Although I hope to explain what is known about the cognitive effects of using digital networked media, including the research and controversy over multitasking, this is not a book on multitasking, pro or con, or how to manage your time better; there are plenty of those. Neither is this book going to deal with the issue of attention deficit disorder. Knowing when as well as when not to multitask is a key part of the digital literacy toolbox—and you don’t need to have a disorder to be confused about how to react to rapid social and technological changes. If you aren’t a little confused, maybe you aren’t thinking deeply enough about the bigger picture. For the purpose of my inquiry into a broad range of literacies, concentrating too much on the important but not all-encompassing issue of multitasking risks missing larger issues about a broad range of attentional habits that are dying and aborning. 我希望能解释数字网络媒体的使用对认识能力的影响，包括多任务的研究和对其的争议，但这不是一本旨在说明多任务的优劣，也不是一本关于如何更好地管理时间的书，它远远不止这些。 这本书也不注重解决注意力不足症的问题。了解在什么时候用或不用多任务便成了精通数字技术的关键—--你将不会就如何应对快速的社会科技发展而一头雾水。当然如果你对此没有一点点的困惑，也许是因为还没有对这个问题有足够深度的思考。我的目的旨在对更广阔领域的深入调查，一味地关注重点，而不全面考虑，将会有可能遗漏更大的问题，这更大的问题便是关于正在消失的注意力习惯。 Most people in the world recognize, at some level, that a massive shift is taking place in the way we direct, fail to direct, fragment, or time-share our attention in conversations, classrooms, and while walking down the street. Many are uneasy about this transformation. Some, like Nicholas Carr in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and his book The Shallows, believe we are losing an essential ability to focus and dive deep. 世界上的大部分人在某种程度上已经意识到了一个巨变正在发生，它体现于我们是怎样成功地或失败的引导我们的注意力,如何在谈话,课堂和走路时将注意力分割或分时享用。很多人对于这种转变难以接受。其中一些人，如同尼古拉斯’卡尔在他的文章中提到‘谷歌是否让我们变得愚蠢？”，此外在其名为《浅薄》的一书中也认为我们正在失去集中注意力和深入思考的基本能力。 The sociotechnologi-cal questions Carr addresses may have been made possible by the digital devices a majority of the earth’s population now carry, but the real changes driving this shift are occurring in human minds and between human beings, not in microchips. The way we communicate today is altering the way people pay attention—which means we need to explore and understand how to train attention now, so that we, not our devices, control the shape of this alteration in the future. 卡尔提出的社会科技问题因数字设备的使用而成为可能，这些数字设备正是大部分人当前所持有的。而社会真正的改变其实发生在人们的思维中，以及人际交往中，并不是仅仅存在于芯片的革新。如今我们交流的方式正在改变人们注意力的分配方式，这意味着我们不得不去探索，去掌握训练注意力的方法，这样才能让人类自己，而不是电子设备，来控制未来的转变的模式。 It’s not that multitasking is always bad (except when it is—like when you are driving a car), or continuous partial attention (such as surfing the Web while talking on the phone) is always rude and inefficient. It’s that too few have learned and taught to others the skills we need to know if we are to master the use of our attention amid a myriad of choices designed to attract us. A significant part of the population has not yet learned to decide when it is appropriate to share multiple lines of attention and when single focal point is necessary (and I’m not just talking about etiquette here but rather about efficacy in business and personal lives), nor have many people studied how attention can be trained. Who can blame us? We’ve been busy trying to catch up with the way our uses of digital computers, worldwide webs, and mobile cameraphones have restructured our lives. (A 2010 survey found that one in six adults has physically bumped into someone or something while talking or texting on their mobile phone.) 多任务环境也并非总是那么不尽人意(除了开车时) ，那么持续被分散的注意力也不是都会造成无礼或低效（如一边打电话一边上网）。假如在各项吸引我们的选择中想要很好地把控我们的注意力，那么我们中太少有人学到这种技能，也没有教给其他人这种机能。很大一部分人还没学会什么时候该将注意力分散到多个点，什么时候应将注意力集中到一个关键点。（在这里我并仅仅讨论礼仪问题而是在上商场和个人生活中的效力）很多人也没有学过如何锻炼自己的注意力。所以谁能责怪我们？ 我们一直忙于赶上潮流，不管是电脑，无联网还是带照相功能的手机，这一切都在重塑我们的生活。 （2010年的调查发现六分之一的成年人在讲电话或发短信的时候会不慎撞到某人或某物。） Fortunately, learning to gain control over attention is a skill that people have been perfecting for thousands of years, and it can start with something as simple as paying attention to your breathing. Eventually, twenty first-century elaborations on older mind tools have to be learned, but the beginner in traditional meditation discipline and modern digital infotention training both start in the same place: elementary mindfulness exercise involving attention to the physical breath. 幸运的是，控制注意力是一项人们几千年来想要完善的技能，它开始地很自然，如同我们的呼吸那么简单。最终，二十一世纪针对古老思维方式的精炼不得不被学习，但是传统思维定律和现代数字信息注意力的训练都起步于同一处：基础的思维训练包括对呼吸的注意。 One of the most critical things to know about mindfulness training is that even the smallest amount of attention is immeasurably more useful than none at all. Step one in gaining control of attention is to simply notice it. Getting started in this kind of reflective thinking is the hardest part, and yet it’s also easy to begin. After embarking on what should become at least occasional self-examination, it’s time to turn the tool of attention control—however early you might be in your self-training—to the task of finding the information you need at the moment you need it, learning what you need to learn and forgetting what you don’t need, and most important, learning how to filter out the bad info. 了解专注力训练一个最关键点的是少量的注意力比没有注意力有天壤之别。 控制注意力的第一步很简单就是要注意到它。从这种反省的思维开始，当然这是是最难的一个部分，但也容易起步。了解了什么需要偶尔自省之后，是时候将控制注意力的工具---不管多早，你可能可以进行自我训练—转为发现当前你需要什么信息，学你需要的，忘记那些无关紧要的，最重要的是学会如何过滤不良信息。

@jacqueying 你好，请通过提交试译稿的方式参加试译。