TECHNOLOGIES tend to be global, both by nature and by name. Say “television”, “computer” or “internet” anywhere and chances are you will be understood. But hand-held phones? For this ubiquitous technology, mankind suffers from a Tower of Babel syndrome. Under millions of Christmas trees North and South Americans have been unwrapping cell phones or celulares. Yet to Britons and Spaniards they are mobiles or móviles. Germans and Finns refer to them as Handys and kännykät, respectively, because they fit in your hand. The Chinese, too, make calls on a sho ji, or “hand machine”. And in Japan the term of art is keitai, which roughly means “something you can carry with you”.

无论本质还是称谓上，科技都体现了全球化的特征。在任何地方提到“television”、“computer”、或“internet”，别人都能明白你的意思。 但是手提电话呢？在这一普遍使用的科技产品上，人类却患上了“巴别塔”综合症。每到圣诞节，南北美洲数百万颗圣诞树下，人们打开包装，取出的是叫做“cell phones”、或者叫做“celulares”的圣诞节礼物。不过英国人和西班牙人将手提电话分别叫做“mobiles”和“móviles”；而德国人和芬兰人分别叫做“Handys”和“kännykät”，因为这种电话可以拿在手中；中国人叫做“sho ji”，意为“手中电话”；日本人叫做“携帯”，大致意为“可随身携带之物”。

This disjunction is revealing for an object that, in the space of a decade, has become as essential to human functioning as a pair of shoes. Mobile phones do not share a single global moniker because the origins of their names are deeply cultural. “Cellular” refers to how modern wireless networks are built, pointing to a technological worldview in America. “Mobile” emphasises that the device is untethered, which fits the roaming, once-imperial British style. Handy highlights the importance of functionality, much appreciated in Germany. But are such differences more than cosmetic? And will they persist or give way to a global mobile culture?

这种称谓上的不统一，说明很多问题。10年之间，移动电话已成为鞋子一样的必需品；而之所以没有一个全世界统一的称谓，是因为深受各地文化的影响。“cellular”说明了现代无线网络的建造方式，表明美国的科技世界观。“mobile”强调为无绳设备，与英国那种漫游传统和大英帝国历史相契。“Handy”突出实用性，而这是德国人非常重视的。但这些称谓差异是否不xx于表面？是会长期存在，还是会让位于全球统一的移动电话文化？

Such questions bear asking. It is easy to forget how rapidly mobile phones have taken over. A decade ago, there were fewer than 500m mobile subscriptions, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Now there are about 4.6 billion (see chart). Penetration rates have risen steeply everywhere. In rich countries subscriptions outnumber the population. Even in poor countries more than half the inhabitants have gone mobile. Dial a number and the odds are three to one that it will cause a mobile phone, rather than a fixed-line one, to ring somewhere on the planet.

这些问题值得一问。人们很容易忘记移动电话是如何迅速占领市场的。根据国际电信联盟的统计数字，10年前，移动电话用户还不足5亿；而目前大约有46亿（见上图）。在各个国家，用户渗透率都经历了急剧上升。在一些富裕国家，用户数甚至超过了人口数。即便是在贫穷国家，也有超过半数的居民过上了移动生活。拨打一个电话，地球上某个地方会有铃声响起，有3/4的可能是移动电话，而非固定电话。

As airtime gets cheaper, the untethered masses tend to use their mobiles more. In early 2000 an average user spoke for 174 minutes a month, according to the GSM Association (GSMA), an industry group. By early 2009 that had risen to 261 minutes, which suggests that humanity spends over 1 trillion minutes a month on mobiles, or nearly 2m years. Nobody can keep track of the flood of text messages. One estimate suggests that American subscribers alone sent over 1 trillion texts in 2008, almost treble the number sent the previous year.

