2. 外语
  3. Business cards have been around a long time in one form or another. The Chinese invented calling cards in the 15th century to gi

Business cards have been around a long time in one form or another. The Chinese invented calling cards in the 15th century to gi

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问题    Business cards have been around a long time in one form or another. The Chinese invented calling cards in the 15th century to give people notice that they intended to visit. European merchants invented trade cards in the 17th century to act as miniature advertisements.
   Lots of companies try to turn their cards into miniature plugs for their products. Employees at Lego give out miniature plastic figures with their contact details stamped on them. McDonald’s business cards are shaped like a portion of fries. A Canadian divorce lawyer once gave out cards that can be torn in two—one half for each of the feuding spouses.
   Such tricks can quickly pall. For techno-utopians, they just go to show that the physical business card is in its death throes(垂死挣扎). After all, why bother exchanging bits of thick paper at all when you can simply swap electronic versions by smartphone?
   However, one can just as well argue the opposite: that business cards are here to stay, and in a blizzard(大风雪)of meetings and correspondence, it is more important than ever that your card stands out. Attempts to reinvent business cards for the digital age have got nowhere.
   That business cards are thriving in a digital age is a forceful reminder that there is much about business that is timeless. Take, for instance, the eternal and inescapable question of whether you can trust someone. The number of things that machines can do better than humans grows by the day. But they cannot look people in the eye and decide what sort of person they are.
   And they cannot transform acquaintanceships into relationships. A good deal of business life will always be about building social bonds—having dinner with people, playing sport with them, even getting drunk with them—and the more that machines take over the quantitative stuff the more human beings will have to focus on the touchy-feely.
   The rapid advance of both globalization and virtualization means that this trust-building process is becoming ever more demanding. Managers have to work harder at establishing trust with people from different cultures: chief executives of global organizations routinely spend three out of every four weeks traveling. They also have to get better at using personal meetings to reinforce bonds that were first formed over the phone or internet.
   Here, business cards are doubly useful. They can be a quick way of establishing connections, and can also act as a physical reminder that you have actually met someone rather than just Googled them. Rifling(搜索)through piles of different cards helps to summon up memories of meetings in ways that simply looking through uniform electronic lists never would.
The word "pall"(Line 1, Para. 3)most probably means______.
选项 A、to have effect
B、to make troubles
C、to become popular
D、to lose appeal
答案D
解析 语义理解题。本题考查根据上下文理解特定词汇的含义。第二段讲到了各种独出心裁的商务名片的设计，而定位段第二句说，对于技术空想者们而言，这些玩意儿正好显示出实体商务名片是在做垂死挣扎，可见此处是说这种小花招的前景并不是很好，观察四个选项，只有D)“失去吸引力”符合上下文，故为答案。A)“起到效果”和C)“变得受欢迎”都表示向好的方向发展，很明显与下文所提到的在做垂死挣扎相矛盾，故排除；文中只探讨了这种以名片来做广告的方式是否有效，以及商务名片是否还有存在的价值，而B)“制造麻烦”显然与这个主题无关，故排除。
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