Level 5 Reading 9B

Reading 9B

阅读9B

THE POWER OF WRITING Joel L. Swerdlow investigates the history and future of one of humanity's most potent forms of artistic and cultural expression. No other invention—perhaps only the wheel comes close— has had a longer and greater impact on humanity's development than writing, Written words have overthrown governments and changed the course of history. So powerful is writing that the beginnings of civilization and history are most often defined as the moment cultures develop it. The transformation of language into written words has immortalized passion, genius, art, and science. Much of writing's power comes from its flexibility. Ever since the Sumerians began keeping records by carving signs on clay tablets 5,000 years ago, humans have searched for the ideal tool to portray words. They have carved symbols in stone and bone and written on leaves, bark, silk, papyrus, parchment, paper, and electronic screens. This skill, once known only to a few professional scribes, grew into mass literacy: More than five billion people— over 86 percent of the world's population—can now read and write. To understand how writing evolved, I visited Serabit el-Khadim, a flat-topped, wind-eroded mountain of reddish sandstone in the southwestern Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. Here, in a turquoise mine dug by Egyptians almost 3,500 years ago, is one of the earliest examples of a phonetic alphabet. "What do you think?" asked Avner Goren as we stooped to enter a dark hole. Goren, an archeologist who supervised excavations in the Sinai for 15 years, was pointing to a wall just ahead of us. Carved into the stone were crude sketches of a fish, an ox head, and a square. The simplicity of the marks belied their significance. The people who made them were among the first to use characters that denote sounds—an alphabet. The alphabetic symbols each represented the initial sound of an object. The picture of the square—a house— thus stood for the b sound because the word for house was beit. The signs were remarkably different from the Egyptian hieroglyphs found elsewhere at the site. If these ancient writers were not Egyptians, who were they? Most researchers now believe that this alphabet was invented in Canaan, a region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Most likely, Canaanites, who were brought in to work the mines, left these messages. Egyptian scribes had to master hundreds of symbols. I asked Goren if alphabetic writing must have seemed attractive to those scribes. "Probably not," he says. "About 30 of the symbols in Egyptian hieroglyphs represent single sounds, just like the alphabet. They knew about using symbols to represent sounds, so to the Egyptians, the Semitic writing may have looked too primitive to be significant. "Goren warned me against seeing an alphabet as "superior" to pictographic writing. "If you came from outer space and wrote a report, you'd give the alphabet high marks," he says. "It's flexible and easy to learn. But what actual effect did that have? There was no mass literacy until after the development of the printing press in the mid-15th century." Nevertheless, although it took hundreds of years, alphabets would eventually change the way people thought. From a small patch in the Middle East, the notion of one symbol per sound gradually became widespread around the world, taking root first among the Greeks, who adapted some characters into written vowels. The Latin alphabet of the Romans evolved from the Greek around the sixth century B.C. By the ninth century A.D., Japan had integrated phonetic components into its written language; Korea did so by the 15th century. Indeed , of the several hundred written languages in the world today, only Chinese still relies on a traditional writing system where by individual characters represent individual words. These characters often mean one thing when used alone, but something else when combined. The Chinese character for trust, for example, shows the character for man alongside the one for word, literally a man standing by his word. Since its beginning as a means for keeping records, writing has evolved into one of humanity's most powerful forms of self-expression. People have used writing to counter loneliness and to establish a sense of self. In the fourth century B.C., Aristotle saw writing as away to express "affections of the soul." Recent studies have shown that writing about feelings can alleviate depression, boost the immune system, and lower blood pressure. And yet, of the more than 10,000 languages ever spoken, most had no written form. How, then, do people in societies without writing express themselves? "We talk to each other, listen, visit, and trust the spoken word," says Guujaaw, a leader of the Haida Nation. "Writing is not essential to living; expressing yourself without writing is natural."

