2013年考研英语一阅读 Text 3 原文翻译及答案解析

Up until a few decades ago, our visions of the future were largely - though by no means uniformly - glowingly positive. Science and technology would cure all the ills of humanity, leading to lives of fulfilment and opportunity for all.

直到几十年前，我们对未来的展望大体上——尽管绝非完全一致——是极其乐观的。科学和技术将治愈人类的所有弊病，为所有人带来充实和机会的生活。

Now utopia has grown unfashionable, as we have gained a deeper appreciation of the range of threats facing us, from asteroid strike to epidemic flu and to climate change. You might even be tempted to assume that humanity has little future to look forward to.

如今，乌托邦已变得不合时宜，因为我们对所面临的各种威胁有了更深的认识，从小行星撞击到流行性感冒，再到气候变化。你甚至可能忍不住认为人类几乎没有什么未来可期待。

But such gloominess is misplaced. The fossil record shows that many species have endured for millions of years - so why shouldn't we? Take a broader look at our species' place in the universe, and it becomes clear that we have an excellent chance of surviving for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years. Look up Homo sapiens in the "Red List" of threatened species of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and you will read: "Listed as Least Concern as the species is very widely distributed, adaptable, currently increasing, and there are no major threats resulting in an overall population decline."

但这种悲观是不必要的。化石记录表明，许多物种已经存续了数百万年——那么为什么我们不能呢？更广泛地审视我们在宇宙中的位置，就会清楚地看到，我们有极大的可能生存数万年，如果不是数十万年的话。在国际自然保护联盟（IUCN）的濒危物种"红色名录"中查找"智人"，你会读到："列为无危物种，因为该物种分布非常广泛、适应性强、目前数量在增长，且没有导致总体种群下降的重大威胁。"

So what does our deep future hold? A growing number of researchers and organisations are now thinking seriously about that question. For example, the Long Now Foundation has as its flagship project a mechanical clock that is designed to still be marking time thousands of years hence.

那么，我们遥远的未来会是什么样子？越来越多的研究人员和组织正在认真思考这个问题。例如，Long Now基金会的旗舰项目是一个机械钟，旨在数千年后仍在计时。

Perhaps willfully, it may be easier to think about such lengthy timescales than about the more immediate future. The potential evolution of today's technology, and its social consequences, is dazzlingly complicated, and it's perhaps best left to science fiction writers and futurologists to explore the many possibilities we can envisage. That's one reason why we have launched Arc, a new publication dedicated to the near future.

或许有意为之，思考如此漫长的时间尺度比思考更近的未来可能更容易。当今技术的潜在演变及其社会后果极其复杂，或许最好留给科幻作家和未来学家去探索我们所能设想的多种可能性。这就是我们推出Arc的原因之一，这是一份专注于近期的新出版物。

But take a longer view and there is a surprising amount that we can say with considerable assurance. As so often, the past holds the key to the future: we have now identified enough of the long-term patterns shaping the history of the planet, and our species, to make evidence-based forecasts about the situations in which our descendants will find themselves.

但从更长远的视角来看，我们有相当把握能说出的内容令人惊讶地多。正如往常一样，过去是未来的关键：我们现在已经识别出足够多的塑造地球历史和我们物种的长期模式，能够基于证据预测我们的后代将面临的情况。

This long perspective makes the pessimistic view of our prospects seem more likely to be a passing fad. To be sure, the future is not all rosy. But we are now knowledgeable enough to reduce many of the risks that threatened the existence of earlier humans, and to improve the lot of those to come.

这种长远的视角使得对我们前景的悲观看法更可能只是一时的潮流。诚然，未来并非一片光明。但我们现在已经足够有知识，能够减少许多威胁早期人类生存的风险，并改善后来者的命运。

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