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
2025-01-31
9
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, Asian civilizations, which were ahead of Europe’ s, fell behind because______.
选项
A、Asian languages were more difficult to learn
B、European languages had simple alphabets
C、they didn’ t have the technology to spread ideas
D、people’ s communication skills were not good enough
答案
C
解析
本题考查细节理解。由第三段中的“One reason why Asia’s civilizations,in 1000far ahead of Europe’s,then fell behind was that they lacked the technology to reproduce anddiffuse ideas”可以推断出,阻碍亚洲文明的是缺少信息传播技术。所以,答案是C。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3936918.html
相关试题推荐
Norevolutionsintechnologyhaveasvisiblymarkedthehumanconditionast
Norevolutionsintechnologyhaveasvisiblymarkedthehumanconditionast
Norevolutionsintechnologyhaveasvisiblymarkedthehumanconditionast
Norevolutionsintechnologyhaveasvisiblymarkedthehumanconditionast
Norevolutionsintechnologyhaveasvisiblymarkedthehumanconditionast
Norevolutionsintechnologyhaveasvisiblymarkedthehumanconditionast
Asweknow,knowledgeisthe______conditionforexpansionofthemind.A、incompat
Theuseofthenewtechnologywillhaveaprofoundeffectonschools.A、negative
Humanistsarguethathumanhistoryismarkedbyacontinuousconflictbetweensc
Inthedevelopingnations,thetechnologyhasthecapacitytoreachteachersin
随机试题
Ican’tspeakJapanese,butIdowishI______.A、canB、couldC、hadD、spokeB本句是表
Thegovernmentistobanpaymentstowitnessesbynewspapersseekingtobuy
缺失,一向近中倾斜30°时,一般不宜做固定桥的原因是A.备牙时切割牙体组织过多
企业产品的竞争力,主要取决于产品自身的性价比。当企业的产品定价不再具有竞争力或质
Thechangeinthatvillagewasmiraculou
表面活性剂能增加难溶性药物的溶解度是因为A.表面活性剂在界面作定向排列 B.表
合用下列药物可减少耐药性产生的是A、乙胺丁醇 B、青霉素 C、吡嗪酰胺 D
根据课程实施的主体的不同,可把课程分为() A.基础型课程、拓展型
某银行客户面临临时性资金短缺的情况时,商业银行的理财从业人员可以建议该客户开立(
A.二氧化钛 B.丙烯酸树脂Ⅱ号 C.丙二醇 D.司盘80 E.吐温80
最新回复
(
0
)