原文來(lái)自Farnamstreet網(wǎng)站。當(dāng)每天無(wú)所不在的新聞包圍我們的時(shí)候，你或許以為越多的新聞閱讀會(huì)讓你更加智慧，不幸的是恰恰相反。判斷閱讀的價(jià)值其實(shí)很簡(jiǎn)單，作者花的時(shí)間越長(zhǎng)，至今留存越久的東西，才值得閱讀。Enjoy！
We spend hours consuming news because we want to be well informed. But is that time well spent? News is by definition something that doesn't last. And as news has become easier to distribute and cheaper to produce, the quality has decreased.
我們花很多小時(shí)閱讀新聞，因?yàn)槲覀兿胍玫匠浞值男畔?。但是這個(gè)時(shí)間花的真的值嗎？新聞的定義本來(lái)就是不能持久的某種東西。隨著新聞分發(fā)越來(lái)越容易，新聞的生產(chǎn)越來(lái)越便宜，其質(zhì)量已經(jīng)下降。
Rarely do we stop to ask ourselves questions about what we consume: Is this important? Is this going to stand the test of time — say, in a week or in a year? Is the person writing this someone who is well informed on the issue?
我們很少停下來(lái)問(wèn)問(wèn)自己我們消費(fèi)了什么新聞：它很重要嗎？它是否經(jīng)受得住時(shí)間的考驗(yàn) — 比如一周或一年？寫這個(gè)新聞的人真的是內(nèi)行嗎？
— Nicolas Carr
“我們被如此多即時(shí)有趣的信息包圍，以至于我們被無(wú)盡的試圖跟上他們的壓力所吞噬。”
- 尼古拉斯·卡爾 （注釋：美國(guó)作家）
There are several problems with the way we consume news today:
我們今天消費(fèi)新聞的方式有幾個(gè)問(wèn)題：
First, the speed of news delivery has increased. We used to have to wait to get a newspaper or gossip with people in our town to get our news, but not anymore. Thanks to alerts, texts, and other interruptions, news find us almost the minute it's published.
首先，新聞傳播的速度提高了。過(guò)去我們不得不等待報(bào)紙或者通過(guò)和鎮(zhèn)上人的閑聊獲得消息，現(xiàn)在完全不需要了。由于手機(jī)提醒，短信和其他干擾方式，新聞幾乎在發(fā)表的一分鐘內(nèi)就能到達(dá)我們。
Second, the costs to produce news have dropped significantly. Some people write 12 blog posts a day for major newspapers. It's nearly impossible to write something thoughtful on one topic, let alone 12. Over the course of a year, this works out to writing 2880 articles (assuming four weeks of vacation). The fluency of the person you're getting your news from in the subject they're covering is near zero. As a result, you're filling your head with surface opinions on isolated topics. Because the costs have dropped to near zero, there is a lot of competition.
其次，生產(chǎn)新聞的成本大幅下降。有些人每天為主要報(bào)紙寫12篇博文。一天在一個(gè)主題上寫出深思熟慮的內(nèi)容都幾乎不可能，更不用說(shuō)了12個(gè)主題了。一年之內(nèi)，這就寫出了2880篇文章（假設(shè)留出四周給假期）。這些人作為你新聞的來(lái)源，他們對(duì)所涉及的主題的精通程度接近于零。因此，你把你的腦袋里填滿對(duì)不同孤立主題的淺薄的觀點(diǎn)。由于新聞生產(chǎn)成本已經(jīng)下降到接近零，競(jìng)爭(zhēng)非常激烈。
Third, producers of news attempt to hijack our brains. News producers perpetuate a culture of “tune in, don't miss out, follow this or you'll be misinformed, oh wait, look at this!” As you consume more and more of that kind of news, you have less and less time for what matters.
第三，新聞制作人試圖劫持我們的大腦。新聞制作人主張的文化是：“快快收聽(tīng)，不要錯(cuò)過(guò)，跟著這個(gè)否則你會(huì)被誤導(dǎo)，嘿停住，看看這個(gè)！”。當(dāng)你消費(fèi)越來(lái)越多這樣的新聞時(shí)，你越來(lái)越少時(shí)間花在重要的事情上。
Fourth, the incentives are misaligned. In part, because there is a lot of competition, most news outlets feel compelled to offer free news. After all, everyone else is doing it. However, when the news is free, you still need to pay people, so you move away from a subscription model that was selling static ads to a captive audience to a model that's selling the audience to advertisers. Page views become the name of the game, and the more, the better. For a lot of people who create news (I won't use the term “journalists” here because I hold them in high regard), the more page views they get, the more they are compensated. A lot of these ads aren't just impressions; they're also giving information about you to the advertisers, but that's another story.
