新世纪大学英语 4 课文 翻译2.Technology and Happiness

Technology and Happiness

James Surowiecki

The text is taken from Technology Review, January 2005.

1 In the 20th century, Americans, Europeans, and East Asians enjoyed

material and technological advances that were unimaginable in previous eras. In the United States, for instance, gross domestic

product per capita tripled from 1950 to 2000. Life expectancy soared. The boom in productivity after World War II made goods better and cheaper at the same time. Things that were once luxuries, such as jet travel and long-distance phone calls, became necessities. And even though Americans seemed to work extraordinarily hard, their pursuit of entertainment turned media and leisure into multibillion-dollar industries.

技术与幸福

詹姆斯·萨洛维奇

20世纪的美国人、欧洲人和东亚人都享受到了过去历代人都无法想象的物质和技术进步带来的乐趣。譬如，在美国，从1950年到2000年国民生产总值翻了3倍。人们的寿命大幅度提高。二战后生产力的迅速发展使商品变得价廉物美。诸如乘飞机旅游和打长途电话等曾经是奢侈的事情成了生活不可或缺的一部分。

2 By most standards, then, you would have to say that Americans are

better off now than they were in the middle of the last century. Oddly, though, if you ask Americans how happy they are, you find that they

are no happier than they were in 1946 (which is when formal surveys of happiness started). In fact, the percentage of people who say they are \— even though the income of people born in 1940 has, on average, increased by 116 percent over the course of their working lives. You can find similar data for most developed countries.

那么，根据大多数标准衡量，你会说，现在的美国人比上个世纪中叶富裕多了。不过，奇怪的是，如果你问美国人有多幸福，你会发现，他们并不比1946年时幸福（1946年正式开始对幸福状况进行调查）。事实上，那些说自己“非常幸福”的人所占的比例自20世纪70年代以来一直稳中有降 —— 尽管20世纪40年代出生的人的收入在他们的工作生涯中平均增长了116％。你可以在大多数发达国家找到相似的数据。

3 The relationship between happiness and technology has been an

eternal subject for social critics and philosophers since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. But it's been left largely unexamined by

economists and social scientists. The truly groundbreaking work on the relationship between prosperity and well-being was done by the economist Richard Easterlin, who in 1974 wrote a famous paper entitled \showed that when it came to developed countries, there was no real correlation between a nation's income level and its citizens' happiness. Money, Easterlin argued, could not buy happiness — at least not after a certain point. Easterlin showed that though poverty was strongly correlated with misery, once a country was solidly middle-class, getting wealthier did not seem to make its citizens any happier.

自工业革命开始以来，幸福与技术之间的关系一直是社会批评家和哲学家们长期研究的课题，然而，基本上还没有受到经济学家和社会学家们的关注。经济学家理查德·伊斯特林在经济繁荣和幸福的关系方面进行了具有开拓性的研究，并于1974年发表了一篇题为“经济增长改变人类命运吗？”的著名论文。伊斯特林表明，就发达国家而言，一个国家的收入和国民的幸福之间没有真正的相互关系。伊斯特林认为，金钱买不到幸福，至少在（金钱）达到了一定程度以后是如此。伊斯特林认为，尽管贫穷与苦难密不可分，但是，一个国家一旦达到稳定的中产阶级水平，富有似乎并没有让其国民感到更多的幸福。

4 This seems to be close to a universal phenomenon. In fact, one of

happiness scholars' most important insights is that people adapt very

quickly to good news. Take lottery winners for example. One famous study showed that although winners were very, very happy when they won, their extreme excitement quickly evaporated, and after a while their moods and sense of well-being were indistinguishable from what they had been before the victory.

这好像几乎是一种普遍现象。实际上，研究幸福的学者们最重要的观点之一是：人们对好消息很快便习以为常。拿彩票中奖者为例。一项重要的研究表明，尽管买彩票中奖的人中奖时会感到非常非常幸福，可这种兴奋很快就消逝了。一段时间之后，他们的心情和幸福感与中奖之前没有什么两样。

5 So, too, with technology: no matter how dramatic a new innovation

is, no matter how much easier it makes our lives, it is very easy to take it for granted. You can see this principle at work in the world of

technology every day, as things that once seemed miraculous soon become common and, worse, frustrating when they don't work perfectly. It's hard, it turns out, to keep in mind what things were like before the new technology came along.

人们对待技术的态度也是一样的：无论一种新事物多么引人注目，也无论它使我们的生活变得多么舒适，人们都认为这是理所当然的事情。在技术世界，你每天都会看到这一原则起作用。曾经一度被视为非常神奇的东西很快就变得习以为常，更糟的是，当这些东西运转不正常时，还会令人沮丧。要把新技术问世之前的情形牢记在心原来是如此困难！

6 Does our fast assimilation of technological progress mean, then, that

technology makes no difference? No. It just makes the question of technology's impact, for good or ill, more complicated. Let's start with the downside. There are certain ways in which technology makes life obviously worse. Telemarketing, traffic jams, and identity theft all come to mind. These are all phenomena that make people consciously unhappy. But for the most part, modern critiques of technology have focused not so much on specific, bad technologies as the impact of technology on our human relationships.