写作的力量 Joel L.Swerdlow探究历史与未来 人类最强大的艺术和文化表达形式之一。 没有其他发明——也许只有轮子能接近-- 对人类发展的影响比写作更长、更大， 文字推翻了政府，改变了历史进程。 文字是如此强大，以至于文明和历史的开端 最常被定义为文化发展的时刻。 语言转化为文字，使激情、天才、艺术和科学永垂不朽。 写作的力量很大程度上来自于它的灵活性。 自从5000年前苏美尔人开始通过在泥板上雕刻符号来保存记录以来， 人类一直在寻找描绘文字的理想工具。 他们在石头和骨头上雕刻了符号 写在树叶、树皮、丝绸、纸莎草、羊皮纸、纸张和电子屏幕上。 这种技能曾经只为少数专业文士所知，后来发展成为大众扫盲： 超过50亿人-- 超过86%的世界人口现在能够读写。 为了了解写作是如何演变的，我参观了塞拉比特·卡迪姆， 埃及西奈半岛西南部一座平顶、被风侵蚀的红砂岩山。 在这里，在埃及人近3500年前挖掘的一个绿松石矿里， 是拼音字母表最早的例子之一。 “你觉得怎么样？”当我们弯腰走进一个黑洞时，阿夫纳·戈伦问。 Goren是一位考古学家，他在西奈半岛监督了15年的挖掘工作， 他指着我们前面的一堵墙。 石头上刻着一条鱼、一头牛和一个正方形的粗略草图。 这些标记的简单性掩盖了它们的重要性。 制作它们的人是最早使用表示声音的字符的人之一——字母表。 每个字母符号代表一个物体的初始声音。 广场的图片——一栋房子-- 因此代表b音，因为表示房子的词是beit。 这些标志与该遗址其他地方发现的埃及象形文字截然不同。 如果这些古代作家不是埃及人，他们是谁？ 大多数研究人员现在认为，这种字母表是在迦南发明的， 约旦河和地中海之间的地区。 最有可能的是，被带到矿场工作的迦南人留下了这些信息。 埃及文士必须掌握数百种符号。 我问戈伦，字母书写对那些抄写员来说是否有吸引力。 “可能不会，”他说。 “埃及象形文字中大约有30个符号代表单一的声音，就像字母表一样。 他们知道用符号来表示声音， 所以对埃及人来说，闪米特文字可能看起来太原始了，没有意义。 戈伦警告我不要认为字母表“优于”象形文字。 “如果你来自外太空，写了一份报告， 你会给字母表打高分，”他说。 “它灵活且易于学习。 但这有什么实际效果呢？ 直到15世纪中叶印刷术发展之后，才出现了大众扫盲。" 然而，尽管花了数百年的时间，字母表最终还是改变了人们的思维方式。 从中东的一小块地方， 每个声音一个符号的概念逐渐在世界各地流行起来， 首先在希腊人中扎根，他们将一些字符改编成书面元音。 公元前6世纪左右，罗马人的拉丁字母从希腊字母演变而来。 到公元九世纪，日本已将语音成分融入其书面语言； 韩国在15世纪就这样做了。 事实上，在当今世界数百种书面语言中， 只有汉语仍然依赖于传统的书写系统，其中单个字符代表单个单词。 这些字符单独使用时通常意味着一件事，但组合使用时则意味着另一件事。 例如，代表信任的汉字， 在单词旁边显示了男人的性格，字面意思是一个信守诺言的人。 自从它开始作为保存记录的手段以来， 写作已经演变成人类最强大的自我表达形式之一。 人们用写作来对抗孤独，建立自我意识。 公元前4世纪，亚里士多德认为写作是表达“灵魂情感”的方式 最近的研究表明，写感情可以缓解抑郁， 增强免疫系统，降低血压。 然而，在有史以来使用的10000多种语言中，大多数都没有书面形式。 那么，在没有文字的社会中，人们是如何表达自己的呢？ “我们彼此交谈，倾听，访问，并相信所说的话，”海达民族的领导人Guujaaw说。 “写作不是生活的必需品；没有写作来表达自己是很自然的。”

The Haida have lived on the Queen Charlotte Islands off the coast of British Columbia for more than 10,000 years. I suggest to Guujaaw that things get distorted when people repeat them to one another, especially over a long duration of time. "Things get distorted in writing as well," he says. "People with writing are a brief chapter in our history, but oral histories from our people go back thousands of years. They are a living history and provide a link between story teller and listeners that written stories cannot. In fact, human intimacy and community can best come through oral communication." Plato, Aristotle's teacher, would probably agree. Living at a time when writing began to challenge Greece's oral-based culture, he warned that writing would make people "trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves ... They will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing." But Plato lived in the fifth century B.C., when reading was physically difficult. Books were papyrus scrolls often more than 15 meters long; the idea of pages only emerged in Europe in the second century A.D. Spaces between words did not become standard in Western society until the seventh century. Long after Plato's time, writing served mostly as an aid to memory, something to stimulate the spoken word. The transition from the spoken to the written word occurred because writing meets certain needs so much more effectively. Writing permits analysis, precision, and communication with both current and future generations in a way that is much more powerful than the spoken word. Thousands of years ago, China's rulers learned the value of a uniform written language, recognizing that it has the power to unite people. In the third century B.C., Chinese people spoke at least eight languages and countless dialects, but with the establishment of a unified empire and a standard writing system around 200 B.C., everyone could read the same characters. Today, the extra work needed to manually enter Chinese into a computer— up to five keystrokes for one Chinese character—raises an important issue. China could become the wealthiest country in the world; it already is a major factor in the international economy. As this economy relies more on computers, does the Chinese writing system act as a constraint on its development? Perhaps not. Usama Fayyad, a former researcher at Microsoft Corporation, whose job was to think about the long-term future of computers and data storage, says technology will eventually offer efficient and economical ways to bypass keyboards. Technology that incorporates voice and handwriting recognition, he claims, could make it irrelevant which writing system is used. Fayyad also says that the distinction between an alphabet and Chinese characters does not matter in terms of how a computer operates. He explains that when you hit a letter on the keyboard, the computer enters that action into its memory as a number. Each letter is a different number, and a sentence inside the computer is a string of numbers. It's up to the computer program to interpret how the string of numbers corresponds to an instruction. Overall, computers are terrifically useful machines, but perhaps paper is still superior. You can hold it, fold it, put it in your pocket, look at it again later when it's convenient. This thought leads me to Joseph Jacobson, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He helped found a company, E Ink, whose technology has transformed ink from a permanent medium to a format that can change electronically. "Paper is fantastic," Jacobson tells me. "If books or newspapers on paper had not already been invented, if we lived in a world only with computer screens, then paper would be a breathtaking breakthrough. But the way we use paper is incredibly wasteful." E Ink is a major developer of electronic-paper—the kind you see on tablets such as Amazon's Kindle. E-paper works by printing electronic letters on squares of plastic that look and feel like paper but can be erased and reused. Jacobson believes that using e-paper will significantly reduce the cost and pollution associated with paper manufacturing. "Paper needs to be taken into the digital age. We need writing that changes on paper," says Jacobson. With that in mind, E Ink has just released a new kind of e-paper called Just Write that promises to offer an experience just like writing on real paper. Users can write on the paper, roll it up, and even cut holes in it— all with very low power usage and no backlight. As I observe E Ink's latest technology, I feel as if I'm back in the cave at Serabit el-Khadim—looking at a piece of the future.

