VOA慢速英语2010年-A Whole New World, Brought to Us by Gi

This is the VOA Special English Technology Report.

As the year comes to an end, we talk about some of the top technology developments of the last ten years. The technological¹ revolution is changing the way we work and play.

Mobile phones became smartphones, with abilities like computers. Many people started reading books on electronic readers. Televisions became high definition and the screens became flat. Digital music players got smaller in size but large enough for people to download their entire music collections.

Worldwide, broadband subscriptions² passed five hundred million. And at least two billion people are expected to be online by the end of this year.

Stephen Baker³ is the vice⁴ president of industry analysis for the consumer electronics market research group NPD. He says the technological developments of the twenty-first century have brought about some historic advances in consumer electronics.

STEPHEN BAKER: “Ten years ago is irrelevant⁵ in consumer electronics. Ten years ago might as well be a hundred years. Certainly if you look back at the way people interacted with electronics in two thousand and the way they interact with them today, there is no comparison.

Televisions have become flat and high definition, just one example of how consumer electronics have changed

"Ten years ago we didn’t have flat-panel televisions. We really didn’t have mobile Web devices or smartphones. We didn’t have e-book readers. Very, very few consumers had notebook computers. There was no Wi-Fi. Just not even a similar experience to what the world was like ten years ago.”

Bruce Bachenheimer is with the MIT Enterprise Forum⁶ in New York. He is also the director of entrepreneurship at Pace University. We spoke⁷ with him about what he believes are the most important developments of the twenty-first century.

BRUCE BACHENHEIMER: “If I were looking at technology that has really impacted us over the last ten years, I would go in order: mobile computing⁸, the proliferation of digital media content, broadband -- mobile and at-home access -- social media platforms and user-generated content, cloud computing, digital photography and GPS. And what I mean by GPS is GPS for the masses, although global positioning systems have been around for quite a while.”

An amateur trader, Yan Qin, checks her smartphone for stock reports in New York on December 7

Mr. Bachenheimer says all of these things have worked together to revolutionize technology. And, he says the technology is constantly changing, faster than at any other time in history.

BRUCE BACHENHEIMER: “The life cycle of these products are so much shorter. If you look at having a telephone, a home phone back in the nineteen fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties, it was exactly the same phone. Nothing changed for three or four decades.

"Basically you had a choice of three colors, tan, white or black. And you could either have it mounted on a wall or on a table top, whereas now you look at something like a cell phone. How many people have a cell phone that's more than a year or two old?”

And that's the VOA Special English Technology Report, written by June Simms. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and iTunes at VOA Learning English. I'm Steve Ember.

　

1 technological   

adj.技术的；工艺的

参考例句：

• A successful company must keep up with the pace of technological change.一家成功的公司必须得跟上技术变革的步伐。
• Today,the pace of life is increasing with technological advancements.当今， 随着科技进步，生活节奏不断增快。

2 subscriptions   

n.（报刊等的）订阅费( subscription的名词复数 )；捐款；（俱乐部的）会员费；捐助

参考例句：

• Subscriptions to these magazines can be paid in at the post office. 这些杂志的订阅费可以在邮局缴纳。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Payment of subscriptions should be made to the club secretary. 会费应交给俱乐部秘书。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 baker   

n.面包师

参考例句：

• The baker bakes his bread in the bakery.面包师在面包房内烤面包。
• The baker frosted the cake with a mixture of sugar and whites of eggs.面包师在蛋糕上撒了一层白糖和蛋清的混合料。

4 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

5 irrelevant   

adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的

参考例句：

• That is completely irrelevant to the subject under discussion.这跟讨论的主题完全不相关。
• A question about arithmetic is irrelevant in a music lesson.在音乐课上，一个数学的问题是风马牛不相及的。

6 forum   

n.论坛，讨论会

参考例句：

• They're holding a forum on new ways of teaching history.他们正在举行历史教学讨论会。
• The organisation would provide a forum where problems could be discussed.这个组织将提供一个可以讨论问题的平台。

7 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

8 computing   

n.计算

参考例句：

• to work in computing 从事信息处理
• Back in the dark ages of computing, in about 1980, they started a software company. 早在计算机尚未普及的时代（约1980年），他们就创办了软件公司。