A Child’s Imagination of Technology 一个孩子对技术的想象

“How are letters mailed?” my sister asked me one day at a local post office in central China. She was 8, two years younger than me, and we just moved to Hubei from Henan.

“See those wires?” I pointed to the thick telephone wires connected to the post office, “Letters get rolled up very thin and are transported like sticks inside them.” The scene of baskets of letters emptied into a seemingly unfathomable funnel somehow stuck in my head. I had wondered to what the funnel was connected in order for letters to be received at the other end. My imagination found the wires to be a logical solution. Back then, I marveled at the miracle of wires powered by electricity and considered them the pinnacle of high technology. The act of “mailing” or “sending” seemed mysterious to me.

For many years, however, I had been amazed at how letters arrived “flat” rather than rolled up, the way they would have been if they actually traveled through wires. “There’s no sign of being rolled up. They must have done a great job flattening letters in the post office,” I thought to myself. It was a relief to me that my little sister never asked any further questions or suspected my answer to her question.

有一天在华中的一个地方邮局里我妹妹问道：“信是怎么寄出去的” ？当年她八岁，比我小两岁，我们家不久前刚从河南搬到湖北。

“看见那些线了吗？” 我指着通进邮局的电话粗线说：“他们把信卷得很细，象小棍一样从这些线里寄出去”。邮局里成筐的信倒进一个似乎深不可测的筒道的画面不知何故一直印在我的脑海里，挥之不去。我弄不清那个筒道到底连到哪儿信才能寄到收件人的手里，想象力使我觉得那些电线是很符合逻辑的答案。当时那些电力驱动的线的神迹令我惊奇，觉得它们就是尖端高科技，“邮”或者“寄”对我来说似乎很神秘。

然而此后好几年，我一直都很诧异，那些信尽管如我所想的从电线里寄过，收到的时候却很平，并不卷。我心里琢磨：“一点儿卷过的迹象都没有，邮局展信的技术真了不得。” 我妹妹并没有再提寄信的问题，也没有怀疑过我的答案，让我如释重负。

Technology, Technology, Technology

Some thirty years ago, only in science fiction would one come across the idea of a video-phone with which phone conversationalists might see each other. Not to mention computers, TV was rare. I still remember that a Pentium 3 was password locked and reserved for researches on theoretical mathematics in the department where I used to teach college English in China.

Education in America has put me on the fast track of technological advancement. I came to rely on computers for my homework and general communication: Word, Excel, Internet Explorer and e-mail. The list keeps expanding, from Power Point, Adobe reader, CD burning, photo editing, web page creation and maintenance to electronics and hardware including scanner, printer, digital camera, video camera, and other classroom multimedia equipment. When I returned to China in 2002, I was overwhelmed and amused by how common it was running into someone on the street yapping into a fist near his/her ear--cell phone and instant messaging were the order of the day. Software keeps growing, both in China and in the United States: QQ, "messengers," Skype, Facebook, et cetera, et cetera. I've visited and posted comments on friends' blogs. Working at Primary Source is propelling me to create one of my own.

My observation of technology is that hi-tech could be overwhelming and time-consuming at times. It's great when it works, but frustrating when it doesn't. Like language--a carrier of culture in my opinion--technology should be a service or a method as well. Language acquisition is the bridge to cross-cultural understanding and communication. By the same token, technology should be a means by which we fulfill tasks. We definitely should not be a slave to technology.