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
The End of the Book? A)Amazon, by far the largest bookseller in the country, reported on May 19 that it is now selling more book
The End of the Book? A)Amazon, by far the largest bookseller in the country, reported on May 19 that it is now selling more book
admin
2014-12-31
54
问题
The End of the Book?
A)Amazon, by far the largest bookseller in the country, reported on May 19 that it is now selling more books in its electronic Kindle format than in the old paper-and-ink format. That is remarkable, considering that the Kindle has only been around for four years. E-books now account for 14 percent of all book sales in the country and are increasing far faster than overall book sales. E-book sales are up 146 percent over last year, while hardback sales increased 6 percent and paperbacks decreased 8 percent.
B)Does this spell the doom of the physical book? Certainly not immediately, and perhaps not at all. What it does mean is that the book business will go through a transformation in the next decade or so more profound than any it has seen since Gutenberg introduced printing from moveable type in the 1450s.
C)Physical books will surely become much rarer in the marketplace. Mass market paperbacks, which have been declining for years anyway, will probably disappear, as will hardbacks for mysteries, thrillers, "romance fiction," etc. Such books, which only rarely end up in permanent collections, either private or public, will probably only be available as e-books within a few years. Hardback and trade paperbacks for "serious" nonfiction and fiction will surely last longer. Perhaps it will become the mark of an author to reckon with that he or she is still published in hard copy.
D)As for children’ s books, who knows? Children’ s books are like dog food in that the purchasers are not the consumers, so the market(and the marketing)is inherently strange.
E)For clues to the book’s future, let’s look at some examples of technological change and see what happened to the old technology.
F)One technology replaces another only because the new technology is better, cheaper, or both. The greater the difference, the sooner and more thoroughly the new technology replaces the old. Printing with moveable type on paper dramatically reduced the cost of producing a book compared with the old-fashioned ones handwritten on vellum, which comes from sheepskin. A Bible—to be sure, a long book—required vellum made from 300 sheepskins and countless man-hours of labor. Before printing arrived, a Bible cost more than a middle-class house. There were perhaps 50,000 books in all of Europe in 1450. By 1500 there were 10 million.
G)But while printing quickly caused the hand written book to die out, handwriting lingered on(继续存在)well into the 16th century. Very special books are still occasionally produced on vellum, but they are one-of-a-kind show pieces.
H)Sometimes a new technology doesn’t drive the old one out, but only parts of it while forcing the rest to evolve. The movies were widely predicted to drive live theater out of the marketplace, but they didn’ t, because theater turned out to have qualities movies could not reproduce. Equally, TV was supposed to replace movies but, again, did not.
I)Movies did, however, fatally impact some parts of live theater. And while TV didn’t kill movies, it did kill second-rate pictures, shorts, and cartoons.
J)Nor did TV kill radio. Comedy and drama shows("Jack Benny," "Amos and Andy," "The Shadow")all migrated to television. But because you can’t drive a car and watch television at the same time, rush hour became radio’ s prime, while music, talk, and news radio greatly enlarged their audiences. Radio is today a very different business than in the late 1940s and a much larger one.
K)Sometimes old technology lingers for centuries because of its symbolic power. Mounted cavalry(骑兵)replaced the chariot(二轮战车)on the battlefield around 1000 BC. But chariots maintained their place in parades and triumphs right up until the end of the Roman Empire 1,500 years later. The sword hasn’t had a military function for a hundred years, but is still part of an officer’s full-dress uniform, precisely because a sword always symbolized "an officer and a gentleman."
L)Sometimes new technology is a little cranky(不稳定的)at first. Television repairman was a common occupation in the 1950s, for instance. And so the old technology remains as a backup. Steamships captured the North Atlantic passenger business from sail in the 1840s because of its much greater speed. But steamships didn’t lose their sails until the 1880s, because early marine engines had a nasty habit of breaking down. Until ships became large enough(and engines small enough)to mount two engines side by side, they needed to keep sails.(The high cost of steam and the lesser need for speed kept the majority of the world’s ocean freight moving by sail until the early years of the 20th century.)
