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  3. Computers have become an extension of us: that is a commonplace now. But in an important way we may be becoming an extension of

Computers have become an extension of us: that is a commonplace now. But in an important way we may be becoming an extension of

admin2012-07-06  53
问题     Computers have become an extension of us: that is a commonplace now. But in an important way we may be becoming an extension of them, in turn. Computers are digital — that is, they turn everything into numbers; that is their way of seeing. And in the computer age we may be living through the digitization of our minds, even when they are offline: a slow-burning quantification of human affairs that promises or threatens, depending on your outlook, to crowd out other categories of the imagination, other ways of perceiving. Self-quantification is everywhere now. There are tools to measure and analyze the steps you take in a day; the abundance and ideological orientation of your friends; the influence of your Twitter utterances; your happiness.
    Welcome to the Age of Metrics — or to the End of Instinct. The once-mysterious formation of tastes is becoming a quantitative science, as services like Netflix and Pandora deploy algorithms to predict, and shape, what we like to watch, listen to and read. These services are wonderful. They also risk lumping us into clusters of the like-minded and depriving us of the self-fortifying act of choosing. It is one thing to love your country because you have seen the world and love it still; it is quite another to love it because you know nothing else.
    What will be the fate of causes, like women’s empowerment, that produce something not easily counted? Will metrics encourage charities to work toward the metric (acres reforested), not the underlying goal (sustainability)?
    Focusing on the wrong metrics already distorts policy-making around the world, according to a fascinating new study commissioned by the French government. We use gross domestic product to measure everything. It makes it easy to compare economies, but it makes us undervalue what cannot be measured, the report said. Trees are killed because the sales from paper are countable, while a forest’s worth is not. Unemployment grants are cut because their cost is plain, while the mental-health cost of idleness is vague.
    In short, what we know instinctively, data can make us forget. But the commission’s solution was revealing of our times: not more balance between qualitative and quantitative, but more metrics: new statistics on human well-being and economic sustainability to contend with data on production. "In this world in which we are so centered on metrics, those things that are not measured get left off the agenda," The commission’s chairman, Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics said. "You need a metric to fight a metric. "
    Technology brings ever more metrics. The strange thing is that nothing in them prevents us from using other lenses, too. But something in the culture now makes us bow before data and suspend disbelief. Sometimes metrics blind us to what we might with fewer metrics have seen. The future’s challenge to us may be to decide how metrics might inform our decisions without becoming them. [488 words]
The last sentence of Paragraph 2 is used to demonstrate that metrics are______.
选项 A、preventing us from using instinct
B、encouraging us to form distinctive tastes
C、causing us to follow others blindly
D、assisting us to form strong beliefs
答案C
解析 本题考查写作目的。
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