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
2013-05-05
59
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://kaotiyun.com/show/C8gO777K
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
ItwasaSundaymorning;Iwasawakenedbeforefivebytherainhammering________againstthebedroomwindow.
Theofficialappearsbeingahardtimeconvincinghispeopletowearmasksduringtheoutrageousepidemic.
TheAmericanAcademyofPediatrics(AAP)justreleaseditsupdatedguidelinesforchildren’smediause.Therecommendations
Studentstodayareconsumersofthelatesttechnologygadgetsandsocialmediumplatforms,buttheydon’thaveadeepunderstand
Therewasabigdisagreementbetweenthedefendantandtheplaintiffinthecourt,thejudgeadjournedthecourttemporarilyto
Thehousehelivedinfortenyearscollapsedyesterdaybecausesomeofthewoodhaddecayed.
Itisclearthatwearerapidlybecomingaglobalculture.Newformsofinformationtechnology,intercontinentaltravel,andthe
Salestactics,likeadvertising,reflectaspectsofthebasicassumptionsandvaluesthatprevailinacountry.Bycarefullylis
Whatissuggestedforyourinvestment?
Fewpleasurescanequalsuchofacooldrinkonahotday.
随机试题
男性,58岁。既往有高血压病史,晨起时突然出现口眼歪斜,言语謇涩,右侧半身不遂,痰多,腹胀便秘,头晕目眩,舌质红,苔黄腻,脉弦滑,即来医院就诊,测血压180/100mmHg,头颅CT未见异常,其诊断是()
下图所示体系的自由度为()
如图15—4—22所示,两跨连续梁的中间支座B及右端支座C分别产生竖向沉陷2△及△,由此引起的截面A的弯矩MAB之值为()。
某公司以FOB价进口一批货物,合同规定:“装货标准每天1200公吨,超装有奖,达不到受罚。”后来某公司租用程租船去国外接货,并在租船合同中规定:“每天装货1300公吨,超装有奖,达不到标准受罚。”请问:两份合同的规定有无问题?为什么?
根据日本个人所得税制度的规定,下列关于扣除项目的说法中不正确的是( )。
下列说法属于学习负迁移类型的是()。
国务院下发的《关于加强文化遗产保护工作的通知》决定从2006年起,每年5月的第二个星期六为我国的“文化遗产日”。()
用某种材料做一个开口长方体容器,其外形长5m,宽4m,高3m,厚0.2m,求所需材料的近似值与精确值.
ThatexperienceledRhettButlertobeginwritingabookaboutrainforestsandthreatstotheirexistence.Buthedidnotpublis
ManypeopleinvestinthestockmarkethopingtofindthenextMicrosoftandDell.However,Iknow【C1】______personalexperie
最新回复
(
0
)