阅读的未来

我觉得，未来的书被电子化的趋势是很明显的。虽然我很肯定有毛边的硬部面书和大量流通在市场的软面书仍然会存在，但是这存在就像广播一样，只是一种文化形式的保留。虽说广播节目从没停过（这难道不是很好么？），但我也只有在堵车时才收听，并且前提是，车是租来的，而且我忘带了MP3的数据线。其他情况下，我则倾向于听音乐和播客节目。

I love books deeply. I won’t bore you with descriptions of my love other than to say that, when I moved back from England, I packed 9 pounds of clothes and 45 pounds of books in one of my checked bags. (I have a weakness for British covers.) And when my luggage was over the fifty pound airline limit, I started chucking T-shirts.

我很爱读书。我不会扰人地向你描述一番我对书的喜爱是多么多么的深，与其那样做，不如让我告诉你一件事：从英格兰回来时，我在一个托运包里放了9磅衣服和45磅的书。（我对英式封面的书毫无抵抗力。）所以当我的行李超过航空托运的55磅限重时，我便毫不犹豫地扔掉了我的T恤以减轻重量。

So I’m nervous about the rise of the Kindle and the Nook and the iBookstore. The book, after all, is a time-tested technology. We know that it can endure, and that the information we encode in volutes of ink on pulped trees can last for centuries. That’s why we still have Shakespeare Folios and why I can buy a 150 year old book on Alibris for 99 cents. There are so many old books!

所以我很害怕Kindle（金读），Nook和iBookstroe的出现和普及（前两者为电子书阅读器，后者为网上电子书店）。书，毕竟是一项能经受时间考验的技艺。我们都知道它能持久流传：树木被糅成纸浆造出粗糙的纸，而我们就从吸附在上面的墨水里解读书的内容，这是能延续好几个世纪的信息。这就是为什么至今我们还保留了莎士比亚的手卷，而我在Alibris（二手书和旧书网站，国内的孔夫子旧书网与之类似）上花99美分就能买到150年前的旧书。在这个世界上，旧书的数量可是相当可观的！

And yet, I also recognize the astonishing potential of digital texts and e-readers. For me, the most salient fact is this: It’s never been easier to buy books, read books, or read about books you might want to buy. How can that not be good?

That said, I do have a nagging problem with the merger of screens and sentences. My problem is that consumer technology moves in a single direction: It’s constantly making it easier for us to perceive the content. This is why your TV is so high-def, and your computer monitor is so bright and clear. For the most part, this technological progress is all to the good. (I still can’t believe that people watched golf before there were HD screens. Was the ball even visible? For me, the pleasure of televised golf is all about the lush clarity of grass.) Nevertheless, I worry that this same impulse – making content easier and easier to see – could actually backfire with books. We will trade away understanding for perception. The words will shimmer on the screen, but the sentences will be quickly forgotten.

可对于文字和屏幕的结合，我仍然有挥之不去的阴霾。我担心的是消费类科技总是朝着单一的方向发展：它一味地使信息内容更容易被接受。这就是为什么你的电视机是高清晰的，你的电脑显示屏又亮又清楚。大体来讲，科技上的进步总是产生好的效果。（我一直不能理解在高清电视出现之前，人们为什么要在电视上看高尔夫，你甚至看不到球。对于我来说，看电视高尔夫节目唯一的享受就是那郁郁葱葱逼真的草地。）尽管如此，“使呈现的内容越来越直观”这条一以贯之的动机，却很可能违背了读书的初衷。我们将因为增加了内容的直观性而失去读书时理解体会的过程。单词会像书上的文字一样出现在显示屏上，但是句子却不会在被人牢记。

Let me explain. Stanislas Dehaene, a neuroscientist at the College de France in Paris, has helped illuminate the neural anatomy of reading. It turns out that the literate brain contains two distinct pathways for making sense of words, which are activated in different contexts. One pathway is known as the ventral route, and it’s direct and efficient, accounting for the vast majority of our reading. The process goes like this: We see a group of letters, convert those letters into a word, and then directly grasp the word’s semantic meaning. According to Dehaene, this ventral pathway is turned on by “routinized, familiar passages” of prose, and relies on a bit of cortex known as visual word form area (VWFA). When you are a reading a straightforward sentence, or a paragraph full of tropes and cliches, you’re almost certainly relying on this ventral neural highway. As a result, the act of reading seems effortless and easy. We don’t have to think about the words on the page.

我来解释一下为什么。巴黎法兰西学院的神经专家Stanislas Dehaene帮助我们剖析了阅读的神经过程。负责读写的大脑部位实则包括了两条不同的神经回路以帮助我们理解词义，这两条回路分别在不同的情况下被激活。其中一条叫做腹侧传导通路，它的作用直接而有效，负责了我们大部分的阅读。当我们看到一组字母时，会将这些字母转换成单词，然后直接领悟到词面意思。Dehaene说，这条神经只能被常规的我们所熟悉的语句段落刺激，而且依赖于大脑皮层的视觉词形区。当你看一句直白的句子，或满是陈词腐句的段落时，你的阅读基本上都是这条腹侧神经通路在起作用。所以阅读过程看起来就像条件反射一样毫不费力，我们根本不用去思考书页上的单词。

But the ventral route is not the only way to read. The second reading pathway – it’s known as the dorsal stream – is turned on whenever we’re forced to pay conscious attention to a sentence, perhaps because of an obscure word, or an awkward subclause, or bad handwriting.  (In his experiments, Dehaene activates this pathway in a variety of ways, such as rotating the letters or filling the prose with errant punctuation.) Although scientists had previously assumed that the dorsal route ceased to be active once we became literate, Deheane’s research demonstrates that even fluent adults are still forced to occasionally make sense of texts. We’re suddenly conscious of the words on the page; the automatic act has lost its automaticity.

