Modern Technology

     Can you imagine life without TVs, computers, the Internet, Playstations, or any of the countless electronic gadgets found in most people’s homes these days? It is amazing to think that human beings have been living on Earth for some 500,000 years, yet we have been living in a world surrounded by technology for only about the last 50 years. If we compared the entire span of human existence on Earth to the life of a 100-year-old person, that would be like discovering technology just three and a half days before our 100th birthday!

     So how did we manage to live without all of these marvelous electronic devices? Although it is possible now to find almost any tidbit of information in just a few minutes or less using the Internet, tasks such as these required a lot of more effort just ten years ago. But since information is constantly changing, it was necessary to buy new encyclopedias every few years, which was very expensive. Otherwise, people would sometimes spend hours at public libraries scouring books and journals to find the information they were hunting for. Now, in the age of the Internet, encyclopedias have become nothing more than relic of the past.

                                                            現代科技

　　你能夠生活沒有電視、電腦、網路、PS，或現今可以在大部份人的家裡找到的，任何無數的電子用品嗎？令人驚奇的是，想一想人類已經在地球上活了五十多萬年，而我們生活在這個被科技圍繞的世界，也才不過這五十年左右的事而已。假如我們把人類存在地球的時間比作一位百歲的老人家，發現科技的時間和我們的一百歲生日相比，也不過才三天半大而已。

　　所以，我們如何在沒有這些了不起的電子用具的狀況，設法活下去呢？雖然現在要找到大部份的資訊只要幾分鐘就好，但像這些任務在十年前可是要花很多工夫。但是因為資訊不斷更新，每幾年就買新的百科全書很必要卻很貴。另外，為了找到所要的資料，人們有時會花上好幾個小時在圖書館查書和期刊。現在，在網路時代，百科全書變成只是過去的遺跡了。