SURPRISE 7

　　When was the modern flush toilet patented?

　　厕所还是一百年前的老样子。

　　Nearly eight years ago, Melinda and I challenged engineers and scientists around the world to reinvent the toilet. More than 2 billion people around the world lack access to a decent toilet. Their waste often ends up in the environment, untreated, killing nearly 800 children every day. And exporting rich-world sanitation solutions isn’t an option, because they require sewer systems that are too expensive to build and need a lot of water.

　　差不多8年前，我和梅琳达向全球各地的工程师和科学家们发出了重新发明厕所的挑战。全球迄今还有20多亿人用不上卫生的厕所。他们的粪便未经处理就进入环境，每天导致近800名儿童死亡。引进发达国家的卫生设施行不通，因为配套的下水道系统建设成本过高，而且需要大量的水资源。

　　So what does the next generation of toilets look like? At first glance, not that different. They don’t exactly look like something out of a sci-fi novel. They might not be the sexiest innovations in the world, but the toilets of the future will save millions of lives.

　　所以下一代的厕所是什么样呢?乍一看，和普通马桶区别不大，完全不像从科幻小说里出来的东西。这些厕所未必是世界上最酷的创新，但它能挽救数以百万计的生命。

　　They’ll also improve lives—especially for women and girls. Life without a toilet is hard for anyone, but it tends to be women and girls who suffer most.

　　它们还能改善生活质量，特别是对妇女和女童来说。没有厕所的生活非常艰难，但承受最多痛苦的还是女性。

　　SURPRISE 8

　　Textbooks are becoming obsolete.

　　课本正变得过时。

　　I read more than my share of textbooks. But it’s a pretty limited way to learn something. Even the best text can’t figure out which concepts you understand and which ones you need more help with. It certainly can’t tell your teacher how well you grasped last night’s assigned reading. But now, thanks to software, the standalone textbook is becoming a thing of the past. All of this is a complement to what teachers do, not a replacement.

　　我读过很多教材，但作为学习的一种途径，教材的作用有限。即使是最好的课本也判断不出哪些内容你已经理解，哪些内容你还需要帮助。课本肯定也无法告诉你的老师，昨晚布置的阅读作业，你掌握到了什么程度。但是现在，在软件的帮助下，单纯的课本正在成为过去。这些手段是对教师工作的补充，而非代替。

　　In addition to adapting to what students know, these online tools also facilitate a new approach to teaching and learning that adapts to who these students are. Put it all together, and you have students spending less for more convenient classes in which they perform better. In short, we now have the tools to redesign higher education so that it meets the needs of today’s students.

　　除了适应学生的学习进度，在线工具还能催生新的教学方式，根据学生的特点因材施教。把这些结合在一起，学生能花更少的钱、更方便地学习，并在课堂上取得更好的学习效果。简而言之，我们已经具备重新设计高等教育的工具，使之满足当今学生的需求。

　　SURPRISE 9

　　Mobile phones are most powerful in the hands of the poorest women.

　　在贫困女性的手中，手机的作用能发挥到最大。

　　In rich countries, mobile phones make it easier to do things we were already doing. But for the world’s most marginalized women, a mobile phone doesn’t just make their old life more convenient; it can help them build an entirely new life. That’s because connectivity is a solution to marginalization.

　　在发达国家，手机能让我们本来的生活更加便利。但对于世界上被最边缘化的女性而言，手机不只是让他们的旧日子更便利，而且能够帮助他们开启全新的生活。这是因为互联互通是打破边缘化的解决之道。

　　When I think about why it’s so important to get more mobile phones in the hands of women, I think about Nikmah, a woman I met in Indonesia last October. Nikmah told me she’d tried for years to support her three children by selling vegetables, but she never could seem to make ends meet. Her situation became even more untenable after she had to flee an abusive husband.

　　每次提到在女性拥有手机的重要性是，我就想起去年十月在印尼见到的Nikmah女士。她告诉我，多年来她一直靠卖菜养活她的三个孩子，但总是入不敷出。后来她离开了家暴的丈夫，她的情况就更难以维持了。

　　Nikmah told me, “Life is like a wheel. Sometimes you’re under, sometimes you’re on top.” For women like her who have spent so much of their lives trapped on the bottom, mobile technology creates new opportunities to fight inequity and lift themselves up. We can help women seize these opportunities by ensuring that inequity doesn’t keep them from having access to technology in the first place.

　　Nikmah对我说：“生活就像一个轮子，有时你被它碾下去，有时你也能站上来。”对于像她这样长期在底层生活的女性来说，移动技术让她们有了新的机会反抗不公、提升自己。我们打破不平等，确保她们最初有机会接触移动技术，帮助她们抓住这些机会。

　　We get asked a lot these days whether we’re still optimistic about the future. We say: Absolutely. One reason is that we believe in the power of innovation. But an even bigger reason is that we’ve seen firsthand that for every challenge we’ve written about in this letter, there are people devoting their ideas, their resources, and even their lives to solving them.

　　最近常有人问我们对未来是否仍然乐观。我们的回答是肯定的。其中一个原因是我们相信创新的力量。但更重要的是，我们亲眼看到，对于我们在信中谈及的每一个挑战，都有很多人在奉献着自己的智慧、资源甚至生命。