☆☆四星级☆☆Economist Debate阅读写作分析－－Information Overload

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红色:单词
紫色:短语,句子
蓝色:分析

SURVEY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Make it simple

The next thing in technology, says Andreas Kluth, is not just big but truly huge: the conquest of complexity


“THE computer knows me as its enemy,” says John Maeda. “Everything I touch doesn't work.” Take those “plug-and-play” devices, such as printers and digital cameras, that any personal computer (PC) allegedly recognises automatically as soon as they are plugged into an orifice called a USB port at the back of the PC. Whenever Mr Maeda plugs something in, he says, his PC sends a long and incomprehensible error message from Windows, Microsoft's ubiquitous operating system. But he knows from bitter experience that the gist of it is no.

At first glance, Mr Maeda's troubles might not seem very noteworthy. Who has not watched Windows crash and reboot without provocation, downloaded endless anti-virus programs to reclaim a moribund hard disc, fiddled with cables and settings to hook up a printer, and sometimes simply given up? Yet Mr Maeda is not just any old technophobic user. He has a master's degree in computer science and a PhD in interface design, and is currently a professor in computer design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is, in short, one of the world's foremost computer geeks. Mr Maeda concluded that if he, of all people, cannot master the technology needed to use computers effectively, it is time to declare a crisis. So, earlier this year, he launched a new research initiative called “Simplicity” at the MIT Media Lab. Its mission is to look for ways out of today's mess.(这两段就举了一个例子:一个计算机用户遇到了麻烦.咋一看还以为是哪个计算机盲遇到什么问题自己解决不了.在第二段作者才指出是一个世界顶级计算机专家.这种写法可以给读者留下深刻映象)

Mr Maeda has plenty of sympathisers. (这种衔接非常自然)“It is time for us to rise up with a profound demand,” declared the late Michael Dertouzos in his 2001 book, “The Unfinished Revolution”: “Make our computers simpler to use!” Donald Norman, a long-standing advocate of design simplicity, concurs. “Today's technology is intrusive and overbearing. It leaves us with no moments of silence, with less time to ourselves, with a sense of diminished control over our lives,” he writes in his book, “The Invisible Computer”. “People are analogue, not digital; biological, not mechanical. It is time for human-centred technology, a humane technology.”

The information-technology (IT) industry itself is long past denial. Greg Papadopoulos, chief technologist at Sun Microsystems, a maker of powerful corporate computers, says that IT today is “in a state that we should be ashamed of; it's embarrassing.” Ray Lane, a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the most prominent technology financiers in Silicon Valley, explains: “Complexity is holding our industry back right now. A lot of what is bought and paid for doesn't get implemented because of complexity. Maybe this is the industry's biggest challenge.” Even Microsoft, which people like Mr Lane identify as a prime culprit, is apologetic. “So far, most people would say that technology has made life more complex,” concedes Chris Capossela, the boss of Microsoft's desktop applications. (逐渐展开,引入更多人的评论)

The economic costs of IT complexity are hard to quantify but probably exorbitant. The Standish Group, a research outfit that tracks corporate IT purchases, has found that 66% of all IT projects either fail outright or take much longer to install than expected because of their complexity. Among very big IT projects—those costing over $10m apiece—98% fall short.

Gartner, another research firm, uses other proxies for complexity. An average firm's computer networks are down for an unplanned 175 hours a year, calculates Gartner, causing an average loss of over $7m. On top of that, employees waste an average of one week a year struggling with their recalcitrant PCs. And itinerant employees, such as salesmen, incur an extra $4,400 a year in IT costs, says the firm.
Tony Picardi, a boffin at IDC, yet another big research firm, comes up with perhaps the most frightening number. When he polled a sample of firms 15 years ago, they were spending 75% of their IT budget on new hardware and software and 25% on fixing the systems that they already had; now that ratio has been reversed—70-80% of IT spending goes on fixing things rather than buying new systems. According to Mr Picardi, this suggests that this year alone IT complexity will cost firms worldwide some $750 billion. Even this, however, does not account for the burden on consumers, whether measured in the cost of call-centres and help desks, in the amount of gadgets and features never used because they are so byzantine, or in sheer frustration.(引入公司的例子,从另一个角度讨论同一个问题)


Why now?(下一个问题)

Complaints about complex technology are, of course, nothing new.(又是一个衔接用的句子) Arguably, IT has become more complex in each of the 45 years since the integrated circuit made its debut. But a few things have happened in the past three years that now add a greater sense of urgency.

The most obvious change(与上一段衔接) is the IT bust that followed the dotcom boom of the late 1990s. After a decade of strong growth, the IT industry suddenly started shrinking in 2001 (see chart 1). In early 2000 it accounted for 35% of America's S&P 500 index; today its share is down to about 15%. “For the past three years, the tech industry's old formula—build it and they come— has no longer worked,” says Pip Coburn, a technology analyst at UBS, an investment bank. For technology vendors, he thinks, this is the sort of trauma that precedes a paradigm shift. Customers no longer demand “hot” technologies, but instead want “cold” technologies, such as integration software, that help them stitch together and simplify the fancy systems they bought during the boom years.

