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
2017-04-09
24
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.
Which of the following statements is NOT true about the postal service?
选项
A、American abortionists were not happy about it.
B、The stamp was invented in Britain.
C、It helped the independence of America.
D、In the 1840s it was the major means of national communications in Britain.
答案
A
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/nX1YFFFM
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
Leavingthemarketplace,themanlookedpleasedwithhimselfinhavingdiscoveredabargain.
I’mveryhappytospeakatthisinternationalforumoneducationandsharewithyoumyideaofeducationinthe21stcentury.In
Ladiesandgentlemen,Totalkabouttheimportanceandeffectivenessoftheglobalhumanresourcemanagement,Iwouldliketo
WelcometotheHarvardexperiencethatawaitsyou.Iwouldalsoliketoextendaspecialwelcometothetransferstudentsandth
SecuringrealandlastingimprovementinthelivesofindividualmenandwomenisthemeasureofallwedoattheUnitedNations
TheCommissionisexpectedtoproposeallowingpeopletochoosewhichlegaljurisdictiontheywouldcomeunder,basedontheir(
Asalways,IampleasedtobehereattheNationalPressClubformy(1)Speech.ThisistheseventhtimeIhavehadthe(2)to
Asalways,IampleasedtobehereattheNationalPressClubformy(1)Speech.ThisistheseventhtimeIhavehadthe(2)to
A、Becausehewasabletomakebigprofitsoutofhiswork.B、Becausehethoughthewasworkinglikeagaragemechanic.C、Because
Theyaregenerallyseenasanti-competitiveandnecessitatinglegislationtoproscribethem,sincetheyalmostinvariablycreate
随机试题
______isHemingway’smasterpiece.()
下列属于有形要素的有()
血管外给药存在吸收过程,药物逐渐进入血液循环。药物的吸收和消除用一级过程描述。单室模型血管外给药体内药量随时间变化关系式()。10
法院调解不能适用于()。
(2005年)1mol刚性双原子分子理想气体,当温度为T时,其内能为()。
美国行为主义心理学家华生在《行为主义》一书中写道:“给我一打健康的婴儿,一个由我支配的特殊的环境,让我在这个环境里养育他们。我可担保,任意选择一个,不论他父母的才干、倾向、爱好如何,他父母的职业及种族如何,我都可以按照我的意愿把他训练成为任何一种人物——医
目前教育体制的功能在很大程度上采用“教育抽水机理论”。也就是将高素质的农村劳动者从农村抽吸到城市,将本来可能会有利于农村经济发展的潜在人力资本变成了仅有利于城市经济发展的人力资本。但华西村做法却恰恰相反,它把人才从城市抽吸到华西村发展。有人说,华西村本身就
提高教师应聘标准并不是引起目前中小学师资短缺的主要原因。引起中小学师资短缺的主要原因,是近年来中小学教学条件的改进缓慢,以及教师的工资的增长未能与其他行业同步。以下哪项如果为真,最能加强上述断定?()
简述秦始皇“弱关东以强关中"政策实施的手段及效果。
Themajortaskfacingadolescentsistocreateastableidentity.Therearesomedevelopmentaltasksthatenablethemtocreate
最新回复
(
0
)