全新版大学英语综合教程第四册Unit6A.docVIP

As the pace of life in todays world grows ever faster, we seem forever on the go. With so much to do and so little time to do it in, how are we to cope? Richard Tomkins sets about untangling the problem and comes up with an answer.随着当今世界生活节奏日益加快，我们似乎一直在不停奔忙。事情那么多，时间却那么少，我们该怎么办？里查德·汤姆金斯着手解决这一问题，并提出了建议。 Old Father Time Becomes a TerrorRichard Tomkins1 Once upon a time, technology, we thought, would make our lives easier. Machines were expected to do our work for us, leaving us with ever-increasing quantities of time to waste away on idleness and pleasure.时间老人成了可怕的老人理查德·汤姆金斯从前，我们以为技术发展会使我们的生活变得更安逸。那时我们觉得机器会替代我们工作，我们则有越来越多的时间休闲娱乐。　2 But instead of liberating us, technology has enslaved us. Innovations are occurring at a bewildering rate: as many now arrive in a year as once arrived in a millennium. And as each invention arrives, it eats further into our time.但技术发展没有把我们解放出来，而是使我们成为奴隶。新技术纷至沓来，令人目不暇接：一年涌现的技术创新相当于以前一千年。而每一项新发明问世，就进一步吞噬我们的光阴。3 The motorcar, for example, promised unimaginable levels of personal mobility. But now, traffic in cities moves more slowly than it did in the days of the horse-drawn carriage, and we waste our lives stuck in traffic jams.比如，汽车曾使我们希望个人出行会方便得让人难以想象。可如今，城市车辆运行得比马车时代还要慢，我们因交通堵塞而困在车内，徒然浪费生命。4 The aircraft promised new horizons, too. The trouble is, it delivered them. Its very existence created a demand for time-consuming journeys that we would never previously have dreamed of undertaking -- the transatlantic shopping expedition, for example, or the trip to a convention on the other side of the world.飞机也曾有可能为我们拓展新天地。问题是，飞机提供了新的天地。其存在本身产生了对耗时的长途旅行的需求，这种旅行，如越洋购物，或远道前往地球的另一半参加会议，以前我们是根本无法想象的。5 In most cases, technology has not saved time, but enabled us to do more things. In the home, washing machines promised to free women from having to toil over the laundry. In reality, they encouraged us to change our clothes daily instead of weekly, creating seven times as much washing and ironing. Similarly, the weekly bath h