Today's topic is: Technology — A Bad Thing? or What? The other day, I walked into an airport men's room, which was empty except for one man, who appeared to be having a loud, animated3 conversation with a urinal4. Ten years ago, I would have turned right around and walked briskly back out of there. One rule my parents stressed when I was a child was: “Never stay in a restroom with a man who talks to the plumbing5."

But, of course, as a modern human, I knew that this man was talking on his cell phone, using one of those earpiece thingies6, with the little microphone on the wire, the kind that people feel they must shout at, to make sure their vital messages are getting through. (HI. IT‘S ME. NOT MUCH. I'M AT THE AIRPORT.")

It's not clear to me why so many people in airports use the earpiece thingies. Why do they need to keep their hands free? Do they expect some emergency to suddenly arise that will require them to have both hands free while talking? ("HI. IT'SME. I'M ENGAGING IN HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT WITH ERRORISTS.")

Or maybe they're afraid that if they hold the phone next to their head, the radiation7 will give them brain cancer. If so, an option they might consider is wrapping their heads in aluminum foil8. Granted, this would make them look stupid. Butnot nearly as stupid as they look shouting into their earpiece wires.

So anyway, there I was, in this restroom, standing maybe six feet from this guy,both of us facing the wall, him shouting at his urinal about some business thing involving specifications, and at some point he said "I swear this is a direct quote — " I am handling it." This caused me to emit an involuntary snorting sound (not loud; certainly nowhere near as loud as this guy was talking; just a little snortlet10), which caused the guy to stop talking and — violating the No.1 Guy Rule of Restroom Etiquette11?nbsp;turn his head and look directly at me, so I could see (using peripheral vision12) that he was irritated by my rude interruption of his conversation. Then he went back to shouting at the urinal.

The point is that every key element of this scenario13 ?nbsp;the cell phone, the airplane, the zipper?nbsp;is made possible by technology. We know that technology is a wonderful thing. But at what point does technology go too far? Is it fair to say that cell phones, if used thoughtfully and politely, are O.K., but that if a person attaches an earpiece thingy and walks around shouting in public, bystanders should be allowed to snatch the wire14 and sprint off15 down the airport concourse16, with the shouter's earphone, and possibly even the shouter's detached ear, bouncing gaily behind on the floor?

I think we all agree that the answer is: Yes. When technology goes too far, ordinary citizens must take action. But the question is: How do we define "too far"? I will tell you. We define "too far"? as when scientists start putting weapons on cockroaches17." This is actually happening, according to an article in the Sept.6 issue of Science magazine, brought to my attention by alert reader Richard Sweetman. This article states that researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have been "mounting tiny cannons on the backs of cockroaches." That is correct: These researchers have been outfitting18 live cockroaches with backpacks containing "plastic tubes filled with explosives."

Of course, the researchers have a scientific reason for doing this: They are on LSD19. No, really, it has something to do with figuring out how cockroaches have such good balance. (You almost never see a cockroach fall off a bicycle.) The researchers have used their findings to construct a working robot roach20 that is, according to Science, the size of a breadbox. Swell21! If there's anything this world needs more than armed cockroaches, it's giant, mechanized cockroaches!

Newspaper story from the year 2004: "A homeowner in Santa Rosa, California, was found shot to death in his kitchen Friday. Police said the man apparently was felled by 500 rounds of small-bore cannon fire, mostly in his ankles, indicating that this was the work of the gang of armed research cockroaches that escaped from a Berkeley lab. Police said the motive in the slaying was apparently a Ring Ding22. In a related development, an escaped robot cockroach broke into an Oakland Wal-Mart and made off with an estimated 17,000 AA batteries.23?Ask yourself: Is that the kind of story you want to read in your newspaper? Me too, as long as it's California. No, seriously, this is bad. We need somebody in authority to look into this right away. Maybe Dick Cheney24 could handle it.

1．cells phone: 又作cellular (tele)phone,手机。

2． zipper: 拉链。

3． animated: 热烈的。

4． urinal: 便池。

5．（the）plumbing:抽水马桶。

6． earpiece thingies: 耳机一类的东西。thingy指确切名字不太清楚或不愿提及的物或人。

7． radiation: 辐射。

8． aluminum foil: 铝箔。

9． I am handling it.: 我正掌握着它。打电话的人是说正在处理某事，而在厕所这个语境下，又容易使人从字面上去理解他此时的动作。

10. snortlet:轻哼声，-let后缀指“小的”。

11. violate the No. 1 Guy Rule of Restroom Etiquette: 侵犯了洗手间礼仪一号规则，指在厕所盯着别人看。

12．peripheral vision: （眼角的）余光。

13． scenario:场景，局面。

14． snatch the wire: 这里指抢走耳机。

15． sprint off: 快速跑开。

16． airport concourse: 机场大厅。

17． cockroach: 蟑螂。

18． outfit: 装备。

19． LSD：麦角酸酰二乙胺，全称为lysergic acid dieth－lamide，一种药效极强的迷幻剂。

20． roach: 这里是cockroach的缩略。

21．swell: 极好的，一流的。

22．Ring Ding:痴狂。

23．development: 新闻；Wal-Mart:沃尔玛连锁超市；make off with:（未经允许）拿走，偷走。

24．Dick Cheney: 现任美国副总统，共和党鹰派人物。

阅读感评

本文涉及到当今社会的一个中心问题，即科技与人的关系。作者举了两个例子，一个是在世界范围内（其实在中国更是如此）呈爆炸式增长的便携式手提电话，即通常所说的手机的滥用，一个是美国人不仅把人武装到牙齿，还把蟑螂军事化，给它们装上微型炸弹来攻击对手。作者认为，技术原本是美妙的东西，但不能走得太远。手机大大方便了联络，但不能随时随地滥用，像文中所说的那人在公共便池前还大声嚷嚷的行为就属考虑不周或缺乏教养了。

