In our self-absorbed age, everything is the newest New Thing or the biggest Big Thing. This spirit inevitably invests the Internet with transcendent significance. Steve Case of America Online already calls the new century "the Internet Century," and some authorities whisper that the Internet rivals the importance of Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in the 15th century. We suffer from historical amnesia. Suppose you were born in 1900. You wouldn't yet watch movies (the first big silent hit, "The Great Train Robbery," showed in 1903), let alone imagine global TV. The airplane hadn't been invented, and Henry Ford wouldn't produce the first Model T until 1908. Fewer than 10 percent of U.S. homes had phones, and fewer than 8 percent had electricity. Antibiotics hadn't been discovered. As yet the Internet isn't in the same league with these developments.
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机译：在我们的自我吸收时代，一切都是最新的新事物或最大的大事物。这种精神不可避免地投资于具有超凡意义的互联网。美国在线的史蒂夫·凯斯（Steve Case of America Online）已经将新世纪称为“互联网世纪”，一些权威人士低声说，互联网可以与古腾堡在15世纪发明印刷机的重要性相提并论。我们患有历史遗忘症。假设您出生于1900年。您还不会看电影（1903年上映的第一部大型热门单曲“ The Great Train Robbery”），更不用说想象全球电视了。该飞机尚未发明，亨利·福特（Henry Ford）直到1908年才生产出第一台T型飞机。在美国，只有不到10％的家庭拥有电话，只有不到8％的家庭拥有电力。尚未发现抗生素。迄今为止，互联网与这些发展并没有处于同一个联盟。
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