由于资费越来越便宜，人们越来越倾向使用自己的移动电话。根据GSM协会的统计数字，2000年年初，一般用户每月通话时间为174分钟；而到了2009年初，这一数字上升为261分钟。这表明世界范围内，人们每月使用移动电话通话总计1万亿分钟，相当于近200万年。至于海量的短信，就无从统计了。一项估计表明：2008年，美国移动电话用户总计发送了超过1万亿条短信，接近2007年的三倍。

Now a further mobile-phone revolution is under way, driven by the iPhone and other “smart” handsets which let users gain access to the internet and download mobile applications, including games, social-networking programs, productivity tools and much else besides. Smart-phones accounted for over 13% of the 309m handsets shipped in the third quarter of 2009. Some analysts estimate that by 2015 almost all shipped handsets will be smart. Mobile operators have started building networks which will allow for faster connection speeds for an even wider variety of applications and services.

时下，在iPhone和其他“智能”手机（用户可接入互联网，下载支持移动电话的应用程序，包括游戏、社交网络程序、效率提高程序等等）的推动下，新一代移动电话革命已经开始。2009年第三季度上市的3亿9百万部手机中，超过13%为智能手机。一些分析人士估计，到2015年，市面上几乎所有手机均为智能型。移动通信运营商已经开始建设相关网络，为不断丰富的手机应用程序和服务提供更快的连接速度。

All alike, all different 既相似，又相异

Yet these global trends hide starkly different national and regional stories. Vittorio Colao, the boss of Vodafone, which operates or partially owns networks in 31 countries, argues that the farther south you go, the more people use their phones, even past the equator: where life is less organised people need a tool, for example to rejig appointments. “Culture influences the lifestyle, and the lifestyle influences the way we communicate,” he says. “If you don’t leave your phone on in a meeting in Italy, you are likely to miss the next one.”

上述这些全球趋势，在不同国家和地区，又有着较为不同的体现。Vodafone在31个国家运营或部分拥有通信网络，该公司老板Vittorio Colao认为越往南，甚至过了赤道，人们使用移动电话的时间越多：在生活缺乏组织性的地方，人们需要这么一个工具来重新安排约定好的事宜。“文化影响着生活方式，而生活方式又影响着人们相互联络的方式”，他说，“在意大利，如果开会的时候你把手机关了，那么你很可能会错过下一个会议。”

Other mundane factors also affect how phones are used. For instance, in countries where many people have holiday homes they are more likely to give out a mobile number, which then becomes the default where they can be reached, thus undermining the use of fixed-line phones. Technologies are always “both constructive and constructed by historical, social, and cultural contexts,” writes Mizuko Ito, an anthropologist at the University of California in Irvine, who has co-edited a book on Japan’s mobile-phone subculture.

还有一些一般性问题也影响着人们使用电话的方式。例如，在一些国家，许多人都拥有自己的度假屋，他们更可能将自己的移动电话号码留给别人，这样这些移动电话号码就成了他们的默认联系方式，也就使得固定电话使用频率减少。加州大学欧文分校的人类学家伊藤瑞子与人合作，编辑了一本有关日本移动电话亚文化的书，她写道“科技总是在一定历史条件下、一定社会和文化中出现和起作用的”。

Indeed, Japan is good example of how such subcultures come about. In the 1990s Americans and Scandinavians were early adopters of mobile phones. But in the next decade Japan was widely seen as the model for the mobile future, given its early embrace of the mobile internet. For some time Wired, a magazine for technology lovers, ran a column called “Japanese schoolgirl watch”, serving readers with a stream of keitai oddities. The implication was that what Japanese schoolgirls did one day, everyone else would do the next.

有关移动电话亚文化的产生，日本确实是一个好例子。上世纪90年代，美国人和斯堪的纳维亚地区的人们率先开始使用移动电话。但是在接下来的10年，日本被公认为是未来移动电话文化的典范，因为它较早地接受了移动互联网。面向科技爱好者的《连线》杂志曾经推出一个专栏叫做“日本女学生看世界”，向读者介绍了大量移动电话使用怪癖。这一专栏的意思是：在手机文化方面，日本女学生xx着世界潮流。

The country’s mobile boom was arguably encouraged by underlying social conditions. Most teenagers had long used pagers to keep in touch. In 1999 NTT, Japan’s dominant operator, launched i-mode, a platform for mobile-internet services. It allowed cheap e-mails between networks and the Japanese promptly signed up in droves for mobile internet. Ms Ito also points out that Japan is a crowded place with lots of rules. Harried teenagers, in particular, have few chances for private conversations and talking on the phone in public is frowned upon, if not outlawed. Hence the appeal of mobile data services.

