首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Sixty-three years old and retired from a career as a welder, Jim Crawford doesn’t have much use for the Internet. The only time
Sixty-three years old and retired from a career as a welder, Jim Crawford doesn’t have much use for the Internet. The only time
admin
2017-04-20
3
问题
Sixty-three years old and retired from a career as a welder, Jim Crawford doesn’t have much use for the Internet. The only time he goes online is to read through the automotive listings in the office of a local online auction company. If he sees something he likes, he says, he asks his mechanic to bid on it for him. Crawford is far from alone: About 15 percent of Americans older than 18 don’t use the Internet, according to a study released in September by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. An additional 9 percent use it only outside the home. They make up a shrinking, but not insignificant, segment of the population. And the gap between them and our increasingly digitized society is growing wider every day. "There is a group of Americans being left behind as technology advances without them," Lawrence E. Strickling, head of the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, told an audience at the Brookings Institution recently.
These people are being left out even as access to broadband—Internet service provided by cable, fiber, DSL and other high-speed networks, as opposed to the older, slower dial-up service—has expanded dramatically in the past 20 years. Because of a national infrastructure upgrade that Strickling compares to the rural electrification effort of the 1930s, well over 90 percent of U. S. households are either wired for high-speed broadband or can get high-speed wireless access. But actual adoption of that service lags behind availability: As of October 2012, the NTIA found that 72.9 percent of homes used broadband Internet service. That’s remarkable growth from 2000, when only 4 percent of homes used broadband, but it still indicates a significant gap.
So who are these Americans who remain disconnected from the online world? "They are disproportionately older," says Kathryn Zickuhr, who wrote the Pew study. According to the survey, which was done in May, 49 percent of non-Internet users are older than 65. They also are, in general, less educated. Although nearly everyone in the United States with a college degree is online, 41 percent of adults without a high school diploma are offline.
The Pew survey asked these people why they don’t go online. Perhaps surprisingly, cost wasn’t the most common answer. The most prevalent reason, given by 34 percent of offline respondents, was that the Internet is not relevant to them. A slightly smaller group, 32 percent, cited problems with using the technology: They said that getting online was difficult or frustrating, or that they were worried about issues such as privacy or hackers. Nineteen percent of non-users cited concerns about the expense of owning a computer or paying for an Internet connection.
Most policymakers would disagree with that sense of irrelevance. They point out that people who aren’t online have a harder time accessing vital services such as Medicare and Medicaid or the new health-care exchanges created under President Obama’s health-care law. They can’t perform useful daily functions that most Americans take for granted, such as looking up directions when traveling, using e-mail for speedy written correspondence, or being able to see and talk with faraway friends or relatives via Skype or FaceTime. They can’t easily search for competitive prices for housing, cars, appliances or other goods. Perhaps most importantly, they are at a major disadvantage when looking for a job: NTIA statistics show that 73 percent of unemployed Internet users reported going online to look for work.
The Pew study found that only 14 percent of offline adults were previous Internet users. There’s good reason to believe if the rest of them tried it, they would find the service rewarding rather than irrelevant. Seeta Pena Gangadharan, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, described " intergenerational interactions between seniors who were timid and concerned about going online" and younger relatives. Seniors often rely on grandchildren to assist them, she says, then realize they need to learn how to use the technology themselves when those family members move away. A program in the D. C. area funded by the America Association of Retired Persons (AARP) Foundation and administered by Family Matters of Greater Washington seemed to confirm that point. Using an established social service organization, it distributed iPads and offered computer classes as well as discounted home Internet service to seniors, many of whom had never been online. Two months into the pilot program this summer, only five of the original 55 participants had dropped out.
The advent of smartphones is also helping to narrow the Internet gap, says Lee Rainie, director of Pew’s Internet project. At a Washington Post forum last week, he said the relatively fast and inexpensive devices, which provide Internet connection via cellphone networks, have had a particularly positive effect on African American and Latino communities.
What is the role of the 3rd paragraph in the development of the topic?
选项
A、Introducing the issue.
B、Describing the problem.
C、Showing the findings.
D、Turning to a new topic.
答案
C
解析
篇章题。第三段以问句开头,但马上就给出了该问题的答案,接下来的第四段进一步给出了那些人不上网的原因,因此,第三段引出了调查结果,故[C]为正确答案。文章第一段即以举例的形式引出了主题,故排除[A];第一、二段中已经对美国很多人还不会使用互联网这一现象进行了清晰的阐释,故排除[B];文章始终围绕美国人在使用互联网方面的差异进行讨论,没有第二个主题,也就无从说起开始了一个新的主题,故排除[D]。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/BzeMFFFM
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
EnglishforSpecificPurposesESP:EnglishforSpecificPurposesESL:EnglishasaSecondLanguageI.DifferencesbetweenESPa
SomePremisesunderWhichLinguistsOperateWhenwedolinguisticresearch,weneedtoknowsomeofthepremisesunderwhic
Morethan22millionpeoplewholiveintheUnitedStatesdon’tspeakorunderstandEnglishverywellandthatcanbe【B1】______.
Acreditcardthatonlyworkswhenithearsitsowner’svoicehasbeendevelopedbyUSscientists.Researchershopethatthe【B1】
TheMexicaneconomywentoffacliffinthesecondthreemonthsof2009,withthegrossdomesticproduct【B1】______10.3percent
TheJapanesesaytheysufferfromaneconomicdiseasecalled"structuralpessimism".Overseastoo,thereisatendencytoseeJ
Inlastweek’sTribune,therewasaninterestingletterfromMr.J.StewartCook,inwhichhesuggestedthatthebestwayofavo
PASSAGEFOURWhathastheNewYorkCityannouncedafterSandy?
PASSAGEONE
随机试题
属于C类的抗心律失常的药物是()。
曹某因诈骗罪被公安机关立案侦查后移送人民检察院审查起诉,人民检察院审查后认为曹某没有作案时间。对此,下列表述中正确的是()
股票或债券上市交易的公司,应当在每一会计年度的上半年结束之日起()个月内,向国家证券监督管理机构和证券交易所提交中期报告。
甲公司向乙公司转让其软件的使用权,期限为10年,一次性收取使用费100000元,双方达成协议,甲公司在未来10年内需提供与该软件使用权相关的后续服务,款项已经收回。假定不考虑相关税费,则甲公司本期应确认的使用费收入为()元。
某玻璃制品厂是增值税一般纳税人,2012年6月采购材料取得的增值税专用发票上注明增值税12万元,其中20%的原材料用于不动产修缮;当月销售产品取得不含增值税销售额100万元;初次购买增值税税控系统专用设备,取得增值税专用发票,不含税价款0.8万元;支付技术
一词当然可以多义,但一词的多义应当是相近的。例如,“帅”可以解释为“元帅”,也可以解释为“杰出”,这两个含义是相近的。由此看来,把“酷(cool)”解释为“帅”实在是英语中的一种误用,应当加以纠正,因为“酷”在英语中的初始含义是“凉爽”,和“帅”丝毫不相及
ARM处理器在大端模式下从0x60000000到0x60000003存储一个字数据0x32303134,R2=0x60000000,以下说法正确的是()。
开发大型软件时,产生困难的根本原因是()。
Eventhoughthesurveywasdesignatedasaninter-disciplinarycourse,itinvolvednoreal______ofsubjectmatter.
Hotmetalshrinksasitbecomescool.
最新回复
(
0
)