Drowning in Light

Dirk Hanson

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德国文豪歌德临终时的最后一句话是：“亮些！再亮些！”无独有偶，法国伟大的浪漫主义作家雨果临终喊道：“我看见了漆黑的光。”人类一生向往光明，惧怕黑暗及黑暗所隐蔽的丑恶与恐怖。如今，科技进步带来的光亮早就满足了歌德的要求，并远远超出了他的想象极限。然而，因为光亮，海龟爬往错误的生育地点，萤火虫们找不到配偶，90%的人再也无法用肉眼欣赏美丽的银河。我们对光的渴望何时到达尽头？我们对光的“瘾”到何处是个度？这是我们都需要思考的问题。

In 1996, Yale economist William D. Nordhaus calculated that the average citizen of Babylon would have had to work a total of 41 hours to buy enough lamp oil to equal a 75-watt light bulb burning for one hour.1. 1996年，耶鲁大学经济学家威廉·D. 诺德豪斯计算出，要获得相当于一个75瓦灯泡发光一小时所释放的亮光，一位普通的巴比伦公民需要工作整整41小时才能买得起足够的灯油。Babylon: 巴比伦，它的历史可以追溯到大约公元前二千年。At the time of the American Revolution, a colonial would have been able to purchase the same amount of light, in the form of candles, for about five hours’ worth of work.2. American Revolution: 美国革命，指在18世纪后半叶导致了北美13州脱离大英帝国并且创建了美利坚合众国的一连串事件。美国独立战争（1775—1783）是美国革命的一部分；colonial:（在美国独立前的）13州殖民地时期的人；purchase: 买，购买。And by 1992, the average American, using compact fluorescents3. compact fluorescent: 节能灯，指将荧光灯与镇流器组合成一个整体的照明设备，光效比一般白炽灯高。, could earn the same amount of light in less than one second. That sounds like a great deal.

Except for one thing: We treat light like a drug whose price is spiraling4. spiral: （价值、价格）暴跌，急剧下降。toward zero. In the words of sleep expert Charles A. Czeisler of Harvard Medical School, “every time we turn on a light, we are taking a drug that affects how we will sleep and how we will be awake the next day.”Simply put, light exposure5. exposure: 袒露，暴露在……之下。affects how we eat, sleep, and work. And for most people, the greater the light, the greater the effects on their sleep.

To complicate matters, our relationship with light is profoundly psychological as well.6. profoundly: 深深地，极度地；psychological: 心理上的，精神的。In her article“Psychological processes in fluencing lighting quality,”Jennifer A. Veitch analyzes the available scienti fic evidence concerning the manner in which lighting conditions affect mood and behavior in of fice settings.7. 在詹妮弗·A. 维奇的文章《影响照明质量的心理因素》里，她分析了现有的关于照明条件如何影响人在办公环境中的心情和行为的科学证据。Veitch found that “preferences for illuminance8. illuminance: 照度，指每单位面积所接到的光，单位是勒克斯。居家的一般照度建议在100勒克斯—300勒克斯之间。具有代表性的一般日常照度有：满月照度大约是0.2勒克斯，星光照度一般是0.0003勒克斯，办公室照度一般是300勒克斯左右。levels are generally higher than the recommended levels.” Researchers in the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada have all documented the same tendency to “overlight” things. Veitch also references studies showing that “people with seasonal affective disorder or the milder, subsyndromal form of this mood disorder consistently preferred higher room illuminance levels than matched, normal controls.”9. 维奇还援引了相关研究，说明“与正常对照组相比，患有季节性情绪失调症或该症中稍微轻微一些的亚症状人群总是喜欢更高的居家照度水平。”reference:把……引作参考，引用；seasonal affective disorder: 季节性情绪失调，也叫做“冬季忧郁症”，是一种主要因为阳光时长的变化而产生的感情或情绪失调。居住在北极圈内的人，由于极夜的缘故，极容易患上季节性情绪失调。

This founding, put simply, states that people don’t feel comfortable in dim workrooms with no wall lighting. See any film noir10. film noir: （法语）黑色电影，多指好莱坞侦探和犯罪片。一般认为，好莱坞经典黑色电影时期从20世纪40年代持续至20世纪50年代末，这个时期的黑色电影带有压抑黑白片的视觉风格。classic for details.

