【一起听英语】过去十年间的变化（在线收听）

十年来，人们的衣食住行发生着哪些变化，其中，哪些变化是最大的呢？

Kate Hello and welcome to this week’s 6 Minute English. Well this is one of our

last episodes of the year, indeed of the decade. So in today’s programme we’re

going to be talking about how various things have changed over the last 10

years – the noughties. (This is the expression some people use to describe the

years 2000 to 2009 because the numbers include a ‘nought’ or zero). So

Rebecca , what has changed for you since the year 2000.

Rebecca answers

Kate Well one thing which has changed everybody’s lives dramatically throughout

the world in the last ten years is the Internet.Can you cast your mind back to

the year 1999 and try to remember how you used the internet back then?

Rebecca answers

Kate Yes, I remember having a strong sense of the Web’s possibilities but I never

imagined what a huge part it would play in my everyday life - working with it,

using it at home, for keeping in touch with friends email, listening to radio,

music and booking holidays etc.

Rebecca answers

Kate Well, the Web has changed all our lives in so many ways and today we’re

going to focus on one aspect of it – social networking. Are you a social

networker?

Rebecca answers 

6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009

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Kate gives some more examples. Here's my question for this week. How many users

does Facebook have?

a) 100 million users

b) 200 million users

c) 300 million users

Rebecca answers

Kate Good answer. I’ll let you know if you were right at the end of the programme.

Can you guess how Facebook might have started?

Rebecca I think it was something to do with Harvard university in Amercia – is that

right?

Kate Yes! Originally a ‘facebook’ was the name given to a document given

American students when they first arrived at university designed to put them in

touch with other students with whom they might be friends. Then a young

student call Mark Zukerman decided to put it on the web rather than using

paper.

We're going to hear from Chris Cox, the vice president of ‘Facebook’. Before

we listen can you explain what upload means?

Rebecca Well upload means to put something on the web. You can upload pictures,

music, videos. The opposite of course is to ‘download’ which means you take

materials from the web and put them on to your own computer or Ipod.

Kate Thanks – well let’s listen. Can you tell me what Facebook was like in its early

days? 

6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009

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Extract 1

Mark built a service that allowed you to upload your picture and your name and where you

came from, your birthday, very basic things and the service had a feature that said you could

add somebody as a friend.

Rebecca He said that Mark built a service which allowed you to upload your

picture, name, your birthday and basic things. More or less what we see on the

site today but just more basic.

Kate And then what happened? Chris Cox again.

Extract 2

Within a matter of month or so I think pretty much everybody at Harvard was on Facebook

and we slowly launched it at one university after another and then suddenly Mark’s inbox

was full of other universities saying could you launch this here. And there was a very

common story which was within weeks of the launch of Facebook.com at a school it would

become….90 % of the student body would join.

Rebecca So it seemed become successful very quickly. He said that within a month

everybody was on Facebook and soon afterwards all the other universities were

asking for it. He used the words inbox – this is of course his email inbox where

he receives emails.

Kate Thanks so there we have just one example of how our everyday lives have

been changed by the internet and social networking in the last ten years. We

are now able to stay in touch with friends in a way which was unimaginable

ten years ago. Now the answer to the question I asked you.

Rebecca I think I said… 

6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009

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Kate And you were correct. Let's have a quick re-cap of the vocabulary we've come

across today. First of all we had noughties, upload, download, inbox and

launch.

Rebecca: Goodbye!