金融时报:视频时代，思考不再？

视频时代，思考不再？

今天的信息科技，能让图像和视频的分享传播变得易如反掌。观看吸引眼球而无需动脑的视频，正在成为我们生活的一部分。一些镜头前不经意的动作可能影响总统大选的结果，一些并不严谨的视频可能拥有令人不安的巨大影响。这，是否意味着一个新的时代，使文字阅读和严谨思考渐渐被边缘化？

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

truculence ['trʊkjʊləns] n.好战

North Korea's cryptic videos 今年2月，朝鲜官媒在youtube上发布了两段宣传视频，片中朝鲜军队以立体化进攻迅速攻占韩国，绑架美国侨民，攻击美国城市

thrown-down gauntlet 扔在地上的长手套，在中世纪的欧洲，这是一种要求与对方决斗的姿态。

vernacular [və'nækjʊlə] n./adj.本地话，方言

1960 presidential debates 史上第一次电视直播的总统大选辩论，年轻的民主党人肯尼迪VS共和党副总统尼克松。一般认为，尼克松在观点和表达上更胜一筹，但镜头前形象更好的肯尼迪最终以微弱优势获胜

unkempt [ʌn'kem(p)t] adj.蓬乱不整

wallop ['wɒləp] v.冲击

Neda Agha-Soltan 2009年伊朗大选时被无辜射杀的一名女学生，这一视频引发巨大反响

KONY 2012 一部发布于2012年3月的纪录片，旨在揭示乌干达军阀科尼的残暴行径。尽管片中有诸多夸大和不实之处，但有各界名人转发，7个月内就有9700万点击

Protestant ['prɒtɪstənt] n./adj.新教，新教徒，新教的

In the unthinking age, seeing is believing (823 words)

By Christopher Caldwell

It might be easier to do something about North Korea’s nuclear truculence if we could make head or tail of the cryptic videos it has been posting on the web. The latest shows a dreaming man, some Korean script and a video of rockets flying through space while fires burn in skyscrapers and a pianist plays “We Are the World” at dirge tempo. Is this a harmless fantasy? A thrown-down gauntlet? Should the west respond with a statement? Should it post a video of its own? It is hard to know. Our traditional media are being “replaced” by the internet. But the “information” coming out of the information economy is often hard to decipher, and composed for purposes that are hard to discern.

The film academic Stephen Apkon argues in The Age of the Image , published this week, that it is possible to speak of a new kind of literacy, one built on figuring out such non-verbal messages. At its humblest level, his book is about the “language” of film, but Mr Apkon has a larger philosophical point, too. Our culture is growing more global. While it still relies on words, they are increasingly wrapped up with images, and it is the images people remember. Elizabeth Daley, dean of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, believes writing today is like Latin on the eve of the Renaissance – the language of a scholarly establishment. YouTube clips and other visuals are the equivalent of vernacular Italian. They are the street language, and the medium for much new and creative thinking.

Images have always mattered in public arguments more than we admit. Few people cared that Richard Nixon won the 1960 presidential debates against John Kennedy, so unkempt did the Republican look. Mr Apkon quotes a neuroscientist who says people are so attuned to picking up subtle signals that they make decisions about whether they like or dislike politicians “immediately”. And unsubtle, non-verbal messages with a great emotional wallop can now be broadcast more widely. Video of the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan, captured during June 2009 protests against irregular Iranian elections, spread round the world. In the gut-wrenching Kony 2012 video (100m views in six days), American activists sought to enlist the US military in a manhunt for a Ugandan warlord.

Eyesight is the most trusted sense, Mr Apkon notes, and that means we need to be careful with it. There is a standing danger that the public will grow so upset by images of mistreatment that it will demand the government send the army off to war. This is arguably what happened Somalia in 1992, with America’s poorly planned military response to the African country’s famine. In future, Mr Apkon says, we are likely to need “a combination of scepticism and incisiveness”, enabling citizens to “[critique] what is put in front of them with some level of sophistication”.

That is unlikely. When the passions provoked by visual imagery lead to the same conclusion as the logic of a verbal argument, people are generally comfortable coming to a decision. But when passion and logic are at odds, one of them must be favoured.

Until recently, it was the essence of statesmanship, scholarship and justice to purge strong emotion from our deliberations. Images today, though, are so plentiful and sharp that they dominate our thought processes. Although Mr Apkon relishes the immediacy of YouTube, he fears that political advertisers will soon be able to craft stories around “hidden mental hungers”, easily manipulating voters.

Citizens tend to think about voting in one of two ways. First, you base your vote on your identity. You are a farmer, so you choose the candidate best disposed towards farmers. The second theory is that you vote on arguments, independent of identity. You believe a sales tax should replace income tax, so you vote for the candidate who shares that opinion. But today’s image-based communication has little to do with identity or arguments. It has to do with the lowest-common-denominator traits that mark you as a human animal.

There is no obvious solution. Even if we acquire the scepticism Mr Apkon speaks of, certain institutions “go with” certain styles of perceiving, absorbing and interpreting information. You would not think that there was anything “Protestant” about the printing press. And yet the press seems to have been a prerequisite for Protestantism’s rise. Likewise, our own democracies, imperfect though they may be, are the culmination of the culture of the written word. Mr Apkon notes how Kennedy, in those 1960 debates, “tapped into a lever in the psyche more primal than mere facts”.

In retrospect, that was an ominous moment. Once you find that lever, isn’t democracy bound to lose a bit of its appeal, rather like a detective story in which you have been told the ending?

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1.The three exemple of the 1960 presidential debates, the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, and KONY 2012, can imply what?

A. Images have always mattered in public arguments more than we admit.

B. Videos on political issues are the most popular among all.

C. Videos carrying messages with a great emotional wallop can attract attention.

D. Activists must use street language to appeal to the audience.

答案(1)

2.What does this mean?

“writing today is like Latin on the eve of the Renaissance – the language of a scholarly establishment”

A. That videos are like Italian that served as the street language.

B. That "a video is worth more than a thousand words".

C. That writing would be less popular among common people.

D. That writing would face extinction, just as Latin.

答案(2)

3.What does the writer think of the phenomenon of “seeing is believing”?

A. positive

B. negative

C. dangerous

D. useful

答案(3)

4.According to the author, what may "image-based communication" influence voter behavior？

A. People might vote on their identities.

B. People might vote on arguments, independent of identity.

C. People might vote on their “hidden mental hungers”.

D. People might vote on political advertisers who have better stories.

答案(4)

* * *

(1) 答案：A. Images have always mattered in public arguments more than we admit.

解释：第三段中作者举了这三个例子，A是本段的第一句话，是这段话试图表达的。

(2) 答案：C.That writing would be less popular among common people.

解释：几个选项乍看都有道理，但是，这句话中有几个元素：拉丁文、文艺复兴前夜、学术语言。

AB并未解释“前夜”意味着拉丁文“逐渐被边缘化”这一含义。D忽略了“学术语言”，拉丁文并未灭亡，只是不再被大众使用。

(3) 答案：B.negative

解释：Apkon说，在未来，人们需要有怀疑精神，要能对眼前的东西有深刻一点的考虑。但作者说，That is unlikely。作者还说了，when passion and logic are at odds, one of them must be favoured.

(4) 答案：C.People might vote on their “hidden mental hungers”.

解释：AB显然是“读图时代”之前的选民行为。Apkon担忧的是：新时代的基于图像的宣传，会代替选民的严肃思考，而政治广告竞相去搞能煽动人内心深处的需要的东西（比如对正义的需要，让“不转不是中国人”这种转发语颇有市场），从而操纵选民行为。