Transcript An Interactive Life

An Interactive Life
By
Barbara Kantrowitz with Joshua
Cooper Ramoby
Background Information
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The text is taken from American Newsweek.
Newsweek is American news weekly established in
Dayton, Ohio in 1933. In it domestic and
international news is summarized, analyzed and
categorized according to topics each week. It also has
special sections devoted to arts, science, medicine,
sports, etc. it is one of the three largest newsweeklies
of America and has a wide domestic and international
circulation. The authors of the text, Barbara
Kantrowitz and Joshua Cooper Ramo are regular
contributors to Newsweek
The general idea of the text
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An interactive life will put the world at your
finger tips, changing the ways you shop, play
and learn. The ultimate promise of the
interactive life is that you will be able to get a
large amount of information over a wide range
of topics by pressing a button. The dreams are
possible thought there’s a dark side. The
advice is “hang on for the ride”—wait for the
future changes.
Words and expressions
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the display: the display of various
phonographs invented by Edison and
other competitors represent the
development of the phonograph
machine in the tens of years/time of
their development, and their
development reflect the change of
idea and purpose of the recording of
sound in people’s mind.
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Interactivity:
Interactive: (computer计) that
allows information to be passed
continuously and in both directions
between a computer and the person
who use it/交互式的，人机对话的；互动
的
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hype: n. (infml. often derog.) loud,
exaggerated promotion or publicity;
attempts to get a lot of public attention for
things or people by saying loudly and
often that they are very good, or better
than they really are/夸张的宣传（某事物）
e.g. media hype 传媒宣传
to hype v. hyping their latest record with a
lot of interviews 借大量采访大肆宣传他们的最
新唱片
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Terminator XII: an
American science
fiction movie series,
starring the popular
actor, Arnold
Schwarzengger. The
number XII implies a
future installment of
the series.
终结者第十二季
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nailing down: making sure, settling
to nail sb. down: a) to force (a person) to state clearly
their intention or wishes./强迫（某人）表明意图
e.g. Before they repair the car, nail them down to a
price.(=make them tell how much it will cost).
他们修车前，先让他们把价钱讲明白
b) AmE to reach a final and definite decision
about something/[美]最终确定，对…做出定论
Two days isn’t enough time to nail down the details of an
agreement.
要把协议的所有的细节都确定下来，两天的时间是不够的。
nail sth．down: make sth．secure with nails; define
sth．precisely 将某物用钉子钉牢，确定某物
例： they haven’t nailed down when and where to
have a meeting．开会的时间和地点尚未确定。
to nail sth. up: If you nail sth. up, you fix it to a vertical
surface using nails.
e.g. the warning notice that he had nailed up on the pole
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Infrastructure: the basic systems
or structures that a country or
organization needs in order to work
properly, for example, transport,
communications, and banking
systems/基础设施（如运输，通讯，银行
制度等），基础结构
A country’s economic infrastructure/
国家的经济基础设施
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CD-ROM: Compact Discs with ReadOnly-Memory
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Buzzword: a word or phrase,
especially one connected with a
particular subject, that has become
fashionable and popular and is used
a lot in newspaper etc./（报刊等的时
髦用语）
"intelligent agents": man-made
robots with similar intelligence with
man/智能型机器人
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agents with specific marching orders:
each of the four agents do different things
based on different orders of the computer
operator
each of the four agents are represented
by four images of people wearing different
clothes on the computer screen.
Implication(暗含的意思):These agents are
just images and not actual robots that are
actually produced in reality.
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keep a tab／tabs on sth．／sb．: keep
account of sth．／sb．：keep sb．／
sth．under observation记某人的账，监视
某人(某物)
例： keep tabs on who’s using the
phone记录打电话人的名字
it is not always possible to keep tabs on
everyone’s movements.
监视每个人的行动并不总是能办的到。
The police have been keeping tabs/ a tab
on him.
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spy on sb: to keep watch
secretly/暗中监视；侦察；窥探
spy on the enemy’s movements/侦察
敌方行动
spy into other people’s affairs/窥探他
人的隐私
I’m sure my neighbors spy on me.
