逃离社交网络--- 我们得谈谈

  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..

 

So this summer, I'm choosing instead to explore the impact of this technology on my routine. I have constructed a set of somewhat arbitrary rules to cut down on my social intake:

    -- I will be available over both work and personal email between 9am and 6:30pm, the hours in a basic work day.

    -- I will also be available on my work phone and my cell phone. At home, I plan to leave my phone in the kitchen, in the area once reserved for a landline. (I ditched mine in June 2003.)

    -- I will not be available at any time on any social service.

    -- I won't be available over any instant messaging service.

    -- I will not text.

    It's harder than I thought to figure out how to disengage. For one, social services have no incentive to offer vacation responders in the way that my email does; after all, once we leave for a brief period, we may not come back. Also, my social feeds provide the backbone for many of the tasks that I do online -- from watching movies on Netflix (NFLX) to ordering food through Seamless. Trying to decouple the tasks from the networks is daunting. And: Social is not just social. It's critical to my work life. I have no doubt I will long for LinkedIn (LNKD) before important business meetings this month in the same way that I craved caffeine when I tried to give up my morning coffee last summer. It won't be pretty.

    But, I plan to keep notes on the process, and I hope to learn a bit more about myself -- and as important, about these social technologies I cover -- in the process. I'll share these thoughts at month's end. And I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts on any similar journeys. Extra attention goes to the letters I receive by snail mail ...

我在八月切断了与Facebook、Twitter、Instagram、商务社交网站LinkedIn、Pinterest和MessageMe的联系。如果你想在九月前联系我，请往我的《财富》邮箱发邮件，或者最好打电话给我。我不知道是否会有比以前更多的时间来给你回电话。

    简单地说，我想知道自从2003年首次登录Friendster以来，我究竟得到了什么，又失去了什么。我已经不记得在我拥有头像照片之前的生活是什么样子了。自从2005年在《商业周刊》（Business Week）上发表第一篇关于社交网络的封面文章以来，我一直在撰写关于社交网络工具的文章——同时也很好地利用了这些工具。通过离开这一个月，我希望以全新的眼光来看待这些技术，同时撰写一批有意思的文章，谈谈它们如何塑造人类的未来。

    大家或许没有注意到，逃离网络在今年似乎已经成为一种趋势。今年五月，保罗•米勒供稿The Verge网站，分享了远离网络一年期间的生活经历。《纽约时报》（New York Times）刊文介绍了戒除数码瘾的训练营，而《快公司》（Fast Company）的封面故事也是关于一个离开网络25天的男人。说真的，这个故事还挺吸引人。

    我相信，之所以会出现这种趋势，是因为美国的网络用户已经达到了最大量的社会过载。我把它归功于一系列完美的新型工具——智能手机、平板电脑、Up bands、Fitbits，噢——甚至是谷歌眼镜（Google Glass），以及一系列人们认为不可或缺的新型服务，即使Facebook这样的老式服务依然扮演了中流砥柱的角色。每天早上醒来，我都会按照以下顺序逐一翻看：短信、工作邮箱、Gmail、雅虎、Instagram、Facebook、Twitter，之后是我iPhone通知面板上的其他信息。

    就像对待其他技术一样，我们需要搞清如何让社交服务融入我们的生活（我广义地将包括电子邮件和短信在内的、所有核心内容依附于社交网络的服务定义为社交服务）。还记得我们在上世纪90年代中期开始使用手机的时候吗？几年间，我们就让它们在餐馆和电影院中响起，还因为接电话而中断了彼此的交谈，直到后来我们制定了一系列文化准则，规范了如何使用它们。而由于这些社交服务本身进化得如此迅速，这一系列文化准则也更难约束它们。

    这几年来，每年春天，我都在寻求逃离网络的一次国际度假，从而让自己摆脱每次感到震动都会把手伸进口袋的条件反射。在匈牙利、克罗地亚和土耳其，躲在小窗后的孤独生活让我觉得颇有滋味，不过即便是这些遥远的地区也与网络联系紧密。（几年前，我关掉手机，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馆，不料却在那里碰上婚宴。人们正随着这样一首流行的土耳其歌曲热烈地舞蹈：“Facebook！Facebook！我在Facebook上遇到了一个女孩！”）

    同样，“度假”这个词的定义是离开常规的日常生活。

 

   因此，今年夏天，我决定探寻这项技术对我日常生活的影响。为了减少获取社交信息，我为自己制定了如下规定：

    -- 常规工作日的上午9点到下午6点半之间查收工作邮件和私人邮件。

    -- 还可以通过工作电话和手机联系到我。在家里，我准备把电话安在厨房里，那里预留了一个放座机的地方。（2003年6月我扔掉了电话。）

    -- 任何时候都不登陆社交服务。

    -- 任何时候都不使用即时通信服务。

    -- 不发短信。

    逃离社交媒体的过程比我预想的要困难。比如说，社交服务不会像我的电子邮件那样提供假期自动回复；毕竟我们一旦有段时间不用它，就可能将它弃之不用。同样，我的社交信息订阅支持着我在网上的许多活动——从在网飞（Netflix）上看电影到使用Seamless订餐。试着把这些事情与网络分离是件可怕的事情。此外，社交不仅是社交，它对我的工作也至关重要。毫无疑问，在本月重要的商业会议之前，我会渴望使用LinkedIn，就像我去年夏天尝试在晨间咖啡时间里戒掉对咖啡因的渴望一样。那种感觉不会好受的。

    但我计划在这一过程中做下记录，借此更加了解自己——同样重要的是，了解这些我使用的社交技术。我将在本月底分享这些想法。我也期待听到你们对于类似体验的想法。如果对此事还有其他关注，可以通过“蜗牛”邮件寄给我……（财富中文网）

    译者：严匡正