Our lust for light has transformed our cities.11. lust: 强烈的欲望，渴望；transform: 使变化，使改造。We have hobbled the nighttime thieves, perverts, and pickpockets;from the ghosts, goblins, and witches.12. hobble: 阻碍，妨碍；pervert: 变态，堕落者；pickpocket:扒手；goblin: （调皮捣蛋的）小妖精，小鬼。Greg Gbur, a professor in the University of North Carolina, reminded me that a wealth of stories—from H. P. Lovecraft’sThe Haunter of the Darkto the moviePitch Black—have focused on the horrible things that come for us when everything goes dark.13. a wealth of: 很多的，丰富的；H.P. Lovecraft: H.P. 洛夫克拉夫特（1890－1937），美国恐怖、科幻与奇幻小说作家，尤以其怪奇小说著称，文中提到的《夜魔》（The Haunter of the Dark）是他的一篇著名短篇小说；Pitch Black: 《星际传奇》，1999年的一部好莱坞科幻片，讲述迫降在外星的一艘太空飞船遭遇一群畏惧光线的地下异形的袭击，这群异形趁日蚀大地一片黑暗期间爬到地面袭击地面上的生物。Many of the first treatises denying the existence of ghosts and witches came from larger cities in the Netherlands and England, which featured some of the earliest and most extensive street lighting in Europe.14. 那些最早否定鬼魂和女巫存在的论文，许多都来自于荷兰和英国的大城市，这些大城市的特点就是它们是欧洲最早启用街道照明并拥有范围最广的街道照明系统的城市。treaty: 论述，诉求；feature: 以……特色，以……特征。At roughly the same time, “failure to illuminate”became a 17th-century crime. As Henry David Thoreau15. Henry David Thoreau: 亨利·戴维·梭罗（1817－1862），美国作家、哲学家、废奴主义者。他最著名的作品有散文集《瓦尔登湖》和《公民不服从》等。concluded: “Men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.” By the mid-1800s,gaslight had changed everything. Artists, bohemians, and ordinary citizens of every stripe ventured forth into the gas-lit night of the city.16. bohemian: 吉卜赛人，流浪汉；stripe: 类型，种类；venture:冒……危险，冒险前进。In the 1850 pocket guide,New York by Gaslight, we are told how to “penetrate beneath the thick veil of night and lay bare the fearful mysteries of darkness in the metropolis.”17. 一本1850年的袖珍指南《煤气灯光下的纽约》告诉我们如何“看透黑夜的厚面纱，将那些大都市暗夜里的可怕秘密公之于众。” pocket guide: 袖珍指南，袖珍指导；penetrate: 穿透，看透；lay bare: 揭发，暴露；metropolis: 大都会，大城市。

Today, engineers are greasing the wheels18. grease the wheels: 给轮子或机器上油，（引申义）采取办法使事情更加顺利地进行。. Lighting prices fall and ef ficiencies rise with the breathtaking semiconductors19. semiconductor: 半导体，一种导电性可受控制、范围可从绝缘体至导体之间的材料。无论从科技或是经济发展的角度来看，半导体的重要性都是非常巨大的。今日大部分的电子产品，如计算机、移动电话或是数字录音机当中的核心单元都和半导体有着极为密切的关联。. As prices fall, our use of light climbs rapidly. Human beings, when faced with the availability of a cheaper and more ef ficient lighting technology,simply use more of it. Like any junkie20. junkie: 吸毒成瘾者，做某事上瘾者。, we don’t know when we’ve had enough. “One thing that evolutionary anthropologists have learned is that humans are not necessarily natural conservationists,” says biological anthropologist Carol Worthman of Emory University, who has done field work in developing countries with scant night lighting,such as New Guinea and Vietnam.21. 艾默理大学生物人类学家卡罗尔·沃斯曼曾在新几内亚和越南那样夜间照明不足的发展中国家做过实地考察。她说：“进化人类学家的发现之一便是人类并不一定是天生的自然资源保护主义者。”conservationist: 自然资源保护论者，提倡保护自然资源的人；scant: 缺乏的，不足的。“We don’t have inbuilt mechanisms22. mechanism: 机制，机理。to step down consumption, even in the best interest of our own physical health.” The disruption of sleeping and the disappearing night sky are just a part of the price. We’ve even tried, and failed, to understand how much we need.

After centuries of gorging, however, there may finally be darkness at the end of the tunnel.23. gorge: 狼吞虎咽地吃，塞饱；dark at the end of the tunnel: 反用常用俗语“light at the end of the tunnel”，此处表示人类无节制的光消耗可能会停止快速增长。Tsao’s Sandia group forecasts that “the developed countries are nearing a saturation point in average illuminance, but plausible arguments can be made that the saturation point may yet be higher.”24. saturation: 饱和状态；plausible: 似乎有理的，表面上讲得通的。

The researchers at Sandia envision a future in which lighting systems will more closely approximate natural lighting, and see a useful analogy in telephony, where bare-bones telephone service evolved into “smart mobile communications systems with a fusion of communications, computation, and display technologies.”25. 桑迪亚的研究者们预想在将来，照明系统将会更加贴近自然光照；他们在电话技术领域找到了共同点：过去极其简单的电话服务已经进化为“融合交流、计算技术和显示技术为一体的智能移动通信系统”。envision: 设想，预想；analogy: 相似之处，类比；bare-bones: 极简单的，基础的；fusion: 混合，融合。Real-time control of the mix of light wavelengths and intensity, as well as real-time control of light placement, are the keys.26. real-time: 实时的，接到指示立即执行的；wavelength: 波长；placement: 位置，安置。The goal is to customize light to fit people’s preferences, which could cut back on lighting and save energy by ironing out waste.27. customize: 订制，按客户具体要求制造；iron out: 消除。Today’s compact fluorescent lamps are expected to give way to SSL LEDs by about 2020, which is when the first rudimentary “smart”lighting will gain ground, say researchers.28. SSL LED: 固态照明（solid-state lighting），指使用固态电子元件，即半导体元件，例如发光二极管、有机发光半导体及高分子发光二极管等作为光源的照明技术。与使用传统电灯泡或日光灯等光源的照明技术相对；rudimentary: 初期的，刚起步的；gain ground: 流行，普及。This may eventually lead to wireless controls for full on/off dimming29. dimming: 亮度控制，调光。responses. We will enter an era in which “lighting systems have the information necessary to customize light to user preferences.”

On his deathbed, Goethe is supposed to have demanded more light. Today we are living in a world that has met Goethe’s demand beyond his wildest dreams. Sea turtles trundle mistakenly toward seaside condos,30. trundle: 滚动，移动；condo: 公寓。fire flies fail to find mates,and two thirds of Americans in 2008 and 90 percent of the world’s population could no longer see the Milky Way with the naked eye. How much light can we take? We’re bound to find out. After all, it’s practically free.