2019年放假安排时间表英语阅读与写作全文及译文 (1)

2021年1月19日发(作者：孟琦)
Unit

4
Text

A
We
’
ve got mail ---Always


Is e-
mail a blessing or a curse?Last month ,after a week’s vacation.I
discovered
1218unread e-mail messages waiting in my IN box. I pretend to be dismayed,but
secretly I was pleased. This is how we messure our wired worth in the late 1900s
—
if
you are not overwhelmed by e-mail. You must be doing something wrong..


Never mind that after subtracting the stale office chitchat ,spam,flame wars,dumb
jokes
forward
by
friends
who
should
have
known
better
and
other
e-mail
were perhaps seven messages actually worth reading .I was doomed
to spend half my workday just deleting junk E-mail sucks.


But wait
–what about those seven? A close friend in T
aipei I haven’t seen in five
years tells me he’s planning to st
art a family. A complete stranger in Belgium sends
me a hot story r stranger offers me a job. I’d rather lose an eye than lose
my e-mail account .E-mail rocks.


E-
’t live with ’t live without artists and real artists, advert
isers
and freedom fighters,lovers and sworn enemies---
they’ve all flocked to e
-mail as
they would to any new medium og expression.E-mail is convenient,save time,brings
us closer to one another
,help us manage our ever-more comples lives. Books are
written,campaigns
conducted
,crimes
committed---all
via
,it
is
also
inconvenient,wastes our time ,isolates us in front of our computers.e-mail is just the
latest chapter in the evolving history of human communication. A snooping husband
now
discovers
his
wife’s
affair
by
reading
her
private
e
-mail
—
but
he
could
have
uncoverd the same sin by finding letters a generation ago.


Yet e-mail ---and all online communication
—
is in fact something truly different,it
capture the essence od life at the close of the 20th century with an authority that
few other products of digital technology can the pace of life seem ever
faster?E-mail simultaneously allows us to cope with the acceleration and contributes
to our attention spans shriveling under barrages of new,improved forms of
stimulation?The quick and dirty e-mail is made to order for those whose ability to
contrate
is
measured
in

we
accept
that
the
creation
of
the
globe-spanning Internet is one of the most important technological innovations of
the last half of this century. Then we must give a e-mail---the living embodiment of
human connection across the Net---pride of place. The way we interact with each
other is changing.e-mail is both the catalyst and the instrument of that change.


The scope of the phenomenon is ide,225milion people can
send
and
receive

about
the
Web
or
e-commerce
or
even
online
porography.e-
mail is the internet’s true killer app
-the sofeware application that we
simply must have .even if means buying a $$2000 computer and plunkding down $$20
a month to American Online.
Oddly
enough,
no
one
planned
it,
and
no
one
predicted
it.
When
research

1
scientists first began
cooking up

the Internet’s predecessor
, the Arpanet, in 1968,
their primary goal was to enable disparate computing centers to share resources.
“But it didn’t take very long before they discovered that the most important thing
was the ability to send mail around, which they had not anticipated at all,” says Eric
Allman
,chief
technical
officer
of
Sendmail,
Inc.,
and
the
primary
author
of
a
20-year- old
program
—

Sendmail
—
that
still
transports
the
vast
majority
of
the
world’s
e
-mail
across
the
Internet .
It
seems
that
what
all
those
top
computer
scientists really wanted to use the Internet for was as a place to debate, via e-mail ,
such crucially important topics as the best science-fiction novel of all time .Even
though Allman is now quite proud that his software helps hundreds of millions of
people communicate, he says he didn’t se
t out originally to change the world. As a
systems administrator at UC Berkeley in the late 70s, he was constantly
hassled
by
computer-science researchers in one building who wanted to get their e-mail from
machines in another location. “I just wanted to make my life easier
,” says Allman.






Don’t we all? When my first child was born in 1994, e
-mail seemed to me some
kind of Promethean gift perfectly designed to help me cope with the
irreconcilable

pressures of new-fatherhood and full-time freelance writing. It saved me time and
money without ever requiring me to leave the house; it
salvaged
my social life,
allowed
me
to
conduct
interviews
as
a
reporter
and
kept
a
lifeline
open
to
my
far- flung
extended family. Indeed, I finally knew for sure that the digital world was
viscerally

potent
when
I
found
myself
in
the
middle
of
a
bitter
fight
with
my
mother
—
on e-mail. Again, new medium, old story.





