苹果是个新宗教，乔布斯是主教

译者 boxi

By Michael S. Rosenwald, Published: October 8

作者：小迈克尔·罗森沃德（MichaelS. Rosenwald），出版日期：10月8日

As news of Steve Jobs’s death pinged around the world this past week on the shiny devices he helped invent, fans of Apple products made pilgrimages to the company’s stores. They brought apples. They lit digital candles on their iPad screens. Some left condolence cards. Outside Apple’s store in Tysons Corner Center, a card had this message scribbled inside: “You changed my life. I love you.”

随着史蒂夫·乔布斯的死讯透过在他帮助下发明出来的闪闪发亮的设备传遍全球，果粉纷纷来到该公司的商店去朝圣。他们带来了苹果。在自己的iPad屏幕上点燃了数字蜡烛。有的人留下了吊唁卡。在泰森斯角中心（TysonsCorner Center）的苹果店外，一张卡片潦草地写下了这串文字：“你改变了我的生活。我爱你。”

The response to Jobs’s untimely passing at age 56 was so unusual — particularly for a former chief executive of a major corporation — that even some fans were taken aback at such a torrent of sorrow. “I feel bad for the guy and his family,” a friend wrote to me in an e-mail, during a friendly debate over whether it was all overblown, but “if anything, the outpouring of grief shows just how obsessed we’ve become with our electronic toys.”

年仅56岁的乔布斯就英年早逝，民众对此的反应是如此的非同寻常—尤其是对于一家重要企业的前首席执行官来说更是如此，以至于有的粉丝惊得目瞪口呆，悲流成河。“我为那个家伙还有他的家庭感到难过”，一位朋友在电子邮件中告诉我，此间我们正对此事是否已经渲染过度进行一场友好的辩论，不过，他说：“如果说还有什么别的东西的话，那就是流露出的悲伤表明了我们对自己的电子玩具的痴迷到了何种地步。”

 Steve Jobs, who co-founded Apple and revolutionized personal computing, died Oct. 5. He suffered from a rare form of pancreatic cancer.

 

I do think, as a gadget nut, that there is some truth there: We are obsessed with our gadgets, Jobs was the gadget king, and people want to thank him for the sleek, addictive objects he left behind. But I also think there’s a greater, higher power at work here, a mystical truth that has emerged among more enlightened Apple fans and on the fringes of academic research.

作为一名电子产品的中坚分子，我的确认为下述在某种程度上属于事实：我们都痴迷于自己的电子产品，而乔布斯则是电子产品之王，因为他身后留下的这个光滑又令人上瘾的东西，人们希望表达对他的感谢之情。但是，我也认为此处还有着一个更伟大、更高级的力量在起作用，那是在更多被点化的果粉中间出现的、处于学术研究边缘位置的一个神秘的事实。

In a secular age, Apple has become a religion, and Steve Jobs was its high priest.

在一个世俗的时代里，苹果成为了一个新的宗教，而史蒂夫·乔布斯则是它的大主教。

Apple introduced the iPod in 2001, and that same year, an Eastern Washington University sociologist, Pui-Yan Lam, published a paper titled “May the Force of the Operating System Be With You: Macintosh Devotion as Implicit Religion.” Lam’s research struck close to home, quite literally — her husband has a mini-museum of Apple products in the basement.

苹果引入iPOd的时间是2001年，同年，东华盛顿大学的一位社会学家林佩茵（音译，Pui-YanLam）发表了题为《愿操作系统的力量与你同在：对Macintosh的热爱成为隐性宗教》的论文。林的研究简直就是一语中的—她丈夫在地下室有一个微型的苹果产品博物馆。

“He has most of the models that were released, even the really obscure ones,” Lam told me the other day. “What Apple stands for is very important to him and people like him.”

“发布的大多数型号他都有，甚至包括那些很不出名的都有，”林有一天告诉我说：“苹果所代表的东西对于他以及像他这样的人来说非常重要。”

And what it stands for, apparently, is more than just gleaming products and easy-to-use operating systems. Lam interviewed Mac fans, studied letters they wrote to trade magazines and scrutinized Mac-related Web sites. She concluded that Mac enthusiasts “adopted from both Eastern and Western religions a social form that emphasized personal spirituality as well as communal experience. The faith of Mac devotees is reflected and strengthened by their efforts in promoting their computer of choice.”

