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
68
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 word "dissemination" underlined in Paragraph 4 means______.
选项
A、plantation
B、distribution
C、reception
D、direction
答案
B
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/38gO777K
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
Marketingspecialistsbegancarvingupwhatoncewasamassaudienceintoinnumerablesegmentsbasedonage,sexandincome.
Heshowsa________tofighthardratherthantonegotiateinresolvingdifferenceswithhiscolleagues.
Everythingontheearthareinincessantchange,nothingcouldremainaneverlastingstate.
Studentstodayareconsumersofthelatesttechnologygadgetsandsocialmediumplatforms,buttheydon’thaveadeepunderstand
Therewasabigdisagreementbetweenthedefendantandtheplaintiffinthecourt,thejudgeadjournedthecourttemporarilyto
Thisorganizationiscompletely_____ofanypoliticalassociation,anditcanconductitsownbusinesswithforeigncounterpa
Theadvertisingindustryintoday’sworlddoeshaveitsshareofresponsibilitiesinleadingpeopletomisconceptions.
Salestactics,likeadvertising,reflectaspectsofthebasicassumptionsandvaluesthatprevailinacountry.Bycarefullylis
Fewpleasurescanequalsuchofacooldrinkonahotday.
MemoryBrainsaredifferentfromcomputers,buttheanalogycanbehelpful.LikethePConyourdesk,yourmindisequippedw
随机试题
《蒹葭》一诗的中心意象是()
患者,女,21岁。为保持身材,饮食节制1年,近日自感疲乏,心悸、气短,头晕、头痛,注意力不集中来院就医。实验室检查:WBC5.4×109/L,Hb98g/L,MCV67fl,肝功能及肾功能均正常。该患者铁代谢的改变可能是
2012年4月9日,某企业向银行申领了信用卡,其中一部分作为对管理人员的福利,另一部分作为企业自用。要求:根据上述资料,回答下列问题。下列关于信用卡资金来源的表述,正确的是()。
下列各项中,属于管理费用核算内容的是()。
赣:江西:赣江
以下措施不能缩小基尼系数的是()。
2011年10月,某市F区人大进行换届选举。5月初,高校教师王某通过微博公开其参选该区人大代表的意愿,并公布了个人身份和简历等基本情况。该条微博发布后,引起了社会广泛关注。请结合上述材料,运用宪法学知识和选举法相关规定,回答以下问题:(1)王某参选行为的法
设向量组(I):α1,α2,…,αs的秩为r1,向量组(Ⅱ):β1,β2,…,βs的秩为r2,且向量组(Ⅱ)可由向量组(I)线性表示,则().
窗体上有一个名称为Command1的命令按钮。其单击事件过程如下:PrivateSubCommand1_Click()Open"c:\f1.txt"ForInputAs#1Open"c:\f2.txt"ForOut
In1965,America’sbigcompanieshadahellofayear.Thestockmarketwasbooming.Saleswererisingbriskly,profitmarginsw
最新回复
(
0
)