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my reference to edward bellamy comes from a forthcoming book, “slouching towards utopia,” by brad delong, an economics professor at the university of california, berkeley. the book is a magisterial history of what delong calls the “long 20th century,” running from 1870 to 2010, an era that he says — surely correctly — was shaped overwhelmingly by the economic consequences of technological progress.
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我对爱德华·贝拉米的引述来自加州大学伯克利分校的经济学教授布拉德·德隆即将出版的《无精打采地走向乌托邦》一书。这本书是德隆所称的“漫长的20世纪”的权威性历史，时间跨度从1870年直至2010年，他说，这个时代主要是由技术进步的经济后果所塑造，这毫无疑问是正确的。
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why start in 1870? as delong points out, and many of us already knew, for the great bulk of human history — roughly 97 percent of the time that has elapsed since the first cities emerged in ancient mesopotamia — malthus was right: there were many technological innovations over the course of the millenniums, but the benefits of these innovations were always swallowed up by population growth, driving living standards for most people back down to the edge of subsistence.?as delong argues, there are two great puzzles about this transformation — puzzles that are highly relevant to the situation in which we now find ourselves.
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为什么从1870年开始呢？正如德隆所指出的，而且也是我们很多人已经知道的，在人类历史的大部分时间里（自古代美索不达米亚出现第一个城市以来大约97%的时间里），马尔萨斯的判断都是正确的：几千年来有许多技术创新，但这些创新的好处总是被人口增长所吞噬，使大多数人的生活水平回落到维持生计的边缘。正如德隆所言，这种转变背后有两大谜团，而它们与我们现在所处的状况高度相关。
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there were occasional bouts of economic progress that temporarily outpaced what delong calls “malthus’s devil” — indeed, modern scholarship suggests there was a significant rise in per-capita income during the early roman empire. but these episodes were always temporary. and as late as the 1860s, many smart observers believed the progress that had taken place under the industrial revolution would prove equally transitory.
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偶尔也有一些经济进步，可以暂时超过德隆所称的“马尔萨斯的魔鬼”——事实上，现代学术研究表明，在罗马帝国早期，人均收入出现过显著增长。但这些插曲都是暂时的。直到19世纪60年代，许多聪明的观察人士还认为，工业革命时期取得的进步将被证明同样是短暂的。
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the first is why this happened. delong argues that there were three great “meta-innovations” (my term, not his) — innovations that enabled innovation itself. these were the rise of large corporations, the invention of the industrial resear
ch lab and globalization. we could, i think, argue the details here. more important, however, is the suggestion — from delong and others — that the engines of rapid technological progress may be slowing down.
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首先是，为什么会发生这种情况。德隆认为有三个伟大的“元创新”（这是我发明的术语，不是他的），也就是使得创新成为可能的创新。它们是：大公司的崛起、工业研究实验室的发明和全球化。我认为，有一些细节是可以商榷的。然而，更重要的是，德隆和其他人提出了一种看法：快速技术进步的引擎可能正在放缓。
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the second is why all this technological progress hasn’t made society better than it has. one thing i hadn’t fully realized until reading “slouching towards utopia” is the extent to which progress?hasn’t?brought felicity. over the 140 years delong surveys, there have been only two eras during which the western world felt generally optimistic about the way things were going.?
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其次，为什么这么多的技术进步并没有让社会变得更好。直到读了《无精打采地走向乌托邦》，我才充分意识到进步未能带来幸福的程度有多么严重。在德隆研究的140年里，只有两个时代，西方世界对事态的发展普遍感到乐观。
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本文节选自：the new york times（纽约时报）
发布时间：2022.07.06
作者：paul krugman
原文标题：technology and the triumph of pessimism
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◆词汇积累
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1.outpace
英/ ?a?t?pe?s /美/ ?a?t?pe?s /
vt.赶过；超过……速度
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2.capita
英/ ?k?p?t? /美/ ?k?p?t? /
n.头数（尤指牲口）
n.（capita）人名；（西、意）卡皮塔
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3.transitory
英/ ?tr?nz?tri /美/ ?tr?nz?t??ri /
简明
柯林斯
adj.短暂的，暂时的；瞬息的
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◆词组搭配
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1.the great bulk of? ??大部分的
2.over the course of? ??在······的过程中
3.swallow up ??淹没；吞下去；耗尽
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◆写作句总结
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原句：over the 140 years delong surveys, there have been only two eras during which the western world felt generally optimistic about the way things were going.
结构：over xx, there have been only xx during which the western world felt generally optimistic about the way things were going.
例句：over the 2 years after the covid-19 pandemic, there have been only few countries which felt generally optimistic about the way things were going.
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