M)Then there is the fireplace. Central heating was present in every upper-and middle-class home by the second half of the 19th century. But functioning fireplaces remain to this day a powerful selling point in a house or apartment. I suspect the reason is a deep-rooted love of the fire. Fire was one of the earliest major technological advances for humankind, providing heat, protection, and cooked food(which is much easier to cat and digest). Human control of fire goes back far enough(over a million years)that evolution could have produced a genetic leaning towards fire as a central aspect of human life.
N)Books—especially books the average person could afford—haven’t been around long enough to produce evolutionary change in humans. But they have a powerful hold on many people nonetheless, a hold extending far beyond their literary content. At their best, they are works of art and there is a tactile(触觉的)pleasure in books necessarily lost in e-book versions. The ability to quickly thumb through pages is also lost. And a room with books in it induces, at least in some, a feeling not dissimilar to that of a fire in the fireplace on a cold winter’s night.
O)For these reasons I think physical books will have a longer existence as a commercial product than some currently predict. Like swords, books have symbolic power. Like fireplaces, they induce a sense of comfort and warmth. And, perhaps, similar to sails, they make a useful back-up for when the lights go out.
Old technology sometimes continues to exist because of its reliability.
选项
答案
L
解析
题干:旧有的技术有时会一直存在下去。因为它的可靠性。题干关键词Oldtechnology,reliability。文中L段前三句提到,有时候新的科技是很不稳定的,这时,旧的技术仍然作为有力的支撑。可见旧的技术是很稳定的,与题干意思吻合,故选L。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/HDq7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
AccordingtorecentUnitedStatesDepartmentofAgriculture(USDA)projections,thecountrywillseeasharpdropinmeatconsumpt
Farewell,Libraries?Amazon.com’srecentannouncementthatsalesofe-booksattheonlinemegastorehadovertakensalesofh
Farewell,Libraries?Amazon.com’srecentannouncementthatsalesofe-booksattheonlinemegastorehadovertakensalesofh
Farewell,Libraries?Amazon.com’srecentannouncementthatsalesofe-booksattheonlinemegastorehadovertakensalesofh
Farewell,Libraries?Amazon.com’srecentannouncementthatsalesofe-booksattheonlinemegastorehadovertakensalesofh
A、Theybegintolikethenewenvironmentaftertheirarrival.B、Theybegintohatethecountryinthenewculture.C、Theybegin
随机试题
域外取证
我国《生活饮用水卫生监督管理办法》规定,下列哪项涉水产品不需经卫生部批准,但需经省级人民政府卫生部门审批后方准投人生产、销售、使用
施工总承包管理模式的简称为()。
煤气站的水煤气和半水煤气的含氧量达到()时必须停炉。
液压强度试验常用洁净水进行,试验压力为()的1.25~1.5倍。
要约不再对要约人和受要约人产生拘束,称为()。
叶某系中国公民,居住在我国西南边境某县。1998年以来,叶某在无任何证件的情况下,多次往返于A国和中国之间贩卖日用品。2001年8月,当叶某再次非法越境时,被当地县公安边防机关查获,并被处以拘留15日。处罚执行完毕后,叶某不服,准备提起行政复议和行政诉讼。
①干细胞的重要性奠定了其在医药卫生、科技产业、国防等领域内的重要地位②美国总统奥巴马上任之初就宣布取消前任总统对干细胞研究的限制③干细胞因其在生命科学、新药试验和疾病研究这三大生物医药领域的重要作用受到全世界医学界和政治人物的关注
什么是信息呢?在我们的日常生活中,信息是指具有新内容、新知识的消息。比如,人们收听了一次广播,听到了一些新闻,也就是接受到一些信息。同样,人们从别人的谈话和通信中,从电话和电视中,从阅读书报和文献资料中,从接触自然景物和周围环境中等等所获得的新消息,也都是
Thereisatendency__________________(在商业通信中用长句进行写作).
最新回复
(
0
)