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Unit 2
Text A
技术与幸福
Technology and
Happiness
詹姆斯
·
萨洛维
奇
Preface
In the present era, all of us are
enthusiastically pursuing technological
advancement and take it for
granted
that the development of technology will make us
happier. However, little evidence can be
found to prove the correlation between
technology and happiness once material and
technological
advances reach a certain
level. The text below may provide you with some
insights into this issue.
2
0
世纪的美国人、欧洲人和东亚人都享受到了过去历代人都无法想象的物质和技术进步带
来的乐趣。譬如，在美
国，从
1950
年到
2000
年国民生产总值翻了
3
倍。人们的寿命大幅
< br>度提高。二战后生产力的迅速发展使商品变得价廉物
美
。诸如乘飞机旅游和打长途电话等
曾经是奢侈的事情成了生活不可或缺的一部分。
In the 20th century,
Americans, Europeans, and East Asians enjoyed
material and technological
advances
that
were
unimaginable
in
previous
eras.
In
the
United
States,
for
instance,
gross
domestic
product
per
capita
tripled
from
1950
to
2000.
Life
expectancy
soared.
The
boom
in
productivity after World War II made
goods better and cheaper at the same time . Things
that were
once
luxuries,
such
as
jet
travel
and
long-
distance
phone
calls,
became
necessities.
And
even
though
Americans
seemed
to
work
extraordinarily
hard,
their
pursuit
of
entertainment
turned
media and leisure into multibillion-
dollar industries.
那么，根据大多数标准衡量，你会说，现在的
美国人比上个世纪中叶富裕多了。不过，奇怪
的是，如果你问美国人有多幸福，你会发现
，他们并不比
1946
年时幸福（
19
46
年正式开始
对幸福状况进行调查）
。事实上，那些说自己
―
非常幸福
‖<
/p>
的人所占的比例自
20
世纪
70
年代
以来一直稳中有降
——
尽管
20
世纪
40
年代出生的人的收入在他们的工作生涯中平均增长了
1
16
％。你可以在大多数发达国家找到相似的数据。
By most standards, then, you would have
to say that Americans are better off now than they
were
in the middle of the last century.
Oddly, though, if you ask Americans how happy they
are, you
find that they are no happier
than they were in 1946 (which is when formal
surveys of happiness
started). In fact,
the percentage of people who say they are
the early 1970s
–
even though the income of people born in 1940 has,
on average , increased by
116 percent
over the course of their working lives. You can
find similar data for most developed
countries.
自工业革命开始以来，幸福与技术之间
的关系一直是社会批评家和哲学家们长期研究的课
题，然而，基本上还没有受到经济学家
和社会学家们的关注。经济学家理查德
·
伊斯特林在
经济繁荣和幸福的关系方面进行了具有开拓性的研究，
并于
1974
年发表了一篇题为
―
经济增
长改变人类命运吗？
‖
的著名论
文。伊斯特林表明，就发达国家而言，一个国家的收入和国
民的幸福之间没有真正的相互
关系。伊斯特林认为，金钱买不到幸福，至少在（金钱）达到
了一定程度以后是如此。<
/p>
伊斯特林认为，
尽管贫穷与苦难密不可分，但是，
一个国家一旦达
到稳定的中产阶级水平，富有似乎并没有让其国民感到更多的幸
福。
The relationship between
happiness and technology has been an eternal
subject for social critics
and
philosophers
since
the
advent
of
the
Industrial
Revolution.
But
it's
been
left
largely
unexamined
by
economists
and
social
scientists
.
The
truly
groundbreaking
work
on
the
relationship
between
prosperity
and
well-being
was
done
by
the
economist
Richard
Easterlin
,
who
in 1974 wrote a famous paper entitled
Easterlin showed that when it came to
developed countries, there was no real correlation
between
a
nation's
income
level
and
its
citizens'
happiness.
