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
19
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] According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?
选项
A、Transporting goods and people is the most important technology in the history of mankind.
B、Technology in transporting goods and people has changed human conditions more than anything else.
C、Technology in spreading information has changed human conditions more than transportation technology.
D、Technology in spreading information can’t change the economic development of society.
答案
C
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3307814.html
相关试题推荐
Underproperconditions,soundwaveswillbereflectedfromthehillsideorothe
Newtechnologylinkstheworldasneverbefore.Ourplanethasshrunk.It’s
Newtechnologylinkstheworldasneverbefore.Ourplanethasshrunk.It’s
Newtechnologylinkstheworldasneverbefore.Ourplanethasshrunk.It’s
Newtechnologylinkstheworldasneverbefore.Ourplanethasshrunk.It’s
Newtechnologylinkstheworldasneverbefore.Ourplanethasshrunk.It’s
Newtechnologylinkstheworldasneverbefore.Ourplanethasshrunk.It’s
Underproperconditions,soundwaveswillbereflectedfromthehillsideorothe
Norevolutionsintechnologyhaveasvisiblymarkedthehumanconditionast
Norevolutionsintechnologyhaveasvisiblymarkedthehumanconditionast
随机试题
LanguageFamiliesAllofthelanguageswithinala
ThingstobeTaughtinEverySchoolI.Introduction:Importan
[originaltext]W:John,haveyouchosenaphysicaleducationclassyetforthis
关于作为集体商标、证明商标注册的商标专用权的法律责任,下列说法正确的是( )。
全口义齿完成蜡型后,进行装盒时,人工牙的切缘或面与上层型盒顶部之间,至少应保持的
下列属于我国劳动法规定的劳动者享有的权利是( )。 ①取得劳动报酬的权利②
构成教学过程的基本要素是()。A.教师、学生、教学方法 B.教师、学生、教学内
在物业管理常用行政公文文种中,()是普遍适用的一种公文,它是唯一不受内外、上下
中国古代建筑分为台基、屋身、屋顶三部分。屋顶为中国古代建筑最具特色之所在;屋身则
布鲁巴奇等人提出的四种反思的方法有()。 A.反思日记B.详细描述C.交
最新回复
(
0
)