Modern inventions have speeded up people's lives amazingly. Motor cars1 a hundred miles in more than an hour, aircraft cross the world within a day, 2 computers operate at lightning speed. Indeed, this love of 3 seems never-ending. Every year motor cars are produced which go even faster and each new computer boasts (吹嘘) of 4 precious seconds in handling tasks.
All this saves time, but5 a cost. When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an airplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling known as jet-lag ( 时差). Our bodies feel that they have been 6 behind in another time zone. Again, spending too long at 7 results in painful wrists and fingers. Mobile phones also have their dangers, according to some scientists; too much use may transmit (传播) harmful 8 into our brains, a consequence we do not like to 9 about.
However, how do we handle the time we have saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We are so used to constant activity that we find it 10 to sit down and do nothing or even just one thing at a time. Perhaps the days are long gone when we might listen 11 to a story on the radio, letting imagination take us into another world.
There was a time 12 some people's lives were devoted simply to the cultivation (耕作) of the 13 or the care of cattle. No multi-tasking (多重任务) there; their lives went on at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. There is much that we might envy about a way of life like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestors 14. Modern machines have 15 people from that primitive existence.
