L. G.亚历山大/L.G.Alexander
The past ages of man have all been carefully labelled by anthropologists. Descriptions like“Palaeolithic Man”.“Neolithic Man”，etc.，neatly sum up whole periods. When the time comes for anthropologists to turn their attention to the twentieth century, they will surely choose the label“Legless Man”.Histories of the time will go something like this：“In the twentieth century, people forgot how to use their legs. Men and women moved about in cars, buses and trains from a very early age. There were lifts and escalators in all large building to prevent people from walking. This situation was forced upon earth-dwellers of that time because of their extraordinary way of life. In those days, people thought nothing of travelling hundreds of miles each day. But the surprising thing is that they didn't use their legs even when they went on holiday. They built cable railways, ski-lifts and roads to the top of every huge mountain. All the beauty spots on earth were marred by the presence of large car parks.”
The future history books might also record that we were deprived of the use of our eyes. In our hurry to get from one place to another, we failed to see anything on the way. Air travel gives you a bird's-eye view of the world—or even less if the wing of the aircraft happens to get in your way. When you travel by car or train a blurred image of the countryside constantly smears the windows. Car drivers, in particular, are forever obsessed with the urge to go on and on：they never want to stop. Is it the lure of the great motorways, or what?And as for sea travel, it hardly deserves mention. It is perfectly summed up in the words of the old song：“I joined the navy to see the world, and what did I see?I saw the sea.”The typical twentieth-century traveller is the man who always says“I've been there.”You mention the remotest, most evocative place-names in the world like El Dorado, Kabul, Irkutsk and someone is bound to say“I've been there”—meaning，“I drove through it at 100 miles an hour on the way to somewhere else.”