而苹果所代表的东西，很显然，绝不仅仅是耀眼的产品和易用的操作系统。林采访了Mac的粉丝，研究他们写给商业杂志的信，还仔细检查了Mac的相关网站。她得出的结论是，Mac发烧友“吸收了东方宗教强调个人精神以及西方宗教强调共同体验的社会形式。Mac信徒的信仰通过其在推销计算机方面的努力得到了反映和加强。”

Lam connected Mac users to research about aficionados of Austin’s Barton Springs, a place that “has spiritual significance to the local environmentalist as a passage that links the mundane, everyday world of existence to a transcendent reality.” Mac fanatics, she wrote, think Apple’s technology can improve humanity. “Thus, while Barton Springs, as a transcendent space, brings people from the Austin community together, the Macintosh computer, which symbolizes a spiritual passage to a utopian future, also ties its followers together,” Lam wrote.

林把Mac用户与对奥斯丁的巴顿喷泉（Austin’sBarton Springs）的研究联系到了一起。巴顿喷泉“对当地环保人士具有精神意义，是连接着世俗生活之存在与超凡脱俗之实在的必经之路”。她写道，Mac的狂热分子认为，苹果的技术能提高人性。“因此，巴顿喷泉，作为一个超凡脱俗之地，将人们从奥斯丁社区汇聚到了一起，而Macintosh计算机，则象征着通往未来乌托邦的精神通道，也将其信众聚集到了一起”，林这样写道。

If that sounds like academic gobbledygook, consider how Apple devotees see the world. Back when Lam’s paper was published, there was a palpable sense of a battle between good and evil. Apple: good. Bill Gates: evil. Apple followers, Lam wrote, pined for a world where “people are judged purely on the basis of their intelligence and their contribution to humanity.” They saw Gates representing a more “profane” world where financial gain was priorities one, two and three.

如果这看起来像是学究的官样文章，那么想想苹果的信徒是如何看待世界的。回到林的论文发表之时，正值一场明显感觉得到的正邪之争。苹果：好人。比尔·盖茨：坏蛋。林写道，苹果的信众渴望一个“纯粹根据其对人性的理解和贡献来判断人”的世界。他们把盖茨看作一个更加“世俗”的世界的代表，在那个世界里，财务收益是优先级最高的东西，第二优先的是财务收益，第三优先的也还是它。

But Apple and Jobs were perceived differently.

但是苹果和乔布斯被视为与之截然不同。

Steve Jobs was not religious. Although he dabbled in Buddhism (and acid), he never embraced the idea of organized religion, a fact that makes the Apple religion all the more ironic — particularly his place in its belief system.

乔布斯不是修道士。尽管他对佛教（和迷幻药）有所涉猎，但他从来没有信奉过任何有组织的宗教，这个事实令苹果教愈发具有讽刺性—尤其是考虑到他在这个信仰体系中的地位时更是如此。

 Steve Jobs, who co-founded Apple and revolutionized personal computing, died Oct. 5. He suffered from a rare form of pancreatic cancer.

 

His product introductions were not unlike the pope appearing at his Vatican window to bless his followers on Christmas. People would line up for hours to snag a seat for a Jobs keynote address. He would stroll onstage like a biblical prophet, dressed down to a modern version of the basics — black turtleneck, Levi’s jeans, New Balance sneakers. For many Apple followers, this was the nearest they would ever come to seeing God. In her study, Lam quoted one fan saying, “For me, the Mac was the closest thing to religion I could deal with.”

