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It's easy to get jaded when you cover the technology industry. Silicon Valley's giants are constantly belching wisps of marshmallow-thick hype, and any reporter looking to cover the beat has to be constantly on guard against unproven claims about this or that algorithmically abetted amazing advance.
报导科技产业新闻很容易令人感到倦怠。硅谷的巨头们总是进行着天花乱坠的宣传，常有人声称某项技术革新经数学计算证明意义重大，而对于这些未被证实的言论，每个追踪产业动态的记者都必须时刻保持警惕。
So when Christopher Mims of Quartz recently declared 2013 to be a 'lost year for tech'--one in which, he says, the industry produced nothing of great value--I could see where he was coming from. I feel the same way some days; when I'm covering some new me-too social-media product or a great new way to target ads, I hang my head in despair.
所以，当Quartz通讯记者米姆斯(Christopher Mims)将2013年称作“科技领域的失落之年”，并称科技产业这一年中没有制造出富有价值的产品时，我能理解他为何得此结论。有的时候我也会这么想。当我在报道某款新的（过度社交化）媒体产品，或者一种新的定位广告的方式时，我都沮丧得抬不起头来。
But then I read a couple of rebuttals to Mims by Daring Fireball's John Gruber and Om Malik, of Gigaom. They argued that the industry's biggest advances have occurred beneath the media's radar, and that the industry, as a whole, is anything but stagnant.
但之后，我读到Daring Fireball博主格鲁伯(John Gruber)和Gigaom创始人马利克(Om Malik)对米姆斯观点的反驳。他们认为科技产业最大的进步潜藏于媒体的视线之外，整个产业绝非停滞不前。
I side with these more positive takes. Here's my roundup of reasons to break out of your tech funk and be optimistic about tech in 2014.
我认同这些更加正面的观点。我认为应当打消负面情绪，以乐观的态度看待2014年的科技产业。下面我将简要陈述我的理由：
First, stop clamoring for the 'next big thing.' Were you disappointed, once again, that Apple didn't release something amazing and new this year--a TV or a smartwatch, say? Were you bummed that there were few revolutionary features on the latest smartphones? Have you concluded that the tech business is boring, that there isn't any more innovation, that we live in uninteresting times?
首先，不要再嚷嚷着呼唤“下一代伟大产品”的到来。今年苹果公司(Apple Inc. ,AAPL)没有发布什么新型产品（比如说电视或者智能手表），你感到失望了吗？新款智能手机没有太多革命性的新性能，你郁闷了吗？你是否已一口咬定科技产业了无生趣，将不会再涌现出新的技术革新？你是否认为我们已身处一个百无聊赖的时代中呢？
If so, I've got two words for you: Grow up.
如果答案是肯定的，我送你两个字：幼稚。
I, too, constantly yearn for mind-blowing new tech. But I've been getting tired of the claim that just because we haven't seen something on the order of the smartphone or tablet in the last few years, the tech industry can no longer innovate. The problem with this argument is that the touchscreen smartphone (and its cousin the tablet) was a singularly novel, industry-shattering device, and we're unlikely to see anything as groundbreaking in a generation.
我也总是希望能够有新的卓越技术出现。但是仅仅因为近年来没有出现类似智能手机、平板电脑的新产品，就有人断言科技产业已无法继续创新。这种说法令我生厌。其问题在于，触屏式智能手机（以及功能近似的平板电脑）是一种极其新颍、撼动了整个产业的电子设备，而我们在这一代产品中不可能再看到如此开天辟地的产品。
The smartphone and the tablet *are* the next big things, and we act like spoiled children when we claim that they somehow aren't enough. Most future advances will simply be improvements or expansions on these basic technologies--ways to make smartphones and tablets cheaper, more powerful, smaller, lighter, and to let them control and connect with an ever-large slice of our lives.
智能手机和平板电脑本身就是新一代的伟大产品，可我们却像被宠坏的小孩子一样叫唤着这还不够。未来大多数技术进步主要将围绕这些基础技术进行改良和拓展，例如让智能手机和平板电脑更便宜，性能更强大，更小更轻，并将更大范围地管理、连接我们生活。
In 2013 we saw several such innovations. Google's Motorola subsidiary released a really good phone, the Moto G, that sells for $199 without a contract--the first of several devices that will radically expand access to mobile phones. Meanwhile Apple's top-of-the-line devices came with an incredible processor, the A7, which proved that mobile devices can approach the power of desktop-class PCs. I was blown away, too, by the growth of apps that are now rewiring our worlds--apps such as ride-sharing service Uber or the robotic slot-car racer Anki Drive, which show the potential for our phones to transform the physical world.
2013年见证了一些此类创新成果的涌现。谷歌(Google Inc. Cl A ,GOOG)旗下的摩托罗拉(Motorola)推出了性能出色的Moto G，这款裸机售价仅199美元的手机彻底地拓宽了人们对手机的接触面。与此同时，苹果的新款高端设备装配了高效卓越的A7处理器，使得移动设备亦可实现台式个人电脑的计算能力。移动应用数量的壮大也令人倍感惊叹，例如叫车应用Uber和智能轨道赛车Anki Drive，都无不彰显著智能手机改造真实世界的巨大潜力。
As the analyst Benedict Evans has argued, the true revolution in mobile computing is one of scale; we're going from an Internet controlled by PCs to one controlled by three billion to five billion phones. No device on the horizon--not the long-awaited TV made by Apple, not Google Glass, not a smartwatch--will be as exciting as what smartphones and tablets hold in store for us. So let's stop yearning for new stuff just for novelty's sake. The next big thing is already here, it's in your pocket, and it's incredible.
