【英语语言学习】人类最伟大的发明

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Writer Virginia Heffernan fell in love with the Internet through the strains of Pachelbel's Canon.

(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO, "GUITAR")

MARTIN: It was January of 2006, and this video appeared on YouTube in its early days.

(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO, "GUITAR")

MARTIN: The musician is a guy named funtwo, and the video is called simply, "Guitar." Virginia Heffernan had been reviewing television for The New York Times, a plum assignment where she spent a ton of time watching beautifully composed visuals. So this funtwo video captivated her. It was raw, unpolished.

VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN: All of a sudden, this thing that looked so different. You know, it was like you'd been used to men in suits and all of a sudden you saw the - your first hippie. He doesn't care that he's completely backlit. He doesn't care that his face is obscured. Like, he's playing into a web camera that's just attached to his computer. There are fewer than zero production values.

MARTIN: Heffernan was hooked. Her new book, "Magic And Loss: The Internet As Art," traces her own experience with the web and strips the technology away to reveal the beauty. Beauty, she says, that can make us feel insignificant¹ and overwhelmed.

HEFFERNAN: Google organizes all the world's information. There's no way that one small person in our small, fathom-long bodies could imagine containing all that information or even slaking² our thirst from it. But instead of admiring the sublime³ quality of what Google has managed to do, of what the Internet offers, we often just feel that inadequacy⁴ so strongly.

So instead of saying wow, these are the Alps and I'm tiny, we end up beholding⁵ the Internet and then telling ourselves that we must be brain-damaged because we can't take all this in. And I knew there was a way to stay sane⁶ in the face of the sublime, the face of the potentially overwhelming, and not sell our souls to try to approximate it.

MARTIN: There is this idea, though, propagated in elite⁷ intellectual circles that the Internet represents the end of culture, right? Social media in particular brings out the worst in humanity. We're addicted⁹ to our phones to such a degree that we ignore our kids. There's porn everywhere - just the click of a mouse. Youtube videos can distract us from real issues, real life, some say. You argue that the Internet itself is not just that. It is actually a giant artistic¹⁰ collaboration¹¹. How so?

HEFFERNAN: I think the other thing I brought to the funtwo video, that first video I loved on YouTube, was a real familiarity as a TV critic with writing about television that was on the arts pages of The New York Times next to opera, dance reviews, theater reviews, book reviews - all these things that we consider arts, but was in other sections of the paper and in the culture at large considered a public health hazard.

So how we were publishing articles saying television shortens your attention span, fattens¹² us up, makes us lazy, makes us lethargic¹³, and then on the arts pages talking about palette, talking about structure, talking about language, talking about characters, talking about pacing and music - all the things that you associate with art criticism.

I decided¹⁴ to make a virtue¹⁵ of that. Television - and later the Internet - gets some of its virtues¹⁶ in opposition¹⁷ to a culture that also calls it diseased. It's very energizing¹⁸ for a new art form or energizing for a new cultural form - like it was for punk music, like it was for Shakespeare's bawdy¹⁹ plays and comedies, like it was even for sentimental²⁰ novels to be called bad for you - what makes you indulge in it more.

It drives up the price of it so people start writing better and better. And with television, it ended in these so-called binge-worthy shows that are maxi-movies and certainly on par⁸ with the best movies in the theater right now.

MARTIN: Point me to some examples of how you think about the Internet as art. It's not just a place - and I mean beyond just the fact that an artist can literally²¹ post their art online and drive sales. You are making a bigger statement about the collective contribution of all our thoughts and ideas into some artistic good. How do you see that? How do you unpack²² that?

HEFFERNAN: Matthew Arnold called the arts the best that has been thought and said in the world. And if Google has had its way and has - is at least on a continuum with organizing all the world's information, then we have the worst and the best of what's been thought and said in the world increasingly on the Internet.

Let's just take tweets, for example. You're slaving over a very short-form kind of communication that you have to keep to characters. Anyone who experimented with writing - forget even about haiku, but, like, really challenging acrostics or villanelles knows that there's something fun about trying to fit a thought into a tight form like that.

You also have to account for the fact that you're shouting people out in a tweet, which is very much what Pope and Dryden and some of the Tory satirists did, you know, in the history of poetry. And then you also are writing, like, in a cryptic²³ way because, you know, sometimes you want to send a signal to some people and you want to send a signal to other people. Sometimes you want to do - be very aggressive and controlling. Sometimes you just want to be a good citizen and kind of give a, like, hooray or applause to someone else. Those are all different personalities²⁴ of poets.

