Page 66 - American English File Student Book 3B

o f pasta, a little like cannelloni, and it’s filled company. Johnson’s website has been shut down and find information or to listen to music, but digital
with cheese and served with tomato sauce. Well, his candles have disappeared from store shelves. natives live and breathe the technology. So for
when it arrived, the tomato sauce was really hot, them living without it is like living without water,
but the pasta and the filling were cold - it was 5 6))) without electricity.. -in the dark ages.
like they were still frozen. Anyway, I called the Apart from the hockey players, he also gives the C hloe What were the rules o f the experiment?
waitress and she said that it couldn’t be cold. So examples o f the Beatles, the most famous rock band Jerem y The family had to live for six months
1 said “Sorry, it is cold. Do you want to try it?” o f all time and Bill Gates, the founder o f Microsoft. without using any electrical gadgets in the house
So she took it back to the kitchen, and later the The Beatles were really lucky to be invited to play with a screen. So no smartphones, no TVs, no
manager came out and apologized, and when 1 in Hamburg in 1960. The club owner who invited laptops or computers, no video consoles, and no
finally got the dish, it was good, hot all the way them usually only invited bands from London, but iPods. They w ere allowed to use technology at
through. But I’d had to wait a longtime for it. But on one trip to the UK he met an entrepreneur from school or at friends’ houses, or in Internet cafes,
later the manager came out again and offered Liverpool who told him that there were some really and they were allowed to use landline phones. But
me a free dessert. So I had a deleicious tiramisu good bands in that city. When the Beatles arrived in everything else was switched o ff for the whole six
for free. Hamburg, they had to work incredibly hard. They months.
had to play for up to eight hours a night in the club Sally Six months? How on earth did she get the
4 49))) seven nights a week. As John Lennon said later, children to agree?
Johnson Bailey presented Man Candles. He argued “We got better and we got more confidence. We Jerem y She bribed them. She told them she was
that most candles smell like perfume and are couldn’t help it, with all the experience we got from going to write a book about the experiment, and
designed for women. One day he was having some playing all night long in the club.” By 1964, when that they would share in any profits that she made
friends over to watch a football game, and his house they became really successful, the Beatles had been from the book!
smelled like old Chinese food and dirty clothes. The to Hamburg four times, and had already performed Sally Wow, that was very smart o f her...
only candle he had at the time was a vanilla-scented live an estimated 1,200 times, far more than many
one, and he didn’t want his house to smell like bands today perform in their entire careers. 5 20)))
perfume. That’s why Bailey invented manly candles Bill Gates's huge stroke o f good luck came P art 2
that smell like things men enjoy: basketballs, golf in 1968, when the high school he was attending H ost So what were the results? Was it a positive
courses, the beach, popcorn, and barbecue sauce. He decided to spend some money they’d been given experience?
even has a horrible-smelling candle you can burn to on a computer. This computer was kept in a little Jerem y At the end of the book Susan says that it
get people you don’t like-perhaps your mother- room that then became the computer club. I n 1968, was a positive experience in every way. At first,
in-law -out o f your house. He tried to convince most colleg es didn’t have a computer club, let alone of course, the kids complained bitterly; they
the Sharks to invest by passingout his candles and schools. From that time on Gates spent most of kept saying they were bored. But then they they
asking them to smell them. The Sharks most wanted his time in the computer room because he and his started to talk to each other again, to go and sit in
to smell the bad candle, which is Bailey’s best-selling friends taught themselves how to use it. “It was my each other’s rooms and talk. They got interested
candle. obsession,” Gates says o f those early high school in cooking and reading; they went to the movies
Kim Nelson’s idea was a cake business that sells years, “i skipped sports. I went up there at night. together. They played CDs on the CD player and
homemade cakes across the US. These cakes are We were programming on weekends, it would be a they actually sat and listened to the music instead
made from all natural ingredients like fresh oranges rare week that we wouldn’t get 20 or 30 hours in.” of just having music on their headphones all the
in the "Oh! Oh! Orange” cake or one pound of grated So Gates was unbelievably lucky to have access to a time as background music. And Susan’s 15-year-
carrots in “Daisy’s Carrot Cake.” Kim came up with computer, but o f course he also put in all those hours old son started playing the saxophone again. He
the idea because many people don’t have the time o f practice, too. had stopped playing a few years before, but then
or the talent to bake a delicious, homemade cake Talent, Gladwell concludes, is obviously he started taking lessons again and even started
for special occassions like birthdays, graduations, important, but there are many talented people out giving concerts... Oh, and the children said that
or anniversaries. Kim says that she has a talent for there. What makes just a few o f them special is that they slept better!