科技是推动历史发展、社会进步的重要动力，这一点不管你承认不承认，都是事实。但科技发展到今天，对欧洲文艺复兴以来“人本主义”价值观的挑战就愈显突出了。

就说电脑吧。九十年代初期还有作家在讨论是照样用笔、稿纸写作呢，还是改用电脑写作。记得有些著名作家说纸和笔可以帮助他们开掘创作灵感，因为这些东西同他们更加血肉相连。 他们的成名作、力作就是这样写出来的。但今天就很难再让出版社接受“手稿”了，“手稿”这个词也已被“电脑打印稿”所取代。其实，目前不管是作家这样的文字工作者还是普通人，除了签名或在记事簿上涂上几笔外，真是很难再用到手书了。据说，现在一些美国的小学里只教学生打字，完全不培养他们的手写能力。我耳闻中国的基础教育也有类似趋势，似乎对“有文化”的标准一下子从认、写字能力变为电脑能力了。这样下去，不仅中国的书法将后继无人，方块字曾给予我们的那种“patience, discipline and the rewards of practice”的训练和感觉也将荡然无存。中国字铭记在这一代及后代人心中的恐怕只剩下“与世界不接轨”的遗憾了。但是，像纸笔这些传统东西的亲和力是永远存在的，技术的发展带来的所谓社会规范化，使得大多数人不得不逐渐放弃这些，这不能不说是技术的悲剧。

再说说被称为虚拟世界（virtual world）的Internet。虽然谁都难以否认email、site-meeting等事物的快速、言简意赅、免除繁文缛节的优点，但这些特点也是把双刃剑。在英文里virtual和virtuous(有德性的)同源，遗憾的是virtual world常常缺乏virtuous exchanges。句子往往被缩短成命令式，像厉声喊叫；拼写、语法、标点的运用像出自没受过教育的粗人；以前书信里的“warm messages”在当今的email里比恐龙蛋还难找，常常是劈头盖脸不完整的一句，既没有称呼也没有明确的落款。在这个一次click就能遇上、同时也可以马上把一个人“屏蔽”的世界里，patience and manner往往被认为是自作多情，非常稀罕。如果把这个世界看作是“an ideal breeding ground for rudeness”，其实一点也不过分。这种结果恐怕是所有Internet发明者们始料未及也是无能为力的。

现代的科技可以把这个越来越复杂的世界里的人变得越来越简单化。科技带来了曾经让所有人激动不已的“信息爆炸”，但你看看近年来从各种渠道涌来的信息，显得是那么的幼稚、“小儿科”。排行榜上占先的流行歌曲或电视节目总是最浅易的；理应有更高艺术追求的文学、电影也是如此，如果艺术作品稍显晦涩或冗长，即被打入冷宫。目前的这种“童稚化”时代，以及与之相生相伴的简单化、不耐烦、怕费劲的文化，我们很难不把其归结为现代科技的一个副产品，而这种坦率地说有些退化的心智活动，语言运用正是其重要的表现。难道人类几十万年的进化又进入了向下的转折期？
记得80年代在大学里读过英国女作家V. Sackville-West的No Signposts in the Sea，里面有这样的文字：

"Dismissive as a Pharisee, I regarded as moonlings all those whose life was lived on a less practical plane. Protests about damage to 'natural beauty' froze me with contempt, for I believed in progress and could spare no regrets for a lake dammed into hydraulic use for the benefit of an industrial city in the Midlands. And so it was for all things. A hard materialism was my creed, accepted as a law of progress..." （我曾把那些生活状态不太现实的人看作是外星人，把他们当作伪善的法利赛人而不屑一顾。如果为了一座中部工业城市的需要而在湖泊上建大坝发电，我就会横眉冷对那些所谓“破坏了自然美”的抗议。我相信进步，因此对此了无遗憾。这就是我当时的世界观。坚定的实利主义曾是我的信条，并奉之为事物发展的规律……）从上下文看以上是“我”此次告别人世前的海上航行之前的观点。二十岁的我当时觉得这个观点也没有什么不对。在“natural beauty”与“material progress”之间作非此即彼的选择时，当然要后者，因为我们都想改变穷困的现状，而发展似乎是惟一的出路。十几年后的今天，当我重读这一段，虽然我在物质生活方面并未得到根本的改善，但当我明白了若这种progress不仅要以natural beauty为代价，而且往往还要以human nature为代价时，我的那么一点点intelligence and reason就不能不让我停下来作些思考。我想我现在更能理解Sackville-West笔下的“我”面对死神经过深刻反思后，终于“loving what I have despised”，吐露了“I want my fill of beautybefore I go”的心声，以至抱有“今是而昨非”之感慨的原因了。