This book is about the future of technology. In it we will examine some of the many recent developments in a few key fields and try, in a limited way, to forecast where they will take us in the next fifteen years or so.  
本书讲述的是技术的未来。书中，我们将检视大量的近期发展中的一些关键领域，有限地预测，在未来15年左右 ，这些发展将带我们走向何方。
If that sounds like a modest goal, it’s not.
听起来这是个适度的目标，但不是。
(Technology is the dominant force of our time and probably of all time to come. It appears in more varieties than we can count).
（技术是我们这个时代，并有可能成为未来的支配性力量。它比我们可以想见的变化要丰富得多。）
It changes so rapidly that no scientist or engineer can keep up with his own field, much less with technology in general.
技术的发展如此迅猛以至于没有哪个科学家或工程师可以在自己的领域跟上它的步伐，在通用技术上更甚。
(It permeates and shapes our lives at every turn.)
（在每一步发展中，它都渗透进我们的生活的每一个角落，并塑造了我们的生活）
We live in technology as fish live in the sea, and we have only a little better chance of forecasting the details of its changes.  
我们生活在技术世界，如鱼翔大海，我们对技术发展细节的预测，仅是管中窥豹。
(Yet the task is well worth undertaking. Whatever hints we can glean about the future will help us prepare for the changes to come. Modest forecasts, evidence of trends, a few concrete developments to be expected all are better than no warning at all. And though technology has made the present much less stable than the past, and surely will make the future more turbulent still, there is good reason to hope that our lives, in sum and on average, will be better as a result.)
（然而，这是一项值得付出的任务。我们收集的有关未来的每一条线索，都将是我们能够未雨绸缪。适当的预测、趋势的痕迹、每一点可预期的具体发展都好于茫然无知。尽管技术使当前没有过去稳定，可以确定未来的变化将更加剧烈， 我们可以预期技术发展，总的来说，会使我们的生活更加美好。）
In an age of uncomfortable challenges, this is reassurance we all can use.    
在这个充满挑战的时代，每个人都可以得益于技术发展。
For an idea of what is to come—in magnitude if not in specifics—look to the past. In the last ninety years, the world has shrunk, while human experience has expanded almost beyond the recognition of those who grew up in our grandparents’ generation.  
未来将会如何——不讲细节，只讲大的方面——我们回头看。在过去的90年里，世界在缩小而人类的经验在扩大，几乎超出了我们祖父辈的认知。
(A century after America’s founders conceived their agrarian democracy, nearly all their descendents still lived on small farms. Since World War I, technology has extracted us from behind horse-drawn plows and plugged us into assembly lines and offices. Today it is removing many of us from offices and letting us work at home or compelling us to work on the road.)
（在美国的创建者们设计了他们的耕地民主100年后，几乎所有他们的子孙都住在小农场。一战始，技术使我们脱离了马拉犁的时代，把我们推上了生产线和办公室。今天技术让我们许多人离开办公室回家办公，乃至于强迫我们在路上工作。）  
(As recently as 1920, the average American baby could expect to live only fifty-four years. By the early 1990s, average life expectancy in the United States had climbed to seventy-five years, seventy-two for men and neatly seventy-nine for women. In the next twenty years, life expectancy may well rise again, even more steeply. This time it will climb, not only for the newborn but for those already well into adulthood).
（即使在1920年，美国人的平均寿命仅54岁。到90年代早期，美国的平均寿命预期已攀升到75岁，男性72，女性79。在未来20年，寿命预期将会稳定增长，甚至更快。现在，寿命预期将攀升，不止对新生儿讲，对成年人同样适用。）
In transportation and communications, the changes have been even more pronounced.
在交通运输领域，发展更加鲜明。
(As recently as World War two, the average American lived and died within 38 miles (61 kilometers) of his birthplace. For New Yorkers, the radius was only 17.5 miles (28 kilometers), as far as the subway ran. Information from the outside came by newspaper, radio, or word from the traveler’s mouth; it moved intermittently and often arrived only after long delay).
（即使在二战期间，美国人一般在其出生地的38英里（61公里）范围内活动。纽约人的生活半径仅17.5英里（28公里），最远是地铁尽头。外界信息来自报纸、广播或旅行者的只言片语，呈现间歇性移动，并且经常有很大的滞后。）
In 1945, when the first atomic bomb fused the sand of Alamogordo, New Mexico, the shot was not heard around the world; rumors of a massive explosion in the desert were easily contained. Only a half century later, someone born in Massachusetts is more likely than not to attend college in Chicago, find a job in Seattle, vacation in Mexico, and retire in Florida. (News from London, Moscow, Sarajevo, and Pyongyang arrives instantly on CNN and, for growing numbers of people, on personal computers fed by the Internet.) From our offices in suburban Virginia and rural New Hampshire, Paris, Singapore, Buenos Aires , and Sydney are all as close as Washington and Boston, none more distant than the few steps to the computer. Around the globe, we will spend the rest of our lives finding things to say to people we will never meet in person. (Thus far, shared interests have proved easy to find).
在1945年，当第一枚原子弹在新墨西哥的阿拉莫戈多沙漠上引爆，爆炸并未在世界上流传，人们很容易地相信了，在沙漠中发生大爆炸的谎言。仅半个世纪之后，有的麻省生人就是不爱在芝加哥上大学，在西雅图找工作，在墨西哥度假，在佛罗里达退休。（越来越多的人，在电脑上，通过网络获得CNN的伦敦、莫斯科、萨拉热窝、平壤新闻。）无论我们的办公室是在弗吉尼亚郊区、新汉普顿农村、巴黎、新加坡、里约热内如还是悉尼都象华盛顿和波士顿一样近，只是到电脑那么几步。在全世界范围内，我们的余生将是与我们永远也不会遇见的人找话说。（迄今，共同的兴趣已被证实很容易找到）。