但是腹侧神经并不是我们阅读时唯一一条工作的神经。第二条阅读通路就是背侧核束神经。有时因为一个晦涩的单词，一个难懂的从句或者难辨别的书写，我们就被动地集中了精力在一句句子上，这时候就刺激了背侧神经。（在Dehaene的实验中，他用不同的方法刺激了这条神经通路，比如将书倒过来给人看，或者将标点点错。）虽然之前有科学家已经提出一旦我们不再像一个文盲，而是能读能写，背侧神经就不会被刺激，但是Deheane的研究表明即使是读写顺畅的成年人偶尔也会被迫捉摸文本的意思。当我们突然间明白书本上的词语时，这个主动的背侧神经反射也就失去了它的自发性。

This suggests that the act of reading observes a gradient of awareness. Familiar sentences printed in Helvetica and rendered on lucid e-ink screens are read quickly and effortlessly. Meanwhile, unusual sentences with complex clauses and smudged ink tend to require more conscious effort, which leads to more activation in the dorsal pathway. All the extra work – the slight cognitive frisson of having to decipher the words – wakes us up.

这就意味着，阅读过程是一个渐进的认识过程。当书上的赫维提卡字体和屏幕上的电子墨水呈现的是我们熟悉的语句时，阅读就毫不费力而且很快。然而，如果是带有复杂从句或者墨迹斑斑的句子，就需要我们有意地付出更多注意力，这样就刺激了背侧神经。额外的脑力活动，也就是辨别词语的轻微认知冲动，激活了我们的大脑。

So here’s my wish for e-readers. I’d love them to include a feature that allows us to undo their ease, to make the act of reading just a little bit more difficult. Perhaps we need to alter the fonts, or reduce the contrast, or invert the monochrome color scheme. Our eyes will need to struggle, and we’ll certainly read slower, but that’s the point: Only then will we process the text a little less unconsciously, with less reliance on the ventral pathway. We won’t just scan the words – we will contemplate their meaning.

所以对于电子书阅览器，我有一些建议。我希望以后的产品能多出一项功能来打破这种在电子屏幕上阅读的安逸，让阅读变得更有挑战些。也许可以变换字体，调低对比度，或者让文本变成黑底白字的。这样我们的眼睛才会觉得不适应，我们也能放慢阅读速度，但重点是，只有这样，我们才能不再无意识地消化文章，才能减少依赖腹侧神经的次数。我们不会再一眼扫过文字而不知所云，而是斟词酌句、深思细想。

My larger anxiety has to do with the sprawling influence of technology. Sooner or later, every medium starts to influence the message. I worry that, before long, we’ll become so used to the mindless clarity of e-ink – to these screens that keep on getting better – that the technology will feedback onto the content, making us less willing to endure harder texts. We’ll forget what it’s like to flex those dorsal muscles, to consciously decipher a literate clause. And that would be a shame, because not every sentence should be easy to read.

而我更大的担忧是科技带来的无处不在的影响。各媒介开始影响讯息是早晚的事。我担心，不久之后，我们就会习惯不需费神理解的电子墨水，习惯越来越清晰的屏幕，科技带来的影响会在信息内容上被反馈出来：我们会变懒，不愿接受理解起来稍显困难的文本。我们的阅读能力会退化，不再有意去理解有深度的句子。这是多么可惜，因为不是每句句子都能被轻易解读的。

Bonus point: I sometimes wonder why I’m only able to edit my own writing after it has been printed out, in 3-D form. My prose will always look so flawless on the screen, but then I read the same words on the physical page and I suddenly see all my clichés and banalities and excesses. Why is this the case? Why do I only notice my mistakes after they’re printed on dead trees? I think the same ventral/dorsal explanation applies. I’m so used to seeing my words on the screen – after all, I wrote them on the screen – that seeing them in a slightly different form provides enough tension to awake my dorsal stream, restoring a touch of awareness to the process of reading. And that’s when I get out my red pen.

另外：我有时会纳闷，为什么只有拿着实实在在的纸，看着被打印的稿子时我才能修改文章。在屏幕上，看起来一切都没问题。而当我在纸质稿上审阅相同的内容时，才会突然意识到文章里的陈词滥调，冗词赘句或哪里太平铺直叙了。为什么会这样？为什么只有在东西被打印在干纸浆上后我才能看出端倪？我想腹/背侧神经在阅读里起的作用在这里同样适用。我太习惯于在屏幕上看到自己的文字了，毕竟我是用电脑写作的。所以，用稍稍不同的方式来阅读就足以引起精神上的注意，而激活了背侧神经通路，使我能更有效地阅读。这样我就能修改我的文章了。

Bonus bonus point: Perhaps the pleasure of reading on my Kindle – it’s so light in the hand, with such nicely rendered fonts – explains why it has quickly become an essential part of my sleep routine. The fact that it’s easier to read might explain why it’s also easier for me to fall asleep.

另外的另外：用Kindle看书是一种享受，它拿在手里轻盈如纸，显示的字体赏心悦目，也许这就好解释为什么我拿它来酝酿睡觉前的气氛了。事实是因为它读起来太安逸了，安逸得让人想睡觉。