Then you end up trying to create something that's consequential²⁵, that could potentially, because we're in a world that gives a lot of credit and power to poetry or these - whatever we want call these 140-character-long epigrams - they could get people fired. They could get people elected. They could divide friends. They could unite friends. They could brighten someone's day or wreck²⁶ someone's day.

MARTIN: It has power, yeah.

HEFFERNAN: It has power. I don't know the last time that a New Yorker poem - you know, which is nothing against The New Yorker, but that's the highest achievement of - still the highest achievement, I think, of American poets is to appear in The New Yorker - that a New Yorker poem was quoted and, you know, in an analog²⁷ way retweeted and that had, you know, giant effects on our culture. So, like, slaving over language to make it consequential, writing very formally and writing, you know, for a big - potentially big audience with impact? That sounds like we are in the age of poetry. I - it's hard to think of a time when poetry was more powerful.

MARTIN: Are we a more literate²⁸ culture because of the Internet today?

HEFFERNAN: I think we are reading more than ever before. It's true that bibliophilia, which is what the 20th century - you know, the love of books is. The 20th century associated literacy and learning with a love of books, of the codex that, you know, has a right-left page, and has a cover, and can be collected, and can collect dust and be in libraries. That was a 20th-century phenomenon. In this century, we are so literate, such fanatical readers - let's put it this way - that you will risk a fatal car accident to continue, quote, "texting," literally interacting with text. Reading it, writing it - it is our chief intoxicant, writing and consuming words.

MARTIN: Virginia Heffernan writes about digital culture for The New York Times Magazine. Her new book is called "Magic And Loss: The Internet As Art." Virginia, thanks so much.

HEFFERNAN: Thank you, Rachel.

1 insignificant   

adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的

参考例句：

• In winter the effect was found to be insignificant.在冬季，这种作用是不明显的。
• This problem was insignificant compared to others she faced.这一问题与她面临的其他问题比较起来算不得什么。

2 slaking   

n.熟化v.满足( slake的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The surface of the concrete floor was coated by a white layer of slaking-lime. “混凝土”地面涂有白色饰面，饰面是以石灰浆涂刷而成。 来自互联网
• Slaking thirst and helping produce saliva, the sweet-and-sour prune makes a good companion on your journey. 青津梅，止渴生津，旅途好伙伴。 来自互联网

3 sublime   

adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的

参考例句：

• We should take some time to enjoy the sublime beauty of nature.我们应该花些时间去欣赏大自然的壮丽景象。
• Olympic games play as an important arena to exhibit the sublime idea.奥运会，就是展示此崇高理念的重要舞台。

4 inadequacy   

n.无法胜任，信心不足

参考例句：

• the inadequacy of our resources 我们的资源的贫乏
• The failure is due to the inadequacy of preparations. 这次失败是由于准备不足造成的。

5 beholding   

v.看，注视( behold的现在分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟

参考例句：

• Beholding, besides love, the end of love,/Hearing oblivion beyond memory! 我看见了爱，还看到了爱的结局，／听到了记忆外层的哪一片寂寥！ 来自英汉 - 翻译样例 - 文学
• Hence people who began by beholding him ended by perusing him. 所以人们从随便看一看他开始的，都要以仔细捉摸他而终结。 来自辞典例句

6 sane   

adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的

参考例句：

• He was sane at the time of the murder.在凶杀案发生时他的神志是清醒的。
• He is a very sane person.他是一个很有头脑的人。

7 elite   

n.精英阶层；实力集团；adj.杰出的，卓越的

参考例句：

• The power elite inside the government is controlling foreign policy.政府内部的一群握有实权的精英控制着对外政策。
• We have a political elite in this country.我们国家有一群政治精英。

8 par   

n.标准，票面价值，平均数量；adj.票面的，平常的，标准的

参考例句：

• Sales of nylon have been below par in recent years.近年来尼龙织品的销售额一直不及以往。
• I don't think his ability is on a par with yours.我认为他的能力不能与你的能力相媲美。

9 addicted   

adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的

参考例句：

• He was addicted to heroin at the age of 17.他17岁的时候对海洛因上了瘾。
• She's become addicted to love stories.她迷上了爱情小说。

