Unit   Fifteen

Text A   The Computer and The Poet

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一．课文简介

计算机的广泛应用使人类进入了一个计算机的时代。随着计算机功能的加强，人们产生了一种不切实际的幻想，即计算机可以解决人类的一切问题，甚至出现了人类可能模仿计算机的危险。其实计算机只不过是一种工具，它不会进行创造性的思维，也不可能解决人类社会面临的一切问题。如果把计算机和善于想象和观察的诗人进行某种形式的结合可能会更富成效。

Paras.1—6   The computer has great advantages and shortcomings as well.

Paras.7—10   The junction of computer and poet will be fruitful. （停顿）

二．词汇精讲：                 New  Words

（上面兰色标出的词汇分别与下面精讲词汇相链接，点击哪个词就出现那个词的相应解释及用法）

词汇精讲:

1.       persist: 坚持，固执；持续，存留

派生词： persistent a. 坚持的，一贯的

用法：persist in 坚持做某事

e.g. If you persist in breaking the law, you will go to prison. 如果你坚持违法的话，就得进监狱。

注意区别：insist on 坚持做某事

2.       vital ： 生命的；有生命力的；极其重要的

e.g. The heart is a vital organ. 心脏是维持生命所必需的器官。

It is vital that you get the form sent off by the twenty- third of this month.

你务必将那张表在本月23 号前寄出。

注意：vital 用于It is vital that +从句 句型中that 从句的谓语动词要用虚拟语气，形式是(should) + 动词原形。

3.       evaluate ：估价，评价

派生词：evaluation n. 估价，评估

e.g. We shall need to evaluate how the new material stands up to wear and tear. 我们必须对新材料的耐磨损性进行评估。

4.       ultimate： 最后的，最终的

e.g. We don’t know the ultimate result. 我们不知道最终的结局。

His ultimate goal is too distant and shadowy to obtain. 他的最终目标太遥远，又太模糊，难以实现。

操练：根本责任在校长身上。

      The ultimate responsibility lies with the headmaster.

5. undue : 过度的，过分的

e.g. It’s difficult to find a way of spreading information about the disease without causing undue alarm. 很难找到一种方式发布有关疾病的消息而不引起不应有的恐慌。

6. conquer： 征服，战胜

e.g. Man can conquer nature. 人定胜天。

It is very difficult to conquer the cigarette habit. 烟很难戒掉。

操练：他曾想用爱战胜敌对。

      He dreamed of conquering hostility by love.

7. proof:  证据，证明，

派生词： prove v. 证据，证明

e.g. Keep your receipt as proof of purchase. 保留你的发票作为购买凭证。

8. possess： 拥有，具有

派生词：possession n. 拥有；

e.g. He never possessed much money, but he always possessed good health. 他从未拥有过很多金钱，但他总是享有健康的身体。

操练：技术员掌握了珍贵的数据资料。

      The technician possesses precious data.

词组phrases

1. to pull down: 拆除；推翻

e.g. They pulled down the warehouse to build a new supermarket. 他们拆除了仓库来建一个新的超市。

操练：一切非法建筑物都必须拆除。

     All the building constructed illegally must be pulled down.

2. to mistake …for: 错把…当作

e.g. I mistake you for your brother. 我错把你当作你的兄弟了。

3. to distinguish between ：分辨，区分

e.g. People who cannot distinguish between colors are said to be colorblind. 不能辨别颜色的人被称为色盲。

操练：两个双胞胎如此相似，以至于很难区分他们。

      The twins look so much alike that it is difficult to distinguish between them.  

4. to come to terms (with): 达成协议；妥协，习惯于

e.g. You need to come to term with reality.  你必须接受现实。

They came to terms with the enemy secretly. 他们私自和敌人达成了协议。

操练：当你的朋友吵架时，你应该帮助他们和解。

      When your friends quarrel with each other, you should help them come to terms.

5. to reflect on : 仔细考虑，反思

e.g. I need time to reflect on your offer. 我需要时间来考虑你的建议。

操练：我们必须仔细考虑电视中暴力行为对儿童的影响。

      We must reflect carefully on the effect of TV violence on children.

