研究生科技英语阅读课文翻译对照(28)

很多年前，如果信件要几天才能到达，我们会感到沮丧不已。几年前，如果电子邮件接收迟了半小时，我们就会抱怨连连。而今天，如果一条文字信息的传送多花了几秒钟的时间，我们就会发牢骚。几个月后，我们可能会抱怨自己的手机不能自动地向一定距离内的朋友发短信，让他们知道我们就在附近。（已经有很多服务提供这样的功能了。）
These new services also make communicating more frequent and informal -- more like a blog comment or a throwaway aside, rather than a crafted email sent to one person. No need to spend time writing a long email to your half-dozen closest friends about how your vacation went. Now those friends, if they"re interested, can watch it unfold in real time online. Instead of sending a few emails a week to a handful of friends, you can send dozens of messages a day to hundreds of people who know you, or just barely do.
这些新的服务还会使通信更频繁和随意──更像是博客评论或随便说出的话，而不是发给一个人的精雕细琢的电子邮件。无需花费时间给你那几个最好的朋友写长长的电子邮件，谈论你的假期过的如何。如今，如果这些朋友感兴趣的话，他们可以实时地在网上了解你的度假生活。你不是每周向屈指可数的几个朋友发送几封电子邮件，而是可以每天向数百个认识你或和你半生不熟的人发送几十条消息。
Consider Twitter. The service allows users to send 140-character messages to people who have subscribed to see them, called followers. So instead of sending an email to friends announcing that you just got a new job, you can just tweet it for all the people who have chosen to "follow" you to see. You can create links to particular users in messages by entering @ followed by their user name or send private "direct messages" through the system by typing d and the user name.