學英文「林威老師」app

同學好! 我是林威老師, 每天收聽1單元, 查詢字典,再從網站看原文,聚沙成塔是絕對的真理  !!!

製作日期:2012.9.23

2 . Technological

breakthroughs

The period from 1880 to 1940 brought numerous major

technological advances into our lives. The long list of new

developments includes electricity, electric lights, powerful

motors, automobiles, airplanes, household appliances, the

telephone, indoor plumbing, pharmaceuticals, mass production,

the typewriter, the tape recorder, the phonograph, and radio, to

name just a few, with television coming at the end of that period.

The railroad and fast international ships were not completely

new, but they expanded rapidly during this period, tying

together the world economy. Within a somewhat longer time

frame, agriculture saw the introduction of the harvester, the

reaper, and the mowing machine, and the development of highly

effective fertilizers. A lot of these gains resulted from playing out

the idea of advanced machines combined with powerful fossil

fuels, a mix that was fundamentally new to human history and

which we have since exploited to a remarkable degree.

Today, in contrast, apart from the seemingly magical internet,

life in broad material terms isn’t so different from what it was in

1953. We still drive cars, use refrigerators, and turn on the light

switch, even if dimmers are more common these days. The

wonders portrayed in The Jetsons, the space-age television

cartoon from the 19608, have not come to pass. You don’t have a

jet pack. You won’t live forever or visit a Mars colony. Life is

better and we have more stuff, but the pace of change has

slowed down compared to what people saw two or three

generations ago.

It would make my life a lot better to have a teleportation

machine. It makes my life only slightly better to have a larger

refrigerator that makes ice in cubed or crushed form. We all

understand that difference from a personal point of view, yet

somehow we are reluctant to apply it to the economy writ large.