I needed a push, and the answer came from “push technology.” I signed up with DailyLit, a service that breaks long works of literature into small chunks and emails them to readers. Just 214 short installments later, I had finished Moby Dick. I also subscribed to the New Yorker Fiction Podcast and Selected Shorts, both of which deliver audio short fiction to my phone. Recently, a retired computer engineer in Spain tweeted the entirety of Don Quixote to honor the 400th anniversary of Cervantes death—a feat that required a mere 17,000 Twitter messages.

In many ways technology has robbed us of our patience for serious art, but tools like digital serialization, podcasts, and Twitter can just as easily push (or gently nudge) us toward better habits. To paraphrase Job, what technology hath taken away, it also giveth.

Translation

用推特 (Twitter) 閱讀文學

我懷著極大的期待在新手機下載了狄更斯、奧斯汀、梅爾維爾和其他作家的幾十本著作。幾個月後我卻帶著羞愧不安的心情把這些迄今尚未閱讀的作品都刪除了，為的是想留點空間來安裝一些遊戲。在吸引我注意力的這場爭戰中，《白鯨記》這部大洋巨著總是被那該死的『憤怒鳥』所帶來一滴一滴注入無法抵擋的快樂多巴胺而擊敗。

我需要被推一把，而解決辦法就是『推播技術』。我註冊了 DailyLit，這是一種把長的文學作品分成小部份然後用電郵寄給讀者的服務。在經過了 214 期之後，我已讀完《白鯨記》。我也訂閱了 New Yorker Fiction Podcast 和 Selected Shorts，這兩個播客節目會把短小說的音訊傳送到我的手機上。最近，西班牙一位退休電腦工程師為了紀念塞凡提斯逝世四百週年，利用推特把整本《唐吉訶德》放在網上──這壯舉只用了一萬七千則推文。

從許多角度看，科技已奪走了我們對於嚴肅的人文科學的耐心，但是諸如數位分期刊載、播客和推特等工具同樣地也很容易就能推我們一把（或輕推我們一下）讓我們養成好習慣。改述約伯記所說的：「科技」所奪走的，它也會恩賜給你。


[註] 文中補充資料（藍色字）
https://dailylit.com/book/164-moby-dick
http://www.newyorker.com/series/fiction-podcast
http://www.selectedshorts.org/listen/
https://twitter.com/elquijote1605

[Image credits] The image is remade with:
Dave Winer: https://www.flickr.com/photos/
scriptingnews/3503448168/in/photolist-6kA65L
Uncalno Tekno: https://www.flickr.com/photos/
uncalno/8537569665/

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