正如分析师埃文斯(Benedict Evans)所提出的，移动计算真正的革命是规模的革命；我们正从由个人电脑控制的互联网转向由30至50亿部手机控制的互联网。即将问世的设备中，无论是人们期待已久的苹果电视还是谷歌眼镜或智能手表，没有哪一种能够像智能手机和平板电脑那样令人兴奋。因此不要再只是为了新奇而追求新设备。下一个重大产品已经存在，它就在你的口袋里，非常不可思议。
Second, privacy is no longer an afterthought. I've already argued that the disappearing-message app Snapchat was the most interesting technology of 2013 because it paved the way for services that don't save all our data by default. The larger message of Snapchat, though, is that privacy isn't dead.
第二，隐私已经不再是事后才想到的问题。我曾经提出，阅后即焚的应用Snapchat是2013年最有意思的技术，因为它给不默认存储我们所有数据的设备铺平了道路。而Snapchat传递出的更重要信息是，隐私并非不再重要。
For years, tech giants have given lip service to privacy. 'It's very important to us!' they insist while slurping up mountains of your data. But the industry hasn't spent much time looking at privacy as a place for innovation, as a feature that users will care about when they choose apps or services.
多年来，科技巨头一直口头承诺保护隐私。它们一边宣称“隐私对我们非常重要！”一边收集你的大量数据。但科技行业一直没有花费太多时间将隐私作为一个可以创新的地方、作为用户在选择应用或服务时会在意的一个功能来考察。
Thanks to Snapchat, revelations about the National Security Agency, and an increased fear of living in a panopticon, that will thankfully begin to change in 2014. Watch for an avalanche of apps that take privacy seriously--whether they delete data by default, keep your data local, or limit the scope of their sharing.
受Snapchat的出现、美国国家安全局(National Security Agency)监控活动泄密、以及人们日益担忧自己生活在全方位监狱中的现象影响，上述情况在2014年将开始发生变化。让我们期待重视隐私的应用如雪崩般出现――无论其采取的方式是默认删除数据、以本地方式保存数据还是限制数据分享的范围。
Third, enterprise tech is interesting, finally. For years, business software was a dead-end for innovation, dominated as it was by Microsoft, Oracle, and other entrenched incumbents. Now that's changing. In 2013 several alternatives rose to challenge old-school business tech--like Quip, a clever new word-processing app, or Box's collaboration software, Box Notes--and I suspect this trend will continue this year.
第三，针对企业的科技也终于有意思起来。多年来，商业软件是创新的死胡同，被微软(Microsoft)、甲骨文(Oracle)和其他根深蒂固的巨头所主导。现在这种情况正在改变。2013年，几个替代产品崛起，对传统的商业科技产品构成了挑战，比如一款巧妙的新文字处理应用Quip，或Box推出的协作软件Box Notes。我猜这种趋势还将在今年持续。
One enterprise advance I'm looking forward to: The rise of companies looking to bring cloud-based services to specific, specialized markets--also known as 'vertical software-as-a-service' businesses. I'm talking about firms like Veeva Systems, which makes a cloud-based sales tool for the health care industry, and which successfully launched an IPO in the fall. Watch for other startups aimed at specific industries--law firms, hospitality, health care--to get really big, without anyone noticing, in 2014.
我期待的一个企业发展是，着眼于将云服务引入具体、专门化市场（又称纵向软营）的公司兴起。我说的是像Veeva Systems这样的公司，它为医疗保健行业提供基于云服务的销售工具，并在去年秋季成功进行了首次公开募股(IPO)。2014年，针对具体行业（如律所、酒店、医疗）的其他初创企业有望悄然实现扩张。
Last but not least, robots aren't necessarily coming for your job. It's been a cliché in the Valley for years that machines will replace humans across a wide variety of job types. It's been a cliché in the Valley for years that machines will replace humans across a wide variety of job types. But while artificial intelligence is still advancing at a furious pace, I was thrilled that AI is augmenting, rather than superseding, humans. Look how Redfin used tech to create better real-estate agents rather than replace them, or how the app Duolingo crowdsources human intelligence to produce better translations than machines are capable of.
最后同样重要的是，机器人不一定会取代你的工作。硅谷多年来的一个陈词滥调是，机器将在多种类型的工作上取代人类。但随着人工智能的发展如火如荼，我为之兴奋的是它正成为人类的补充而非替代。可以看看Redfin如何利用科技打造更好的房地产经纪人，而不是取代他们；也可以看看Duolingo应用如何通过对人类智能开展“众包”来提供比机器更好的翻译。
I think we're witnessing the dawn of a new paradigm in machine-human cooperation: Combining machine intelligence with biological intelligence will always trump one or the other. Machines make us better, and we make machines better. There's still hope for us. Welcome to the bionic future.
我认为，我们正在见证人机合作新范式的曙光：机器智能与生物智能的结合肯定会比二者中的任何一个更为高明。机器让我们更优秀，我们让机器更先进。我们还有希望。欢迎来到仿生学的未来。
Do you have any to add? I'd love to hear from you about the best and worst tech trends of the year.
你们还有什么可补充的吗？我乐于听到你们对于年度最佳和最差科技趋势的看法。