My
mother
had
given
me
an
e-mail
head
start.
In
1988,
she
bought
me
a
modem so I could create a CompuServe account. The reason? Her younger brother
had contracted a rapidly worsening case of Parkinson’s disease. He wasn’t able to
talk clearly, and could hardly scrawl his name with a pen or pencil. But he had a
computer
, and could
peck
out words on a keyboard. My mom figured that if the
family all had CompuServe accounts, we could send him e-mail. She grasped, long
before the Internet became a household word, how online communication offered
new
possibilities
for
transcending
physical
limitations,
how
as
simple
a
thing
as
e-mail could bring us closer to those whom we love.






It may even help us find those whom we want to love in the first
Shreve is a freelance writer in the San Francisco Bay Area who keeps a close eye on
the emerging culture of the new
online generation. For the last couple of years, she’s
seen what she considers to be a positive change in online dating habits. E-mail, she
argues,
encourages
the
shy.
“It
offers
a
semi
-risk-free
environment
to
initiate
romance,” says Shreve. “Because it l
acks the immediate threat of physical rejection,
people who are perhaps shy or had painful romantic failures in the past can use the
Internet as a way to build a relationship in the early romantic stages.”






But it’s not just about
lust
. E-mail also flattens
hierarchies
within the bounds
of an It is far easier
, Shreve notes, to make a suggestion to your superiors and
colleagues via e-mail than it is to do so in a pressure-
filled meeting room. “Any time
when you have something that is difficult to say, e-
mail can make it easier
,” she says.
“It serves as a
buffer

zone.”


2






Of course, e-
mail’s use as a social lubricant can be taken to extremes. There
is
little
point
in
denying
the
obvious
dark
side
to
the
lack
of
self-constraints
encouraged by e-mail.
Purveyors
of pornography rarely call us on the phone and
suggest out loud that we check out some“hot teen action.” But they don’t think twice
about
jamming
our
e-mail
boxes
full
of
outrageously
prurient

advertisements.
People
who
would
never
insult
us
face
to
face
will
spew

the
vilest
,
most
objectionable, most appalling rhetoric imaginable via e-mail or an instant message,
or in the no-holds-barred confines of a chat room.
Cyberspace’s lapse in genitility underscores a central contradiction inherent in
online
communication.
If
it
is
true
that
hours
spent
on
the
Net
are
often
hours
subtracted from watching television, one could argue that the digital era has raised
the curtains on a new age of literacy
—
more people are writing more words than ever
before!
But
what
kind of
are
we
writing?
Are
we
really
more
literate,
or
are
we
sliding
ever
faster
into
a
quicksand
of
meaningless
irrelevance,
of
pop-cultural
triviality-expressed,usually,in
lowercase
letters-run
amok?
E-mail
is
actually
too
easy,too casual. Gone are the days when one would worry over a letter to a lover or
a relative or a collea
gue. Now there’s just time for that quick e
-mail,a few hastily
cobbled
together
thoughts
written
in
a
colloquial
style
that
usually
borders
on
unedited stream of consciousness. The danger is obvious: snippy comments to a
friend,overly sharp retores to one’s boss,insults mistakenly sent to the target, not
the intended audience.e-mail allows us to act before we can think-the perfect tool
for a culture of hyperstimulation.
So instead of creating something new, we forward something old. instead of
crafting
the
perfect
phrase,we
use
a
brain-dead
abbreviation:IMHO
for
In
My
Humble Opinion,or ROTFLMAO,for Rolling on The Floor Laughing My Ass a
rumor?E-mail is to 50 people!Instead messaging and chat room just accentuate the
casual
negative.
If
e-mail
requires
little
thought,
then
instant
messaging
——flashing
a
message
directly
onto
a
recipitent’s
computer
monitor
——
is so insubstantial as to be practically nonexistent.
E-mail,ultimately,
is
a
fragile
thing,easy
to
forge,easy
to
corrupt,
easy
to
destroy. A few weeks ago a coworker of mine accidentally and irretrievably wiped
out 1,500 of his own saved message. For a person who conducts the bulk of his life
online,such
a
digital
tragedy
is
akin
to
erasing
part
of
your
own
ly,nothing’s
let.
If
is
comforting
to
think
that,if
preserved
in
a
retrievable way, all the notes the world is passing back and forth today constitute a
vast
historical
archive,but
the
opposite
may
also
be
true.
Earlier
this
summer
,
I
visited some curators at Stanford University Library who are hard at work compliling
a
digital
archive
of
Silicon
Valley
history.
They
bemoaned
a
new,fast-spreading
corporate policy that requires the deletion of all corporate e-mails after 60 or 90
days. As Microsofe and Netscape have learned to their dismay,old e-mails,however
trivial they seem when they are written,can and will come back to haunt you. Say
the lawyers,to just wipe them all out.
Still,e-mail is enabling radically new forms of worldwide human collaboration.
Those
225
million
people
who
can
send
and
receive
it
represent
a
network
of

