手机可不仅仅是通信工具，它还可以是移动的银行、发动战争的情报机，以及分发药品、救死扶伤的好助手……它瞬间跨越千山万水、随时传递宝贵信息的强大功能造就了人们全新的生活方式，也成就了一个崭新的世界面貌。
The modern mobile-phone era dates back only to the 1970s. In just 40 years, they've gone from suitcase-size novelty1) to ubiquity2). More than 4 billion of the 6 billion people on earth now have a cell phone, with a quarter of those owners getting one in just the last two years. And many are using them, in a giant global experiment, to change the way life is lived, from Manhattan to Ouagadougou3). 
当今的手机时代仅仅始于20世纪70年代。在短短的40年间，手机这一原本有手提箱那么大的新奇玩意儿已经变得无处不在。当今全世界60亿人口中，有40多亿人拥有手机，而其中的四分之一用户是最近两年才拥有手机的新用户。从曼哈顿到瓦加杜古，人们都在使用手机改变原有的生活方式，这已经成了一个大型的全球性实验。
The phones now allow Masai4) tribesmen in Kenya to bank the proceeds5) from selling cattle; Iranian protesters to organize in secret; Afghan villagers to alert Coalition soldiers to Taliban forces; and charities to see, in real time, when HIV drugs run out in the middle of Malawi6).
有了手机，肯尼亚马赛部落的牧民就能把卖牛所得的收益存入银行；有了手机，伊朗抗议者便能秘密地组织起来；有了手机，阿富汗村民就能提醒联军士兵警惕塔利班；有了手机，慈善机构便能实时监控马拉维中部地区治疗艾滋病的药物何时用完。
“I was actually sitting around with a bunch of Ethiopian7) farmers recently,” says Duncan Green, research director for the charity Oxfam8), “when I noticed that none of them had light or running water, but each family had a mobile phone.” The reasons are simpler than we think, he says. “Before, these farmers, if they wanted to check on a sick relative elsewhere, had to walk three hours in each direction. Now they just make a call.” That convenience, he says, drives their eager embrace of the phones. But the phones' growing ubiquity—“they're a technological Coca-Cola,” Green says—has other uses, too. Here are some ways they're changing the world.
“其实，我最近和一群埃塞俄比亚农民待在一起，”慈善机构牛津饥荒救济委员会的研究室主任邓肯·格林说道，“我发现，虽然他们没有人用得上电或者自来水，但他们家家都有一部手机。”他说之所以出现这种情况，原因很简单，比我们想象的简单。“以前，如果这些农民有个住在别处的亲戚生病了，想问候一声，就得辛辛苦苦走上三个钟头——这还只是单程距离。现在，他们只用打个电话就行了。”他认为，这种便利性正是他们对手机趋之若鹜的原因。“手机就像是技术领域的可口可乐。”格林说。不过，手机这种日渐增长的普及性还有其他用途。下面我们就来看看手机改变世界的几种方式。
Enabling Commerce
促进贸易
In Tanzania, reports the BBC, only 5 percent of people have a bank account. In Kenya, there is one bank branch per 100,000 people. It's a situation that is repeated in many developing countries, including such potential powerhouses9) as India. The solution, for some, has come through the cell phone. In Uganda, where villages often have one top-up10) phone run by a trusted operator, a basic system helps store and transfer money. In a TED11) talk in 2007, Jan Fishman, an analyst for Frog Design, a global innovation firm, outlined a common method of banking using a cell phone where there are no banks. A villager, working hundreds of miles away from home, buys a cell-phone refill card with his earnings. To send his money back to the village, he calls the operator, who tops up the phone using the card. The operator, having taken a commission, then hands cash on12) to whoever has been authorized. In India, the system has been formalized and is supported by the Bank of India. In Kenya, the main service, M-Pesa13), moves millions of dollars per day by text message. In the East African nation, the ability to SMS means that Masai farmers can bank the money from the sale of a cow instead of carrying the cash. One minor difficulty, says Green, is that the same farmer will sometimes spend money he should be using for food on a shiny new phone. “But that's just people,” he says.