有人说日本移动电话的快速发展得益于日本社会环境。之前，日本多数青年人早已使用BP机作为联络方式。1999年，日本主要的运营商NTT推出了针对移动互联网的i-mode服务平台。这一平台使得不同通信网络间发送e-mail的费用较低，这样日本人纷纷立即注册申请使用这一业务。伊藤瑞子还指出：日本是一个非常拥挤的国家，还有许多规矩。青少年们尤其为此搞得大为头疼，他们少有机会进行私人谈话，在公共场合用电话进行交谈虽说并非法律所禁止，但却被认为是不妥行为。所以移动数据服务大受欢迎。

The best way to grasp Japan’s mobile culture is to take a crowded commuter train. There are plenty of signs advising you not to use your phone. Every few minutes announcements are made to the same effect. If you do take a call, you risk more than disapproving gazes. Passengers may appeal to a guard who will quietly but firmly explain: “dame desu”—it’s not allowed. Some studies suggest that talking on a mobile phone on a train is seen as worse than in a theatre. Instead, hushed passengers type away on their handsets or read mobile-phone novels (written Japanese allows more information to be displayed on a small screen than languages that use the Roman alphabet).

要了解日本的移动电话文化，{zh0}的方法是在上下班时间坐上一列拥挤的地铁。你会发现，车厢中有许多标识告诉你不要使用电话。每隔几分钟，还会有广播提醒。如果你接了个电话，你招来的可能不仅仅是谴责的目光，同车的乘客可能会向警卫投诉，而这时警卫会平静而又语气肯定地说：“dame desu”，意思是“这是被禁止的”。一些研究表明，人们认为在地铁上打电话比在剧院里打电话性质还恶劣。所以在列车上，乘客们会安安静静地用电话发送信息或是读掌上小说（与使用罗马字母的其他语言相比，日语文字可以在较小的屏幕中显示较多的信息）。

Might the Japanese stop talking entirely on their mobiles? They seem less and less keen on the phone’s original purpose. In 2002 the average Japanese mobile user spoke on it for 181 minutes each month, about the global norm. By early 2009 that had fallen to 133 minutes, then only half the world average. Nobody knows how many e-mails are sent, but the Japanese are probably even more prolific than text-crazy Indonesians, who average more than 1,000 messages per month on some operators. No wonder that Tokyo’s teenagers have been called the “thumb generation”.

日本人会不会{zh1}根本不用移动电话打电话？现在看起来，日本人使用通话这一手机最初功能的热情越来越低。2002年，日本移动电话用户月均通话时间为181分钟，与世界平均水平持平。2009年年初，这一数字降到了133分钟，仅为世界平均水平的一半。没人知道日本人到底发送了多少e-mail，但日本人可能在这方面超过疯狂发送短信的印尼人（平均每月要发送1000条短信）。难怪东京的青少年被称作“拇指一代”。

Handy if you’re thrifty 精打细算用手机

Others are quiet, too. On average Germans—who are fond of saying that “talk is silver, silence is golden”—spend only 89 minutes each month calling others for Handy-based conversation. This may be a result of national telephone companies on both sides of the Berlin Wall having exhorted subscribers for years to “keep it short” because of underinvestment in the East and rapid economic growth that overtaxed the network in the West. Germans are also thrifty, suggests Anastassia Lauterbach of Deutsche Telekom. For longer calls, she says, consumers resort to much cheaper landlines.

