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  3. In 1995 George Gilder, an American writer, declared that "cities are leftover baggage from the industrial era. " Electronic comm

In 1995 George Gilder, an American writer, declared that "cities are leftover baggage from the industrial era. " Electronic comm

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问题     In 1995 George Gilder, an American writer, declared that "cities are leftover baggage from the industrial era. " Electronic communications would become so easy and universal that people and businesses would have no need to be near one another. Humanity, Mr Gilder thought, was "headed for the death of cities".
    It hasn’t turned out that way. People are still flocking to cities. In Silicon Valley and the newer tech hubs what Edward Glaeser, a Harvard economist, calls "the urban ability to create collaborative brilliance" is alive and well.
    Cheap and easy electronic communication has probably helped rather than hindered this. First, connectivity is usually better in cities than in the countryside, because it is more lucrative to build telecoms networks for dense populations than for sparse ones. Second, electronic chatter may reinforce rather than replace the face-to-face kind. Cheap electronic communication may have made modern economies more "relationship-intensive", requiring more contact of all kinds.
    A third factor is becoming increasingly important; the production of huge quantities of data by connected devices, including smartphones. These are densely concentrated in cities, because that is where the people, machines, buildings and infrastructures that carry and contain them are packed together. They are turning cities into vast data factories. "That kind of merger between physical and digital environments presents an opportunity for us to think about the city almost like a computer in the open air," says Assaf Biderman of the SENSEable lab.
    As those data are collected and analysed, and the results are recycled into urban life, they may turn cities into even more productive and attractive places. Some of these "open-air computers" are being designed from scratch, but most cities are stuck with the infrastructure they have, at least in the short term. Exploiting the data they generate gives them a chance to upgrade it. And, particularly in poorer countries, places without a well-planned infrastructure have the chance of a leap forward. Researchers from the SENSEable lab have been working with informal waste-collecting cooperatives in So Paulo whose members sift the city’s rubbish for things to sell or recycle. By attaching tags to the trash, the researchers have been able to help the co-operatives work out the best routes through the city so they can raise more money and save time and expense.
    Enforcing the law may also become easier. Andrew Hudson-Smith, director of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London, thinks that within five years or so police forces will be able to predict and prevent some crimes by watching Twitter and other social media. The thought may give civil libertarians the creeps, but some Londoners, recalling the part played by instant messaging in last year’s riots in their city, may wish the police already had such foresight.
    However, the real prize, says John Day of IBM Research, lies not in single areas such as infrastructure or policing but in making whole cities better by drawing on data from multiple sources for multiple purposes.
The phrase "merger between physical and digital environments"(Line 4, Para. 4)means______.
选项 A、connection between city residents and the data they produce
B、combination of existing infrastructures and the internet
C、joining of real-life neighbourhoods and virtual communities
D、integration of the urban world and the data it generates
答案D
解析 该短语上文指出，数据密集于城市之中，因为城市是携带、容纳这些数据的人、机器、建筑、基础设施密集之地，它们正将城市变为巨大的数据工厂；下文指出，(这种merger)为人们提供了将城市视为“露天计算机”来考虑的契机。可以推知，短语中的physical environment指的是人、机器、建筑、基础设施等城市中的一切事物，而digital environment则是所有这些事物产生的数据，因此[D]选项符合文意。
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