“Life is speeding up. Everyone is getting unwell.”This may sound like something someone wo

“Life is speeding up. Everyone is getting unwell.”
This may sound like something someone would say today. But in fact, an unknown citizen who lived in Rome in AD 52 wrote it.
We all love new inventions. They are exciting, amazing and can even change our lives.
But have all these developments really improved the quality of our lives?
Picture this: You’re rushing to finish your homework on the puter. Your mobile phone rings, a QQ message from your friend appears on the screen, the noise from the television is getting louder and louder. Suddenly the puter goes blank and you lose all your work. Now you have to stay up all night to get it done. How calm and happy do you feel?
Inventions have speeded up our lives so much that they often leave us feeling stressed and tired. Why do you think people who live far away from noisy cities, who have not telephones, no cars, not even any electricity often seem to be happier? Perhaps because they lead simpler lives.
One family in the UK went “back in time” to see what life was like without all the inventions we have today. The grandparents, with their daughter, and grandsons Benjamin, 10, and Tomas, 7, spent nine weeks in a 1940s house. They had no washing machine, microwave, puter or mobile phones.
The grandmother, Lyn, said, “It was hard physically, but not mentally.” She believed life was less materialistic. “The more things you have, the more difficult life bees,” She said. The boys said they fought less to fight over, such as their puter. Benjamin also noticed that his grandmother had changed from being a “trendy（时髦的）, beer-drinking granny, to one who cooked things.”
Here are some simple ways to beat the stress often caused by our inventions!
Don’t be available all the time, turn off your mobile phone at certain times of the day. Don’t check your e-mail every day.
Don’t reply to somebody as soon as they leave a text message just because you can. It may be fun at first, but it soon gets annoying.
【小题1】The passage is mainly about     .A．problem with technologyB．improvements of our life with technologyC．the important roles technology plays in our everyday lifeD．major changes which will be likely to happen to technology【小题2】The writer quoted（引用） what a citizen in ancient Rome said at the beginning of the story in order to     .A．share a truth about lifeB．tell us what life was like long time agoC．make us wonder what causes such a thing to happenD．point out that you experience some big problems and they may be the same【小题3】Why did the family choose to spend some time in a 1940’s house? Because    .A．they liked to live simple livesB．they were curious about how people lived without modern inventionsC．they were troubled by modern inventionsD．living in a different time would be a lot of fun for them【小题4】What do you think the underlined word “available” in the 1st suggestion offered by the writer mean?A．Busy on lineB．Free.C．Be able toD．Be found by others.A