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  3. The simple wooden house sits in an unremarkable old neighborhood in an Osaka

The simple wooden house sits in an unremarkable old neighborhood in an Osaka

游客2025-03-18  35
问题     The simple wooden house sits in an unremarkable old neighborhood in an Osaka suburb, the kind of place people forget still exists in modern Japan. There are no pachinko parlors or cyber cafes—no shops of any kind, really. It’s an unlikely place to encounter the next version of Japan’s technological evolution. But listen to what happens when a gray-haired septuagenarian named Kazuko Komiyama returns after visiting friends, "Welcome home," a voice chirps. "Isn’t it a nice day?"
    The high-pitched greeting belongs to a robot. It’s a simple machine, to be sure. This isn’t a thoughtful robotic character like those found in a Star Wars movie, or like Japan’s own popular creation Astro Boy. But it’s a robot nonetheless: a chocolate-brown wombat that eventually will be able to flutter its eyes when Komiyama, 77, enters the room and giggle when she scratches its fuzzy little head. It tells her what the weather is like. It reminds her when it’s time to take her medicine. It sings sweet songs to her.
    For Komiyama, a mechanical companion is a guard against the dreadful loneliness many elderly Japanese must endure. She saw one such tragic story on a TV news show recently. "An old man’s death went unnoticed because he lived alone," she says. "Day after day, his diary read, ’I didn’t meet anybody today. Again. ’I don’t want to end up like that. " So when welfare workers from the Osaka suburb of Ikeda asked for volunteers to test the prototype of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.’s pet robot, she jumped at the chance. She keeps the robot sitting in her living room. After a month, she’s starting to warm up to the thing, despite one irritating habit. "It speaks with a childish voice," she complains. "That makes me feel like I’m treated as an old person. I would rather have an equal relationship with a robot. "
    This is modern Japan, a Gizmo Nation where even grandmothers make friends with their gadgets. For half a century, the Japanese have made it a cultural mission to turn out a succession of cool, elegant and increasingly human machines. And what machines they have become: robotic geishas; headgear that projects computer screens in midair in front of wearers’ eyes; toilets that measure a person’s weight, body fat and urine sugar levels. The country that gave the world transistor radios, the Walkman and hand-held videogames is now positioned to turn its love of gadgetry into a profitable national enterprise once again. [br] We can infer from the third paragraph that nowadays many old people in Japan are______.
选项 A、treated as old persons
B、very lonely in their life
C、enjoying themselves
D、not taken good care of
答案 D
解析 文章第三段指出，对小宫山来说，一个机械伴侣可以帮助她克服可怕的孤独——许多日本老人都面临这一问题。最近，她在电视上就看到了这样一个悲剧故事。她说：“一个独身老人去世后竞无人知晓。他的日记中每天都重复相同的话：‘我今天什么人也没见到。又是这样。’我不想这样下去。”所以听说大阪市郊区池田市的福利工人正找人试用机器人样机后，她紧紧地抓住了这个机会。她把机器人放在客厅中。一个月之后，她已经开始喜欢上这个家伙了，尽管它有一个让人讨厌的习惯。她埋怨说：“她说话时声音很傻，就像一个小孩。这让我觉得，它好像是把我当作老人看。我宁愿和机器人保持一种平等的关系。”因此，我们可以推断出本题的正确答案应为D，没有得到很好的照顾。
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