10 artistic   

adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的

参考例句：

• The picture on this screen is a good artistic work.这屏风上的画是件很好的艺术品。
• These artistic handicrafts are very popular with foreign friends.外国朋友很喜欢这些美术工艺品。

11 collaboration   

n.合作，协作；勾结

参考例句：

• The two companies are working in close collaboration each other.这两家公司密切合作。
• He was shot for collaboration with the enemy.他因通敌而被枪毙了。

12 fattens   

v.喂肥( fatten的第三人称单数 )；养肥（牲畜）；使（钱）增多；使（公司）升值

参考例句：

• The weekly with large fattens on sex, crime and scandal. 这家发行量甚大的周刊靠宣染性、罪和丑闻打开销路。 来自互联网
• It boosts consumers' real incomes and fattens firms' profit margins. 这将增加消费者的收入提高企业的利润幅度。 来自互联网

13 lethargic   

adj.昏睡的，懒洋洋的

参考例句：

• He felt too miserable and lethargic to get dressed.他心情低落无精打采，完全没有心思穿衣整装。
• The hot weather made me feel lethargic.炎热的天气使我昏昏欲睡。

14 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

15 virtue   

n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力

参考例句：

• He was considered to be a paragon of virtue.他被认为是品德尽善尽美的典范。
• You need to decorate your mind with virtue.你应该用德行美化心灵。

16 virtues   

美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处

参考例句：

• Doctors often extol the virtues of eating less fat. 医生常常宣扬少吃脂肪的好处。
• She delivered a homily on the virtues of family life. 她进行了一场家庭生活美德方面的说教。

17 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

18 energizing   

v.给予…精力，能量( energize的现在分词 )；使通电

参考例句：

• a refreshing and energizing fruit drink 提神并增加体能的果汁饮料
• The time required after energizing a device, before its rated output characteristics begin to apply. 从设备通电到它开始提供额定输出特性之间所需的时间。 来自辞典例句

19 bawdy   

adj.淫猥的，下流的；n.粗话

参考例句：

• After a few drinks,they were all singing bawdy songs at the top of their voices.喝了几杯酒之后，他们就扯着嗓门唱一些下流歌曲。
• His eyes were shrewd and bawdy.他的一双眼睛机灵而轻佻。

20 sentimental   

adj.多愁善感的，感伤的

参考例句：

• She's a sentimental woman who believes marriage comes by destiny.她是多愁善感的人，她相信姻缘命中注定。
• We were deeply touched by the sentimental movie.我们深深被那感伤的电影所感动。

21 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

22 unpack   

vt.打开包裹（或行李），卸货

参考例句：

• I must unpack before dinner.我得在饭前把行李打开。
• She said she would unpack the items later.她说以后再把箱子里的东西拿出来。

23 cryptic   

adj.秘密的，神秘的，含义模糊的

参考例句：

• She made a cryptic comment about how the film mirrored her life.她隐晦地表示说这部电影是她人生的写照。
• The new insurance policy is written without cryptic or mysterious terms.新的保险单在编写时没有隐秘条款或秘密条款。

24 personalities   

n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There seemed to be a degree of personalities in her remarks.她话里有些人身攻击的成分。
• Personalities are not in good taste in general conversation.在一般的谈话中诽谤他人是不高尚的。

25 consequential   

adj.作为结果的，间接的；重要的

参考例句：

• She was injured and suffered a consequential loss of earnings.她受了伤因而收入受损。
• This new transformation is at least as consequential as that one was.这一新的转变至少和那次一样重要。

26 wreck   

n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难

参考例句：

• Weather may have been a factor in the wreck.天气可能是造成这次失事的原因之一。
• No one can wreck the friendship between us.没有人能够破坏我们之间的友谊。

27 analog   

n.类似物，模拟

参考例句：

• The analog signal contains high-frequency video information,which helps make up the picture.模拟信号包括有助于构成图像的高频视频信息。
• The analog computer measures continuously,without proceeding step by step.模拟计算机不是一步一步地进行，而是连续地进行量度。

28 literate   

n.学者；adj.精通文学的，受过教育的

参考例句：

• Only a few of the nation's peasants are literate.这个国家的农民中只有少数人能识字。
• A literate person can get knowledge through reading many books.一个受过教育的人可以通过读书而获得知识。