his book is about the future of technology. In it we will examine some of the many recent developments in a few key fields and try, in a limited way, to forecast where they will take us in the next fifteen years or so.

　　這本書是關(guān)于科技的未來的。在這本書中我們將要回顧近年來一些主要科技領(lǐng)域的發(fā)展，并且試著稍微預測一下在未來的十五年后科技將要有哪些新的發(fā)展。

　　If that sounds like a modest goal, it’s not.

　　也許這個目標聽起來有些謙虛，然而卻不是。

　　(Technology is the dominant force of our time and probably of all time to come. It appears in more varieties than we can count).

　　It changes so rapidly that no scientist or engineer can keep up with his own field, much less with technology in general.

　　科技發(fā)展得如此之快，以至于科學家或者工程師都跟不上他們自己領(lǐng)域的科技發(fā)展，更不用說廣泛意義上的科技了。

　　(It permeates and shapes our lives at every turn.)

　　We live in technology as fish live in the sea, and we have only a little better chance of forecasting the details of its changes.

　　我們生活在科技之中，正如同魚生活在海洋之中一樣。而且我們很難詳細地預測科技未來的發(fā)展。

　　(Yet the task is well worth undertaking. Whatever hints we can glean about the future will help us prepare for the changes to come. Modest forecasts, evidence of trends, a few concrete developments to be expected all are better than no warning at all. And though technology has made the present much less stable than the past, and surely will make the future more turbulent still, there is good reason to hope that our lives, in sum and on average, will be better as a result.)

　　In an age of uncomfortable challenges, this is reassurance we all can use.

　　在這個充滿了令人緊張的挑戰(zhàn)的時代，科技是我們都能夠放心使用的。

　　For an idea of what is to comein magnitude if not in specificslook to the past. In the last ninety years, the world has shrunk, while human experience has expanded almost beyond the recognition of those who grew up in our grandparents’ generation.

　　要預測未來是宏觀上的，而不是細節(jié)上的就要回顧過去。在過去的90年里，整個世界在不斷縮小，而人類的探索卻在不斷擴大，幾乎超過了我們祖父輩那一代的人們對于整個世界的認識。

　　(A century after America’s founders conceived their agrarian democracy, nearly all their descendents still lived on small farms. Since World War I, technology has extracted us from behind horse-drawn plows and plugged us into assembly lines and offices. Today it is removing many of us from offices and letting us work at home or compelling us to work on the road.)

　　(As recently as 1920, the average American baby could expect to live only fifty-four years. By the early 1990s, average life expectancy in the United States had climbed to seventy-five years, seventy-two for men and neatly seventy-nine for women. In the next twenty years, life expectancy may well rise again, even more steeply. This time it will climb, not only for the newborn but for those already well into adulthood).

　　In transportation and communications, the changes have been even more pronounced.

　　在交通和通信方面的變化就更加顯著了。

　　(As recently as World War two, the average American lived and died within 38 miles (61 kilometers) of his birthplace. For New Yorkers, the radius was only 17.5 miles (28 kilometers), as far as the subway ran. Information from the outside came by newspaper, radio, or word from the traveler’s mouth; it moved intermittently and often arrived only after long delay).

　　In 1945, when the first atomic bomb fused the sand of Alamogordo，New Mexico, the shot was not heard around the world; rumors of a massive explosion in the desert were easily contained. Only a half century later, someone born in Massachusetts is more likely than not to attend college in Chicago, find a job in Seattle, vacation in Mexico, and retire in Florida. (News from London, Moscow, Sarajevo, and Pyongyang arrives instantly on CNN and, for growing numbers of people, on personal computers fed by the Internet.) From our offices in suburban Virginia and rural New Hampshire, Paris, Singapore, Buenos Aires, and Sydney are all as close as Washington and Boston, none more distant than the few steps to the computer. Around the globe, we will spend the rest of our lives finding things to say to people we will never meet in person. (Thus far, shared interests have proved easy to find).

　　1945年，當?shù)谝活w原子彈融化了新墨西哥州的阿拉莫戈多的沙子的時侯，這個令人震驚的消息并沒有傳遍世界。有關(guān)這次沙漠中的巨大爆炸的消息是很容易保密的。僅僅半個世紀之后，馬薩諸塞州出生的人卻很有可能在芝加哥上大學，在西雅圖工作，去墨西哥度假，于佛羅里達退休。不論我們的辦公室是在佛吉尼亞的郊區(qū)、新漢普郡的鄉(xiāng)村，還是在巴黎、新加坡，布宜諾斯艾利斯或者悉尼，亦或是近在華盛頓或波士頓，我們之間的距離也不過是走到計算機的那幾步。在全球各個地方，我們都有可能會在我們的后半生中去和我們永遠不會見面的人談?wù)撐覀兩钪械氖虑?