Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a literature class.

旁白：请听一段文学讲座的节选片段。

The professor is discussing Henry David Thoreau.

这堂课的教授正在讲亨利·戴维·梭罗。

Professor: Nowadays, trains are pretty much taken for granted, but in the United States in the first part of the nineteenth century, when Thoreau lived, the railroad was a big deal, a technological revolution.

教授：当今时代，对于坐火车我们已经习以为常，但是在19世纪早期的美国，在梭罗还活着的时候，火车可是一个大发明，一场科技的革新。

It was kind of earth-shattering to ride in a mechanical conveyance at fifty kilometers an hour in the 1830s.

火车是一种惊世骇俗的用机器运送人的东西，在十九世纪三十年代它的速度是50公里每小时。

The train, or "iron horse" as people called it, unlocked all sort of new experiences of time, space...

火车，或者当时人们所称的“铁马”，解锁了人们对于时间和空间的各种新体验。

Thoreau himself praised trains for changing the way people experience their own bodies, for stirring the imagination in new ways.

梭罗自己赞美火车改变了人们体验自身移动的方式，以新的方式改变了人们的想象。

So, in Thoreau's famous book, Walden, as you know, Walden is one of the central literary texts of the United States from that time period, and in it, Thoreau offers both praise and criticisms of trains.

所以，在梭罗著名的书《瓦尔登湖》里，《瓦尔登湖》是那个时代美国的一种中心文学文本，在这个文本里，梭罗既对火车表达了赞美，也提出了批判。

Um...Thoreau is sometimes seen as being anti-modern, but he's not.

嗯……梭罗有时候被视为是反现代化的，但他其实并不是。

He uses poetic language, descriptive metaphors to inspire, to awe his readers, to communicate the fact that the railroad was a feat of human ingenuity.

他用诗一般的语言和描述性的隐喻来鼓舞他的读者，并且使他们心生敬畏，他传达了这个事实，那就是火车是人类心灵手巧的壮举。

Thoreau also associates trains with commerce and trade.

梭罗也把火车和商业交易联系了起来。

Though his attitudes toward commerce are complicated, he credits trains for delivering goods that feed and clothe society, things that improve human life.

尽管他对于商业的态度是很复杂的，他还是赞美火车运送了食物和衣物，这些东西使得人类生活质量提高了。

But Thoreau also critiques trains on what we could call philosophical grounds.

但是梭罗也在哲学方面批评了火车。

He points out that riding on trains distorts people's experiences of the natural world.

他指出，乘火车旅行会扭曲人们对于自然世界的感受。

Trees, wild life, landscapes just zip right past you and this is a real problem for him.

树木、野生动物、风景都从你身边掠过，这对他来说是个真正的问题。

Thoreau also worries that trains had become an institution regulating the whole country.

梭罗也担心，火车已经变成了统治整个国家的一种组织。

He worries about people doing things in “railroad fashion”, conforming to the train's timetable, letting their lives be governed by this mechanical device that is making its way into the fabric of society.

他担心人们会以一种“火车方式”来做事情，去迎合火车的时间表，让他们的生活被这种机械设施左右，这种生活方式正在渗透进社会的方方面面。

And he extends this critique to other inventions of the day, like the penny press, this very fast steam-driven press.

他还把这种批评扩展到了当时其他的发明，像是廉价报刊，这种非常迅捷的媒体。

He talks about popular literary genres, like penny newspapers and dime novels, which were being published in mass quantities.

他谈论过当时流行的文学种类，就像是廉价报纸和廉价小说，这些东西在被大量出版。

He worries about people no longer thinking for themselves and uncritically accepting all this cheap popular literature and the trivial details of the news.

他担心人们不再为自己考虑，不带有批判意识地接受了所有这些廉价的流行文学和鸡毛蒜皮的新闻。

So Thoreau is offering here a critique of technology that might be relevant for our own times, and I think it's important to take it seriously.

所以梭罗提出了一种对于和我们自己时代有关的科技的批评，我觉得我们有必要认真对待他的批评。

When there is a new invention, a new computer or a mobile phone technology, some new gadget, there is a tendency to think that we need to have that thing, just as people were doing in the nineteenth century with respect to railroads.

当出现一个新的发明的时候，比如电脑的新发明或者手机的新科技，或者一些小的机械工具，（一旦有这种新发明出现）我们就会认为我们必须要有这个东西，就像是十九世纪的人对火车所认为的那样。

Accepting them as a necessity without considering the possible negative consequences or trade-offs that can flow from them.

他们在接收之前并没有考虑这些科学技术可能会导致的不良后果。

Okay. Can anybody offer an example of what I'm talking about? Deborah?

好的。有人可以对于我所说的举个例子吗？Deborah？

Student: Yeah, there was this new computer game that my brother just had to have, so he saved his money and bought it, which was good, I guess that he saved his money and all, but now he spends like all his spare time playing that game instead of riding bikes with his friends or reading books like he used to do, and it's causing some friction between him and our parents.

学生：有了，我哥哥很想买新的电脑游戏，他攒钱买下了它，这很好，我猜他应该是攒钱什么的，但是现在他所有的业余时间都在玩这个游戏，而不是和朋友出去骑自行车或者跟往常一样读书了，这就导致了他和我们父母之间的一些摩擦。

Professor: Perfect example! Deborah.

教授：完美的例子！Deborah。

So this is one way to think about Thoreau's text, not just as an important book in its time, for what it tells us about the nineteenth century, but also as a text that can teach us certain things about ourselves in contemporary society.

所以这就是我们来思考梭罗的文字的一种方式，而不是仅仅把它视为一本当时的重要的书，因为它不仅让我们了解了十九世纪，还教给我们在当代社会关于我们自己的一些事情。