I studied psychology¹ as a subsidiary to my politics degree at university. In the mid-1970s, psychology was the media studies of its day — fashionable but usually chosen because it was easy, and most of the stuff we were taught was frictionless². There was not a lot to get to grips with.

我大学时主修政治，辅修心理学。上世纪70年代中期的心理学就像现在的媒体学：时髦，但选修这门课通常是因为学起来容易，而且我们学的绝大部分东西都毫无难度，没多少东西要认真对待的。

One lecture, however, has stayed with me. It was about ergonomics, the science of designing machines, systems and processes that are efficient and comfortable to use. It was the heyday³ of awful design and I was so taken with the thought of a job in which you could spend your time improving things, I flirted⁴ briefly⁵ with the idea of becoming an ergonomist.

但有个讲座给我留下了深刻印象，那就是人体工程学。这是一门研究如何恰当设计机器、系统和流程，使其用起来更高效更舒适的学科。当时是烂设计横行的年代，我对你可以投入时间去改良事物的职业如此神往，以至于一度想成为一名人体工程学专家。

It did not happen, and I have never knowingly met one. But I get the sense — ergonomists will doubtless send me user-friendly emails to confirm or deny this — that ergonomists are not rock stars of modern industrial enterprise.

那没能成为现实，我也从没遇到一位人体工程学专家。但我能感觉到，人体工程学专家不是现代工业企业的摇滚明星。（他们肯定会给我发送深入浅出的邮件来证实或否认这一点。）

In kitchen appliances especially, the ergonomist’s voice is ignored — at least if the absurd counterintuitiveness of so many products is any guide.

尤其是在厨房电器上，人体工程学专家的声音被忽视了——至少从如此多奇葩的反直观产品来看是这样。

A friend who knows Heston Blumenthal has just adopted a microwave which, he told me, the British chef and restaurateur was not using at home because it was “too complicated”. That must be one complicated microwave.

一位认识赫斯顿.布鲁门塔尔(Heston Blumenthal)的朋友刚刚采用了一台微波炉，他跟我说，这位英国大厨和餐馆老板在自己家里不用，因为它“太复杂”了。那肯定是一台非常复杂的微波炉。

For simplicity⁶ and ergonomic bliss⁷, the most perfect mechanism⁸ for controlling levels has to be the old-fashioned rotary⁹ knob. I say old-fashioned because knobs — volume controls you turn, tuning¹⁰ knobs, treble and bass¹¹ controls, brightness on a television, all of them — have almost disappeared over the past 20 years.

就简洁和符合人体工程学而言，控制水平的最完美机械装置当属老式旋钮。我说老式是因为旋钮在过去20年几乎完全消失了，比如音量旋钮、调谐旋钮、高低音控制旋钮、电视亮度旋钮，诸如此类。

In the mid 1990s they were supplanted¹² by buttons with left, right, up and down arrows on them, by which you “incrementally¹³” (some might say jumpily) increased or decreased a level. They needed a display to show you what your hand and ear, in a wholly intuitive neurological combo, had previously¹⁴ told you.

20世纪90年代中期，旋钮被上下左右箭头按钮取代，让你可以“逐步地”（有些人或许会说“跳跃地”）调高或调低一级。这种按钮需要一个显示器来向你展示的东西，过去你的手和耳朵（两者构成一个完全直观的神经系统组合）可以告诉你。

Knobs fell into demise¹⁵ for understandable reasons. Behind the volume and tone, knobs in the pre-digital age were potentiometers — mechanically variable resistances, which as you turned them provided a smooth, analogue¹⁶ change in the energy reaching the amplifier.

出于可以理解的原因，旋钮遭到淘汰。在数字化之前的时代，控制音量音调的旋钮是电位器，即机械可变电阻，当你转动它们时，可以平稳、相应地改变输出到扩音器的电量。

Tuning was done with a variable capacitor, also wholly mechanical — a stack of fins¹⁷ that intermeshed in concert with your knob-turning to change the capacitance, which, in combination with a tight coil of wire, determined¹⁸ the frequency you heard.

完成调谐的是一个可变电容器，它也是全机械的，由一叠相互啮合的翅片构成。当你转动旋钮时，可变电容器改变电容，配合一个紧密缠绕的线圈，可以决定你收听到的频率。

Both components¹⁹ could be miniaturised. Old transistor²⁰ radios had tiny versions of each. But when devices began to be run by software, “pots” and variable capacitors became redundant²¹. Level changes and tuning could be done “solid state” — meaning without mechanical parts, which was cheaper for manufacturers and looked futuristic.