我肯定邻居暗中监视我。
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levy a fee (to , upon): v. to demand
and collect money officially; collect (a
payment, etc) by authority or force/征
收；征集（款额等）；强加某事物
levy sth on sb
a departure tax levied on all
travelers/向所有旅客征收的离境税
e.g. to levy a tax on tobacco 对烟草征税
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elitism n. [U] derog. (behavior based on)
the belief that there should be elites and
that they deserve power, influence, special
treatment, etc.; (believe in a) system,
leadership, etc. that aims at developing an
elite/旨在培养精英的体制、领导等（的主张）；精英
主义
many people believe that private education
encouraged elitism.
许多人认为私人办学可助长精英主义。
populism: n. type of politics that claims to
represent the interests of ordinary people/
平民主义；平民论（声言代表民众利益的政治主张）
populist: a person who claims to believe in
the wisdom and judgment of ordinary
people, esp. in political matters./平民主义者；
平民论者
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it's one thing ... (it's) quite another:
this is a useful pattern, denoting
contrast ...; 是一回事，…则是另一回事
e.g It is one thing for a teacher to speak
and understand a language, quite another
to consciously understand and explain the
system of that language.
It’s one thing to think, and quite another
to practice.
It’s one thing to talk big, and quite
another to put your words into practice.
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Spin (sb) a yarn: tell (usu long)
story, often in order to deceive sb/讲
故事（通常很长，常用以蒙人）
The old sailor loves to spin yarns
about his life at sea.
那老水手爱信口开河地讲他的航海生涯。
He spun us his unlikely yarn about
being trapped for hours in a broken
lift.
他对我们胡诌在坏电梯中困了几个小时。
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hang on for the ride: we should hang on for
the ride in the vehicle (car/train) of the
interactive technology
we should grip the “方向盘” tightly for the
ride in the vehicle of the interactive
technology so as to walk the right way and
keep the going of the car safe and so as not
to let the vehicle of the interactive
technology go astray
“ride”前面用的是定冠词 “the” instead of 不定冠词
“a”, 证明是以前提到过的
在这里用到了metaphor的用法，踏上这趟“交互作用
科技”之旅
Paraphrase
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To get an idea of what the future
might bring, step into the past.
Paraphrase: In order to form a view
of what will happen in the future,
you need only to have a look at what
happened in the past.
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His competitors envisioned the
greater potentia for
entertainment and art. Where he
saw internal memos, someone
else saw Beethoven
Paraphrase: His business rivals saw
in their minds that there was great
possibility of using the machine for
entertainment and art.
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Game fanatics may be able to do
the same from another electronic
library filled with realistic video
versions of arcade shoot-'em-ups.
Paraphrase: Those who are
obsessed in video games may do it in
the same way by contacting another
electronic library which has a large
number of video tapes recording the
actual shootings and killings seen in
video game shops.
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"Interactivity" may be the biggest
buzzword of the moment, but
"convergence" is a close second.
Paraphrase: "Interactivity" for the time
being may be the most used word which
has little meaning but sounds impressive
to outsiders while "convergence" follows
"interactivity" closely in the second place
in frequency.
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Imagine the conversation: "Have I
got a compatible user for you!" .
Paraphrase: Try to think what the
conversation would be like: “I have
got a user who will suit you fine!”
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If the tolls for using the information
highway are too high, interactivity may
widen the gap between the haves and the
have-nots, the rich and wired vs. the poor
and un-plugged.
Why may interactivity widen the gap?
Because those who have access to the
information may have better opportunities
since information and the speed of
acquiring information are decisive in
today's competition.
Figure of Speech
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Simile
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Metaphor
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Synecdoche
Structural Analysis
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1. Paragraphs 1-2: Introduction of interactive life
a huge amount of information available to anyone at the
touch of a button
2. Paragraphs 3-18: description of interactive life
A. difficult to understand because it’s still a long way
B. four phases: fake interactive, true interactive, complete
viewer control, and final frontier
C. possible dreams because of large capacity chip, fibre
optic cables and digitalization
D. dark side: no privacy, wide gap, considerable debate
3. Paragraph 19: Suggestion
hanging on for the ride
Thank You