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
Farewell, Libraries A)Amazon, corn’s recent announcement that sales of e-books at the online megastore had overtaken sales of ha
Farewell, Libraries A)Amazon, corn’s recent announcement that sales of e-books at the online megastore had overtaken sales of ha
admin
2015-07-31
31
问题
Farewell, Libraries
A)Amazon, corn’s recent announcement that sales of e-books at the online megastore had overtaken sales of hardcover books came as no surprise. It had to happen sometime. But the news did conjure quite an interesting mental image: libraries that from now on will look smaller and less crowded.
B)For the moment, let’s not argue with the proposition that people will read as much as they ever have, no matter whether they read an actual book or a book on a screen. The habits of readers may not change(if anything, people may read more, or at least buy more—several stories have quoted e-book owners who say they buy more titles for their e-readers than they did when they were buying hardcover books). But if readers aren’t changing, their environments will. Rooms that once held books will—well, whatever they hold from now on, it won’t be books, or not as many books. Theoretically, your space will be more spare, more serenely uncluttered. That’s the theory, at least. My experience is that stuff expands to fill the space available. But you can dream.
C)All of this has already happened big time in the music business, where downloads have gradually but surely replaced CDs. I don’t know how many people I’ve overheard crowing because they managed to transfer their entire music collections onto their computers. All those CDs taking up space on the wall have gone -All those CDs that travel from car to kitchen to bedroom to living room, with the CD and the case getting separated somewhere along the way—a problem no more in the digital age. From now on, we’ll own what might be described as the idea of stuff, since the actual physical things—records, tapes, photographs, CDs. and now books have been as good as vaporized, with the information contained therein stored away on a hard drive.
D)This, of course, is merely collateral damage(附带损害)in the digital revolution, if damage it is. There’s as yet no way to tell if this transition is good, bad, both, or neither, but surely the absence of a physical library, be it musical or literary, marks a fundamental shift in the way we live and think about things. In music, for example, the rise of iTunes, Pandora, YouTube. and all the other online music players has quickly eroded our devotion to the long-playing album as the principal means of organizing music. After a half century of neglect, the lowly single is back on top. Most immediately this has consequences for artists, maybe not so much for the people who buy their music. But who knows?
E)With books, the absence of packaging does nothing to the contents. I can buy a hardcover copy of Moby-Dick or download it onto an e-reader, and Melville is still Melville. But I grew up loving Rockwell Kent’s illustrations of that novel, and later Barry Moser’s. It’s hard to think of the book without them. I can do that, certainly, but some little thing is lost.
F)Paperbacks and public libraries made books cheap or free but certainly available to millions who might otherwise not have been able to afford them, and all that happened long before I was born. Nevertheless, I was brought up by people who had been taught- and who taught me—that books were valuable things, things to be cared for and cherished, and I have owned some volumes for close to half a century(almost none of them, I should point out, qualify as "collectible" or valuable to an antiquarian book collector; owning a rare book makes me nervous. I like books I can hold, read, and even here my mother is spinning in her grave— write in).
G)I come from a generation for whom the books and records on the shelf signaled, in some way, who you were(starting with the fact that you were a person who owned books or records or CDs). If you visited a friend, you took the first chance you had to secretly scan that friend’s shelves to get a handle on the person. I suppose I could sneak a peek at a friend’s Kindle, but is that the same? And try that kind of snooping on a bus or in a coffee shop and you’ll probably get arrested.
H)The stuff of our lives is a comfort. We look up at the shelves and we see old friends. Yes, there are books on my shelves that aren’t my friends, that I haven’t finished or even started, but someday I will, I promise—my home library is a physical manifestation of ambivalence. There is comfort in the continuity of seeing the same books year after year. I guess there might be some of the same pleasure in scrolling through a digital library or music playlist, but somehow I think something will be lost.
I)For years audiophiles(高保真度录音爱好者)have tried to persuade more casual music fans that a vinyl record played on a decent sound system sounds better than a digital record played on the same system. Digital sound is not as warm, not as seductive to the ear. The resurgence, albeit modest, of vinyl, especially among young listeners and musicians, proves that this argument is not generational. It’s not, in other words, just old fogies versus young hipsters.