第四，激勵(lì)機(jī)制失調(diào)。部分由于競(jìng)爭(zhēng)激烈，大部分新聞媒體都不得不提供免費(fèi)新聞。畢竟，其他人都在這樣做。但是，當(dāng)新聞是免費(fèi)的時(shí)候，你仍然需要付錢給人，所以你從一個(gè)靜態(tài)廣告出售的訂閱模式轉(zhuǎn)移到一個(gè)向廣告商出售觀眾的模式。網(wǎng)頁(yè)瀏覽量成為這個(gè)游戲的關(guān)鍵，瀏覽越多越好。對(duì)于很多創(chuàng)造新聞的人來(lái)說(shuō)（我在這里不會(huì)用“新聞工作者”這個(gè)詞，因?yàn)槲曳浅Ｗ鹬厮麄儯?，他們的?yè)面瀏覽越多，得到的報(bào)酬就越多。很多這些廣告不只是展示，他們也在向廣告商提供關(guān)于你的信息，但這是另一回事。
I could go on, but I think you're starting to see the picture now.
我可以繼續(xù)下去，但是我想現(xiàn)在你已經(jīng)開(kāi)始看到這個(gè)畫面了。
— Herbert Simon
“信息消費(fèi)了什么是相當(dāng)明顯的：它消費(fèi)了接受者的的注意力。因此，大量的信息造成了注意力的貧乏，需要在信息來(lái)源過(guò)多的情況下有效地分配這種注意力?！?/p>
- 赫伯特·西蒙
The point is, most of what you read online today is pointless. It's not important to your life. It's not going to help you make better decisions. It's not going to help you understand the world. It's not going to help you develop deep and meaningful connections with the people around you. The only thing it's really doing is altering your mood and perhaps your behavior.
重點(diǎn)是，你今天在網(wǎng)上閱讀的大部分內(nèi)容都是毫無(wú)意義的。它對(duì)你的人生并不重要。它不會(huì)幫助你做出更好的決定。它不會(huì)幫助你理解世界。它不會(huì)幫助你與你周圍的人產(chǎn)生深刻而有意義的聯(lián)系。它唯一真正做的是改變你的心情，也許你的行為。
The hotels, transportation, and ticketing systems in Disney World are all designed to keep you within the theme park rather than sightseeing elsewhere in Orlando. Similarly, once you're on Facebook, it does everything possible, short of taking over your computer, to prevent you from leaving. But while platforms like Facebook play a role in our excessive media consumption, we are not innocent. Far from it. We want to be well informed. (More accurately, we want to appear to be well informed.) And this is the very weakness that gets manipulated.
迪斯尼世界的酒店、交通和票務(wù)系統(tǒng)都旨在讓你呆在主題公園內(nèi)，而不是去奧蘭多的其他地方觀光。同樣，一旦你在Facebook上，它會(huì)盡一切可能，短暫的接管你的電腦，以防止你離開(kāi)。但是，盡管像Facebook這樣的平臺(tái)在我們過(guò)度消費(fèi)新聞中扮演一個(gè)角色，我們自己并不是無(wú)辜的。遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)不是。我們太想要充分掌握一切信息。 （更準(zhǔn)確地說(shuō)，我們希望看起來(lái)掌握一切信息。）這是我們?nèi)觞c(diǎn)被操縱了。
— Nassim Taleb
“要徹底治愈報(bào)紙上癮，花一年時(shí)間閱讀前一周的報(bào)紙。”
- Nassim Taleb （注釋：黑天鵝的作者）
I have a friend who reads The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, her local newspaper, and several other publications. She's addicted. She wants to know everything that's going on everywhere and to have an informed opinion. She's just like the rest of us — we all want to know what's going on and have a well-informed opinion. If we're not well informed, then what are we? I don't want to be ignorant, and that's just how I'm made to feel if I'm not keeping up.