6. to come about : 发生

e.g. Can you tell me how the accident came about? 你能告诉我事故是怎么发生的吗？

操练：好书的产生是努力工作的结果。

Good books come about as a result of hard work.

7. to make over : (财产)转让，移交；改造

e.g. His wealth was made over to his children. 他的财产被移交给了他的孩子。

He has been made over into a new man. 他已经完全改变成了另一个人。

8  to speculate on 思索，推测，猜测

e.g. A spokesperson declined to speculate on the cause of the train crash.

发言人拒绝对火车失事原因进行猜测。

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三．课文详解

The Computer and The Poet

The essential problem of man in a computerized age remains the same as it has always been. That problem is not solely how to be more productive, more comfortable, more content, but how to be more sensitive, more sensible, more proportionate, more alive. The computer makes possible a marvelous leap in human proficiency; it pulls down the fences around the practical and even the theoretical intelligence.① But the question persists and indeed grows whether the computer will make it easier or harder for human beings to know who they really are, to identity their real problems, to respond more fully to beauty, to place adequate value on life, and to make their world safer than it now is.②

Electronic brains can reduce the profusion of dead ends involved in vital research. But they can't eliminate the foolishness and decay that come from the unexamined life. Nor do they connect a man to the things he has to be connected to — the reality of pain in others; the possibilities of creative growth in himself; the memory of the race; and the rights of the next generation③

The reason these matters are important in a computerized age is that there may be a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, and intelligence with insight.④ Easy and convenient access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they would lead.⑤

Facts are terrible things if left spreading and unexamined.⑥ They are too easily regarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic. It requires a very unusual mind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact. The computer can provide a correct number, but it may be an irrelevant number until judgment is pronounced.

To the extent, then, that man fails to distinguish between the intermediate operations of electronic intelligence and the ultimate responsibilities of human decision, the computer could prove a digression.⑦ It could obscure man's awareness of the need to come to terms with himself. It may foster the illusion that he is asking fundamental questions when actually he is asking only functional ones. ⑧It may be regarded as a substitute for intelligence instead of an extension of it. It may promote undue confidence in concrete answers. "If we begin with certainties." Bacon said, "we shall end in doubts but if we begin with doubts, and we are patient with them, we shall end in certainties."

The computer knows how to conquer error, but before we lose ourselves in celebrating the victory, we might reflect on the great advances in the human situation that have come about because men were challenged by error and would not stop thinking and exploring until they found better approaches for dealing with it.⑨ "Give me a good fruitful error, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections," Ferris Greenslet wrote, "You can keep your sterile truth for yourself."

The biggest single need in computer technology is not for increased speed, or enlarged capacity, or prolonged memory, or reduced size, but for better questions and better use of the answers. Without taking anything away from the technicians, we think it might be fruitful to effect some sort of junction between the computer technologist and the poet. ⑩A genuine purpose may be served by turning loose the wonders of the creative imagination on the kinds of problems being put to electronic technology. (11)The company of poets may enable the men who tend the machines to see a wider range of possibilities than technology alone may inspire. (12)

A poet, said Aristotle, has the advantage of expressing the universal; the specialist expresses only the particular. （13） The poet, moreover, can remind us that man's greatest energy comes not from his dynamos but from his dreams. But the quality of a man's dreams can only be a reflection of his subconscious. What he puts into his subconscious, therefore, is quite literally the most important nourishment in the world.

Nothing really happens to a man except as it is registered in the subconscious. This is where event and feeling become memory and where the proof of life is stored. The poet — and we use the term to include all those who have respect for and speak to the human spirit — can help to supply the subconscious with material to enhance its sensitivity, thus safeguarding it. The poet, too, can help to keep man from making himself over in the image of his electronic wonders. For the danger is not so much that man will be controlled by the computer as that he may imitate it.（14）   

The poet reminds men of their uniqueness. It is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate on it is a gain. (15) （老师停顿）

（以下课文详解分别与上面划线部分内容相链接）

课文详解：

1.       句中makes possible a marvelous leap in human proficiency 是VCO结构，其中a marvelous leap in human proficiency 是宾语，由于宾语较长，因此把宾补possible 提到了前面。

2.       句中whether