3
potentially
cooperating
individuals
dwarfing
anything
that
even
the
mightiest
corporation or government can muster
. mailing-list discussion groups and onlion
conferencing allow us to gather together to work on a mutitude of projects that are
intersted or helpful to us
——
to pool our collective efforts in a fation never before
most obvious place to see this collaboration right now is in the world of
software. For decades,programers have used e-mail to collaborate on projects. With
increasing frequency,this collaboration is occurring across company lines,and often
without even the spur of commercial incentives. It’s happening lar
gely because it
can
——it’s relatively easy for a thousand programmers to collectively contribute to
a
project
using
e-mail
and
the
internet.
Perhaps
each
individual
contribution
is
small,but the scale of the internet multiplies all efforts dramatically.


我们收到了邮件
---
从不间断

电子邮件是 福是祸？上个月，
在一周休假之后，
我在收件箱中发现了
1218
封未读邮件 ，
我假装气恼，
却暗自窃喜。
如果你没被电子邮件淹没，
你一定是出了问题< br>---
这就是
20
世纪
90
年代末我们衡量自身有限价值的方 式。

不必在意除去那些乏味的办公室闲聊，
垃圾邮件，
网上唇枪舌剑，朋友转发来的本不该
转发的愚蠢笑话以及通过电子邮件发送的电子杂志，
真正值得一读的也 许只有
7
封邮件。
注
定我得花上半个工作日删除垃圾邮件。电子邮件令人讨厌 。

且慢
---
那
7
封值得一读的邮件如何？
5< br>年未见的一位台北好友告诉我他打算开始成立
家庭了。
比利时的一位陌生人发来了一则热 门新闻的内幕。
另一位陌生人给我提供了一份工
作。我宁可失去一只眼睛月不愿失去我的电子邮 件账户。电子邮件让人痴狂。

电子邮件啊，我们不能靠他生活但离开它也不行，
增加 艺术家，广告商，为只有而战的
英勇卫士，恋人，不共戴天的敌人
---
他们纷纷涌向 电子邮件，一如他们涌向任何一种新的
表达工具。电子邮件方便，省时，拉近人们相互间的距离，帮助我 们处理日益纷乱的生活，
著书，一系列活动的展开，犯罪
---
皆可通过电子邮件，但 电子邮件有事不便的，它浪费我
们的时间，
用电脑把我们彼此隔离，
使我们本已烦乱和 生活变得更加复杂，
对于怀疑论者而
言，
电子邮件不过是人类交流演变史上最新的一个 章节，
窥探妻子的丈夫现在可以通过妻子
的私人邮件发现她和别人的暧昧关系
----
而二三十年前她同样可以通过信件发现妻子的隐
情。

然而电子邮件，以及所 有在线交流，实际上是一种全新的东西，在
20
世纪末它以大多
数的数字技术产品所不 具备的权威力捕捉了生活的本质，
生活节奏时候越来越快？电子邮件
在帮我们应对这种加速的同 时，
有助长了加速的发生，
我们的注意力持续时间在连珠炮似的
新型的先进的刺激方式 影响之下，
时候变得越来越短？快速而龌龊的电子邮件正式为那些注
意力持续时间以微毫秒计的 人群而预定的。
如果我们承认遍及全球的因特网是本世纪后半页
最重要的技术创新之一的话，我 们就必须赋予电子邮件
-----
人们通过网络相互联系的真实
体现
---- ---
一席荣耀之地。
人们互动的方式正在发生改变，
而电子邮件既是改变的催化剂，
又是改变的工具。

