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1、Of the millions of inventions, what are the ten greatest?数百万的发明,十个最大的是什么 ?Ive drawn up a list. And theres one thing I know about this list: You wont agree with it. Some of you will write to tell me I forgot the gun, the airplane, or whatever. Which is fine: A top-ten list is all about starting a goo
2、d argument. But to draw up (and then argue about) such a list, you have to set some guidelines, and here are mine: Im starting at the year zero. Otherwise, wed never get out of prehistory. And Im limiting inventions to physical devices. The scientific method, the university and electricity dont coun
3、t-they are, respectively, a concept, a social system, and something we discovered but which existed all along.我草拟了一个列表。还有一件事我知道这个列表:你不会同意。你们中的一些人会写信告诉我我忘记了枪,飞机等等。很好 :一个十位的全是一个好论点。但起草 (然后争论)这样的列表,你必须设置一些指南,这里是我的 :我从今年开始零。否则 ,我们从未离开史前史。我限制发明的物理设备。科学方法、大学和电力不算,他们分别是一个概念, 一个社会系统,我们发现的东西而存在。This is a lis
4、t of end products. That is, Im excluding components with no independent function. Take the gear, for example. A groundbreaking bit of technology to be sure. Without it, wed scarcely have any machines at all. But we never say, Oh, darn, Im out of gears! Ditto microchips, transistors, and ball bearing
5、s. Here, then, in no particular order, are my nominees as the ten greatest inventions.这是一个终端产品列表。也就是说,我不包括组件并没有独立的功能。以齿轮为例。可以肯定的是一项开创性的技术。没有它,我们几乎没有任何机器。但我们从来不说:“哦,该死, 我的齿轮!“同上微芯片、晶体管和球轴承。在这里, 然后,在没有特定的顺序, 是我的提名为十个最大的发明。1. The Mechanical Clock. Before this invention, time was inseparable from events
6、, the main one being the Sun crossing the sky. Only local time existed, no universal river of time. If you agreed to meet someone at sunset, you had to say where, because the Sun is always setting somewhere. The sundial merely divided the Suns daily journey into units, which meant the hour had no fi
7、xed length: it swelled and shrank with the seasons. Besides, no one carried a sundial around, so you never heard anyone say, Cant talk now, Im on the sundial. Then, mechanical clocks came around-gears, springs, pendulums, the works. Gradually, as these clocks all came to be coordinated, they created
8、 public time, a thing in itself: one single, universal current flowing everywhere throughout the universe, always at the same pace. People could now communicate with each other by coordinating to this universal frame of reference. Thus, clocks made factories, offices, schools, meetings, and appointm
9、ents possible. The activities of millions could be meshed like, well, clockwork. And of course, what clocks made possible, they soon made necessary. In a clock-driven world, most of us are now either on time, ahead of schedule, or running late.1。机械钟。这项发明之前, 时间与事件是分不开的, 主要是太阳穿越天空。只有当地时间存在,没有普遍的时间之河。如
10、果你同意在日落时分遇见某人, 你必须说,因为太阳总是设置的地方。日晷仅仅每天太阳的旅程分为单位,这意味着一个小时没有固定长度: 随季节而膨胀和收缩。此外,周围没有一个人带着一个日晷 ,所以你从来没听过有人说 ,“现在不能说话, 我在日晷。“然后,机械钟,齿轮、弹簧、钟摆,。渐渐地, 随着这些时钟都来协调 ,他们创造了公共时间,本身:一个单一的、普遍的电流都在整个宇宙中,总是以同样的速度。现在人们可以相互沟通协调这种普遍的参照系。因此,时钟制造工厂、办公室、学校、会议和约会。数百万人的活动可能是网状,发条。当然 ,时钟成为可能,他们很快就必要的。在 clock-driven 的世界中,我们大多数
11、人现在要么 “,”“提前”,或“迟到了。”2. The Toilet* and Modern Plumbing. * Go ahead. Laugh. Then try to imagine New York City without toilets. You cant. The ability to remove sewage from and bring clean water into places of dense human habitation makes the modern city possible. Without it, wed still have cities, bu
12、t not like the ones we know. A high-rise building would be impossible, really, without toilets and plumbing. Remove apartment buildings, office towers, and dense downtown cores from your picture of the world and you have to change the whole rest of your picture too, because the implications keep rip
13、pling.2。厕所*和现代管道。 *吧。笑了。然后尝试想象纽约没有厕所。你不能。去除污水的能力,把干净的水为密集的人类居住的地方使现代城市成为可能。没有它,我们仍然有城市, 但不像我们所熟悉的。一幢高层建筑是不可能的,真的, 没有马桶和管道。删除公寓大楼 ,办公大楼,和密集的市中心核心世界的你的照片,你必须改变整个的你的照片, 因为影响一直荡漾。3. The Printing Press. Unoriginal, I know, but still its true. Gutenbergs press, with its movable type, launched publishing.
14、In the short term, this made the Reformation possible by putting a Bible in the hands of anybody who wanted one. The Church lost its lock on truth, and the sovereign individual soon emerged as the key unit of Western society. In the longer term, publishing universalized literacy*. Before this invent
15、ion, so few could read that, effectively, even those few lived in a world of oral tradition and memory. Humanitys consensual picture of reality was shaped by stories, told and retold. In this fluid world, if the big picture shifted, no one knew, because they had nothing to check it against. The prol
16、iferation of text fixed objective reality. Now, when two people disagree about what happened yesterday, they can look it up. Stories have survived, but merely as entertainment. Our modern collective picture of reality is founded on facts archived as text.3。印刷术。非原创, 我知道,但是这是真的。古腾堡的出版社,活字印刷,出版。在短期内,这使得改革可能将手中的圣经的人想要一个。教会失去了锁定真理,和主权个人很快就成为西方社会的主要单位。从长远来看,出版使普遍化识字*。这项发明之前, 很少能读,有效,即使是那些很少住在口头传统和记忆的世界里。人类的两厢情愿的现实的故事,一遍又一遍地。在这个流动的世界,如果大局了 ,没有人知道,因为他们没有检查它。文本的扩散固定的客
