In recent days, I have been obsessively staring at telephone numbers. That is partly because I have just moved house and am flicking through my contacts list to send out change-of-address notes. But there is a second reason too: I have just stumbled on a fascinating little paper written by a Princeton cognitive psychologist called George Miller on the topic of “chunking”. And while this piece of research is half a century old, it has a curious relevance today - particularly in relation to those telephone numbers which are now so unthinkingly woven into the fabric of our 21st-century lives.
最近几天我在着了魔似的盯着电话号码。这部分是因为我刚刚搬家，正翻着通讯录发出地址变更通知。不过还有另外一个原因：我偶然间看到了一篇引人入胜的小论文，这篇论文出自普林斯顿大学(Princeton University)认知心理学家乔治•米勒(George Miller)，讨论的是有关“组块”(chunking)的话题。尽管这篇研究论文是半个世纪前发表的，但它在当今时代具有一种令人好奇的相关性——尤其是在与电话号码有关的方面，这些电话号码正悄无声息地渗透到21世纪生活的方方面面。