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  3. I am extremely important. So important that all kinds of people might need to communicate with me 24 hours a day. Mere phone cal

I am extremely important. So important that all kinds of people might need to communicate with me 24 hours a day. Mere phone cal

admin2009-06-24  66
问题     I am extremely important. So important that all kinds of people might need to communicate with me 24 hours a day. Mere phone calls are good enough, letters take days, or at least a day, and meetings face to face—well, obviously that is out of the question. No, the index of my success is my faxability. Only God knows what international incidents have been averted by my black fax machine. For I am now at the centre of a vast global communications network, all of which is instantly faxable, and made up of busy people who cannot possibly wait for that vital document a minute longer.
    "Fax it to me", we say snappily, presuming that we are in the company similarly technologically endowed. "What do you mean you haven’t got one?" We gasp in amazement at their willingness to admit they are not a member of this exclusive club. After all, membership only sets you back $400 or so and for this you get to review daily our motto: "I fax therefore I am". Once you are in possession of one of those magic machines a new world opens up to you. A world of escalating urgency, a world where the most mundane information becomes some how more significant because it arrives via a bleeping machine, a world where the medium has more cachet than the message.
    The fax machine, like the camcorder, has come into its own in the Nineties. The affordability of this technology has meant that the democracy of instantaneous communication has filtered down to us all. So we are all dutifully engaged in this orgy of electronic impulses, recording and erasing, faxing and receiving. But what we are actually communicating apart from the fact that we are in communication? The urgent messages we send each other on these electronic postcards are often little more than reminders that, "Yes, we have the technology, even if we have little use for it".
    Yet because we know that knowledge is power we cannot admit as much, for to do so would be to join the great faxless underclass. Instead, we pretend that every doodle, every hurried sentence is somehow so earth-shatteringly crucial that it must immediately be signaled halfway round the world. For some like Philippe Starck, who designs by fax, this may be the case. But what do most of us use fax for? We can now fax a pizza or a sandwich; we can fax afternoon radio shows with our funny stories; we can fax our bank manager; we can fax our resignation notice and nowadays we can even be fired by fax.
    Although there is soma argument about the legal status of any fax that declares to be contractual, the great benefit of all these is that it is done in public. Indeed what the latest hatch of communications technology, from mobile phones to camcorders to faxes, have in common is that they no longer respect the old boundaries between public and private, work and leisure. If you fall down and break your leg, some idiots with a camcorder will be recording your pain and sending it to an amateur video show on TV. If someone sends you a humiliating rejection by fax, you can guarantee that everyone else will have read it before you.
    Likewise, encouraged by insane advertising which advertises us to turn our homes into extensions of our offices, there is now no time in which work cannot intrude on leisure. The answering and fax machines may always be switched on in case we miss some vital pieces of information. But what exactly is it that for most of us cannot wait till tomorrow? We are not running countries, or multinational corporations, but the trick is to act like we are. In our "accelerated culture" speed feeds our sense of self-importance. It’s not what you say but how fast you say it, and a fax provides instant gratification that this is the case. Faxes are about declarations rather than dialogue.
    But even this delicious frenzy of non-communication can go wrong. Fax terrorists sabotage business by bunging up the machine with 50 pages saying nothing except "Peace and love". And who has had a fax gone astray? As you slot your paper into the hungry mouth how do you really know where it is going, that you have the right number, that you are not sending your masterpieces into oblivion? Worse still: they can break down.
    Since my ten-year-old son poured a can of coke into mine I have not received any faxes at all. The sad truth is that I never did get many. Apart from the odd work stuff they would mostly be from friends trying out their new fax machines. Having received theirs, I could then fax them back to tell them that they were in full working order. See, I told you I was important.
选项 A、interest and surprise the reader.
B、explain why the writer needs a fax.
C、convince the reader of the importance of faxes.
D、focus on the legitimate used of faxes.
答案A
解析
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