在其他一些国家，人们也是非常安静。德国人常说“开口是银，沉默是金”，他们月均使用手机谈话时间只有89分钟。这可能是柏林墙两侧国有电话公司数年来一直劝说人们“通话时间尽可能短”的结果，这是因为前东德相关投资不足，而西德由于经济增长较快，通信网络负担过重。德国电信的Anastassia Lauterbach认为德国人还非常会精打细算。她说如果是长途，人们会选择便宜很多的固定电话。

In contrast, Americans won’t shut up. Their average monthly talk-time is a whopping 788 minutes, though some of this is a statistical illusion because subscribers also pay for incoming calls. Yet talk is cheap: there is no roaming charge within the United States. Americans are often in their cars, an ideal spot for phone calls, especially in the many states where driving and talking without headsets is still legal.

与德国人相反，美国人一开口就讲个不停。美国人月均通话时间达到惊人的788分钟，尽管这其中可能包含统计方法带来的错觉，因为用户接听来电同样收费。不过，通话资费非常便宜：全美境内均不收取漫游费用。美国人常常在自己的汽车里打电话。汽车中是使用电话的理想场所，特别是在许多州，开车时不用耳机接打电话尚不算违法。

The chattiest of all are Puerto Ricans, who have by far the highest monthly average in the world of 1,875 minutes, probably because operators on the American island offer all-you-can-talk plans for only $40, which include calls to the mainland. This allows Puerto Ricans to chat endlessly with their friends in New York, but may also have arbitrageurs routing cheap international phone calls through the island.

{za}打电话的是波多黎各人，以月均高达1875分钟的通话时间位居世界xx，这可能是因为这里的运营商提供花费仅为40美元的包月服务，想怎么打就怎么打，包括拨往美国的电话均不再收取费用。这样，波多黎各人可以没完没了地和纽约的朋友们交谈，还有一些人利用这一点想到发财之路，通过波多黎各转接国际长途电话，资费便宜很多。

Just how people behave when talking on a mobile phone is a question of culture, at least at first, according to Amapro Lasén, a sociologist at Universidad Complutense in Madrid. In the early 2000s she studied phone users in the Spanish capital, in Paris and in London. Mobiles were a common sight, but Parisians and Madrileniens felt freer to talk in the street, even in the middle of the pavement. Londoners, by contrast, tended to gather in certain zones, for instance at the entrances of tube stations—the sort of place Ms Lasén calls an “improvised open-air wireless phone booth”.

马德里孔普卢顿大学的社会学家Amapro Lasén认为，人们使用移动电话交谈的方式体现了不同的文化，至少最开始是这样。本世纪头几年，她对马德里、巴黎和伦敦的电话用户进行了研究。移动电话在这三个城市虽说都非常普及，但巴黎人和马德里人在大街上可以无所顾忌的使用移动电话，甚至在人行道上也是如此；而伦敦人就不一样，一般会聚在某些特殊区域使用移动电话，例如在地铁站入口。Amapro Lasén把这样的地方叫做“临时露天无线电话间”。

In Paris people openly complained when bothered by others talking loudly about intimate matters, but complaints were rare in London. In both places, people tended to separate phone and face-to-face conversations, for instance by retreating to a quiet corner. But subscribers in Madrid often mixed them and even allowed others to take part in their phone conversations. The Spanish almost always take a call and most turn off voicemail.

在巴黎，人们会公开抱怨其他人大声谈论私事对自己造成打扰，而在伦敦就少有此事。无论在巴黎还是伦敦，与他人面对面交谈时接到电话，人们会避开，例如走到安静的角落去进行电话交谈；而在马德里，人们则不避开，甚至会让刚刚面对面交谈的人参与到电话交谈中来。西班牙人几乎总是在接电话，而且多数人会关掉自己的语音信箱。

For Ms Lasén, who has lived in all three cities, such variations reflect how people traditionally use urban space. In London, she says, the streets are mainly for walking, “like the bed where the river flows”. Paris, however, is a place to stroll, the home of the flâneur. In Madrid people inhabit the streets to talk together. As for their aversion to voicemail, the Spanish consider it rude to leave a call unanswered, even if it is inconvenient. This may be the result of a strong sense of social obligation towards friends and family.

