The office is where colleagues meet, work and bond. But it is also a time capsule, a place where the imprint of historic patterns of working are visible everywhere. The pandemic has heightened this sense of the office as a dig site for corporate archaeologists. It isn’t just that covid-19 has left its own trace in the fossil record, from hand sanitisers to social-distancing stickers. It is also that items which were useful in the pre-covid world make less sense now; and that things which were already looking quaint seem positively antiquated.?

辦公室是同事見面、工作和聯(lián)絡(luò)感情的地方。但它也是一個時間膠囊，在這里，歷史工作模式的印記隨處可見。疫情加劇了這種辦公室作為企業(yè)考古學(xué)家挖掘場所的感覺。這不僅是因為新冠病毒在化石記錄中留下了自己的痕跡，從洗手液到保持社交距離的貼紙。還有一個原因是，在新冠疫情前有用的物品現(xiàn)在變得不那么有意義了; 那些本來就顯得古色古香的東西，現(xiàn)在看來確實是過時了。

The most obvious artefact is the landline phone, a reminder of the days when mobility meant being able to stand up and keep talking. Long after people have junked them in their personal lives—less than 15% of Americans aged between 25 and 34 had one at home in the second half of 2021, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention—landline phones survive in offices.?

最明顯的人工制品是座機(jī)，它提醒人們一個移動的時代，在這個時代移動意味著可以站著說話。盡管人們在個人生活中丟棄了固定電話，根據(jù)美國疾病控制與預(yù)防中心的數(shù)據(jù)，2021年下半年，25至34歲的美國人中只有不到15%的人家里有固定電話，但固定電話仍然存在于辦公室。

There might be good theoretical reasons for this persistence: they offer a more secure and stable connection than mobile phones, and no one frets that they are about to run out of battery. In practice the habit of using them was definitively lost during the pandemic. Now they sit on desk after desk, rows of buttons unpressed, ringtones unheard, cords tellingly unknotted.

這種持續(xù)存在可能有很好的理論理由:?它們提供了比手機(jī)更安全、更穩(wěn)定的連接，而且沒有人會擔(dān)心它們的電池快用完了。實際上，使用它們的習(xí)慣在大流行期間完全消失了?，F(xiàn)在，它們坐落在一張又一張桌子上，一排排的按鈕沒有按下，聽不到鈴聲，電話線明顯沒有打結(jié)。

Landlines were already well on their way out before covid-19 struck. Flipboard charts have suffered a swifter reverse. These objects signal a particular type of torture—people physically crowded together into a room while an idiot sketches a quadrant with a marker pen and points meaningfully to the top-right-hand corner. The idiot is still making quadrants but is now much more likely to use a slide deck. The crowd is still being tortured but is now much more likely to be watching on a screen. The office still has flipboards, but they are stowed in corners and their topmost pages are slowly yellowing.

在covid-19爆發(fā)之前，固定電話已經(jīng)很過時了。Flipboard圖表遭遇了更快的逆轉(zhuǎn)。這些物品標(biāo)志著一種特殊類型的痛苦折磨，人們擠在一個房間里，一個白癡用記號筆畫一個象限，并意味深長地指向右上角。白癡仍然在制作象限，但現(xiàn)在更有可能使用幻燈片。人們?nèi)栽谠馐苷勰ィF(xiàn)在更有可能是在屏幕上觀看。辦公室里仍然有翻頁板，但它們被堆放在角落里，最上面的頁面慢慢變黃了。

If your office still uses internal mail, with those special envelopes that have people’s names crossed out as they wend their way round an organisation, you are in a corporate period drama. But most offices still retain clues to the historical importance of paper. Photocopiers, scanners, shredders, guillotines and unfeasibly large staplers are echoes of a not-too-distant time when physical documents were a vital currency, when people assembled in a single room and shared ideas on pieces of paper.?

