首页
登录
职称英语
No revolutions in technology have as visibly marked the human condition as t
No revolutions in technology have as visibly marked the human condition as t
游客
2023-12-26
52
管理
问题
No revolutions in technology have as visibly marked the human condition as those in transport. Moving goods and people, they have opened continents, transformed living standards, spread diseases, fashions and folk around the world. Yet technologies to transport ideas and information across long distances have arguably achieved even more: they have spread knowledge, the basis of economic growth.
The most basic of all these, the written word, was already ancient by 1000. By then China had, in basic form, the printing press, using carved woodblocks. But the key to its future, movable metal type, was four centuries away. The Chinese were hampered by their thousands of ideograms. Even so, they quite soon invented the primitive movable type, made of clay, and by the 13th century they had the movable wooden type. But the real secret was the use of an easily cast metal.
When it came, Europe — aided by simple Western alphabets — leapt forward with it. One reason why Asia’s civilizations, in 1000 far ahead of Europe’s, then fell behind was that they lacked the technology to reproduce and diffuse ideas. On Johannes Gutenberg’s invention in the 1440s were built not just the Reformation and the Enlightenment, but Europe’s agricultural and industrial revolutions too.
Yet information technology on its own would not have got far. Literally: better transport technology too was needed. That was not lacking, but here the big change came much later: it was railways and steamships that first allowed the speedy, widespread
dissemination
of news and ideas over long distances. And both technologies in turn required people and organizations to develop their use. They got them: for individual communication, the postal service; for wider publics, the publishing industry.
Throughout the 19th century, the postal service formed the bedrock of national and international communications. Crucial to its growth had been the introduction of the stamp, combined with a low price, and payment by the sender. Britain put all three of these ideas into effect in 1840.
By then, the world’s mail was taking off. It changed the world. Merchants in America’s eastern cities used it to gather information, enraging far-off cotton growers and farmers, who found that New Yorkers knew more about crop prices than they did. In the American debate about slavery, it offered abolitionists a low-cost way to spread their views, just as later technologies have cut the cost and widened the scope of political lobbying. The post helped too to integrate the American nation, tying the newly opened west to the settled east.
Everywhere,
its development
drove and was driven by those of transport. In Britain, travelers rode by mail coach to posting inns. In America, the post subsidized road-building. Indeed, argues Dan Schiller, a professor of communications at the University of California, it was the connection between the post, transport and national integration that ensured that the mail remained a public enterprise even in the United States, its first and only government-run communications medium, and until at least the 1870s, the biggest organization in the land.
The change
has not only been one of speed and distance, though, but of audience. About 200 years ago, a man’s words could reach no further than his voice, not just in range but in whom they reached. But, for some purposes, efficient communication is mass communication, regular, cheap, quick and reliable. When it became possible, it transformed the world. [br] What can the postal service do?
选项
A、Colleting market prices of goods.
B、Spreading ideas at a low cost.
C、Promoting political lobbying.
D、All of the above.
答案
D
解析
转载请注明原文地址:http://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3308369.html
相关试题推荐
Overthepast50years,technologyhaschangedthefishingindustrydramatic
BanningBiotechnologyonMadeiraMadeiraismorethan500kilometersfrom
Itwasn’tlongbeforeFrankswasamarkedman.AfterheservedinDesertStorm,
Underproperconditions,soundwaveswillbereflectedfromthehillsideorothe
Newtechnologylinkstheworldasneverbefore.Ourplanethasshrunk.It’s
Newtechnologylinkstheworldasneverbefore.Ourplanethasshrunk.It’s
Newtechnologylinkstheworldasneverbefore.Ourplanethasshrunk.It’s
Newtechnologylinkstheworldasneverbefore.Ourplanethasshrunk.It’s
Norevolutionsintechnologyhaveasvisiblymarkedthehumanconditionast
Norevolutionsintechnologyhaveasvisiblymarkedthehumanconditionast
随机试题
[originaltext]M:Ihaveaspecialguesttoday,Shirley.Shirley,youtrulyhave
Comparisonsweredrawnbetweenthedevelopmentoftelevisioninthe20thce
肩关节前脱位闭合复位急性期康复治疗的目的不包括A.控制疼痛 B.减轻炎症 C
胃液中内因子的作用为A.激活胃蛋白酶原 B.参与胃黏膜屏障作用 C.促进促胃
氨基糖苷类抗生素的抗菌作用机理是()A.抑制核酸代谢 B.抑制蛋白质合成
已知A企业2016年利润总额为400万元,利息费用20万元,折旧与摊销共计25万
患者,女性,26岁,结婚3年未孕。幼年曾患肺结核。妇检:子宫略小,后位,活动差,
呼吸衰竭患者动脉血氧分压小于A.80mmHg B.70mmHg C.60mm
人力资源需求预测时要进行环境与影响因素分析,以下属于竞争五要素分析法要分析的内容
1.背景材料:某一标段公路工程项目,采用工程量清单方式结算。按合同规定工程量计量
最新回复
(
0
)