baking cakes, and more importantly, she feels it’s her they are lucky and that they put in far more hours of Sally Oh, well that’s good, yeah. What about the
passion. Kim’s products are currently sold online practice than the rest. children’s’ schoolwork? I mean, nowadays we sort
in her local area, but she would like to increase o f assume that everyone needs the Internet to do
production and sell more cakes across the US. The 5 19))) research for homework and so on.
cake business is called Daisy Cakes. P art 1 Jerem y In fact, the children’s school report cards
H ost And now it’s time for our book of the week, showed that they all improved. When they
4 50))) which is T h e W in ter o f o u r D iscon nect by Susan needed the Internet, they used the computers at
The Sharks asked Johnson a lot o f questions, for Maushart. Jeremy, to start with, it’s a good title, school or at college (the eldest daughter was in
example they asked him how much the candles sell isn’t it? college), or they went to friends’ houses. But when
for (10-12 dollars a candle) and how much money Jerem y Yes, amazing. And it was a fascinating they did their homework they did it better than
they made in sales the year before ($53,000). experiment and a good read. before because they weren’t multi-tasking-they
Johnson explained that currently, he and his wife Host Tell us about it. weren’t doing homework and listening to music
had put over $ 4 0,000 o f their own money into this Jerem y Well, Susan Maushart is a journalist who’s and sending messages all at the same time. So
product. The Sharks also asked how the candles raising three teenage children. She decided to do they concentrated better, and their schoolwork
were made, to which he answered that he poured the experiment after reaching a point where she improved.
them all into their containers by himself - he didn’t felt that the whole family, especially her children, Andrew What about, Susan, the mother? Did
have any help in his entire candle-making process. were all living in their own little worlds, with she find it difficult to live without modern
In the end, they decided that they weren’t headphones on, plugged into their laptops or their technology?
interested. Their main reason was they thought iPods or their smartphones and that they weren’t Jerem y What she found most difficult was
the business just wasn’t big enough or interesting relating to the other people in the family. writing her weekly article for the newspaper
enough, so they couldn’t believe that it would ever Andrew' So it wasn’t just her children who were because she had to do it by hand, and not on
make any money. permanently plugged into an electrical device? her laptop. She says that at the beginning her
The Sharks were impressed by Kim’s Jerem y Well, she admits that she herself was hand used to really ache; she just wasn’t used
presentation, and they immediately asked to addicted to her phone and to her iPod and her to writing by hand anymore. But that was just a
try her cakes. T hey really loved her cakes and laptop and that she was constantly reading news small problem.
complimented her on their fresh and delicious taste. sites and googling information, but it was really C hloe Any other negatives?
Even though the male Sharks liked Kim’s product, her children who were totally dependent on new Jerem y Well, o f course the phone bill for their
they were concerned that her company had reached technology. In the book she makes the interesting landline was huge!
its potential- making a respectable $27,000 in the distinction between “digital immigrants” and C hloe Has the experiment had a lasting effect?
last three months. In the end, Barbara Corcoran, “digital natives.” Jerem y Susan says that it has. She thinks that they
the only female Shark decided to invest $50,000 C hloe What does that mean? all get along much better as a family, her son
in Kim’s business because she thought there was a Jerem y She describes herself as a digital is still playing the saxophone, and he sold his
market for Kim’s product. immigrant, that’s to say someone who didn’t video console. They’ve all realized that we live
And since then? grow up with digital technology, which is really in a digital world, but that we need to disconnect
Kim’s Daisy Cakes are now being sold online anyone who was born beforel 980. Her children from time to time and to reconnect with the
across the US. She was able to pay Barbara are digital natives, which means that they were people around us. So they have new rules in the
Corcoran back in only three weeks! And she has born a fte r computers and the Internet were house - like no TVs in bedrooms and no TV in
expanded her business by offering new products like already part o f life. the kitchen where they eat. And no wasted hours
lemon curd. C hloe Well, that’s me then. on the Internet.
Although the Sharks thought Johnson’s candles Jerem y Yes, well, the main difference, she says, is Sally Sounds great. That would be a good rule for
were funny, it's a good thing they didn’t invest in his that digital immigrants use the technology, to me, too!
129 Listening