When we were growing up in our grandparents' home, Jack, my grandfather, was always in his room sitting in the chair and listening to the radio. The voices speaking from the metal box day and night, taught us that there was a larger world outside. He would roll the black dial (刻度盘) back and forth until the signal was clear. Then he would listen.
Now he is old and falls ill. When I went to visit him, he said to me, "I dislike the Internet. The problem is that we're losing primary contact with each other. No more shaking hands. Everyone is so busy. We want too much and in the process of getting it we miss so much." He stopped for a while. "It makes me lonely and sad." Then he looked at me, "I just want to hear your voices."
I think of all the voices on the radio he has spent a lifetime listening to. I asked, "How did you become interested in radio?" "I don't know," he said. "It was another way to reach people. I was always interested in searching for a better signal, a clearer, more powerful signal that could communicate with someone somewhere."
"And I'll tell you another funny thing: you can electronically eliminate all kinds of noise from the signal, but you can't get rid of natural noise caused by thunder and lightning, rainstorms, or snowstorms."
He closed his eyes and smiled. "I was just thinking that in spite of all our technologies, maybe we haven't progressed that far as human beings. We shouldn't forget we still have the same basic needs."
