学生双语报40期18.pptVIP

40期 * In the Information Age, with constant connection to home and work, weve diluted what it means to experience someplace new. (Henry Lin/First Light/Corbis) Road-warrior hell: I get off a 15-hour flight from North America and turn on my BlackBerry at some Asian airport. Instead of focusing on the immediate environment and the ride into town, I am engrossed in the several dozen e-mails that piled up while I was en route, a third of which require a serious response, and one or two of which relay worrying news. As if that isn’t enough of a distraction: throughout all my journeys, because of the 12-hour time difference, each morning in Asia begins with a slew of e-mails from the East Coast, again requiring responses, again relaying crises to deal with. Wherever we are, we are all always available, and everybody knows it. The media tell us how lucky we are to live in the Information Age. I believe we have created a hell on Earth for ourselves. B 作为一个商旅达人我常遭遇这样的梦魇：当我坐了15小时的飞机从北美到达亚洲的某个机场，一下飞机便打开黑莓手机，我既顾不上看一眼周围的环境也没有打算着如何乘车进城，而是埋头苦读飞行时到达的几十封电子邮件。其中有三分之一的邮件需要认真地去回复，还有一两封带来了令人担忧的消息。似乎这些还不足以让人心烦:整个旅行中，由于12个小时的时差，在亚洲醒来的每个早晨我都收到来自美国东海岸的一大堆邮件。同样都需要回复，同样都有亟待处理的事情。无论我们身处何方，都能伸手可及，这一点大家似乎都知道。媒体告诉我们生活在这样一个信息时代我们是多么幸运。而我相信我们为自己创造一个了地球上的地狱。 Let me bore you with the old days: In the early 1980s, nobody had advance notice of my arrival anywhere. I’d fly to Addis Ababa to cover a famine, or to Sarajevo to cover the preparations for the Winter Olympics, armed with only about eight names and telephone numbers. Because I did not have to waste time sending e-mails back and forth for days to set up appointments, I had that much more time to read about the history and geography of the country to which I was headed. And you know what? When I arrived and dialed those numbers, about half the people on the list answered and were pleased to meet with me: after all, I had come all this way, completely dependent on their hospitality. And so hospitality was offered. And those people introduced m