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写于艾哈迈达巴德。本文源于2024年在艾哈迈达巴德与设计师和教育工作者的一些对话。---印度的设计史有点像一本被遗忘的图书馆书籍——有趣，可能很有价值，但当你真正需要它时，却莫名其妙地从书架上消失了。尽管印度在独立后有着丰富的历史，传统与现代以奇特而美妙的方式交织在一起，但几乎没有人想到要把它写下来。我猜想这是因为设计师天生就太忙于设计东西，而无暇停下来写下它们。上周，我偶然发现了一个关于被遗忘的技术和设计史的最奇怪、最令人愉快的的故事：苹果牛顿在印度。是的，牛顿——1980年代的iPhone和iPad的前身，它承诺未来，但却跌入了过去。我在艾哈迈达巴德遇到的一位参与了这场传奇的人告诉我，苹果在最后一次绝望中，决定将牛顿带到印度。这个想法？卖给政府。你知道的，当你的尖端科技产品濒临死亡时，你就会这样做。这个计划很简单：苹果会将牛顿推销为社会发展的革命性工具，外勤人员可以用它来收集数据。而且，由于政府喜欢大量购买东西（特别是如果它听起来有点用处），这可能挽救牛顿。最好的部分是？他们甚至在拉贾斯坦邦的农村地区进行了研究，在那里，令所有人惊讶的是，人们实际上喜欢并理解它。苹果产品就是这么有粘性，外勤人员对它们爱不释手。想象一下，有人在沙漠中央用一个看起来像来自《星际迷航》的设备随意收集土壤数据。一年来，一切进展顺利。然后，以苹果一贯的方式，他们拔掉了插头。这里的牛顿项目被搁置了。当然，这让我想起了另一个古怪的设计/技术史：Simputer，一款1990年代在班加罗尔设计的掌上设备。如果说牛顿是古怪的姑妈，那么Simputer就是疯狂的科学家表亲——印度技术专家另一次巧妙的、几乎被遗忘的尝试，试图重塑未来，但没有成功。这东西甚至有一个加速度计。是的，你没听错——一个加速度计，在90年代！为了演示它，他们创建了一个滚珠迷宫游戏，如果Simputer幸存下来，它可能会比你值得信赖的诺基亚上的贪吃蛇更令人上瘾。但唉，像所有美好的事物一样，它在我们浪费数小时倾斜液晶屏享受乐趣之前就消失了。真正让我感动的是：像这样的故事还有很多潜伏在尘土飞扬的角落里，等待被讲述。然而，随着最初的讲述者逐渐老去（有些人离开了人世），我们正在比我们说出“请备份你的硬盘”的速度更快地失去这些故事。历史正在从我们的指缝中溜走，我不禁想到，在所有这些被遗忘的设备和被抛弃的梦想的混乱中，一定有一本关于如何修复这一切的手册。它可能被归档在“我们最终会做的事情”下。---

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Written from the city of Ahmedabad. This text was an outcome of some conversations with designers and educators I met in Ahmedabad in 2024.---Design History in India is a bit like a forgotten library book—interesting, potentially valuable, but inexplicably missing from the shelf when you really need it. Despite a rich post-independence history where tradition and modernity mingled in strange and wonderful ways, hardly anyone thought to write any of it down. I suspect it’s because designers, by nature, are far too busy designing things to stop and write about them.Last week I stumbled upon one of the strangest and most delightful stories of forgotten tech and design history: the Apple Newton in India. Yes, the Newton—the 1980s precursor to the iPhone and iPad that promised the future but tripped and fell into the past instead. Someone I met in Ahmedabad, who’d been on the front lines of this saga, told me about how Apple, in a final fit of desperation, decided to bring the Newton to India. The idea? Sell it to the government. You know, as one does when one’s cutting-edge tech product is at death’s door.The plan was simple: Apple would pitch the Newton as a revolutionary tool for social development, something field workers could use to collect data. And because governments like buying things in large quantities (especially if it sounds vaguely useful), this might just save the Newton. The best part? They even carried out research in rural Rajasthan, where, much to everyone’s surprise, people actually liked and understood it. Sticky that Apple products are, field workers couldn't get their hands off them. Imagine someone in the middle of a desert casually collecting soil data on a device that looked like it belonged in Star Trek.For a year, everything was going well. And then, in true Apple fashion, they pulled the plug. The Newton project here was shelved.Of course, this reminded me of another quirky bit of design/tech history: the Simputer, a handheld device designed in Bangalore in the 1990s. If the Newton was the eccentric aunt, the Simputer was the mad scientist cousin—another ingenious, mostly forgotten attempt at reshaping the future by Indian technologists that didn't work out. This thing even had an accelerometer. Yes, you heard that right—an accelerometer, in the ‘90s! To demo it they created a Ball Bearing Maze game, which, had the Simputer survived, would’ve probably been more addictive than Snake on your trusty Nokia. But alas, like all good things, it vanished before we could waste hours tilting LCD screens in sheer joy.What really gets to me is this: there are so many stories like these lurking around in dusty corners, waiting to be told. Yet, as the original storytellers grow older (and some shuffle off this mortal coil), we’re losing these tales faster than we can say, “Please back up your hard drive.”History is slipping through our fingers, and I can’t help but think that somewhere in all this mess of forgotten devices and discarded dreams, there’s a manual on how to fix it all. It's probably filed under "Things We’ll Get To Eventually."---

印度设计史