这两个部件都可以小型化，老式晶体管收音机就有微型音量旋钮和调谐旋钮。但当电子设备开始通过软件运行时，电位器和可变电容器变得多余。水平变化和调谐能够在“固态”下实现，意思就是没有机械部件，这对制造商来说更加便宜，看上去还有未来感。

The downside was that the new forms of software control were horrible to use — fiddly, slow and imprecise. Car radios, where all-button controls were enthusiastically adopted, were dangerous because they required you to take your eyes off the road to squint²² at the display.

缺点是软件控制这种新方式并不好用，繁琐、缓慢且不精确。积极采用全按钮控制的汽车收音机带来危险，因为它们要求你把目光从道路上收回，眯着眼去看显示屏。

Almost overnight, anything with a volume control — the older and ergonomically superior choice — came to be seen as retro and quirky.

几乎一夜之间，任何有音量控制——老式、从人体工程学上说更加优越的选择——的产品，都被看成复古和怪异。

In 1999, Tom DeVesto, a Boston audio engineer, had the idea of building a radio with no controls other than volume, tuning knobs and simple dials.

1999年，波士顿音频工程师汤姆.德维斯特(Tom DeVesto)想做出一个只有音量、调谐旋钮和简单调谐度盘的收音机。

“They’re nicer to use,” he says. “Other people might like holding buttons down, but to me the intuitive way to control things was to turn a knob. There was no need to reinvent the wheel.”

他说：“它们用起来更顺手。其他人可能喜欢按下按钮，但对我来说，旋转旋钮才是更直观的控制方式。没必要重新发明车轮。”

But when he started showing his Tivoli One radio to stores, retail²³ buyers in the US did not get it. “I still remember one shaking his head. He said, ‘You have to have a dial, a display, that lights up, with all kinds of levels on it.’”

但当他开始向商家展示他的Tivoli One收音机时，美国的零售买家们并不买账。“我还记得其中一个人摇着头说，你必须有一个调谐度盘，一个显示器，能亮起来的，上面能看到一级一级的。”

Mr DeVesto says his Tivoli radios went on to sell more than 10m units globally, usually in the nicer, John Lewis-type stores. Como Audio, a radio company he founded this year, also majors on knobs — even if today, with old-style components having almost disappeared, the knobs synthesise mechanical controls.

德维斯特说，他的Tivoli收音机后来在全球售出超过1000万台，通常是在约翰.刘易斯（John Lewis，英国百货商店——译者注）这类较高档的商店。今年他创建了Como Audio，这家收音机公司仍主打旋钮。即使当今老式组件几乎已消失，但可以用旋钮来合成机械控制。

“You have to work today to give it some feeling that turning the knob is doing something, when all it’s really doing is sending zeroes and ones to the computer,” says Mr DeVesto.

德维斯特说：“如今你得想办法，让转动旋钮的人得到一些反馈，即便其真正用途是向计算机发送一堆0和1。”

Knobs still feature on some expensive HiFi equipment and recording²⁴ engineers’ control panels, but other attempts to reintroduce the joy of the knob to a younger generation have, sadly, not been very successful.

旋钮仍出现在一些昂贵的高保真音响设备和录音工程师的控制面板上，但是很可惜，将旋钮之乐趣重新介绍给年轻一代的其他尝试不怎么成功。

Marshall, the British guitar amplifier-maker, launched a mobile phone last year called the London, which had a thumb-wheel control knob that it called a “scroll²⁵ wheel”. The phone is still available but it is not one you often see in use.

英国吉他音箱制造商Marshall去年推出一款手机，名为“London”，该手机有一个被称作“滚轮”的拇指旋轮控制旋钮。市面上仍能看到这款手机，但你不常见到人们使用它。

LG had even less of a breakthrough in 2013 when it brought out a 32-inch LED television, the Classic, with old-school on/off, channel change and volume knobs. You can still get them, but the Classic did not precipitate²⁶ a rush back to knobs.

LG在2013年推出了32英寸LED电视“Classic”，设有老式的开关、频道调节和音量旋钮，该产品甚至更谈不上突破。Classic现在仍能买到，但它没有带来旋钮的回归。

A shame. Knobs you turn (and, while we are at it, big, chunky buttons you press) are not some atavistic relic²⁷, but an ergonomic advance — albeit²⁸ a nostalgic one. In a perfect technological²⁹ world, they would be the next big thing, not a throwback.

太可惜了。你转动的旋钮（既然说到这里，还有我们现在使用的胖乎乎的大按钮）并不是什么返祖余孽，而是人体工程学的一大进步——尽管带有怀旧情怀。在一个完美的技术世界里，它们将成为下一款轰动产品，而不是个复古玩意儿。