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  3. Futurists have identified two changes that seem to be central to contemporary social life. First, the United States is being res

Futurists have identified two changes that seem to be central to contemporary social life. First, the United States is being res

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问题     Futurists have identified two changes that seem to be central to contemporary social life. First, the United States is being restructured from an industrial to an information society. Second, modern societies are increasingly shifting from a national to a global economy. Futurists have applied a good many metaphors to these changes, including Daniel Bell’s "postindustrial society", Alvin Toffier’s "the third wave" and John Naisbitt’s "megatrends". Common to these metaphors is the notion that American society is shifting from the production of goods to the production of services and from society based on the coordination of people and machines to a society organized around knowledge. These changes, it is contended, will afford a myriad of choices. The world will increasingly be one of many flavors, not just vanilla(香草)or chocolate.
    Many observers of contemporary American life believe that we are witnessing a historical change and the first major impact of the shift from an energy economy to an information economy. For 300 years technology has been cast in a mechanical model, one based on the combustion processes that go on inside a star like the sun. The steam engine opened the mechanical age, and it reached its peak with the discovery of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion, which replicated the energy producing processes of a star. We now seem to be moving toward a biological model based on information and involving the intensive use of materials. Although biological processes need physical energy and materials, they tend to substitute information for both. Biological processes "miniaturize" size, energy, and materials by "exploding" information. The human brain is some ten times the size and weight of the brain of a lemur(狐猴), but it handles a billion times more information. As a result, high tech industries are information intensive rather than energy or material intensive.
    Sociologists have played and will continue to play an important role in assessing and interpreting these developments and other aspects of change.
What characterizes the information society?
选项 A、The amount of knowledge to be learned.
B、Physical energy and materials.
C、Rapid change and its social effects.
D、Small size and high capacity.
答案D
解析 从文中第2段的内容推知，社会似乎正在向生物学模式转变，这一模式的基础是信息，涉及材料的集中利用。生物过程虽然也需要实际的能源与材料，但它倾向于用信息来代替二者。生物过程利用“爆炸”信息的方法缩小体积、能源及材料。例如，人的大脑体积及重量约是狐猴的10倍，但它所能处理的信息却是后者的10亿倍。所以，高技术工业的典型特征是信息的高度利用，而不是能源与材料的高度利用。因此“小体积大容量”正确。
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