这一现象涉及面之广。

这一现象涉及面之广令 人惊叹，
全球范围内，
有
2
亿
2
千万
5
百 万可以收发邮件，
别提

4
万维网，
电子商务或者在线色情内容，
电子邮件是因特网的真正杀手级应用
----
即我们必须
具备的软件设备，< br>即便这意味着购置一台
2000
美元的电脑以及每月向美国在线支付
20
美元
的费用。奇怪的是，这一切无人计划，无人预见。当科学家们于
1968
年最早 策划因特网的
前身阿尔派网时，他们的首要目标是使不同的计算机中心分享资源。
“然而，不久 他们便发
现其最重要的作用是散发邮件，这一点他们根本没有料想到”埃里克。奥尔曼。
Sen dmail
公司的技术主管——他也是问世已有
20
年之久的
Sendmai l
程序的主要编写者，
世界上绝大
部分电子邮件现在仍然通过
Sendmai l
在因特网上传送——这样说道。似乎那些顶级计算机
科学家真正想做的，
是把因特网 作为一个通过电子邮件探讨哪部科幻小说最棒之类最重要话
题的场所。
尽管奥尔曼为他的程序系 统能帮助成千上万的人交流沟通颇感自豪，
但他坦言他
原本并没想要改变世界。作为
7 0
年代末加州大学伯克分校的系统管理人，他时常被计算机
科学研究人员所烦扰，那些研究人员 要求获取另一幢大楼计算机里的电子邮件。
“我只想使
我的生活变得简单。
”奥尔曼说 。

我们何尝不是呢？当我第一个孩子
1994
年出生的时候，电子邮件对我 来说好似普罗米
修斯的礼物，
恰好帮我应对初为人父和全取自由撰稿之间不可调和的压力。它帮我省时省钱，
又不需要我离开家门；
它拯救了我的社交生活，
让我作为记者进 行采访，
与此同时和分散在
四处的亲人保持送信联络的通畅。
其实，
我最终确 切地知道数字世界的力量不可小觑，
是在
我与发现我与母亲通过电子邮件争吵不休的时候，又一 次，新的工具演绎老的故事。

由于母亲的原因我比大多数人都更早地使用
e-mai l
。
1998
年的时候，她为我买了一个
调制解调器以便我创立一个
CompuServe
账户。原因是她弟弟患上了急速恶化的帕金森病。
他不能清楚的说话，< br>几乎也不能用钢笔或铅笔写他的名字。
但他有一台电脑，
能够在键盘上
敲出一个 又一个字。我母亲认为如果家庭成员都有
CompuServe
账户，我们便可以给他发邮件。
早在因特网家喻户晓之前，
我母亲就领会到在线交流如何能为超越身体局限提供新的可
能，像电子邮件这么简单的东西如何能把我们和我们所爱之人拉得更近。

电子邮件甚 至能帮我们找到我们想爱之人。詹·什里夫是旧金山海湾地区的一位自由
撰稿人，
她一直在留心 观察新在线一代的新兴文化。
在过去的几年里，
她目睹了在她看来是
网上约会习惯的积 极变化。她认为通过邮件网上约会能鼓励那些天性害羞的人。
“它提供了
一个风险降低了一半的 恋爱氛围。
”

詹·什里夫说，
“这是因为网上恋爱没有对外表产生抵
触的直接威胁，
那些腼腆的或者过去有过痛苦恋爱经历的人可以在恋爱早期通过因特网建立
关 系。
”

不仅仅关乎情欲。电子邮件同样可以淡化办公室的等级观念。什里夫说给上级 或者同
事通过电子邮件提个建议远比在充满压力的会议室里简单得多。
“每当你有什么难以开口 的
事要说，写个电子邮件会使之变得简单得多。
”她说，
“电子邮件起着缓冲作用。< br>”

当然，电子邮件作为社交润滑剂的使用有时也会走向极端。避讳电子邮件引发的自律
缺失的负面效应，
这一做法几乎毫无意义。
提供色情内容的网站很少会打电话大声提议 我们
去看看“欲火中烧的青少年性交”
，可是他们却会不假思索地往我们的邮箱滥发极度淫秽的
广告。
从不当面侮辱我们的人也会通过电子邮件或即时信息或在不设阻拦的聊天室里向我们发送最污秽、最令人作呕、最令人发指的言语。

网络空间文明礼貌的丧失突出了在线交流 的内在主要矛盾。诚然，人们花在网上的时
间是从看电视那里省出来的，
有人便宣称数字时代拉 开了一个新文化时代的序幕——比起以
往，更多的人在写更多的字了！
但是，我们在写什么字呢 ？我们真的是更有文化修养，
还是
更快地滑入毫无意义的空谈以及浅薄不堪的流行文化的陷阱？ 那些东西常以小写字母书写，
在网上大肆泛滥。
电子邮件尝尝太简单，
太随意。
为一封写给恋人或亲戚或同事的信而斟词
酌句的日子一去不复返了。
现在的人们匆匆写就电子 邮件，
几个仓促拼凑的想法，
以口语化
的文体表达，近乎未经剪辑的意识流。其危险显 而易见：
发给朋友的话语唐突尖刻，发给老

5