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
No revolutions in technology have as visibly marked the human condition as those in transport. Moving goods and people, they hav
No revolutions in technology have as visibly marked the human condition as those in transport. Moving goods and people, they hav
admin
2015-05-12
25
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.
The words "its development" underlined in Paragraph 7 refer to the development of
选项
A、the American nation
B、the mail coach
C、road building
D、the postal service
答案
D
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/DY2YFFFM
本试题收录于:
CATTI二级笔译综合能力题库翻译专业资格(CATTI)分类
0
CATTI二级笔译综合能力
翻译专业资格(CATTI)
相关试题推荐
Eventheplay’smostminorcharactersworktogetherwithextraordinaryskill,theirinterplaycreatesamovingtheatricalexperi
Peoplebuyinsuranceinordertosubstituteasmall,certain,tolerablelossforalarge,uncertain,catastrophicone.
Manypeopleprefertohavetheirtaxformscompletedbyaprofessionalratherthanhavingdoneitthemselves.
Mosttachometersmeasurethespeedofrotationofaspinningshaftorwheelintermsofrevolutionsperminute.
Itisclearthatwearerapidlybecomingaglobalculture.Newformsofinformationtechnology,intercontinentaltravel,andthe
Itisclearthatwearerapidlybecomingaglobalculture.Newformsofinformationtechnology,intercontinentaltravel,andthe
Itisclearthatwearerapidlybecomingaglobalculture.Newformsofinformationtechnology,intercontinentaltravel,andthe
Itisclearthatwearerapidlybecomingaglobalculture.Newformsofinformationtechnology,intercontinentaltravel,andthe
Itisclearthatwearerapidlybecomingaglobalculture.Newformsofinformationtechnology,intercontinentaltravel,andthe
随机试题
与脑髓充盈关系最密切的脏是
罗伯特.卡茨研究认为,高层管理者最重要的技能是()。
微软公司开发的浏览器简称为()。
以下关于上前牙金属烤瓷冠牙体预备的描述,哪项不恰当
已审核未记账的凭证,修改方法为()。
信息技术指的是用来扩展人的信息器官功能、协助人们进行信息处理的一类技术。下列基本信息技术中,用于扩展人的效应器官功能的是()。
布鲁纳的认知—发现学习理论中,掌握学科的基本结构的教学四大原则是什么?
有学者认为,现代社会的转变,一个最大的特点就是高度的________。大多数人不再“子承父业”,地理迁徙成为常态,大家族走向离散,家的样态愈发多元,人活成了一颗颗原子。
A、 B、 C、 D、 B图中两个图形的重叠部分都是矩形,只有B项符合。
HowtoStopComparingYourselftoOthersIntroduction-Timeonsocialmediafeedsincreasesdepressionandenvyanddecr
最新回复
(
0
)