【英语语言学习】互联网高速路

SCOTT SIMON:

Douglas Coupland has written a book about a company that's not a household name but has laid enough optic cable to circle the globe many times. And if it were to vanish tomorrow, in many ways we would vanish to each other. Alcatel-Lucent is a French multinational¹, formed in 2006 when it merged² with America's Lucent Technologies. Alca-Lu, as it's now called, has built the roads by which so much human knowledge, emotions, insights and misinformation now circle the globe over the Internet. During a visit to his plant in China, Mr. Coupland met an engineer that makes routers. He saw a picture of the man's son on his desk and wondered about the difference in their experiences.

DOUGLAS COUPLAND: I said, well, what's the big difference between you at seven and him at seven? And, oh, like, that's easy. He knows that the Internet is the real world.

SIMON: Mr. Coupland's book is "Kitten Clone: Inside Alcatel-Lucent." It's less a corporate³ history and more meditation⁴ on the future technology, a shaping force. He found he misses his pre-Internet brain.

COUPLAND: Oh, God, I do. When I say that, do you get a sort of tingle⁵ in your spine⁶, going, oh, I know what he's talking about?

SIMON: (Laughter) I think I know what you're talking about.

COUPLAND: Well, I do miss my pre-Internet brain, but what I'm finding increasingly is that I'm forgetting my pre-Internet brain. I remember the way I used to do things - the way I used to think, the way I thought I about thinking - and now I'm in this whole new neural⁷ reality, I guess you'd call it. And human beings, there's no evidence that we're capable of simultaneous thought, but were getting much better at doing a lot of things very, very quickly. I kind of miss my attention span. I used to have a much larger attention span. I don't know where it went. It's just gone, poof. And I think that's more common than I would've thought a year ago.

SIMON: One of the things you write about here, you seem to both love and worry about the implication of increasing speeds on the Internet.

COUPLAND: I do. But here's an anecdote⁸ that maybe puts that question into certain perspective. I was meeting with the vice⁹ president of the Communist Party in Shanghai, and I said, well, you know, what's your plan, sir? And he said, well, our five-year plan is to ensure that every man, woman and child in China has, at the very least, five megs of connectivity. And in all the top 10 cities, everyone's going to have one gig a second of connectivity. So I said, you know, sir have you thought about, you know, the unexpected side effects of giving 1.3 or 1.4 billion people a gig a second? And he says OK, I know what you're saying, I know where you're going, but here's the thing - the future of the human race, at least in this century, is ultra-high-speed Wi-Fi everywhere all the time. And it's going to happen whether you or I don't want it to happen or not. And because it's inevitable¹⁰, we might as well get there first. I'm like, woo boy, that certainly put my little feelings into perspective there.

SIMON: Yeah, the misgivings¹¹ of two people from literary tradition don't amount to a hill of beans in this world of increasing Internet speeds. Yes?

COUPLAND: Well, Scott, the thing about the Internet is, you know, you'd never ever phone up a friend and say hi, come on over to my house. Let's go on the Internet together. It just sounds stupid. So you have this intrinsically solitary¹² act that, you know, all of us know from our, you know, daily rituals and our work life. And yet it has this amazing propinquity - is that the word - to create new kinds of groups, to reinforce other forms of group structures. And I do think that one of the great, probably the biggest question of our time, is going to be whether or not the Internet ultimately favors the individual or whether or not it favors the group.

SIMON: You even suggest in this book that because of the Internet, narrative¹³ might be breaking down as a form.

COUPLAND: Yeah. I write novels. I mean, that's part of who I am and what I do. And I grew up with the notion that, you know, your life, you're born, you have a life, you die, but there's some sort of larger overall narrative or meaning to it. And then what happens is that you go online and your time frames get, you know, chopped up from the relatively¹⁴ glacial time frames, let's say reading fiction - long-form fiction - and suddenly you don't really feel like an individual in sort of the 19th, 20th century sense of the word. You sort of realize that you're just one human being unit out of seven billion other human being units, and it's kind of humbling¹⁵. And I think for, you know, people from the West, it's kind of come down but for a lot of people on Earth who are, you know, getting this technology, it's, like, a real step up in the world. Like, yeah I know I'm part of the ballgame now.

SIMON: Douglas Coupland. His new book, with photographs from Olivia Arthur, is "Kitten Clone: Inside Alcatel-Lucent." Thanks so much for being with us.

COUPLAND: I've loved it. Thanks, Scott.

1 multinational   

adj.多国的，多种国籍的；n.多国籍公司，跨国公司

参考例句：

• The firm was taken over by a multinational consulting firm.这家公司被一个跨国咨询公司收购。
• He analyzed the relationship between multinational corporations and under-developed countries.他分析了跨国公司和不发达国家之间的关系。

2 merged   

（使）混合( merge的过去式和过去分词 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中

参考例句：

• Turf wars are inevitable when two departments are merged. 两个部门合并时总免不了争争权限。
• The small shops were merged into a large market. 那些小商店合并成为一个大商场。

3 corporate   

adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的

参考例句：

• This is our corporate responsibility.这是我们共同的责任。
• His corporate's life will be as short as a rabbit's tail.他的公司的寿命是兔子尾巴长不了。

4 meditation   

n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录

参考例句：

• This peaceful garden lends itself to meditation.这个恬静的花园适于冥想。
• I'm sorry to interrupt your meditation.很抱歉，我打断了你的沉思。

5 tingle   

vi.感到刺痛，感到激动；n.刺痛，激动

参考例句：

• The music made my blood tingle.那音乐使我热血沸腾。
• The cold caused a tingle in my fingers.严寒使我的手指有刺痛感。

6 spine   

n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊

参考例句：

• He broke his spine in a fall from a horse.他从马上跌下摔断了脊梁骨。
• His spine developed a slight curve.他的脊柱有点弯曲。

7 neural   

adj.神经的，神经系统的

参考例句：

• The neural network can preferably solve the non- linear problem.利用神经网络建模可以较好地解决非线性问题。
• The information transmission in neural system depends on neurotransmitters.信息传递的神经途径有赖于神经递质。

8 anecdote   

n.轶事，趣闻，短故事

参考例句：

• He departed from the text to tell an anecdote.他偏离课文讲起了一则轶事。
• It had never been more than a family anecdote.那不过是个家庭趣谈罢了。

9 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

10 inevitable   

adj.不可避免的，必然发生的

参考例句：

• Mary was wearing her inevitable large hat.玛丽戴着她总是戴的那顶大帽子。
• The defeat had inevitable consequences for British policy.战败对英国政策不可避免地产生了影响。

11 misgivings   

n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧

参考例句：

• I had grave misgivings about making the trip. 对于这次旅行我有过极大的顾虑。
• Don't be overtaken by misgivings and fear. Just go full stream ahead! 不要瞻前顾后， 畏首畏尾。甩开膀子干吧！ 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

12 solitary   

adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士

参考例句：

• I am rather fond of a solitary stroll in the country.我颇喜欢在乡间独自徜徉。
• The castle rises in solitary splendour on the fringe of the desert.这座城堡巍然耸立在沙漠的边际，显得十分壮美。

13 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。

14 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

15 humbling   

adj.令人羞辱的v.使谦恭( humble的现在分词 )；轻松打败（尤指强大的对手）；低声下气

参考例句：

• A certain humbling from time to time is good. 不时受点儿屈辱是有好处的。 来自辞典例句
• It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-buildingexperience. 据说天文学是一种令人产生自卑、塑造人格的科学。 来自互联网