【英语听和读】万维网

 Amber¹: Hello, I'm Amber, and you’re listening to bbclearningenglish.com.

Today, since we are a website, we join in celebrations for the 15th birthday of

the World Wide Web!

The World Wide Web has changed the lifestyle and working environment of

people all over the world. In this programme, we listen to a short interview

about how the internet has changed our lives.

Ian Pearson is a futurologist - he studies ‘futurology’. He’s concerned with

trying to say correctly what will happen in the future. In the first part of his

interview, Ian Pearson lists both good things and bad things about the internet.

Can you catch any of these?

And he begins by saying that he does not believe the World Wide Web has

made our lives completely happy, or blissful. And he uses an unusual

expression - using the prefix³ ‘cyber’ - to describe the condition of being made

extremely happy by the internet! What is this unusual expression? Cyber –

what?

Ian Pearson

‘I don’t believe in cyber bliss². I think that the future is very much the same as today, where

you’ve got good things and bad things, you know, we’ve got email but we’ve got junk mail

along side. In the future, we’ll have lots of new ways of doing things, but we’ll have some

misuse⁴ as well. It’s never going to be Utopia, but, you know, if we get it right, it won’t be hell

either.’ 

15 years of the World Wide Web © BBC Learning English

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Amber: Did you catch it? Ian Pearson says he doesn’t believe in ‘cyber bliss’ –

‘cyber’ means ‘relating to computers, especially to messages and

information on the internet’, and ‘bliss’ means ‘perfect happiness’ or

‘enjoyment’. Cyber bliss. And he says the positive things about the internet

are ‘email’ and that in the future ‘we’ll have lots of new ways of doing

things’. However, the negative things are ‘junk mail’ and future ‘misuse’ of

the internet. When you listen again, notice how Ian Pearson balances his

sentences to list ‘good things and bad things’.

Also, at the end of this extract, Ian Pearson uses two terms to describe how

the internet will never be perfect, but if we ‘get it right’, and work to

improve the World Wide Web, it won’t be a harmful or unpleasant thing

either. Can you catch either of these two terms, describing two completely

opposite situations?

Ian Pearson

‘I don’t believe in cyber bliss. I think that the future is very much the same as today, where

you’ve got good things and bad things, you know, we’ve got email but we’ve got junk mail

along side. In the future, we’ll have lots of new ways of doing things, but we’ll have some

misuse as well. It’s never going to be Utopia, but, you know, if we get it right, it won’t be hell

either.’

Amber: ‘It’s never going to be Utopia, but, you know, if we get it right, it won’t be

hell either.’ ‘Utopia’ is an imaginary perfect world where everyone is

happy. If a situation, experience or place is very unpleasant, an informal

word to describe it is ‘hell’. ‘It’s never going to be Utopia, but, you know, if

we get it right, it won’t be hell either.’

Next, Ian Pearson suggests we can celebrate certain features of the World

Wide Web – after all, not many of us would like to go back to 1990 and live

without email and text messaging! And generally, technology does help us

to be productive with our lives and to organise⁵ them! Can you catch the 

15 years of the World Wide Web © BBC Learning English

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expression he uses to say that he doesn’t want to go back in time to a world

without the World Wide Web?

Ian Pearson

‘I certainly wouldn’t want to wind the clock back. I don’t think very many people would.

There’s a battle between people who want to use these things to make our lives better and

people who want to, basically, be parasitic⁶ on all of that to make money by making our lives

misery⁷. You know, people are sent junk mail and stuff like that. We have to find ways of

dealing⁸ with those people and still allow the benefits to come through to people that want to

use it for good things.’

Amber: Ian Pearson says: ‘I certainly wouldn’t want to wind the clock back’. This is

an informal way of saying that you don’t want to go back to a previous

situation. ‘I certainly wouldn’t want to wind the clock back’.

Ian Pearson also says there’s now ‘a battle’, a fight, between people who use

the internet for good and those ‘parasitic’ people who use the internet for

bad purposes. If you say someone is ‘parasitic’, you mean they don’t work

and depend on other people instead. And Ian Pearson says such people are

‘making our lives a misery’ – another useful informal expression. Listen

again.

Ian Pearson

‘I certainly wouldn’t want to wind the clock back. I don’t think very many people would.

There’s a battle between people who want to use these things to make our lives better and

people who want to, basically, be parasitic on all of that to make money by making our lives

misery. You know, people are sent junk mail and stuff like that. We have to find ways of

dealing with those people and still allow the benefits to come through to people that want to

use it for good things.’ 

1 amber   

n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的

参考例句：

• Would you like an amber necklace for your birthday?你过生日想要一条琥珀项链吗？
• This is a piece of little amber stones.这是一块小小的琥珀化石。

2 bliss   

n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福

参考例句：

• It's sheer bliss to be able to spend the day in bed.整天都可以躺在床上真是幸福。
• He's in bliss that he's won the Nobel Prize.他非常高兴，因为获得了诺贝尔奖金。

3 prefix   

n.前缀；vt.加…作为前缀；置于前面

参考例句：

• We prefix "Mr."to a man's name.我们在男士的姓名前加“先生”。
• In the word "unimportant ","un-" is a prefix.在单词“unimportant”中“un”是前缀。

4 misuse   

n.误用，滥用；vt.误用，滥用

参考例句：

• It disturbs me profoundly that you so misuse your talents.你如此滥用自己的才能，使我深感不安。
• He was sacked for computer misuse.他因滥用计算机而被解雇了。

5 organise   

vt.组织，安排，筹办

参考例句：

• He has the ability to organise.他很有组织才能。
• It's my job to organise all the ceremonial events.由我来组织所有的仪式。

6 parasitic   

adj.寄生的

参考例句：

• Will global warming mean the spread of tropical parasitic diseases?全球变暖是否意味着热带寄生虫病会蔓延呢？
• By definition,this way of life is parasitic.从其含义来说，这是种寄生虫的生活方式。

7 misery   

n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦

参考例句：

• Business depression usually causes misery among the working class.商业不景气常使工薪阶层受苦。
• He has rescued me from the mire of misery.他把我从苦海里救了出来。

8 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。