他的产品介绍跟圣诞节时出现在梵蒂冈皇宫窗口前的教皇祝福其信众没有什么不同。人们会排队等上数小时以便拿到一个聆听乔布斯主旨演讲的位置。他在台上闲逛，像圣经里面的先知一样，衣着朴素，回归本原，只不过是现代版—黑色的高翻领毛衣，Levi’s的牛仔裤，外加纽巴伦（New Balance）的胶底帆布鞋。对于许多苹果的追随者来说，这是他们能够看到上帝的最近之处。在林的研究中，她引述了一位果粉的话：“对于我来说，Mac是我距离我能够应付的宗教最近的东西。”

And so there, onstage, was Jobs, this quasi-religious figure, holding these devices that many in the audience believed could take them to a utopian place of computing — beyond the bright white light of Apple’s commercials and into a magical space where everything works, where everyone connects, where everyone trades on the same digital spirit. At home or at their office desks, so many people followed Jobs’s introductions online that Web sites would regularly crash under the pressure.

那么，站在台上的，便是乔布斯，这位准宗教人物，他手里拿着的这些设备，许多受众相信能够把他们带到计算的乌托邦—越过苹果商业广告那道明亮的白光，进入到万物运转、人与人的沟通与贸易都是基于同一个数字灵魂的魔幻空间。在家里，或者在办公桌前，在线收看乔布斯的介绍的人如此之众，以至于网站常常因为流量太大而宕掉。

Now he is gone. Apple’s fans, who today find themselves in the mainstream, are already flopping around looking for a new spiritual guide to technological utopia. Jobs’s successor, Tim Cook, introduced Apple’s newest iPhone this past week on a much smaller stage — physically and spiritually — than Jobs commanded. He is genteel and Southern, but not Jobsian. I was struck that the Wall Street Journal on Friday offered up a profile of Apple industrial design master Jonathan Ive, a handsome Brit who, in his limited public appearances, talks about gadgetry with the same reverence as his mentor.

现在乔布斯离去了。今天发现自己跻身主流的果粉们，已经在忙活着要找寻一位新的精神导师引导他们抵达技术乌托邦了。上周，在一个无论是从实体上，或者是在精神上都要比乔布斯掌控的那个要小得多的舞台上，乔布斯的继任者蒂姆·库克（Tim Cook）介绍了苹果最新的iPhone。 他温文尔雅，也很了不起，但他不是乔布斯徒（Jobsian）。本周五的华尔街日报刊登了苹果工业设计大师乔纳森·伊夫（Jonathan Ive）的介绍 ，这位英俊的英国人，在其有限的公开露面中谈到了电子产品以及他对自己导师同样的崇敬之情，这令我吃惊不小。

The good vs. evil battle will continue, even without Jobs. It is now iPhone vs. Android. Apple users see Google’s operating system as a Trojan horse for the search giant to simply sell more ads, not make people’s lives easier or more rewarding. Apple pushes — and will continue to push — the utopian, humanistic qualities of its platform quietly but relentlessly in almost everything it does.

正邪之争仍将延续，就算乔布斯故去后也依然会如此。现在，这是iPhone和Android之间的对垒。苹果用户视Google的操作系统为特洛伊木马，因为这家搜索巨头的所为只是一味卖出更多的广告，而不是令人们的生活更方便或更有益。苹果一直在将其平台乌托邦式的人文主义品质植入其所做的几乎所有事情上，悄无声息但又冷酷无情，且还会继续如此。

In a television ad for the iPhone 4, Louis Armstrong’s “When You’re Smiling” plays softly while Apple’s video-connection app FaceTime lets grandparents watch their grandchildren, iPhone to iPhone. The ad ends with a deaf man signing to his wife while on a business trip. “The whole world smiles with you,” Armstrong croons; the Apple logo, over a stark white background, appears on the screen, then slowly fades away. The white stays.

在一则 iPhone 4的电视广告上，里面一边静静地播放着路易斯·阿姆斯特朗（Louis Armstrong）的《当你微笑时》，而苹果的视频连接应用FaceTime则让祖父母观看自己的孙子，以iPhone对iPhone的方式。广告以一位在出差中的失聪者跟妻子打手势作为结束。“全世界都会对你微笑”，阿姆斯特朗浅唱低吟着；在光秃秃的白色背景下，苹果商标出现在屏幕上，然后慢慢消隐。而白色依旧停留在那里。

It almost seems like a flash to heaven.

这看起来几乎就像是天堂一闪而过。