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PC, internet, smartphone: what’s the next big technological epoch?
个人电脑、互联网、智能手机：下一个大的技术时代是什么?
One of the challenges of writing about technology is how to escape from what the sociologist Michael Mann memorably called “the sociology of the last five minutes”. This is especially difficult when covering the digital tech industry because one is continually deluged with ‘new’ stuff – viral memes, shiny new products or services, Facebook scandals (a weekly staple), security breaches etc.
写科技文章的挑战之一，是如何摆脱社会学家迈克尔•曼提出的那令人难忘地“最后五分钟的社会学”(the sociology of the last five minutes)的桎梏。在报道数字科技行业时，这尤其困难，因为人们总是被“新”东西淹没——病毒式传播的文化基因、闪亮的新产品或服务、Facebook（每周都有）的丑闻、安全漏洞等。
Recent weeks, for example, have brought the industry’s enthusiasm for the idea of a “metaverse” (neatly dissected here by Alex Hern), El Salvador’s flirtation with bitcoin, endless stories about central banks and governments beginning to worry about regulating cryptocurrencies, Apple’s possible rethink of its plans to scan phones and iCloud accounts for child abuse images, umpteen ransomware attacks, antitrust suits against app stores, the Theranos trial and so on, apparently ad infinitum.
最近几周，该行业产生了许多热情，例如：对“元宇宙”（亚历克斯·赫恩在这里仔细分析过）的想法、萨尔瓦多对比特币的迷恋、关于央行和政府开始担心监管加密货币的没完没了的故事、苹果可能会重新考虑其扫描手机和iCloud账户中虐童图片的计划、数勒索软件攻击、针对应用商店的反垄断诉讼、Theranos的审判等等，显然是无穷无尽的。
So how to break out of the fruitless syndrome identified by Prof Mann? One way is to borrow an idea from Ben Thompson, a veteran tech commentator who doesn’t suffer from it, and whose (paid) newsletter should be a mandatory daily email for any serious observer of the tech industry. Way back in 2014, he suggested that we think of the industry in terms of “epochs” – important periods or eras in the history of a field. At that point he saw three epochs in the evolution of our networked world, each defined in terms of its core technology and its “killer app”.
那么，如何摆脱曼恩教授所说的“无果综合症”呢? 其中一种方法是借鉴本•汤普森的观点。汤普森是一位经验丰富的科技评论员，他并没有受到无果综合症的困扰。对于任何认真观察科技行业的人来说，他的（付费）时事通讯都应该成为每日强制性阅读的电子邮件。早在2014年，他就建议我们从“时代”的角度来看待这个行业——一个领域在历史上的重要时期或时代。在那个时候，他看到了我们的网络世界的三个发展阶段，每个阶段都以其核心技术和“杀手级应用”来定义。