Money,
Easterlin
argued,
could
not
buy
happiness
–
at
least not after a certain point. Easterlin showed
that though poverty was strongly
correlated with misery, once a country
was solidly middle-class, getting wealthier did
not seem to
make its citizens any
happier.
这好像几乎是一种普遍现象。
实际上，
研究幸福的学者们最重要的观点之一是：
人们对好消
息很快便习以为常。
拿彩票中奖者为例。
一项重要的研
究表明，
尽管买彩票中奖的人中奖时
会感到非常非常幸福，
可这种兴奋很快就消逝了。
一段时间之后，
他们的心情和幸福感与中
奖之前没有什么两样。
This
seems
to
be
close
to
a
universal
phenomenon .
In
fact,
one
of
happiness
scholars'
most
important
insights
is
that
people
adapt
very
quickly
to
good
news .
Take
lottery
winners
for
example. One famous
study showed that although winners were very, very
happy when they won,
their
extreme
excitement
quickly
evaporated
,
and
after
a
while
their
moods
and
sense
of
well-being were
indistinguishable from what they had been before
the victory.
人们对待技术的态度也是一样的：
无论一种新事物多么引人注目，
也无论它使我们的生活变
得多么
舒适，
人们都认为这是理所当然的事情。
在技术世界，
你每天都会看到这一原则起作
用。
曾经一度被视
为非常神奇的东西很快就变得习以为常，
更糟的是，
当这些东西
运转不正
常时，还会令人沮丧。要把新技术问世之前的情形牢记在心原来是如此困难！<
/p>
So, too, with technology: no
matter how dramatic a new innovation is, no matter
how much easier
it makes our lives, it
is very easy to take it for granted. You can see
this principle at work in the
world of
technology every day, as things that once seemed
miraculous soon become common and,
worse,
frustrating
when
they
don't
work
perfectly.
It's
hard,
it
turns
out,
to
keep
in
mind
what
things were like before
the new technology came along.
那么，
我们对技术进步的快速吸收是否意味着技术没有发挥什么作用呢？不，
决非
如此。
不
论好歹，这只是把技术影响的问题变得更加复杂。
我们先从负面影响谈起。
在某些方面，技
术
显然使得生活更加糟糕了。
譬如，
我们马上会想到电话推销、<
/p>
交通阻塞以及身份资料失窃
等情况。
这些
都是让人们明显意识到不幸福的现象。
可是，
现代的技术评论文
章多半都没有
把焦点集中在具体的、有害的技术上，而是集中在了技术对人际关系的影响
上。
Does
our
fast
assimilation
of
technological
progress
mean,
then,
that
technology
makes
no
difference
?
No.
It
just
makes
the
question
of
technology's
impact,
for
good
or
ill
,
more
complicated. Let's start with the
downside . There are certain ways in which
technology makes life
obviously worse.
Telemarketing , traffic jams, and identity theft
all come to mind . These are all
phenomena
that
make
people
consciously
unhappy.
But
for
the
most
part,
modern
critiques
of
technology have focused not so much on
specific, bad technologies as the impact of
technology on
our human relationships.
在联了网的数据库世界里，
隐私变得越来越脆弱。
在许多工作场所，
诸如按键监控和电话全
程录音之类
的技术使得对员工的监视变得更加容易。人们对电视的攻击主要集中在以下方
面：技术扰
乱了人际关系、破坏了社区交往。
一些人甚至说，
电视是美国人
逐渐相互疏远的
罪魁祸首。同样也有人认为，互联网的负面影响进一步使人远离了我们常
说的
―
真实世界
‖
。
Privacy
has
become
increasingly
fragile
in
a
world
of
linked
databases .
In
many
workplaces,
technologies like keystroke monitoring
and full recordings of phone calls make it easier
to watch
workers.
The
notion
that
technology
disrupts
relationships
and
fractures
community
gained
mainstream prominence
as an attack on television. Some even say that TV
is chiefly responsible
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