海达人在不列颠哥伦比亚省海岸外的夏洛特女王群岛上生活了1万多年。 我建议Guujaaw，当人们互相重复时，事情会变得扭曲， 尤其是在长时间内。 他说：“在写作中，事情也会被歪曲。”。 “有文字的人是我们历史上的一个简短篇章， 但我们人民的口述历史可以追溯到数千年前。 它们是一部活生生的历史，在讲故事的人和听众之间提供了书面故事所不能提供的联系。 事实上，人类的亲密关系和社区最好通过口头交流来实现。" 亚里士多德的老师柏拉图可能会同意。 生活在写作开始挑战希腊口头文化的时代， 他警告说，写作会让人 “信任外部文字，不记得自己。。。 他们将成为许多事情的听众，却什么也没学到。" 但柏拉图生活在公元前五世纪，当时阅读在身体上很困难。 书籍是纸莎草卷轴，通常超过15米长； 书页的概念直到公元二世纪才在欧洲出现。 直到七世纪，单词之间的空格才成为西方社会的标准。 在柏拉图时代很久以后，写作主要是作为记忆的辅助工具，刺激口语。 从口语到书面语的转变发生了 因为写作更有效地满足了某些需求。 写作允许分析、精确和与当代和后代的沟通 以一种比言语更强大的方式。 几千年前，中国的统治者学会了统一书面语言的价值， 认识到它有团结人民的力量。 公元前三世纪，中国人至少会说八种语言和无数方言， 但随着公元前200年左右统一帝国和标准书写系统的建立。， 每个人都能读到同样的字符。 如今，将中文手动输入电脑需要额外的工作-- 一个汉字最多需要五次按键，这就提出了一个重要问题。 中国可能成为世界上最富有的国家； 它已经是国际经济中的一个主要因素。 随着这种经济越来越依赖于计算机， 中国文字系统是否对其发展起到了制约作用？ 也许不是。 Usama Fayyad是微软公司的前研究员， 他的工作是思考计算机和数据存储的长期未来， 该技术最终将提供高效经济的绕过键盘的方法。 他声称，结合了语音和手写识别的技术， 可能会使使用哪种书写系统变得无关紧要。 法耶兹还说，字母表和汉字之间的区别 就计算机如何操作而言，这并不重要。 他解释说，当你敲击键盘上的一个字母时， 计算机将该动作作为数字输入到内存中。 每个字母都是一个不同的数字，计算机内的句子是一串数字。 这取决于计算机程序如何解释数字串与指令的对应关系。 总的来说，计算机是非常有用的机器，但也许纸张仍然更优越。 你可以拿着它，折叠它，把它放在口袋里，方便的时候再看一次。 这个想法让我想到了约瑟夫·雅各布森， 麻省理工学院物理学教授。 他帮助创办了一家公司，E Ink， 其技术已将墨水从永久性介质转变为可电子更改的格式。 “纸太棒了，”告诉告诉我。 “如果纸上的书籍或报纸还没有发明出来， 如果我们生活在一个只有电脑屏幕的世界，那么纸将是一个惊人的突破。 但我们使用纸张的方式非常浪费。" E Ink是电子纸的主要开发商，你可以在亚马逊的Kindle等平板电脑上看到这种纸。 电子纸的工作原理是在塑料方块上打印电子字母，这些方块看起来和感觉都像纸，但可以擦除和重复使用。 雅各布森认为，使用电子纸将大大降低与造纸相关的成本和污染。 “纸张需要进入数字时代。 我们需要把变化写在纸上，”雅各布森说。 考虑到这一点，E Ink刚刚发布了一种名为just Write的新型电子纸 这有望提供一种与在真实纸张上写作一样的体验。 用户可以在纸上写字、卷起，甚至在纸上打孔-- 所有这些都具有非常低的功耗，并且没有背光。 当我观察E Ink的最新技术时， 我感觉自己好像回到了Serabit el Khadim的洞穴里，看着未来的一部分。

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