如果你的辦公室還在使用內(nèi)部郵件，那些郵件有著特殊的包含人們姓名的信封，當(dāng)這些信封在組織中“走來走去”的時候，名字會被劃掉[這里應(yīng)該理解不到位，有懂的小伙伴可以在評論區(qū)留言]，那么你就處于一場公司歷史劇中。但大多數(shù)辦公室仍然保留著紙張在歷史上重要性的線索。復(fù)印機(jī)、掃描儀、碎紙機(jī)、裁切機(jī)和大得不可想象的釘書機(jī)讓人想起不久前的一個時代，那時紙質(zhì)文件是一種重要的“貨幣”，人們聚在一個房間里，在紙上分享想法。

In-trays and out-trays are visible reminders of how information used to flow within organisations. Noticeboards and business cards were once the best ways to convey news and contact details. Forecasts of the paperless office have been around for decades; they are not about to come true now. But the stationery cupboard will be less well stocked in future.?

收件籃和待發(fā)信件盤是過去信息如何在組織內(nèi)部流動的明顯提醒。布告板和名片曾經(jīng)是傳遞消息和聯(lián)系方式的最佳方式。關(guān)于無紙化辦公的預(yù)測已經(jīng)出現(xiàn)了幾十年; 它們現(xiàn)在還不可能實現(xiàn)。但是文具柜以后就沒有那么多存貨了。

Meetings between people in the office and those working remotely rely today on platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Hunt around, though, and you may find an object that was seen as useful back in those dim and distant days of 2019: the conference-call speakerphone. Looking a bit like a small spacecraft, this phone had to be plugged into a socket to work. Lights would suddenly blink, and people would murmur in awe. Someone would dial in, each button-press a loud beep. They would inevitably hit the wrong one at some point and have to start again. These rituals and others are now rarely performed; the phones themselves are gathering dust on shelves, left behind by better technology and the abrupt rise of remote working.?

如今，辦公室工作人員和遠(yuǎn)程工作人員之間的會議依賴于Zoom或Microsoft Teams等平臺。然而，到處尋找，你可能會發(fā)現(xiàn)一種在2019年那些昏暗而遙遠(yuǎn)的日子里被視為有用的東西: 電話會議揚聲器。這個揚聲器看起來有點像小型航天器，必須插在插座上才能工作。燈光會突然閃爍，人們會敬畏地喃喃自語。有人會撥號，每按一個按鈕，就會發(fā)出很響的嗶嗶聲。他們不可避免地會在某個時刻碰到錯誤的地方，不得不重新開始?，F(xiàn)在，這些儀式很少進(jìn)行; 由于科技進(jìn)步和遠(yuǎn)程辦公的突然興起，揚聲器在貨架上積滿了灰塵。

The very layout of many offices is a throwback to a pre-pandemic age. If you work in a place filled with identikit cubicles, still have your own nameplate or sit at a desk tethered to the floor by a digestive system’s worth of cabling, you are in an environment that made sense when the whole workforce came to the office every day, even if they just got on with their own work in silence. Now that the office’s comparative advantage is as a place to collaborate with other people, socialising, sofas and hot-desking are seen as the future.?

許多辦公室的布局都回到了大流行之前的時代。如果你工作的地方到處都是千篇一樣的小隔間，仍然有自己的銘牌，或者坐在一張被消化系統(tǒng)一樣的電纜拴在地板上的辦公桌前，那么當(dāng)所有員工每天都來辦公室時，即使他們只是默默地開始自己的工作，你所處的環(huán)境也是有意義的。既然辦公室的相對優(yōu)勢在于它是一個與他人合作的地方，社交、沙發(fā)和輪用辦公桌被視為未來的趨勢。

Real archaeologists need tools and time to do their painstaking work: paint brushes, trowels, sieves and picks. Corporate archaeology is easier: you just need eyes and a memory of how things used to be. But you also need to be quick. As more and more workplaces are revamped for the hybrid era, now is the time to take a careful look around the office. You may see something that will soon seem as dated as pneumatic tubes, typewriters and fax machines.

真正的考古學(xué)家需要工具和時間來完成他們艱苦的工作: 畫筆、泥鏟、篩子和鎬。企業(yè)考古更容易: 你只需要眼睛和對事物過去的記憶。但你也要動作快。隨著越來越多的工作場所為適應(yīng)混合辦公時代而進(jìn)行翻修，現(xiàn)在是時候仔細(xì)審視一下辦公室周圍了。你可能很快就會看到像氣動管、打字機(jī)和傳真機(jī)一樣過時的東西。