每天一篇经济学人 | Zoom fatigue Zoom疲劳（2022年第...

In the early days of covid-19, the tech industry was consumed by a sense of euphoria. With billions of people locked down at home, work and play were shifting online. Many hoped that the new normal would spark a huge productivity boom as firms digitised and workers spent less time commuting. The excitement was most evident in stockmarkets, where any firm related to this trend saw its share price surge. The value of an equally weighted portfolio of five pandemic darlings—call it the “lockdown lunacy index”—increased by 320% from the start of the pandemic to its peak in August 2021. The tech-heavy nasdaq, by contrast, rose by 88%. 

在新冠肺炎疫情初期，科技行业沉浸在一种狂喜中。由于数十亿人被锁在家里，工作和娱乐正在转移到网上。许多人希望，随着企业数字化和员工通勤时间的减少，新常态将引发生产力的巨大繁荣。这种兴奋在股市上表现得最为明显，任何与这种趋势相关的公司的股价都出现了飙升。由五位大流行宠儿组成的加权投资组合，称为“封锁疯狂指数”，其价值从大流行开始到2021年8月达到峰值增加了320%。相比之下，以科技股为主的纳斯达克上涨了88%。

The mania has ended. Today the lockdown lunacy index—which includes Netflix, a streaming service; Peloton, a maker of fancy exercise bikes; Robinhood, a stock-trading App; Shopify, an e-commerce platform; and Zoom, a videoconferencing firm—has fallen by more than 80% from its peak, far exceeding the 18% drop in the nasdaq. Zoom and friends are trading at below pre-pandemic prices. 

这种狂热已经结束。如今，包括流媒体服务Netflix、高档健身自行车制造商Peloton、股票交易应用Robinhood、电商平台Shopify以及视频会议公司Zoom在内的“封锁疯狂指数”的股价已经从最高点下跌了80%以上，远远超过纳斯达克指数18%的跌幅。Zoom和友商们的交易价格低于疫情前的价格。

How worrying is this return to Earth? To be sure, some of it reflects gloomier prospects for the global economy, racked by inflation, war and rising interest rates. And it is disAppointing that two years of digitisation and remote work have not provided clear evidence of a productivity boom. Yet there are reasons still to be techno-optimistic. Much of the early enthusiasm may simply have been focused on the wrong types of firm. Though the pandemic darlings have fizzled, the shift towards ever greater digitisation continues. The true winners are not the flashy consumer-tech firms, but the companies that provide the infrastructure to enable this shift. 

这次“回落”有多令人担忧? 可以肯定的是，这在一定程度上反映出受通胀、战争和利率上升折磨的全球经济前景更加黯淡。令人失望的是，两年的数字化和远程工作并没有提供生产率激增的明确证据。然而，仍有理由对技术持乐观态度。早期的热情可能只是集中在了错误的公司类型上。尽管大流行的宠儿已经失败，但向越来越大的数字化的转变仍在继续。真正的赢家不是那些华而不实的消费科技公司，而是那些提供基础设施以实现这一转变的公司。

Much of the decline of our lockdown index reflects shakier business models. On August 22nd Zoom reported that its year-on-year revenue growth had fallen to 8%, the lowest rate since the company listed in 2019. Three days later Peloton reported a nearly 30% fall in its quarterly sales, compared with a year ago. Subscribers are fleeing Netflix for other viewing platforms, such as Disney+. Robinhood is laying off a quarter of its staff as day traders cool on the markets.

封锁指数的下降在很大程度上反映了商业模式的不稳定。8月22日，Zoom报告称，其收入同比增长已降至8%，这是该公司2019年上市以来的最低增速。三天后，Peloton公布其季度销售额同比下降了近30%。Netflix的订阅用户正在流失到Disney+等其他观看平台。随着日内交易者在市场上“保持冷静”，Robinhood正在裁员四分之一。

The fading work-from-home boom has affected the demand for hardware, too. Worldwide pc shipments are expected to decline by 10% this year; analysts reckon mobile-phone sales will tumble by 7%. A downturn in spending on video games and a series of crypto implosions have dented the sales of the powerful semiconductors used to mine digital currencies and render computer graphics.

在家办公热潮的消退也影响了对硬件的需求。今年全球pc出货量预计将下降10%；分析人士认为手机销量将下降7%。电子游戏支出的下滑，以及一系列加密技术的爆发，都影响了用于挖掘数字货币和渲染计算机图形的强大半导体的销售。

Look beyond the boom and bust of consumer tech, though, and you see the real successes. The market for the infrastructure technology that underpins people’s daily lives, such as cloud computing, cybersecurity and digital payments, is thriving. The cloud-computing industry is expected to grow to almost $500bn this year, up from $243bn in 2019. Amazon’s cloud offering, the largest in the world, is still growing at 33% each year. It accounted for three-quarters of the firm’s operating income over the past 12 months, and is propping up the tech giant’s ailing e-commerce business. Its closest rivals are the cloud services of Microsoft and Google. Their annual sales are growing by 40% and 36%, respectively.

不过，透过消费型科技的繁荣与萧条，你会看到真正的成功。云计算、网络安全和数字支付等支撑人们日常生活的基础设施技术市场正在蓬勃发展。今年，云计算行业预计将从2019年的2430亿美元增长到近5000亿美元。亚马逊的云服务是世界上最大的，每年仍以33%的速度增长。在过去的12个月里，它占到了公司营业收入的四分之三，并支撑着这家科技巨头境况不佳的电子商务业务。它最接近的对手是微软和谷歌的云服务。他们的年销售额分别增长了40%和36%。

Cloudification has created new demands for cybersecurity, another tech winner. The combined revenue at the three largest listed cybersecurity firms has almost doubled since the start of the pandemic. Their market capitalisation has tripled, and has come down only a fraction since the start of the year. Digital payments are another bright spot, thanks to lockdowns and social distancing. Three-quarters of iPhone owners use Apple Pay, up from half in 2019, and nine out of ten American retailers now accept it as a payment method. Almost 200m people in India and China have used some form of digital payment for the first time since the onset of covid. A third of adults in sub-Saharan Africa now have a mobile-money account, up from a fifth in 2017.

云化为网络安全带来了新需求，网络安全是另一个技术赢家。自疫情开始以来，三家最大的上市网络安全公司的总收入几乎翻了一番。它们的市值增长了两倍，自今年年初以来仅略有下降。由于封锁和社交隔离，数字支付是另一个亮点。四分之三的iPhone用户使用Apple Pay，这一比例高于2019年的一半，美国十分之九的零售商现在接受它作为一种支付方式。自新冠肺炎疫情爆发以来，印度和中国近2亿人首次使用了某种形式的数字支付。撒哈拉以南非洲地区目前有三分之一的成年人拥有移动货币账户，这一比例高于2017年的五分之一。

Sanity reignsThe bubble may have burst on the pandemic’s darlings, but the drumbeat of digitisation continues. The less eye-catching technologies that provide the underlying infrastructure for the shift are the true beneficiaries of covid. Whether these will fuel a productivity boost one day remains to be seen. But there was more going on during the pandemic than lockdown lunacy.

对疫情宠儿的泡沫可能已经破灭，但数字化的鼓声仍在继续。那些不那么引人注目的技术为这一转变提供了基础设施，它们才是新冠肺炎的真正受益者。这些是否会在将来的某一天推动生产力的提高，还有待观察。但疫情期间发生的不仅仅是封锁的疯狂行为。