Boa noite a todos! Good evening, everyone!

Today we resume our ongoing Listening/ Reading practice. The selected text is called Hostil Mundo Novo (Hostile New World) by one of Brazil’s most renowned writer and biographer Ruy Castro, who was written about our country’s popular personalities such as Garrincha and Carmen Miranda. His text is about facing new technologies, so pay close attention to terms related to that. Keep up the good work!

Check out the steps:

• Listen to the audio first. See if you can identify any words and write them down, if you want to.
• Scroll down and read the text. You can try reading it out loud to practice your pronunciation and speaking skills, or play the audio again and follow as you listen. Read each sentence carefully and see what you can recognize and understand.
• Check translated text in italics. What were you able to grasp? Which parts were the most difficult? It’s a good idea to read the text in Portuguese again now that you know its full meaning.

1.  Ouça/ Listen

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

 

 

 

 

2. Leia/ Read

Hostil mundo novo 

Parte 1: Você já passou por isso. Nas últimas semanas, tenho sido torturado por computadores que ligam e desligam sozinhos, mouses travados, “reiniciações” lentas e outras deliciosas avarias. Ligo para o técnico e ele me instrui a ligar e desligar este ou aquele botão da torre, “usar o aplicativo” ou ficar de quatro, meter-me debaixo da mesa e desplugar tudo da parede, esperar cinco minutos e plugar de novo. Naturalmente, não dá certo. Nem pode dar. Em jovem, sobrevivi aos zeros em matemática, física, estatística e outras ciências do diabo, e me concentrei apenas no que me interessava: português, história e línguas.

Parte 2: Desde então, passei a vida profissional a bordo de um único veículo —a palavra. Com ela, tenho me virado em jornais, revistas, editoras de livros, rádios, TVs, auditórios, salas de aula e outros cenários onde a palavra seja chamada a dirimir dúvidas ou dinamitar certezas. De repente, várias eras geológicas depois, em idade de não querer aprender mais nada, a tecnologia exige que eu me torne engenheiro eletrônico.

Cada vez mais funções dispensam o papel, a ida pessoal ao banco ou a conversa “presencial”. Para reinstalar a internet no computador, tenho de ligar um cabo enfiado na televisão. Desbloquear um cartão de crédito exige saber extrair uma raiz quadrada.

Parte 3: A vida agora é online e cabe no bolso, mas, diante daquele inferno de teclas, plugues e botões sem sentido, pode-se perder tudo se digitar algo errado. A tecnologia tornou o mundo hostil para os que não conseguem acompanhá-la. É verdade que ela não pode parar por causa de meia dúzia de macróbios incapazes de se atualizar. Acontece que, nós, os macróbios, não somos meia dúzia. Somos milhões e, graças à ciência e a nós mesmos, estamos ameaçados de viver até os cem anos. Pois, se for para chegar lá, que seja para continuar usando algo mais nobre do que apenas os polegares.

 

 

Hostile New World

You’ve been through this. For the past weeks, I’ve been tortured by computers that turn on and off unannounced, problematic mouses, slow “reboots,” and other delicious malfunctions. I call the technician and he instructs me to turn on and off this or that tower button, “use the app” or stay on all fours, get under the table and unplug everything from the wall, wait five minutes and plug it again. Of course, it does not work. It would never work. As a young man, I survived zeros in mathematics, physics, statistics, and other devil sciences, and focused only on what interested me: Portuguese, history, and languages.

Since then, I have spent my professional life aboard a single vehicle – the word. With it, I have turned to newspapers, magazines, book publishers, radios, TVs, auditoriums, classrooms and other settings where the word is called to solve doubts or dynamite certainties. Suddenly, several geological ages later, at the age of not wanting to learn anything else, technology requires me to become an electronic engineer.

Using paper has become increasingly dispensed with, the personal journey to the bank or the “face-to-face” conversation. To reinstall the internet on my computer, I have to connect a cable tucked into the television. Unlocking a credit card requires knowing how to calculate a square root

Life is now online and it fits in your pocket, but in the face of that sum of keys, nonsense plugs and buttons, you can lose everything if you type something wrong. Technology has made the world hostile to those who can not keep up with it. It is true that it can not stop because of half a dozen macrobes, unable to keep up. It turns out that we, the macrobes, are not half a dozen. We are millions, and thanks to science and ourselves, we are threatened to live to be a hundred years old. But if we do get there, let it be to continue using something more noble than just the thumbs.