2007年5月28日星期一

拾电脑深处的文件夹时总会被déjà-vu搞得心动, 因为这些久违的文件实在太经典了。 这些温馨的, 深邃的, 动人的, 杀气冲天的déjà-vu总是贯穿于我暗伏杀机的平淡生活中,起到了张晓龙的问候般的效果。 我很满意。

忽略其导致癫痫病的副作用之后,这就是现在和未来的力量之源。 用鲁迅的口吻来讲,这就是现在和未来的力量之源罢 !

然而在天天叫喊”No more déjà-vu, please!”的Stanley同学那里,情况就大相径庭了。最近他开始质疑自己的一句有些年岁的口头禅:”When we jump out of the circle, we can see the bigger picture. ” 并不留情面地对这句话作出鉴定: 纯属SB。

然而正是一句对今天没有指导意义的废话,惊现在我多年前稚嫩的演讲稿里,并作为déjà-vu的主要来源正在激励着我背上的汗毛。Stanley其实早就在2003年慈祥地提醒过我,这只是一种手段,在危难时刻创造一种机会,可以让别人陶醉于文化的déjà-vu中而自己能够挤入智者群中暂时躲避两秒钟,皆大欢喜。

附上新鲜出土的21世纪初的21世纪杯稿子及音频以纪念刚刚另一种灵感的诞生。

Download: Well-rounded Education
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, April 2004
Zhang Yan


Ladies and gentlemen,
I’m truly honored by the opportunity to stand before you on this special day, a day when I as an engineering student can express my special thoughts to all of you audience from a diversity of backgrounds.
Last October I participated in the Model United Nations Conference hosted by Chinese Foreign Ministry. I still remember vividly the scene when the reporter of Phoenix TV interviewed me after the conference. She asked: “As a student of telecommunications, why do you spend so much time and energy preparing for this political event?” I said: “To give myself an all-round education!” And the next morning, that reply became the headline of Beijing Daily, if not China Daily. It was entitled: “Science and engineering students seeking to be well-rounded.”
Yes, we want to be well-rounded because we are challenged. We engineering students take it for granted that technology is changing incredibly fast. We are thinking nervously and seriously whether our colleges are failing to provide a foundation in the skills currently needed in industry. Take my major telecommunications for example. Scientists say that 21st century is a biomedical time, not an electrical time. So the interdisciplinary exploitation serves as the critical part for our electric and electronics world to find new way of being.
Therefore, throughout the history of our university, researchers, educators, and students have been increasing connections among disciplines. We are proud of our REU program—Research Experiences for Undergraduates, which was established by the student union of our telecommunications school. We members are now doing a Cochlear Implants Project. In order to provide deaf people a hearing, we are trying to produce a bionic ear for these disabled. This artificial device incorporates electrical and electronics engineering, biomedical engineering, psychoacoustics and cognition science together. Through this project, we came to understand each other, we started to appreciate what we did not know, we managed to overcome differences, and we were motivated to travel in unexplored territory seeking new understandings of our world. In a word, we had witnessed the great power of knowledge collaboration. Students from different fields had regained their future opportunities because they know for sure that the interdisciplinary education is always there providing us with a broad stage to reach our full potential.
But the power of knowledge collaboration is not restricted to science and engineering. It is in the full community of learning. Walking around campus I absorbed a reality that there is a seamless web between students from different professional backgrounds. The engineering students are discussing animatedly in a philosophy lecture, speaking passionately in the public speaking club, and looking for sparkling ideas from learning history and arts. How wonderful that is! That, ladies and gentleman, is just a significant step forward to be well-rounded because once we jump out of the circle we can see the bigger picture.
Still in the Model United Nations, on the issue of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the agenda passed a motion to urge the UNESCO to spread a new kind of education called Science and Engineering Ethics to universities around the world, which is a 1-year’s course first developed by our REU program last year. From the birth of atomic bomb to the cloning of humans, from the increasingly popular campus suicide to the immergence of new and more harmful computer viruses that are made by our university students. By illustrating and analyzing these cases, the course will strike every scientist and engineer’s heart that we can never be well-rounded talents unless we are engaged in healthy psychology and high moral principle.
Still, after participating in various political and humanitarian activities, it is still my greatest pleasure to find inspiration in the lives of scientists and engineers, as they have insight that can be generalized to any area of life. Let me end my speech with the Nobel Prize winner Li Zhengdao’s words: “The realization of the perfect combination of science and engineering, science and arts, technology and humanity, is the greatest symbol of a university’s success.”