Getting started

How many machines does your family own? What machines do you use every day? Can you live a life without machines?

Let's read

When I was a boy, we had a tiny television set. Although it only had one channel, I would always be in my chair when cartoons came on.

The one I liked best was The Jetsons (《杰森一家》), a cartoon full of fantastic machines that could do anything. I always smiled or even laughed when I watched it and dreamed that one day 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,     ▲    . Just today I had to spend most of the morning downloading a new copy of my word list so I could write better. When I first started out, I wrote my stories online. Last week, I spent most of another morning trying to get my new coffee maker to work right. I seem to be swimming 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 most of our time using these machines.

I hope that in the future, machines can be more user-friendly so we needn't spend all our time on them. With machines, we can live an easier life, but they can never take the place of the time to spend with family and friends.