这些商业模式为何还不过时

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　　一个女儿来看我们，想要给她妈妈看件东西。

　　My wife’s head is in her laptop.

　　我妻子正埋头在笔记本电脑上打字。

　　Just a moment, I’m writing an email, she says.

　　稍等一会儿，我在写电子邮件，她说。

　　God, it’s like 1996 round here, says daughter.

　　天哪，你好像还生活在1996年，女儿说。

　　This is an (almost) fully¹ functioning person who nonetheless once FaceTimed me in New York to ask how far from the corner of an envelope you stick a stamp if you want to avoid seeming weird².

　　她是一个（几乎）具有完全行为能力的人，有一次却在纽约通过FaceTime联系我，询问把邮票贴在距离信封右上角多远处，才不至于显得怪异。

　　None of her friends even uses email, she claims.

　　她说，在她的朋友中，甚至连使用电子邮件的都没有了。

　　Young people (and those who like to appear young) message only on social media.

　　年轻人（和那些喜欢假扮年轻的人）只用社交媒体来收发信息。

　　I have been hearing for 10 years that email is over, but it is still with us.

　　电子邮件过时了的说法，我已听了有10年了，但它仍未从我们的生活中消失。

　　I was on a train with a young venture capitalist the other week; he apologised for spending 20 minutes attending to emails.

　　不久前的一天，我跟一位年轻的风险投资家一起坐火车；他为花费20分钟处理电子邮件向我道歉。

　　I’m surprised you even do email, I said.

　　让我惊讶的是，你竟然还在使用电子邮件，我说。

　　He looked puzzled.

　　他看上去有些困惑。

　　I live on email, he said.

　　我离不开电子邮件，他说。

　　Hadn’t he heard it is over? Vaguely³, he said.

　　难道他没听说过电子邮件过时了吗？隐约听说过，他说。

　　But nothing’s ever over, is it? I even heard somewhere that handwritten letters are making a comeback.

　　但是，什么东西都不会绝对过时，不是吗？我甚至在某个地方听说，手写信件又回来了。

　　In the past few weeks, I have seen Facebook, Twitter, eBooks, websites, apps, phone calls, smartphones, desktops⁴, laptops and TV written off as over.

　　过去几周，我曾看到Facebook、推特(Twitter)、电子书(eBook)、网站、应用(app)、电话通话、智能手机、台式电脑、笔记本电脑被宣告过时。

　　Manifestly, they are not.

　　可它们显然都没有过时。

　　I confidently predict that in the next year, the current tech hot-picks — tablets, smartphones, VR, Instagram, wearable tech, the internet-of-things, Snapchat and self-driving cars — will be pronounced by someone as over.

　　我敢预测，在未来一年，当前的热门技术——平板电脑、智能手机、虚拟现实(VR)、Instagram、可穿戴技术、物联网、Snapchat和自动驾驶汽车——将会被人宣告过时了。

　　Then, one by one, they will be proclaimed to be back.

　　然后，它们将被一个接一个宣告回来了。

　　I confess I have done it.

　　我承认我这么做过。

　　The essayist and former trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb has called this neomania, arguing that technology that has been successful for many years will probably continue to be many years into the future.

　　评论家、前交易员纳西姆?尼古拉斯?塔勒布(Nassim Nicholas Taleb)把这种现象称为嗜新狂，他辩称，成功了多年的技术很可能在未来还将持续许多年。

　　The number of people consuming technology is so big it can accommodate pluralism.

　　科技消费者的人数如此多，完全容得下多元化。

　　Almost anything technically⁵ redundant⁶ — vinyl records, valve amplifiers, photographic film, typewriters, even, dare I say it, printed newspapers — can thrive and have a commercially significant following.

　　几乎任何在技术上多余的物品——黑胶唱片、电子管放大器、照相胶片、打字机，我敢说，甚至还有纸质报纸——都可能风生水起，拥有在商业上重大的粉丝群体。

　　The increasingly elderly population in much of the world helps to feed this.

　　在世界很多地区，人口老龄化日益严重，助长了这一趋势。

　　Not to forget those mindful young seekers after obsolescence⁷, the WG Grace-bearded hipsters.

　　不要忘记那些特意追求古旧物品的年轻人、那些留着威廉?吉尔伯特?格雷斯(WG Grace)式胡须的潮人。

　　But technological⁸ pluralism is not merely the province of the ageing or the achingly chic⁹.

　　但是，技术多元化并非老龄人群或追求时髦者的专属。

　　I mentioned ham radio — the global version of citizens band, or CB — in a column a couple of months ago, only to discover it is experiencing a modest boom.

