介绍:
生活中已经有很多事情让你对自己感到失望和内疚了，这些个应用玩意还来提醒你？这实在太荒谬了——谁要他们来提醒我了。这感觉有些像《土拨鼠日》中的情节——总是一月的第二周，当你已经放弃了你的新年决心并开始憎恶自己。
When there are so many things in life to make you feel guilty or disappointed in yourself, to have extra ones feels absurd – especially since I invited them in. It sometimes feels like groundhog day – for ever the second week of January, when you’ve given up on your resolutions and hate yourself.
这些应用挺有用的，但是它们还有另一个“鼓励沉迷行为”的缺点。我下载了一个伸展应用，它会展示出我每天的拉伸进度。然而，只要我漏了一次课程，我的进展积分会被重置为零——这让我心灰意冷。还有，如果每天走不到1万步，我只是稍微觉得自己做的不够好，但是有的人已经详尽地写下了他们是如何被这些数字控制的——半夜在楼梯间走来走去，就为了达到这个步行目标。当你决定下载这些应用，让它们帮助自己变得更健康的时候，你想象过自己会被迫如此吗？
The other big drawback to these helpful widgets is that they can encourage obsessional behaviour. One stretching app I downloaded showed my progress day by day – if I skipped a session, my improvement markers reset to zero. It was incredibly disheartening. And I mentioned that I might feel mildly inadequate if I don’t hit 10,000 steps, but other people have written at length about how they find themselves enslaved by the number – marching up and down the stairs at midnight, just to hit that target. Is that the kind of activity you imagined that you’d be engaged in when you decided to download an app to help you get fit?
现代科技以很多出其不意的方式帮助我们。如果过多地抱怨这些可以提高或者简化我们生活的应用程序，可就不礼貌了。不过也许设计这些应用的公司应该想想，我们对这些应用的感觉如何。扰人的、让人感觉内疚的使用体验，以及消极激进的提醒信息，可不是符合用户习惯的销售技巧。从现在开始，我会更加谨慎地下载这些小东西。我的智能手机也许会帮助我成功找到真爱、学会做倒立，不过任何人都不应该用手机来测量生活的进程。如果我确实想要内疚一下，打个电话给我妈就行了。
Modern technology helps us in so many incredible ways that it would be churlish to complain too severely about apps that can enhance or simplify our lives. But perhaps the companies that design them should have a think about how they want to make us feel. Nagging guilt trips and passive-aggressive notifications are not conventional sales techniques. From now on, I’ll be more cautious when I download these little widgets. My success or failure in finding true love, or finally learning how to do a handstand might well be helped along by my smartphone, but none of us should measure our progress in life by it. If I really want to feel guilty, I can always phone my mother.
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