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
2023-12-31
43
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 o-ver 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-ran 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
本题考查推理判断。由第一段的最后一句“Yet technologies to transport ideas andinformation across long distances have arguably achieved even more they have spread know—ledge,the basis of economic growth.”可以推断出,传播信息的技术比交通更能改变人们的生活条件。所以,答案为C。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3322357.html
相关试题推荐
TheApoliticalrevolutionsoftheeighteenthcenturyhadanBimmenseimpactona
Doyouagreeordisagreewiththefollowingstatement?Modemtechnologyiscreati
Alookatthecompaniespursuingthetechnologygivesagoodindicationofitsp
Asforthepeoplewhoseeyesstillfindthegreatreasonsbehindthetechnology
AnIsraelicompanysaysithasdevelopedtechnologythatcanchargeamobilepho
Wirelesstechnologyhasquickenedthedevelopmentofmessagingsoftware,opening
Thespaceshuttleprogramentailstheuseofsophisticatedtechnology.A、enhance
Toimposecomputertechnology______teachersistocreateanenvironmentthati
Foreachofthesetargetedmarkets,thetechnologytransferbrokershaveidentif
Theconditionoftheaccidentvictimisdeteriorating.Idoubtifhewill______.
随机试题
TheFederalReserveBankofNewYorkisnearcollapse,foritfailedtopayback
[originaltext]W:Ijustmadeupaquartoforangejuicethismorning,andnowI
一氧化碳中毒患者不出现()A.发绀 B.动脉血氧分压降低 C.呼吸加深加
在前四周期的36种元素中,原子最外层未成对电子数与其电子层数相等的元素有( )
某城市建筑住宅区集中供热系统,选用下列哪几项热媒的温度范围最合理?A.150~7
《旅游法》规定,建立旅游综合协调机制,将()作为其中一项综合协调内容A.旅游服务
大咯血窒息患者体位引流取A.半坐卧位 B.平卧位 C.健侧平卧位 D.患侧
下表显示了某集团四大产业链总收入及利润率,则其利润(利润=总收入X利润率)最高的
按成本的经济性质,工程成本由()组成。A.变动成本和固定成本 B.制造成本和
关于防雷接地,以下说法正确的为()。A.接地极只能垂直敷设不能水平敷设 B.
最新回复
(
0
)