我有一位朋友， 她讀“紐約客”，“紐約時(shí)報(bào)”，“經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人”，“華爾街日?qǐng)?bào)”，當(dāng)?shù)貓?bào)紙和其他一些刊物。她上了癮。她想知道所有地方發(fā)生的一切，并且知道來(lái)龍去脈。她就像我們其他人一樣。 如果我們不了解發(fā)生的情況，那我們是什么呢？我不想成為無(wú)知的人，如果我沒(méi)有跟上這些新聞，我就會(huì)有這種感覺(jué)。
Despite that, I've stopped consuming news. At first, it was really difficult. When my friends would start talking about something topical and emotionally charged and ask me what I thought, I'd have to say I don't know. This was followed by a “What!?” and “You have to read this” as they took out their phones to text me a link to an article I would never read. One hilarious aspect of this situation is that they often expected me to stop the conversation with them and read the article so I could share in their outrage. No thanks.
盡管如此，我已經(jīng)停止消費(fèi)新聞。起初，這真的很困難。當(dāng)我的朋友們開(kāi)始投入的談?wù)撘恍衢T話題，問(wèn)我我在想什么，我不得不說(shuō)我不知道。接著是“什么！？”和“你必須讀這個(gè)”，然后他們拿出手機(jī)用短信給我發(fā)那些我永遠(yuǎn)不會(huì)讀的文章的鏈接?；氖牵麄兘?jīng)常希望我停止與他們的談話，閱讀文章，以便我可以分享他們的憤怒。不用了，謝謝。
Being well informed isn't regurgitating the opinion of some twenty-two-year-old with no life experience telling me what to think or how outraged to be. Your first thought on something is usually not yours but someone else's. When all you do is consume, you are not only letting someone else hijack and direct your attention; you are also letting them think for you.
充分了解信息并不是去反芻那些二十來(lái)歲沒(méi)有生活經(jīng)驗(yàn)的人的意見(jiàn)，讓他們告訴我該如何思考或者多么憤怒。你首先想到的東西通常不是你的，而是別人的。當(dāng)你所做的只是消費(fèi)，你不僅讓別人劫持并引導(dǎo)你的注意力，你也讓他們?yōu)槟闼伎肌?br>
Avoid the noise because it messes with the signal. Your attention is valuable, so why spend so much time on stuff that will be irrelevant in a few days? Read what stands the test of time. Read from publications that respect and value your time, the ones that add more value than they consume. Read what prompts you to think for yourself. Read fewer articles and more books. Read books that have stood the test of time, those that are still in print after 20 years or so.
避免噪音，因?yàn)樗c信號(hào)混淆。你的注意力是有價(jià)值的，那么為什么花這么多時(shí)間在這些幾天以后就毫不相干的東西？閱讀那些經(jīng)得起時(shí)間的考驗(yàn)的東西。閱讀那些尊重和珍惜你時(shí)間的出版物，那些增加價(jià)值而不是浪費(fèi)的出版物。閱讀那些要求你自己思考的東西。閱讀更少的文章和更多的書籍。閱讀經(jīng)過(guò)時(shí)間考驗(yàn)的書，20年后仍在印刷的書。
We're afraid of silence, afraid to be alone with our thoughts. That's why we pull out our phones when we're waiting in line at a coffee shop or the grocery store. We're afraid to ask ourselves deep and meaningful questions. We're afraid to be bored. We're so afraid that to avoid it, we'll literally drive ourselves crazy consuming pointless information.
我們害怕沉默，害怕和思想獨(dú)處。這就是為什么當(dāng)我們?cè)诳Х葟d或雜貨店排隊(duì)等候時(shí)，我們拿出手機(jī)。我們害怕問(wèn)自己深刻而有意義的問(wèn)題。我們害怕無(wú)聊。我們很害怕，為了避免它，我們會(huì)瘋狂地消耗毫無(wú)意義的信息。
Let's close with this quote by Winifred Gallagher: “Few things are as important to your quality of life as your choices about how to spend the precious resource of your free time.”
讓我們用Winifred Gallagher的這句話結(jié)束：“很少有事情，比你選擇如何花費(fèi)你的寶貴空閑時(shí)間， 對(duì)你的生命質(zhì)量來(lái)的重要?！?/span>
愉悅資本，和本篇沒(méi)有關(guān)系：-）
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