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
25
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] Which of the following statements is NOT true about mass communication?
选项
A、It can reach no further than human voice.
B、It can reach a large audience.
C、It is rapid and efficient.
D、It can be trusted.
答案
A
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3308373.html
相关试题推荐
Itwasn’tlongbeforeFrankswasamarkedman.AfterheservedinDesertStorm,
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
Newtechnologylinkstheworldasneverbefore.Ourplanethasshrunk.It’s
Norevolutionsintechnologyhaveasvisiblymarkedthehumanconditionast
随机试题
______forthefactthatshebrokeherleg,shemighthavepassedtheexam.(200
《国际航海条例》规定,取得国际班轮运输经营资格的国际船舶运输经营者,应当自取得资
下列关于汇兑损益的表述中,不正确的是()。A.生产经营期间发生的,应计入财务费
共用题干 Physician-assistedSuicide1.TheSu
建筑市场的交换交易活动的特点有()。A.交易的前端性 B.建筑市场交易的规则
已知A物重力的大小P=20kN,B物重力的大小Q=30kN.滑轮C、D不计质量,
人在每一瞬间,将心理活动选择了某些对象而忽略了另一些对象。这一特点指的是注意的(
统计资料显示,在2019~2020学年内,全球商学院的申请数量同比下降了3.1%
褒扬诚信的重要性 【背景链接】 2019年6月3日国家发改委发布《关
基金所募集的资金在法律上具有独立性,由选定的基金托管人保管,并委托()进行股
最新回复
(
0
)