I’ve got a cell phone, e-mail and voice mail. But why am I so lonely?
A funny thing happened on the way to the communications revolution: we stopped talking to each other.
   1. revolution: A revolution in a particular area of human activity is an important change in that area. 重大变革；巨大变化
   2. The nineteenth century witnessed a revolution in ship designI was walking in the park with a friend recently, and his cell phone rang, interrupting our conversation. There they were, talking and talking on a beautifully sunny day and I became invisible, absent from the conversation.
   1.interrupt: If someone or something interrupts a process or activity, they stop it for a period of time.
   2.The match took nearly three hours and was interrupted at times by rain  
   3.invisible: If you describe something as invisible, you mean that it cannot be seen
   4.Parents fear they might overstep these invisible boundaries
   The park was filled with people talking on their cell phones. They were passing other people without looking at them, saying hello, noticing their babies or stopping to pet their puppies. Evidently, the untethered electronic voice is preferable to human contact.
   1.untethered: not tied or limited with or as if with a tether (似)不被绳索捆束的，不受约束的
The telephone used to connect you to the absent. Now it makes people sitting next to you feel absent. Recently I was in a car with three friends. The driver hushed the rest of us because he could not hear the person on the other end of his cell phone. There we were, four friends zooming down the highway, unable to talk to one another because of a gadget designed to make communication easier.
   1. used to：过去常常做；be used to：现在习惯做
   2.He used to drink a lot but now he is used to doing exercise.
   3.zoom down: go quickly 飞驰
   4.gadget: A gadget is a small machine or device which does something useful
   5.Her favorite gadget is her personal ipod
Why is it that the more connected we get, the more disconnected I feel? Every advance in communications technology is a setback to the intimacy of human interaction. With e-mail and instant messaging over the Internet, we can now communicate without seeing or talking to one another. With voice mail, you can conduct entire conversations without ever reaching anyone. If my mom has a question, I just leave the answer on her machine.
   1.Why is it that----It is why that 强调句型
   2.It is in Changchun that this car is made---Where is it that this car is made?    3. setback: A setback is an event that delays your progress or reverses some of the progress that you have made.
   4.He has suffered a serious setback in his political career
As almost every conceivable contact between human beings gets automated, the alienation index goes up. You can’t even call a person to get the phone number of another person any more. Directory assistance is almost always fully automated.  
   1.conceivable: If something is conceivable, you can imagine it or believe it.
   2.Without their support the project would not have been conceivable...  
   3.alienation index:疏远指数
   4.directory A directory is a book which gives lists of facts, for example people's names, addresses, and telephone numbers, or the names and addresses of business companies, usually arranged in alphabetical order. （通常按字母顺序排列的）通讯录，姓名住址录，工商行名录
Pumping gas at a station? Why say good morning to the attendant when you can swipe your credit card (刷信用卡) at the pump and save yourself the bother of human contact?
Making a deposit at the bank? Why talk to a clerk who might live in the neighborhood when you can just insert （插入）your card into the ATM?
Pretty soon you won’t have the burden of making eye contact at the grocery store. Some supermarket chains are using a self-scanner(自动扫描仪) so you can check yourself out, avoiding those annoying clerks who look at you and ask how you are doing.
I am no Luddite. I own a cell phone, an ATM card, a voice-mail system, an email account. Giving them up isn’t an option---they are great for what they are intended to do. It’s their unintended consequences that make me cringe.??
   1.Luddite: 勒德分子是一个害怕或者厌恶技术的人，尤其是威胁现有工作的新技术的形式。在工业革命期间，英格兰的纺织工人主张模仿一个叫做Ned Ludd的人破坏工厂设备来抵制节省劳动力的技术带个工厂的改变。
   2.I am no Luddite: I am not against automation
   3.they are great for what they are intended to do: their functions are great
   4.cringe: If you cringe at something, you feel embarrassed or disgusted