据英国广播公司报道，坦桑尼亚只有5%的人口拥有银行账户。在肯尼亚，每10万人共用一个银行支行。这种情形在许多发展中国家普遍存在，甚至包括像印度这样发展势头强劲的国家。而一些国家正利用手机改变这一现状。在乌干达，村子里通常都有一部充值电话，由一名大家都信任的操作员管理，利用这一简单系统便可以实现存款和转账。在2007年TED组织的一场演讲中，全球创意公司“青蛙设计”的分析师简·费什曼简要介绍了一种在没有银行的地方利用手机开展银行业务的常用方法。一个在离家几百英里的地方干活的村民要想把钱送回村里，可以用自己赚的钱买一张手机充值卡，然后给村里那名操作员打电话，操作员就会将这张充值卡里的钱充到村里装的那部充值电话里。扣去一定的手续费后，操作员会把现金转交给那个村民指定的收款人。在印度，这种做法已经正式化，并且得到了印度银行的支持。M-Pesa是肯尼亚最主要的手机银行服务系统，在这一系统中，每天有数百万美元以短信的方式流通。对东非国家的马赛牧民来说，能够发短信便意味着能把卖牛赚来的钱存入银行，而用不着整天带着现金。但这也带来了一个小问题，格林说，那就是牧民有时会把本应用于买食物的钱拿去买光鲜的新手机。“不过，这也是人之常情。”他说道。
Distributing Medicine
分发药品
Stock-outs14)—which is what it's called when isolated clinics in countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and Zambia run out of antimalaria medicine, zinc tablets, penicillin, HIV and AIDS drugs, and diarrhea treatments—are potentially deadly, even as their occurrence often is denied by local governments. A new project, Stop Stock-Outs, aims to use cell phones to solve the problem. Activists send a simple text message to a central number reporting which drugs are out of stock. The information is collated15) in a virtually real-time map, on which bright red dots signify a dangerous shortage.
在像肯尼亚、乌干达、马拉维、赞比亚这样的国家，有一些非常偏僻的诊所，那里的抗疟疾药物、补锌药片、青霉素、治疗艾滋病的药物和治疗腹泻的药物用完后经常缺货，这就是所谓的“药品断货”。药品断货的后果是致命的，病人很有可能因此贻误治疗而丧命，就算当地政府常常予以否认，但此类事件却时有发生。一个名叫“消除药品缺货” 的新项目旨在利用手机来解决这一问题。该项目的成员只需给总机发送一条短信报告哪些药品断货，断货信息便会被收集起来，标记在一张实时虚拟地图中，地图上的红色亮点就显示出药品短缺的危险地带。
Waging16) War
发动战争
In Afghanistan, The Wall Street Journal reports, the Taliban have forced local cell-phone-service providers to shut down their towers at night. The move is designed to stop locals reporting Taliban movements to Coalition forces. NATO troops, meanwhile, also black out17) entire areas of cell coverage before an offensive to prevent insurgents18) from remotely detonating19) roadside bombs, says one official who did not want to be named. Suppressing the devices will become harder and harder for both sides—cell phones are one of the few economic bright spots in the country. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans now have one.
《华尔街日报》报道说，在阿富汗，塔利班强迫当地的手机服务商晚上关闭信号塔。这一举措是为了阻止当地居民向联军报告塔利班的一举一动。而与此同时，一位不愿透露其姓名的官员说，北约军队在发起进攻之前也关闭了整个地区的手机通讯，以防止造反分子远程引爆路边炸弹。然而，不论对哪一方来说，阻止人们使用手机都将成为一项越来越困难的工作——手机是这个国家为数不多的经济亮点之一。现在，成千上万的阿富汗人都拥有自己的手机。
1. novelty [ˈnɒv(ə)lti] n. 新奇，新颖，新鲜
2. ubiquity：请参见47页注释13。
3. Ouagadougou [ˌwɑːɡəˈduːɡuː] n. 瓦加杜古，布基纳法索的首都。布基纳法索是位于非洲西部沃尔特河上游的内陆国。
4. Masai [mɑːˈsaɪ] n. 马赛人，东非的著名游牧民族，主要活动范围是肯尼亚南部和坦桑尼亚北部。
5. proceeds [ˈprəʊˌsiːdz] n. 收益，获利
6. Malawi [mɑːˈlɑːwi] n. 马拉维，非洲东南部的一个国家
7. Ethiopian [ˌiːθiˈəʊpjən] adj. 埃塞俄比亚的
8. Oxfam：牛津饥荒救济委员会，又译作乐施会，一个具有国际影响力的发展和救援组织联盟。这一联盟通过政治倡议、促进发展项目和紧急救援等方式，为贫困和不公正寻求解决之道。
9. powerhouse [ˈpaʊə(r)ˌhaʊs] n. 强大的团体、组织等
10. top-up：给手机或公共交通卡充值的
11. TED：一个致力于“用思想的力量改变世界”的非营利组织，全称是Technology Entertainment and Design。它于1984年由理查德·温曼和哈里·马克思共同创办，从1990年开始每年在美国加州的蒙特雷举办一次，如今在世界的其他城市也会每半年举办一次。它最初主要邀请科技、娱乐和设计领域的领军人物来分享他们最热衷的事业的见解，如今会议的内容几乎涉及各个领域。
12. hand on：转交
13. M-Pesa：指的是一项以手机为媒介进行货币转账和交付的服务名称。M代表的是mobile，pesa在斯瓦希里语中相当于英文中的money。
14. stock-out：缺货，无存货
15. collate [kəˈleɪt] vt. 收集并整理
16. wage [weɪdʒ] vt. 发动
17. black out：中断，停止，熄灯
18. insurgent [ɪnˈsɜː(r)dʒ(ə)nt] n. 造反者，起义者
19. detonate [ˈdetəneɪt] vt. 引爆