Amapro Lasén在这三个城市都居住过，她认为这些区别反映了人们利用城市空间的不同传统。她说在伦敦，街道主要用来供人们行走，“就好像河床是用于河水流淌的”。在巴黎，街道是用来散步闲逛的，所以是漫无目的闲游者的天堂。在马德里，人们长驻街上，聚在一起交谈；至于说为什么讨厌语音信箱，是因为他们认为即使是出于不方便，有来电而未接也是一件非常不礼貌的事。这或许是因为西班牙人对朋友和家庭有着强烈的社会责任感。

Elsewhere, too, culture and history may help determine whether people talk in public or take a call. The Chinese often let themselves be interrupted, fearing that otherwise they could miss a business opportunity. Uzbeks use their mobiles only rarely in public, because the police might be listening. And Germans can get quite aggressive if people disobey the rules, even unwritten ones. In 1999 a German man died in a fight triggered by his ill-mannered Handy use.

在其他国家，文化和历史同样影响了人们是否会在公共场合交谈或接听电话。中国人总是不厌其烦地接听电话，生怕错过任何商业机会。乌兹别克人在公共场合极少使用移动电话，因为xx或许就在一旁听着。而在德国，如果有人违反哪怕并非法律明文规定的规矩，其他人也会产生很强的敌意。1999年，一名德国男子死于一场斗殴，而起因就是他使用手机的行为不当。

Economics and other hard factors also shape habits. Olaf Swantee, the head of Orange’s mobile business, notes that pricey handsets are less popular in Belgium than in Britain because Belgian operators have long been barred from subsidising phones, a strategy widely used on the other side of the Channel. Italy, however, exhibits both low subsidies and many high-end handsets. Subscribers there do not want to spend much on airtime, but are keen to buy a flashy phone.

经济和其他硬因素同样决定了人们的不同习惯。Orange公司移动业务主管Olaf Swantee称在比利时，价格昂贵的手机并不如在英国那么受欢迎，因为比利时电信运营商长期以来都被禁止向用户补贴购机费用，而这在英国却是广泛采用的营销策略。意大利购机补贴低，xx手机品种多。意大利人虽然并不想花太多钱在话费上，但在购买xx手机上还是非常积极的。

China is distinct because of economics and relatively lax regulation. Many consumers use shanzhai (“bandit”) phones, produced by hundreds of small handset-makers based on chips and software from Mediatek, a Taiwanese firm. Knock-offs are common, with labels such as “Nckia” and “Sumsung”. Other innovative manufacturers have developed specialised phones, for instance handsets that can respond to two phone numbers, or models with giant speakers for farmers on noisy tractors.

中国的情况最为独特，除了经济方面的原因以外，还受法规不严的影响。许多消费者使用小作坊生产的山寨手机，这样的手机制造商在中国有成百上千家，他们都是从台湾的联发科进口芯片和软件进行生产。手机仿造非常普遍，你会发现“Nckia”、“Sumsung”这样的牌子。其他一些具有创新意识的制造商已经开发出专业的手机，例如双卡双待手机，以及专为农民开发的配有巨型扬声器的手机，这样即便在拖拉机的一片嘈杂声中也不会漏接电话。

Elsewhere the physical environment determines which kinds of handsets prevail, says Younghee Jung, a design expert at Nokia, the world’s largest maker of handsets. In hot India, for instance, men rarely wear jackets, but their shirts have pockets to hold phones—which therefore cannot be large. Indian women keep phones in colourful pouches, less as a fashion statement than as a way to protect the devices and preserve their resale value. It also makes for a noteworthy contrast with Japan, says Ms Jung. If women there keep phones in a pouch and decorate them with stickers and straps, that has nothing to do with economics, but reflects the urge to personalise the handset. Phones are highly subsidised in Japan and the resale value is essentially nil, so it is not unusual to see lost units lying in the gutter.

