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
78
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 words "its development" underlined in Paragraph 7 refer to the development of
选项
A、the American nation
B、the mail coach
C、road building
D、the postal service
答案
D
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/D8gO777K
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
Onthewaytothecompany,becausetheroadwasblockedbyatrafficaccident,themanagerhadtomakea______.
Ourjourneywasslowbecausethetrainstopped______atdifferentvillages.
Studentstodayareconsumersofthelatesttechnologygadgetsandsocialmediumplatforms,buttheydon’thaveadeepunderstand
Thesaladswerepreparedcarelessly,withoutenoughvegetableinit.
Countlessexamplesoneducationfailurereinforcedthecognitionthatthereisfurtherandactualsignificanceofstrengthening
EmmawasspeciallytrainedbeforetryingtoswimtheEnglishchannel,andafterhavingatoughtimewiththeroughandcoldwate
Itisclearthatwearerapidlybecomingaglobalculture.Newformsofinformationtechnology,intercontinentaltravel,andthe
Duringthefamine,manypeoplewere_________togoingwithoutfoodfordays.
Idon’tdoubthowtheplanwillbewellreceived.
Fewpleasurescanequalsuchofacooldrinkonahotday.
随机试题
局麻药的作用机制是
在企业发生长期借款利息的情况下,借方不可能涉及的科目是()。
电子报检是指报检人使用报检软件通过检验检疫电子业务服务平台将报检数据以电子方式传输给检验检疫机构,经检验检疫业务管理系统和检务人员处理后,将受理报检信息反馈报检人,实现远程办理出入境检验检疫报检的行为。()
根据侵权责任法律制度的规定,除法律另有规定外,下列各项中,适用无过错责任原则的有()。
下列各项中,属于经济法律关系的有()。
2007年全球金融海啸肆虐,以家电为代表的消费性电子产品外销的需求急速衰退,家电企业可谓__________。为了扩大国内市场,也为了让国内家电企业走出低谷,家电下乡、以旧换新、节能补贴等政策陆续出台。这些扶持性政策__________,对家电业发展产生了
①弹性分析方法是众多分析方法中研究产业吸纳能力的基本方法②由此可以看出,文化创意产业弹性系数最大,对就业的吸纳能力最强,这和北京市不断调整经济结构、充分利用文化资源优势以及对文化创意产业的重视程度相关③北京文化创意产业开辟了大量的就业空
不良贷款
组织级过程改进的步骤包括()。
AccordingtotheUnitedStatesConstitution,thelegislativepowerisinvestedin
最新回复
(
0
)