本书内容是关于未来科技的我们将在书中探讨几个关键领(精)

This 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.

本书内容是关于未来科技的。我们将在书中探讨几个关键领域取得的许多最新进展，并尝试在有限方面，预言未来十五年或更长时间里，这些新科技会把我们带往何处。

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

听起来这似乎很好办到，其实不然。

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

（科技是我们当代起支配的力量，未来大概也会如此，其作用方面超出我们所能枚举。）

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

科技进步如此迅速，没有哪个科学家或工程师能在他自己的专业领域完全跟上其脚步，更别说通用技术这一更大范围了。

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

（科技渗透到了我们生活的方方面面，也塑造了我们生活的方方面面。）

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.

我们象鱼儿生活在海里一样生活在科技的海洋里，只有极少的机会能够预测到科技进步的细节之处。

(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.)

（不过，这样的预言工作是值得进行的。不管我们能找到哪些关于未来的暗示，都会帮助我们做好迎接转变的准备。适度的预言，趋势变化的证据，几项可以期待的具体进展，都比毫无戒备的要好。虽然科技使得现在比过去更不稳定，

并且显然会让未来更加喧嚣而动荡，但有理由相信，作为结果，我们的生活，总之会更加美好。）

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

在一个充满不安的挑战的时代，这一点是我们能够放心的。

For an idea of what is to come—in magnitude if not in specifics—look 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.

至于将要来临的是什么（从大的方面而不是细节方面来看）？过去则可为借鉴。已往九十年，地球变小了，人类的经验急剧增加，已经远远超出我们祖父母时代所出生的人们所能认知的范围了。

(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.)

（美国的创建者们建立起他们的土地民主制度之后的一百年，他们的几乎所有子孙一直居住在小农场里。第一次世界大战以来，科技使我们能够从马拉犁的后面解脱出来，站到流水线旁，走进办公室里。今天，新的技术又让我们当中的许多位能够脱离办公室，在自己家办公，甚至是一边赶路，一边工作。）

(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).

（近至１９２０年，美国人的平均预期寿命只有５４岁。到１９９０年代，美国人的平均预期寿命达到了７５岁，其中男性７２岁，女性７９岁。今后的二十年，预期寿命将再次增长，甚至是大大增长。这次增长，不光是对于刚出生的婴儿适用，对那些早已步入成年的人也是一样。

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

在交通和通讯领域，变化来得同样翻天覆地。