When I was a boy, we had a tiny television set. It only had one channel (频道). Still, I would always be in my chair when cartoons came on.
The one I liked best was The Jasons (《杰森一家》). It was a cartoon series set in a future that was full of fantastic machines that could do anything. I always smiled when I watched it and dreamed of a day when I would have machines like this to do all my work, so I could just sit back and relax.
Now my life is full of machines like these. But if anything, I seem to have more to do than ever. Just today I had to spend most of the morning downloading (下载) a new word processing program so I could write this article. When I first started out, I wrote my stones on lined notebook paper and it took half the time. Last week, I spent most of another morning trying to get my new coffee maker to work right. I seem to be drowning in a sea of new rules and problems that come with new technology.
Now don't get me wrong. Computers and machines have done a lot to help all of us. I just want us to be able to use them without them using us. We always seem to be busy because we're spending all of our time using these machines.
I hope that in the future, machines can be more user-friendly, so we don't spend all our time on them. With machines we can live an easier life, but they can never replace time spent with family and friends.