Steven Milunovich, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, another bank, offers a further reason why simplicity is only now becoming a big issue.(又是一个衔接) He argues that the IT industry progresses in 15-year waves. In the first wave, during the 1970s and early 1980s, companies installed big mainframe computers; in the second wave, they put in PCs that were hooked up to “server” computers in the basement; and in the third wave, which is breaking now, they are beginning to connect every gadget that employees might use, from hand-held computers to mobile phones, to the internet.

The mainframe era, says Mr Milunovich, was dominated by proprietary technology (above all, IBM's), used mostly to automate the back offices of companies, so the number of people actually working with it was small. In the PC era, de facto standards (ie, Microsoft's) ruled, and technology was used for word processors and spreadsheets to make companies' front offices more productive, so the number of people using technology multiplied tenfold. And in the internet era, Mr Milunovich says, de jure standards (those agreed on by industry consortia) are taking over, and every single employee will be expected to use technology, resulting in another tenfold increase in numbers. (比较三个时期使用人数的增加)

Moreover, the boundaries between office, car and home will become increasingly blurred and will eventually disappear altogether. In rich countries, virtually the entire population will be expected to be permanently connected to the internet, both as employees and as consumers. This will at last make IT pervasive and ubiquitous, like electricity or telephones before it, so the emphasis will shift towards making gadgets and networks simple to use.(计算机网络的影响)

UBS's Mr Coburn adds a demographic observation. Today, he says, some 70% of the world's population are “analogues”, who are “terrified by technology”, and for whom the pain of technology “is not just the time it takes to figure out new gadgets but the pain of feeling stupid at each moment along the way”. Another 15% are “digital immigrants”, typically thirty-somethings who adopted technology as young adults; and the other 15% are “digital natives”, teenagers and young adults who have never known and cannot imagine life without IM (instant messaging, in case you are an analogue). But a decade from now, Mr Coburn says, virtually the entire population will be digital natives or immigrants, as the ageing analogues convert to avoid social isolation. Once again, the needs of these converts point to a hugely increased demand for simplicity.(不同人群的不同反映)

The question is whether this sort of technology can ever become simple, and if so, how. This survey will analyse the causes of technological complexity both for firms and for consumers, evaluate the main efforts toward simplification by IT and telecom vendors today, and consider what the growing demands for simplicity mean for these industries. A good place to start is in the past.

总体来说,这篇文章文字难度非常小,生词不多,句子不难,也没有太多的专业术语.文章使用大量例子作为职称,这种风格显然不适合用在aw写作种.但不少简单的句子只得借鉴.

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Themoderator's opening remarksOurfirst debate in this series involved a vital area of public policy. For thissecond debate the focus is firmly on the individual, and the impact oftechnology on our lives. The question at hand should make us all examine ourown use of technology, and perhaps produce surprising answers.

Weall use technology. Everyone reading or taking part in this debate is of courseconnected to the internet. For that, at least, let us be thankful.

Buteven as it opens up extraordinary new possibilities, is technology making ourlives too complicated? I am able to write this opening statement far away frommy desk, courtesy of wireless connectivity, on a hotel veranda overlooking theEnglish Channel on a Sunday morning: miraculous simplicity! Yet my wife, whosebirthday we are celebrating here, may view it differently: an unfortunatecomplication of her special day. This debate is about a question many of usgrapple with on a daily basis.

Twodimensions of the issue emerge from the thoughtful opening statements. First,Richard Szafranski, a partner at Toffler Associates, raises the broad impact oftechnology on our environment: its contribution to global warming, the creationof new chemical compounds with uncertain impact on life and health, theinvention of weapons of mass destruction. (这些都是素材)Surely, he argues, such thingscomplicate our lives.

Second,and more palpably, there is the matter of the breakneck development of personaltechnology. Mr Szafranski argues that the abundance of this stuff is such thatwe suffer from "over-choice" as well as "surpluscomplexity": all those ring tones to choose from and personal devices tobe baffled by. Far from simplifying our lives, choosing between so many optionsis hard and increasingly complicated work.

JohnMaeda, president elect of the Rhode Island School of Design, accepts thattechnology can add complexity to our lives, and we can all empathise with talesof maddening computer crashes and infuriating printer glitches. But, he claims,it also has the capacity to remove even greater complexity that existedbeforehand: who wouldn't grapple with a fidgety hearing-aid if in the end itovercomes deafness?. Furthermore, he believes, we are tech"explorers", experimenting and adapting technologies to our needsover time: he raises the prospect that we are entering a time ofsimplification, a "Renaissance of design-led development." In short,"the bad rap given to technologies today will be only temporary."

Wheredoes the balance lie? That is what I hope this debate will clarify. Mr Maedareckons there is 90% upside and 10% downside; Mr Szafranski, without putting anumber on it, thinks it's the other way around. What do you think?

Onelast word before the debate begins. You have, rightly, on previous occasionslooked closely and critically at the wording of the propositions. In this case,as Mr Szafranski notes, it might be objected that technology didn't"promise" anything, though I think it's probably fair to say thatmany people assumed (and tech companies routinely claim) that its purpose is tosimplify not complicate. "It didn't work," asserts Mr Szafranski. Ordid it?
这篇没有什么好说的,非常简单,关键是下两篇