　　在两个月前的一篇专栏文章里，我提到了业余无线电——即民用波段(CB)的全球版，随后竟发现它在经历一定程度的卷土重来。

　　Other fields that technology should have destroyed just keep going.

　　其他本该被技术摧毁的领域依然存在。

　　High-street travel agencies should have gone the way of the phone box, yet two big travel agents have opened in the past year in Richmond, my south London suburb.

　　商业街上的旅行社本该跟公用电话亭命运相同，但在我居住的伦敦南郊的里士满，过去一年开张了两家大型旅行社。

　　Over online technologies have a habit of reviving.

　　过时的网上技术往往会再度活跃。

　　The early social networking site and talent showcase, MySpace, is almost a paradigm¹⁰ for over-ness.

　　早期的社交网站和才能展示平台MySpace差不多是一个过时的范例。

　　Yet I met a man last week who has effectively reinvented the idea and may have the Next Big Thing on his hands.

　　然而上周我遇上的一个人实际上再创了这个主意，他或许握有明日之星(Next Big Thing)。

　　Ricardo Porteus, from Blackpool, England, has left his job as head of marketing¹¹ for Pacha Group, the Ibiza-based nightclub brand.

　　来自英格兰布莱克普尔(Blackpool)的里卡多?波蒂厄斯(Ricardo Porteus)辞去了位于伊比沙岛(Ibiza)的夜总会品牌派弛集团(Pacha Group)营销负责人的职位。

　　Last year, he put ￡250,000 of his own money into developing Bleep.me, which allows 16 to 20-year-olds to showcase their passion for music as well as such talents as modelling, tattooing¹² and crafts.

　　去年，他自己拿出25万英镑开发Bleep.me，该网站让16岁至20岁的年轻人展示自己的音乐激情，以及模特表演、纹身和手工艺等才能。

　　Bleep.me pulls all their social media streams together, helping¹³ give them what amounts to a free, constantly updated website.

　　Bleep.me把他们的所有社交媒体流整合到一起，帮助给他们提供了一个免费的、不断更新的网站。

　　Websites are dead for artists, Mr Porteus says.

　　网站对于艺术家来说死掉了，波蒂厄斯说。

　　Facebook is dead as a creative space.

　　Facebook作为一个创意空间已经死了。

　　And Google’s dead.

　　谷歌(Google)死了。

　　Young kids hang out on Snapchat and Instagram, — sentiments that may strike some as ironic¹⁴ coming from the guy making a new version of MySpace.

　　年轻人在Snapchat和Instagram上消磨时间，——这种情绪来自一个打造了新版MySpace的人，或许让人感到讽刺意味。

　　Mr Porteus, 36, has 5,000 established artists using Bleep.me, 30,000 hopefuls, and has on the board an ex-Yahoo CEO and top guys from Facebook.

　　36岁的波蒂厄斯吸引了5000个已经成名的艺术家和3万个仍在打拼的艺术家使用Bleep.me，其董事会里包括一名雅虎(Yahoo)前CEO和Facebook的几名高管。

　　He is working on raising a further ￡500,000 now, then plans a ￡5m funding round next year, aiming for a ￡15m valuation in 2017.

　　现在，他正着手再融资50万英镑，然后打算明年融资500万英镑，希望公司在2017年达到1500万英镑的估值。

　　People always make the comparison to MySpace and see it as a negative, but for me it’s flattering.

　　人们总把我们比作MySpace，并把这一点视为不利因素，但在我看来，其中有奉承的意思。

　　Every dog has its day.

　　凡人都有得意日。

　　Its day was six to eight years, which in tech is a lifetime.

　　MySpace的鼎盛时期是6到8年，对技术而言，这就是一个生命周期。

　　So what, I asked him, is Bleep.me’s life expectancy¹⁵?

　　我问他，那么Bleep.me的预期寿命是多久？

　　I’d say for cool people, we’ll have a three-year peak, and in five years, we’ll peak corporately¹⁶, he says — an impressive case of a company planning for its own over-ness.

　　我得说，对于潮人，我们将有3年高峰期，5年后，我们作为一家公司将达到巅峰，他说。这是一家公司为自己的过时进行筹划的令人印象深刻的例子。

　　And yet no one would be amazed if Bleep.me were still around in 15 years.

　　不过，如果15年后Bleep.me仍然活着，谁也不会感到惊讶。

　　Over is over. Or should be.

　　过时的说法已经过时，或者说应该过时。

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