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November 1, 2018
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| He recently watched a Woody Allen movie. In the movie, an American guy traveled to Paris and he accidentally time-slipped into 1920's Paris. He learned how to travel between the two time periods. He was amazed to meet Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, etc. The guy was a writer and met a famous writer. He returned to his era, and brought his new updated story that his publisher rejected, and showed her. She said that his work was great. He felt that compared to his world, the 20's era Paris had a lot of good points, and many famous people gathered there. He decided to stay in the 20's era Paris. But, at the end, he had second thoughts, and decided not to. He remembered that in the 1920's, the medicine situation was not as good as in his time. And if one suffered from a cavity, they didn't have the technology of anesthesia, so the patients had to withstand the pain of the treatment. Even for only this reason, it was big enough that he remained in the modern society. We are complaining about present life and tend to say the old time was good because of nostalgia. We shouldn't forget that we are living in a more comfortable world than the old time, and technology is pursuing the next stage of comfortable living. "But ...," he thought. It was right that new technology enabled us to live longer lives. Better medicine has  been invented. Doctor's skills are going up. We can eat and drink from things imported from all over the world at cheaper prices. We can buy anything from abroad thanks to free trade and developed transportation systems. More and more people could enjoy traveling around the world. We can watch various sports in the world through good quality big TVs. He was surprised that he saw a big sized 4K TV sold in a shop at a price of only 400 dollars. We can watch movies through rental video shops and the internet at a low cost. We can get tickets for planes easier, and reserve hotel rooms easier. We can communicate with many friends on Facebook and other social networks. "But...," he thought. He was asked to attend a wedding party of one of his relatives in a foreign country and make a speech. He booked the airplane easily at a cheap price. He really dreaded to make a speech in front of people and if a long trip at a higher cost could release his burden, he would choose it. He and his father hadn't been getting along with for a long time. Facebook couldn't solve that situation. He felt new communication technology didn't work for basic problem like this. He heard that SNS could make the bully problem in schools worse. His smartphone was troublesome. It demanded him to charge it every day. It warned frequently about the shortage of vacant memory, or unread emails, or gave alerts to improve the situation of some services, recommendations, etc. He started to think about to quit using his phone. He hated sports, and he never exercised. His body was like a hippopotamus. He cursed so many delicious foods and tasty alcohol drinks that were cheaply imported from all over the world. He couldn't sleep well. He felt that modern society was too busy. There was too much information all around us to be able to filter it. Recently, he watched a movie. The movie was good, although he could say that the book was definitely better than the movie. Sometimes he thought that reading books might be the best way to enjoy something because you can make up the world and one's imagination is unlimited. As for books, several years ago, he bought an e-reader. It was an epoch-making machine. As his eyes had started becoming old, he happily was able to make letters bigger and could enjoy reading many books. Actually, he bought a new generation e-reader when the new ones appeared and read more than 30 books. This continued for several years. And one day, he realized reading books made of paper suited him better. After that day, he had never used his e-reader. He liked paper books that he could stop reading anytime and put a bookmarker in, and start anytime just by opening it. He liked to feel a sense of completion looking at how the bookmarker proceeded. He liked to see the back of the cover on the book shelves. He liked to hand them to others for recommendations. He felt that progress wasn't always good. |
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*cavity :虫歯
*anesthesia :麻酔
*withstand :耐える
*dread :ひどく心配する
*hippopotamus :カバ
*as for :について言えば
*completion :完成