科技改变生活英语

8. The Airplane

Just as the locomotive made the world a smaller place in the nineteenth century, the airplane did the same for us in the twentieth century, shrinking our planet to the point that a person could fly anywhere in the world in a matter of hours.
Science and Technology Are Changing Our Life
Wang M F
2014-4-8

There can be no doubt that the twentieth century is one of the most remarkable in human history for its previously unparalleled rate of technological advances and scientific discoveries, a rate that continues to this day. In fact, there were so many new technologies invented and discoveries made in the last century that it’s difficult to pare the list down to just the ten. However, now we look back to those ten innovations or technologies that have had the greatest influence on humanity— both positively and the negatively.
10. Nuclear Power

Nuclear power was to the twentieth century what steam power had been to the nineteenth: a game changer. Suddenly humanity had a power source that didn’t pollute, was efficient and practically unlimited, and so had the potential to change the planet overnight. Unfortunately, it was a two-edged sword in that this same energy source could be used to create the most destructive weapons in history, threatening human survival with its very presence. However, it is hard to deny the overall positive impact nuclear power has had. The fear of mutually assured destruction probably prevented the world from experiencing a third world war.
5.

Telephone
"The telephone," wrote Alexander Graham Bell in an 1877 prospectus drumming up support for his new invention, "may be briefly described as an electrical contrivance for reproducing in distant places the tones and articulations of a speaker's voice." As for connecting one such contrivance to another, he suggested possibilities that admittedly sounded utopian: "It is conceivable that cables of telephone wires could be laid underground, or suspended overhead, communicating by branch wires with private dwellings, country houses, shops, manufactories, etc."
2. The Internet

While the airplane shrank our planet to the point that one could fly from New York to London in six hours, the internet made it possible to be there in a few seconds. It allows truth to make it into and out of repressive countries, it foments revolutions, and spreads lies at the speed of light. It also gives anyone the ability to buy and sell almost anything imaginable, find and torment old school mates, watch the latest you-tube videos, and even find their perfect life partner, all for a few bucks a month. Oh, and you can also get useful information off it if you don’t mind scrolling through 15,000 hits to find out just how long snails really live.
6. Rocketry

In the twentieth century, rockets became bigger and more powerful. Most importantly, they became controllable, which suddenly made them useful both as weapons of war and, even more vitally, as our means of accessing outer space. Without the rocket, it is safe to say we would not only have never gone to the moon or visited every planet in our solar system. Rockets also place satellites into orbit around our planet, so without them we also wouldn’t be able to use GPS, predict the weather, make international calls or, for the most part, even use our cell phones much of the time.
10. Nuclear Power
10. Nuclear Power
10. Nuclear Power
9. The Personal Computer

It’s difficult to imagine our world today without computers. Of course, they have been around since World War Two, but they were clunky, massively expensive things that had all the calculating power of a brick. When Steve Wozniak and Stephen Jobs introduced the Apple in 1976, however, it changed everything and the rest is, as they say, history.
5.
Telephone
4. Medical advancement


Until Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, almost any little bug that someone picked up was potentially fatal. Once penicillin—and later a whole range of other antibiotics—came on the scene, however, death due to bacterial infection became rare, resulting in a greatly reduced mortality rate and much longer life-span. It also rendered many scourges of the past— from small pox and typhoid to gonorrhea and syphilis—obsolete or, at least in the case of venereal disease, something easily treatable. WHO Coordinator for Epidemiology and Burden of Disease Colin Mathers said: "The life expectancy worldwide has increased from 64 years in 1990 to 70 years in 2011." The data provided in the report show that Japan, Switzerland and San Marino highest average life expectancy reached 83 years of age
8. The Airplane
7. The Automobile

wenku.baidu.com
Though under development in Europe during the nineteenth century, the automobile didn’t really become a practical and reliable source of transportation until the twentieth century. 2013, China's automobile production and sales both more than 20 million, has been reelected for five consecutive years in the world. The number of private cars in China reached one hundred million.
3. Television

I know it destroys brain cells and renders people emotionally and psychologically damaged, but really, where would we be without the boob tube? It is society’s baby-sitter, news source, teacher, entertainer, and story-teller. Worse, most of us would have no idea what to do with our time without it, which is probably the saddest commentary of all.