全球{zd0}手机制造商诺基亚的设计专家Younghee Jung说，在其他地方，物理环境决定了何种手机{zshy}。例如在气候炎热的印度，男士们很少穿着夹克，不过衬衣口袋可以用来装电话，所以电话不能太大。印度妇女将手机装在五颜六色的袋子中。这些袋子更主要的作用是对手机起保护作用，手机转手时不致贬值太多，而不是出于时尚的考虑。这就与日本的情形形成了显著的对比，Younghee Jung说。如果日本女士将手机放在袋子里，并在手机上用贴纸和不干胶带进行装饰，这并非出于任何经济方面的考虑，而是要让自己手机与众不同。在日本，运营商提供的购机补贴非常高，二手机的价值基本为零，所以遗失的手机静静躺在阴沟里，并不是件稀罕事。

In some countries it is a common habit to carry around more than one phone. Japanese workers often have two: a private one and a work one (which they often turn off so bosses cannot get them at any hour). “I have one phone for work, one for family, one for pleasure and one for the car,” says a Middle Eastern salesman quoted in a study for Motorola, a handset-maker. Having several phones is often meant to signal importance. Latin American managers, for instance, like to show how well connected they are: some even have a dedicated one for the boss.

在一些国家，人们普遍习惯携带一部以上的电话。日本普通员工常常携带两部：一部为私用，一部为工作用（工作用的这部常常关机，这样老板就不能随时联系上自己了）。在手机制造商摩托罗拉进行的一项调查中，一名中东商人说道：“我的电话，一部用于工作，一部用于联系家人，一部用于找乐子，还有一部开车时用。”同时拥有好几部电话常常是为了显示自己的重要身份。例如，在拉丁美洲，经理人们喜欢表现自己路子广，他们中一些人甚至有一部手机专用于和自己老板联系。

As this example suggests, softer factors may influence the choice and design of hardware, even for networks. If coverage in America tends to be patchy, it is not least because consumers seem willing to endure a lot and changing operators is a hassle. Elsewhere the reverse is true. Italians demand good reception on the ski slopes, the Greeks on their many islands and Finns in road tunnels, however remote. If coverage is poor, subscribers will switch.

上面这个例子表明，一些软因素可能影响硬件的选择和设计，甚至是在通信网络方面。如果在美国，一家运营商的网络覆盖不佳，很重要一个原因是消费者们似乎愿意忍受这许多不便，并且更换运营商较为麻烦。而在其他国家，情况恰恰相反。无论位置多么偏远，意大利人要求在滑雪道上，希腊人要求在希腊的众多岛屿上，芬兰人要求在公路隧道中，也要有良好的手机信号。如果信号覆盖不加，用户就会更换运营商。

Paradoxically, however, it is in Italy and Greece that people are especially worried about the supposed health risks of electromagnetic fields. A 2007 survey commissioned by the European Commission found that 86% of Greeks and 69% of Italians were “very” or “fairly” concerned about them, compared with 51% in Britain, 35% in Germany and only 27% in Sweden. It may be that people fret when they lack reliable information—or that in some countries local politicians stir up fears.

令人吃惊的是，反倒是意大利人和希腊人还特别担心传说中的电磁场危害。欧盟委员会2007年一项调查表明：86%的希腊人和69%的意大利人“非常”或“有点”担心电磁场危害，而在英国和德国，这一比例分别为51%和35%，在瑞典仅为27%。这种担心或许是因为人们缺乏可靠的信息，或者是因为在有些国家，政治家们故易造成人们的恐惧。

Whatever the reasons, the public reaction explains why phone masts in Italy are often disguised, for instance as the arches of a hamburger restaurant, as a palm tree or even as the cross on a famous cathedral. In Moldova, by contrast, such masts are monuments to prosperity. “Every time we put up a mast, they had a party. It connected them,” says Orange’s Mr Swantee.

无论原因为何，公众的反应表明了在意大利，为何移动电话发射塔常常伪装成汉堡店的拱门、棕榈树、甚至xx大教堂的十字架。相反，在摩尔多瓦，这些发射塔却是繁荣的象征。“每树立起一座发射塔，人们都会举办派对庆祝。因为发射塔把人们联系起来。” Orange公司的Olaf Swantee说。

Yet digital technologies change quickly, and so do attitudes towards them. Will such differences between cultures persist and grow larger, or will they diminish over time? Companies would like to know, because it costs more to provide different handsets and services in different parts of the world than it would do to offer the same things everywhere.

