新编大学英语第三册unit4 Text A: Too Fast?
UNIT 4 IN-CLASS READING; New College English (III)
Too Fast?
1 People who were born just before World War I remember waving at automobiles as they passed. Seeing a car was like watching a parade exciting and out of the ordinary. The airplane it was spelled "aeroplane" then was another new invention. Refrigerators were "iceboxes," and a man delivered the ice for the box in the summer and the coal for the stove in the winter. Now, the iceman, like the blacksmith, survives only in literature.
2 Today, change comes so fast that working people can become obsolete because their occupations vanish in the middle of their lives. Knowledge, and thus the rate of change, increases geometrically. Every idea gives birth to a dozen new ones, and each of them has a dozen children. The people of the pre-World War I generation had hardly assimilated the inventions of that era before they were attacked by a new batch of even more sophisticated inventions. The Atomic Age dawned in 1945, August 6 to be exact, and then, before we could catch our breath, the Space Age arrived.
3 Change was not always this rapid. Certain important inventions, like the telephone, the airplane, the automobile, and the radio, had been invented by 1914, but the effects of these inventions upon the lives of ordinary citizens were not felt until many years later. We now have the technology to develop machines before people are ready to use them. For example, we have the technology to enable people to pay their bills by phone but even people with phones resist. The change is too much too fast. People don't want to talk to machines, especially if the machines talk back to them.
4 It is certain that technology, especially computer technology, will rule our lives to a greater and greater degree. This situation will not necessarily prove positive or negative in effect. Many people would be more comfortable if change came more slowly, but on the other hand, there are many for whom every innovation is like a new toy. They can't wait for the next invention to be available. When scientists talk about the remarkably adaptable nature of people, they probably have these people in mind.
5 But there is a limit to everyone's ability to adapt. What will happen to us when change comes so rapidly that we can no longer adjust to it? These same scientists who talk about our adaptable nature also tell us that change is to some degree emotionally painful to everyone. What then, will happen to us when change comes so rapidly that we can no longer stand the pain, and we refuse to change?
6 We have read a lot about scientific and technological change, but that is only part of the picture of modern life. There is often a great lag between scientific discovery and cultural acceptance. For example, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, proposed over one hundred years ago and accepted by all serious scholars for generations, is still rejected by large segments of society. These segments~ see science as contradicting a higher religious authority. They see science as questioning and destroying their beliefs and culture.
7 The problem is not easily solved because it is in the nature of science to question, and it is in the nature of human beings not to want to question the things they believe in. Science is not merely a field of study like chemistry or physics or biology. Science is a method of looking at the world, a method that requires an open mind, objectivity, and proof based upon observation or experimentation. It is a method that ignores religion, race, nationality, economics, morality, and ethics. It pays attention only to the results of research. The scientific method has shown us endless marvels and wonders, but methods can't provide all the answers. Science cannot tell us whether or not to drop a bomb: That is a moral or political question. Science only tells us how to make one.
8 As we have already said, technological innovations are being made at faster and faster rates. The future will be even more revolutionary than the past. Will we, as a species, survive the revolutions that we have begun? There is plenty of evidence to think that we will. Our species has enormous potential that we have just begun to use. For example, we have only begun to control the environment. One day technology will make every desert bloom. It's simple, really. To do so, all we need to do is lower the cost of converting sea water into fresh water. Then, when the deserts bloom, will they provide enough food for our growing numbers? Most likely, they will. We have only just begun to discover the possibilities of highly intensive desert agriculture. We already have the technology to increase production ten times and to use one-twentieth of the water we needed before.
9 We know how to make agricultural miracles. What we need are the time and money to make the technology available to everyone.
10 In the nineteenth century, people believed in progress. They believed that science would lead them to a new era of endless prosperity and happiness. Well, it didn't work out that way. Two disastrous world wars convinced people of that. Yet, in our disappointment and in our fears that science was a monster that would one day destroy us, we forgot that science was not the monster; we were the monster. Science was merely a servant, and like fire, a good servant when treated properly.
11 Despite all the problems of the modern world, however, most people would not choose to live in any of the less scientific ages that have preceded ours. If and this is a big if we don't destroy ourselves in war, the future can only be better. Each year will bring a more bewildering array of scientific advances: diseases cured, space conquered, transportation and communication revolutionized, agriculture and industry completely transformed, etc. To some, the future sounds exciting; to others, frightening. But one thing is sure it won't be boring.
