2021年12月六级第3套仔细阅读 Passage 1 原文翻译及答案解析

The trend toward rationality and enlightenment was endangered long before the advent of the World Wide Web. As Neil Postman noted in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, the rise of television introduced not just a new medium but a new discourse: a gradual shift from a typographic culture to a photographic one, which in turn meant a shift from rationality to emotions, exposition to entertainment. In an image-centered and pleasure-driven world, Postman noted, there is no place for rational thinking because you simply cannot think with images. It is text that enables us to "uncover lies, confusions and overgeneralizations, and to detect abuses of logic and common sense. It also means to weigh ideas, to compare and contrast assertions, to connect one generalization to another."

理性与启蒙的趋势早在万维网出现之前就已岌岌可危。正如尼尔·波兹曼在其1985年著作《娱乐至死》中所指出的，电视的兴起不仅引入了一种新媒介，还引入了一种新话语：从印刷文化向图像文化的逐渐转变，这进而意味着从理性向情感、从阐述向娱乐的转变。波兹曼指出，在一个以图像为中心、以快乐为驱动的世界里，理性思维没有立足之地，因为你根本无法用图像来思考。正是文本使我们能够“揭露谎言、困惑和过度概括，并察觉对逻辑和常识的滥用。它还意味着权衡思想，比较和对比断言，将一种概括与另一种联系起来。”

The dominance of television was not confined to our living rooms. It overturned all of those habits of mind, fundamentally changing our experience of the world. Conduct of politics, religion, business, and culture was reduced to entertainment, sensationalism, and commerce. "Americans don't talk to each other; we entertain each other," Postman wrote. "They don't exchange ideas; they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities, and commercials."

电视的主导地位不仅限于我们的客厅。它颠覆了所有这些思维习惯，从根本上改变了我们对世界的体验。政治、宗教、商业和文化的进行被简化为娱乐、煽情和商业。波兹曼写道：“美国人不互相交谈；我们互相娱乐。”“他们不交换思想；他们交换图像。他们不争论命题；他们争论的是外貌、名人和广告。”

At first, the web seemed to push against this trend. When it emerged towards the end of the 1980s as a purely text-based medium, it was seen as a tool to pursue knowledge, not pleasure. Reason and thought were most valued in this garden—all derived from the project of the Enlightenment. Universities around the world were among the first to connect to this new medium, which hosted discussion groups, informative personal or group blogs, electronic magazines, and academic mailing lists and forums. It was an intellectual project, not about commerce or control, created in a scientific research center in Switzerland. For more than a decade, the web created an alternative space that threatened television's grip on society.

起初，网络似乎与这一趋势背道而驰。当它在1980年代末作为一种纯粹基于文本的媒介出现时，它被视为追求知识而非快乐的工具。在这个花园中，理性和思想最受重视——所有这一切都源于启蒙运动的项目。世界各地的大学是最早连接到这个新媒介的机构之一，它托管了讨论组、 informative 个人或团体博客、电子杂志以及学术邮件列表和论坛。这是一个智识项目，不涉及商业或控制，创建于瑞士的一个科学研究中。十多年来，网络创造了一个替代空间，威胁到电视对社会的控制。