不过数字技术发展很快，人们对数字技术的态度转变同样如此。这些不同文化中的差异是会继续存在并分歧越来越大，还是会逐渐消失？相关公司很想知道问题的答案，因为相比在所有国家提供相同的手机和服务，在世界不同国家提供不同的手机和服务，成本要高。

Enter the Apparatgeist 走进机器灵魂

A few years ago such questions provoked academic controversy. Not everybody agrees with Ms Ito’s argument that technology is always socially constructed. James Katz, a professor of communication at Rutgers University in New Jersey, argues that there is an Apparatgeist (German for “spirit of the machine”). For personal communication technologies, he argues, people react in pretty much the same way, a few national variations notwithstanding. “Regardless of culture,” he suggests, “when people interact with personal communication technologies, they tend to standardise infrastructure and gravitate towards consistent tastes and universal features.”

几年前，此类问题引发了学术界的争论。并非每个人都同意伊藤瑞子提出的社会决定科技的观点。新泽西州罗格斯大学传播学教授James Katz认为存在着一种“机器灵魂”（Apparatgeis）。对于个人通信技术，他称人们的反应是非常相似的，只在少数国家有所不同。“无论何种文化”，他提出，“使用个人通信技术时，人们会倾向于将基础设施标准化，喜好也会逐渐同一，从而出现普遍特征。”

Recent developments seem to support him. When Ms Lasén went back to London, Paris and Madrid a few years later, phone behaviour had, by and large, become the same in the different cities (although Spaniards still rejected voicemail). Yet it is not just the Apparatgeist that explains this, argues Ms Lasén. In all three cities, she says, people lead increasingly complex lives and need their mobiles to manage them. Ms Ito agrees. American teenagers now also text madly, in part because their lives are becoming almost as regulated as those of the Japanese.

近来通信技术的发展似乎验证了他的观点。几年后，Amapro Lasén又回到伦敦、巴黎和马德里这三个地方，人们使用电话的方式已经基本上相同了（尽管西班牙人仍排斥语音信箱）。然而，Amapro Lasén认为并非只有及其灵魂可以解释这一现象。她说在这三个城市，人们的生活都是越来越复杂，因此需要用移动电话来管理各自的生活。伊藤瑞子对此表示同意。美国青少年也疯狂地发送短信，部分原因是他们的生活已经变得几乎同日本青少年一样充满了规矩。

This convergence is likely to continue, not least because it is in the interest of the industry’s heavyweights. Handsets increasingly come with all kinds of sensors. Nokia’s Ms Jung, for instance, is working on a project to develop an “Esperanto of gestures” to control such environmentally aware devices. Her team is trying to find an internationally acceptable gesture to quieten a ringing phone. This is tricky: giving the device the evil eye or shushing it, for instance, will not work. Treating objects as living things might work in East Asia, where almost everything has a soul, but not in the Middle East, where religious tenets make this unacceptable.

这种趋同很可能还会继续，主要是这符合行业巨头们的利益。越来越多的手机安装了感应装置。例如，诺基亚的Younghee Jung女士目前正从事“世界通行手势”的开发工作，用来控制手机这种对环境敏感的设备。她的项目团队正试图寻找一种世界范围内通行的手势，来使电话响铃声静音。这可不容易：例如，用眼神让手机静音，或者冲手机做嘘的手势，可办不到。要是在东亚，将物品当作活物来对待还有可能，因为那里的人们认为几乎任何东西都有灵魂；不过在中东，这是与当地的教义相冲突的。

In the long run most national differences will disappear, predicts Scott Campbell of the University of Michigan, author of several papers on mobile-phone usage. But he expects some persistence of variations that go back to economics. In poorer countries subscribers will handle their mobile phones differently simply because they lack money. Nearly all airtime in Africa is pre-paid. Practices such as “beeping” are likely to continue for quite a while: when callers lack credit, they hang up after just one ring, a signal that they want to be called back.