J)Something of the same argument might be made for books, or for the tactile(触觉的)pleasure of holding and reading a well-made book. At its simplest, a book is a tool, or an information-delivery system, if you will, and it does what it does supremely well. To conceive of a world without physical books is to conceive of a world somehow diminished. It may be more efficient—yes, you can take a "stack" of books on vacation with an e-reader. It may spare quite a few forests from the ax. But efficiency is no substitute for pleasure. The future may be less cluttered. It may also be less fun.
There is something valuable lost in the e-books without the favorable illustrations.
选项
答案
E
解析
同义转述题。定位句提到,我喜欢Rockwell Kent与Barry Moser这两个人的插图,我无法想象没有插图的书会怎么样,会有东西缺失。题干是对定位句的同义转述.故答案为E)。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/4rl7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
WhyTeenagersReallyDoNeedanExtraHourinBed?A)"Makingteensstartschoolinthemorningis’cruel’,"braindoctorclaim
WhyTeenagersReallyDoNeedanExtraHourinBed?A)"Makingteensstartschoolinthemorningis’cruel’,"braindoctorclaim
Graduatingseniorsmayfacehigherriskforjobburnout(筋疲力尽,枯竭)thantheirparents’generation,saybusinessandcareerexperts.
Mostparents,Isuppose,havehadtheexperienceofreadingabedtimestorytotheirchildren.Andtheymusthave【B1】______howd
Amidasummerofrecord-settingheat,anewsurveyfindsthatmostofGenerationX’s(20世纪60年代到70年代初出生的美国人)youngandmiddle-agea
Fightunhealthyfood,notfatpeopleA)It’shardlybreakingnewsthatjunkfoodisbadforus.Butjusthowbad—andjusthowmu
Newresearchshowsgirlswhoregularlyhavefamilymealsaremuchless【C1】______toadoptallkindsofextremeweightcontrol【C2】
IntheAmericanfamily,thehusbandandwifeusuallyshareimportantdecision-making.Whenthechildrenareoldenough,theytak
Tosomeit’sadreamjob—eatingdeliciousmealsforfreeandthenwritingaboutthem.Butforsomefoodcritics,theireyesar
WhySummerVacationWon’tMakeYouHappierA)Fromaninformalandhighlyunscientificsurveyoffriendsandcolleagues,Icanre
随机试题
导致肾小球滤过率减少的情况是
患者,女,65岁。急性下壁和后壁心肌梗死。当晚突然意识丧失,抽搐,心电图发现有窦性停搏和Ⅲ度房室传导阻滞。此时应首先考虑的治疗措施是
在不同的社会经济条件、城市自然条件和建设条件下,不同城市的道路系统有不同的发展形态。从形式上,不属于常见的城市道路网归纳方式的是()
国际铁路联运货物运输费用按()计算。
北京某地板制造公司为增值税一般纳税人,2014年11月有关业务如下:(1)内销自产实木地板包括:销售A型实木地板一批,不含税销售额320万元;销售B型实木地板一批,不含税销售额304万元;销售竹地板不含税销售额71.18万元;(2)从某农场采购原木,收
马克思主义是马克思主义理论体系的简称,马克思主义理论体系覆盖了马克思本人关于未来社会形态——科学社会主义的全部观点和全部学说,实事求是马克思主义活的灵魂。
简述非意识过程、潜意识过程和无意识过程。
最能概括体育教学本质的教学目标是( )
ICMP是Internet控制协议报文协议,它允许主机或路由器报告(37)和提供有关异常情况的报告。它是(38)的组成部分,其报文格式包括报文头和数据区两部分,其中报文头部分是由—些刨等三个字段组成,字段长度分别为(40)。ICMP可作为询问报文,用来测试
Touristsareguilty,sowearefrequentlytold,ofanumberofcrimes;upsettingtheecologicalbalanceofMountHimalayas,park
最新回复
(
0
)