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This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute.

We humans love a good story. We tell stories to entertain, to inform, even to pass the time. And we’ve been telling tales for, oh, the past 50,000 years. Then came the written word. Writing stuff¹ down has its benefits. It’s more permanent and doesn’t depend on anyone’s memory. And it allows you to take in information at your own pace, whenever and wherever you want. So writing has shaped our culture. But the spoken word may be making a comeback.

Recording² and digitizing speech has become easy, which is why you’re hearing me now. It’s also pretty cheap. For example, in the September 26th issue of Science, a researcher at the University of Maryland notes that with about $100 worth of disk storage you can record everything you speak or hear this year. Although he doesn’t say why you’d want to. And now that voice recognition³ software has gotten better at interpreting⁴ speech, we should soon be able to search audio⁵ like we do text to find what we want to listen to. Who knows what this might mean for society. Maybe 100 years from now, we’ll finally have a good answer for why Johnny can’t read: because he no longer has to.

Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin.

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收听单词发音

1 stuff
n.原料，材料，东西；vt.填满；吃饱
参考例句：
We could supply you with the stuff in the raw tomorrow.明天我们可以供应你原材料。 He is not the stuff.他不是这个材料。

2 recording
n.录音，记录
参考例句：
How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？ I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

3 recognition
n.承认，认可，认出，认识
参考例句：
The place has changed beyond recognition.这地方变得认不出来了。 A sudden smile of recognition flashed across his face.他脸上掠过一丝笑意，表示认识对方。

4 interpreting
v.解释( interpret的现在分词 )；理解；把…理解为；演绎（按自己的感觉演奏音乐或表现角色）
参考例句：
The girl is interpreting for foreign visitors. 那女孩在替外宾当口译。来自《简明英汉词典》 The drawing procedure is reviewed before interpreting this figure. 在解释这个图以前，先复习一下画图的方法。来自辞典例句

5 audio
n./adj.音频(响)(的)；声音(的)，听觉(的)
参考例句：
Often,the meeting is recorded on audio or video media for later reference.通常这种会议会以视频或者音频形式记录下来，供以后查阅。 You don't even have to pay for audio programs.你大可不必为自己听这些节目付费。