密歇根大学的Scott Campbell写过几篇有关移动电话使用的论文，他预测说：长远来看，不同国家间的差异最终多数会消失。但是他还预测说一些源于经济的差异还是会长期存在。在贫穷国家，用户使用移动电话的方式就会不同，就因为他们缺钱。在非洲，通话费用都是预付的，所以像寻呼等现象很可能还会继续存在较长的时间。主叫的人如果预付款已经用完，他会响一声铃，然后马上挂断，表明希望对方打过来。

A few differences may remain within borders, suggests Kathryn Archibald, who works at Nokia and tries to understand consumers in different parts of the world. Only a few countries, mainly in Africa and Asia, still need special cultural attention when designing a phone (which is why some models in India double as torches). “We see more differences within countries than between them,” she says.

少数差异可能只是在有关国家内继续存在， Kathryn Archibald说。她在诺基亚工作，负责研究世界各地人们的不同需求。在设计电话的时候，只是少数国家，主要在非洲和亚洲，需要专门注意当地的文化（这就是为什么为印度市场开发的某些型号手机还可同时用作手电）。“往往在一个国家内的差异，要比国与国之间的差异多”，她说。

Nokia breaks down phone users into various categories, rather than by geography. “Simplicity seekers” barely know how to turn on their phones and use them only in case of trouble. At the other end of the spectrum, “technology leaders” always want the latest devices and feel crippled without their phones. “Life jugglers” need their handsets to co-ordinate the many parts of their lives. Ms Archibald says Nokia’s aim is to offer the right handset to each such group.

诺基亚把手机用户分为多种类型，但不是按照地理位置划分。“求简者”几乎不知道如何开机，而且只是在遇到麻烦的时候才用自己的电话。而另一极端是“科技xx者”，他们总是想要{zx1}型号的产品，而且如果电话不在身边就会感到处处受制。而“生活大忙人”需要用手机来协调生活中大量事情。Kathryn Archibald说诺基亚旨在为各种用户提供适合他们需求的产品。

But when it comes to content—the services offered via the phones and the applications installed on them—Nokia pays considerable attention to local culture. In India and other developing countries the firm has launched a set of services called “Life Tools”, which ranges from agricultural information for farmers to educational services such as language tuition. In many rich countries, by contrast, handsets come bundled with a subscription to download music. “We need to operate globally, but be relevant locally,” concludes Ms Archibald.

但在内容方面——通过手机提供的各种服务以及安装在手机中的各种应用程序——诺基亚相当注意各地不同的文化。在印度和其他一些发展中国家，诺基亚提供一整套名为“生活工具”的服务，从为农民提供的农业信息到语言课程等教育服务。而在许多富裕国家，购买手机都同时附赠音乐下载服务。Kathryn Archibald说：“我们虽然是全球经营，但也要针对地方特点。”

All this raises a question: as differences fade, are people becoming slaves to the Apparatgeist? “Because of our evolutionary heritage, we want to be in perpetual contact with others,” argues Mr Katz. Just as technology allows people to overeat, it now lets them overcommunicate. If this is a problem now, imagine what would happen if telepathy become possible. The thought is not entirely far-fetched: researchers at Intel, a chipmaker, are devising ways to use brain waves to control computers. A phone that can be implanted in your head may be just a few years away—at which point the Germans will no longer be able to call it a Handy.

所有这些引出一个问题：随着差异的逐渐消失，人们是否会变成机器灵魂的奴隶呢？James Katz 认为：“人类的进化历史决定了我们总是要与他人保持联系”。就如同科技能使人们吃得过多，它现在又造成人们之间联络过多。如果这现在是一个问题的话，想象一下要是心灵感应可以实现的话，又会发生什么。这并非不着边际：芯片制造商因特尔的研究人员正在研究如何用脑电波来控制计算机。这样，或许几年以后，电话可以植入人的头部，到那时，恐怕德国人就不能再把移动电话叫做“手”机了。