那么，我们对技术进步的快速吸收是否意味着技术没有发挥什么作用呢？不，决非如此。不论好歹，这只是把技术影响的问题变得更加复杂。我们先从负面影响谈起。在某些方面，技术显然使得生活更加糟糕了。譬如，我们马上会想到电话推销、交通阻塞以及身份资料失窃等情况。这些都是让人们明显意识到不幸福的现象。可是，现代的技术评论文章多半都没有把焦点集中在具体的、有害的技术上，而是集中在了技术对人际关系的影响上。

7 Privacy has become increasingly fragile in a world of linked

databases. In many workplaces, technologies like keystroke

monitoring and full recordings of phone calls make it easier to watch workers. The notion that technology disrupts relationships and fractures community gained mainstream prominence as an attack on television. Some even say that TV is chiefly responsible for the gradual isolation of Americans from each other. Similarly, the harmful effects of the Internet, which supposedly further isolates people from what is often called \

在联了网的数据库世界里，隐私变得越来越脆弱。在许多工作场所，诸如按键监控和电话全程录音之类的技术使得对员工的监视变得更加容易。人们对电视的攻击主要集中在以下方面：技术扰乱了人际关系、破坏了社区交往。一些人甚至说，电视是美国人逐渐相互疏远的罪魁祸首。同样也有人认为，互联网的负面影响进一步使人远离了我们常说的“真实世界”。

8 This broad criticism of technology's impact on relationships is an

interesting one and is especially relevant to the question of happiness, because one of the few things we can say for certain is that the more friends and the closer relationships people have, the happier they tend to be.

这种广义上关于技术影响人际关系的批评颇有趣味，尤与幸福的问题相关，因为我们真正有把握说清楚的事情没有几件，但其中之一是：人们的朋友越多，关系越密切，就越幸福。

9 Today, technological change is so rapid that when you buy

something, you do so knowing that in a few months there's going to be a better, faster version of the product, and that you're going to be stuck with the old one. Someone else, in other words, has it better. It's as if disappointment were built into acquisition from the very beginning.

今天的技术变化异常神速，购买某种产品时你就知道，再过几个月，比这个产品性能更好、运作更快的款式就会问世，而你却还得使用旧款式的产品。换句话说，别人买到的产品要比你的好。这种失望感仿佛从开始购买这件产品时就已经存在了。

10 Daily stress, an annoying sense of disappointment, fear that the

government knows a lot more about you than you would like it to — these are obviously some of the ways in which technology reduces people's sense of well-being. But the most important impact of

technology on people's sense of well-being is in the field of health care. Before the Industrial Revolution, two out of every three Europeans died before the age of 30. Today, life expectancy for women in Western Europe is almost 80 years, and it continues to increase. The point is obvious: the vast majority of people are happy to be alive, and the more time they get on earth, the better off they feel they'll be. But until very recently, life for the vast majority of people was nasty, rough, and short. Technology has changed that, at least for people in the rich world. As much as we should worry about the rising cost of health care and the problem of the uninsured, it's also worth remembering how valuable for our spirits as well as our bodies are the benefits that medical technology has brought us.

日常生活的压力，一种令人烦恼的失望感、对政府知道你的情况超出你所希望程度的恐惧感 —— 这些显然都是技术降低了人们幸福感的几个方面。然而，技术对人们的幸福感最重要的影响是在医疗保健方面。工业革命以前，每三个欧洲人就有两个的寿命不足30岁。今天，西欧妇女的寿命差不多是80岁，而且还会继续提高。道理很清楚：绝大多数人很乐意活下去，他们在地球上生活的时间越长，感觉就越好。可是，不久前，绝大多数人还过着龌龊不堪、畜生般的生活，而且生命非常短暂。技术改变了这种状况，至少对于富裕国家的人们来说是如此。我们在该为医疗保健费用的提高和没有参加保险的人们的问题而担忧的同时，也应该记住，医疗技术带给我们身体上和精神上的好处是多么有价值。

11 On a deeper level, what the technological improvement of our

health and our longevity emphasizes is a paradox of any discussion of happiness on a national or a global level: even though people may not be happier, even though they are wealthier and possess more technology, they're still as hungry as ever for more time. It's like that old joke: the food may not be so great, but we want the portions to be as big as possible.

从更深的层次上说，我们在健康和长寿方面所取得的进步却强调了在国家和全球层面讨论幸福问题的一个自相矛盾的说法。即使人们不会更幸福，即使他们更加富裕并拥有更多技术，他们还会像以前那样渴望长寿。这就像那个古老的笑话一样：食品也许并不好，可我们都想让自己得到的那一份尽量大。