware like the Light Phone. 其他人则完全放弃了iPhone，转而选择翻盖手机、运行安卓系统的电子墨水屏设备，或者像Light Phone这样极简主义的触屏硬件。

“Our customers for the last 10 years are telling us how they feel more free after switching to the Light Phone,” Light co-founder Kaiwei Tang told TechCrunch. “It’s getting more and more attention, especially among young people. We have quite a lot of the community using Light Phone as 20- to 35-year-olds, which surprised us.” “过去10年来，我们的客户一直在告诉我们，换用Light Phone后他们感到多么自由，”Light联合创始人唐凯伟（Kaiwei Tang）告诉TechCrunch。“它正受到越来越多的关注，尤其是在年轻人中。我们的社区里有相当多20到35岁的用户在使用Light Phone，这让我们感到惊讶。”

Murray isn’t as optimistic about the future of “dumb phones,” though. “There’s certainly a movement of people who are just kind of anti-tech and ‘get it out of our lives,’” he said. “That’s really hard though, because then you realize you can’t do things that are now assuming you have a smartphone, like banking, or going into a hotel, or [using] credit cards.” 不过，默里对“功能机”（dumb phones）的未来并不那么乐观。“确实有一群人倾向于反科技，想要‘把科技赶出我们的生活’，”他说。“但这真的很难，因为你会发现，你无法完成那些默认你有智能手机才能做的事情，比如银行转账、入住酒店或（使用）信用卡。”

Kasulke said if Apple ever made an e-ink iPhone, he would “f–ing donate plasma to be able to afford it.” But that’s unlikely, so he’s not particularly interested in downgrading his phone. “I’m not like a, ‘I wish I could throw this thing in the toilet and go live in the woods’ kind of guy,” Kasulke said. 卡苏尔克说，如果苹果公司真的制造出一款电子墨水屏iPhone，他会“去卖血浆来买它”。但这不太可能，所以他并没有特别想去“降级”他的手机。“我不是那种‘真希望把这玩意儿扔进马桶，然后去森林里生活’的人，”卡苏尔克说。