大学英语精读听力第三册 unit10

[00:00.00]Alvin Toffler writes about the fact
[00:25.34]that technology is advancing much faster today
[00:29.34]than ever before in history.
[00:32.44]The symbols of technology are no longer factory smokestacks
[00:37.43]or assembly lines.
[00:40.12]As we are headed for the future, the pace will quicken still further
[00:45.40]THE FANTASTIC SPURT IN TECHNOLOGY   A. Toffler
[00:51.80]To most people the term technolgy
[00:55.80]conjures up images of smoky steel mills or noisy machines.
[01:01.18]Perhaps the class representation of technology
[01:05.49]is still the assembly line created
[01:08.57]by Henry Ford half a century ago
[01:12.36]and made into a social symbol
[01:15.26]by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times.
[01:19.05]This symble, however, has always been inadequate and misleading,
[01:24.43]for technology has always been more than factories and machines.
[01:29.73]The invention of the horse collar in the middle ages
[01:34.33]led to major changes in agricultural methods
[01:38.43]and was as much a technological advance
[01:41.93]as the invention of the Bessemer furnace centuries later.
[01:46.92]Moreover, technology includes techniques,
[01:51.80]or ways to do things,as well as the machines
[01:56.01]that may or may not be neessary to apply them.
[02:00.11]It includes ways to make chemical reactions occur
[02:05.10]ways to breed fish, plat forests, light theaters
[02:10.19]count votes or teach history.
[02:13.49]The old symbols of technology are even more misleading today
[02:18.87]when the most advanced technological processes
[02:23.05]are carried out for from assembly lines or blast furnaces
[02:28.45]Indeed, in electronics, in space technology
[02:33.05]in most of the new industries
[02:36.16]quiet and clean surroundings are characteristic
[02:40.16]even sometimes essential.
[02:43.24]And the assembly line
[02:45.72]the organization of large numbers of men to carry out simple
[02:51.02]repetitive functions-is outdated.
[02:54.63]It is time for our symbols of technology to change
[02:59.23]to catch up with the quickening changes in technology itself
[03:04.14]This acceleration is frequently dramatized
[03:08.32]by a brief accout of the progress in transportation.
[03:12.60]It has been pointed out, for example
[03:16.00]that in 6000 BC the fastest transportation available to man
[03:21.90]over long distances was the camle caravan
[03:25.90]averaging eight miles per hour(mph).
[03:29.11]It was not until about 1600 BC
[03:33.60]when the chariot was invented that the maximum speed
[03:37.99]was raised to roughly twenty miles per hour.
[03:42.20]So impressive was this invention
[03:46.19]so difficult was it to exceed this speed limit
[03:50.30]that nearly 3,500 years later
[03:54.00]when the first mail coach began operating in England in 1784
[03:59.91]it averaged a mere ten mph
[04:03.70]The first steam locomotive,introduced in 1825
[04:09.00]could have a top speed of only thirteen mph
[04:13.49]and the great sailing ships of the time labored along
[04:17.70]at less than half that speed.
[04:20.99]It was probably not until the 1880's that man,
[04:26.16]with the help of a more advanced steam locomotive,
[04:30.84]managed to reach a speed of one hundred mph.
[04:35.23]It took the human race millions of years to attain that record.
[04:40.22]It took only fifty-eight years,however,to go four times that fast
[04:46.51]so that by 1938 men in airplanes were traveling at better than 400 mph
[04:54.19]It took a mere twenty-year flick of time to double the limit again
[04:59.89]And by the 1960's rocket plane approached speeds of 4,000 mph
[05:06.96]and men in space capsules were circling the earth at 18,000 mph
[05:14.07]Whether we examine distances traveled, altitudes reached,
[05:19.66]or minerals mined, the same accelerative trend is abvious
[05:25.67]The pattern, here and in a thousand other statistical series
[05:31.08]is absolutely clear and unmistakable
[05:35.07]Thousands of years go by, and then, in our own times
[05:40.06]a sudden bursting of the limits, a fantastic spurt forward
[05:45.68]The reason for this is that technology feeds on itself
[05:51.06]Technology makes more technology possible
[05:55.34]as we can see if we look for a moment at the process of innovation
[06:00.44]Technological innovation consists of three stages
[06:05.24]linked together into a self-reinforcing cycle
[06:09.63]First, there is the creative, feasible idea
[06:14.80]Second, its practical application. Third,its diffusion through society
[06:21.88]The process is completed, the loop closed,
[06:26.48]when the diffusion of technology embodying new idea,
[06:31.26]in turn, helps generate new creative ideas.
[06:36.07]Today there is evidence that the time between each of the steps
[06:40.77]in this cycle has been shortened.
[06:43.46]Thus it is not merely true, as frequently noted
[06:48.56]that 90 percent of all the scientists who ever lived are now alive
[06:54.04]and that new scientific discoveries are being made every day
[06:59.13]These new ideas are put to work much more quickly than ever before
[07:05.14]The time between the first and second stages of the cycle
[07:09.64]between idea and application has been radically reduced.
[07:14.94]This is a striking difference between ourselves and our ancestors.
[07:20.53]It is not that we are more eager or less lazy than our ancestors
[07:26.22]but we have, with the passage of time
[07:29.72]invented all sorts of social devices to hasten the process.
[07:35.00]But if it takes less time to bring a new idea to the marketplace
[07:40.70]it also takes less time for it to sweep through the society
[07:45.89]For example, the refrigerator was introduced
[07:50.60]in the United States before 1920
[07:54.38]yet its peak production did not come until more than thirty years later
[07:59.90]However, by 1950 --in only a few years
[08:05.09]television had grown from a laboratory novelty
[08:09.59]to the biggest part of show business.
[08:12.88]So the interval between the second and third stages of the cycle
[08:18.49]between application and diffusion
[08:21.79]has likewise been cut, and the pace of diffusion
[08:25.99]is rising with astonishing speed.
[08:29.49]The stepped-up pace of invention, application and diffusion
[08:34.59]in turn, accelerates the whole cycle still further
[08:39.50]For new machines or techniques are not merely a product
[08:44.49]but a source, of fresh creative ideas