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
2015-04-18
21
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 o-ver 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-ran 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.
According to the passage, Asian civilizations, which were ahead of Europe’ s, fell behind because______.
选项
A、Asian languages were more difficult to learn
B、European languages had simple alphabets
C、they didn’ t have the technology to spread ideas
D、people’ s communication skills were not good enough
答案
C
解析
本题考查细节理解。由第三段中的“One reason why Asia’s civilizations,in 1000far ahead of Europe’s,then fell behind was that they lacked the technology to reproduce anddiffuse ideas”可以推断出,阻碍亚洲文明的是缺少信息传播技术。所以,答案是C。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/aTwO777K
本试题收录于:
CATTI三级笔译综合能力题库翻译专业资格(CATTI)分类
0
CATTI三级笔译综合能力
翻译专业资格(CATTI)
相关试题推荐
ConversationMusicTheoryWhatarethestudentsmainlydiscussing?Clickontwoanswers.
GreenPowerYou’veinsulatedtheattic,installedtriple-glazedwindows,andboughthigh-efficiencyappliances.Canyoumake
ComingSoon:theNextGreatFluEpidemicThevirusfirstcametoofficials’attentioninabagofdeadchickens.EarlyinMa
FamilyMattersThismonth,Wyomingpassedabillthatwouldgivelegalteethtothemoralobligationtosupportone’sparent
AirlineAlliancesCooperativecompetition.Competitivecooperation.Confused?Airlineallianceshavetravelersscratchingth
NarratorListentopartofadiscussioninalinguisticsclass.Nowgetreadytoanswerthequestions.Youmayuseyou
Tracingtheoriginoflanguageisalwaysanintriguingtaskespeciallysincesomescientistssaythatlanguageistheveryessen
Sotoodidalotofthenorth’ssoldiers.Oneofthecentralthemesofthepoliticalhistoryofthetwelfthcenturywasthecont
ParkandBurgess’smodelhascometobeknownasthe"concentric-zonemodel"(representedbythefigure).Becausethemodelwaso
Whatisthelecturemainlyabout?Whatfeatureofthemuonsbenefitsarcheologists?
随机试题
骨料的含水状态可分为()。
某一血清标准样品中钾的含量为0.168mg/ml。现用一种新型测血钾仪进行测定,四次测定结果分别为0.156mg/ml、0.154mg/m1、0.162mg/ml、0.160mg/ml。问新型测血钾仪是否存在系统误差(95%置信水平)?己知:t(0.05,
参加开标的授权委托人应携带()和复印件。
按照货物重量或体积二者中较高的一种计收,运价表内以()表示
风景名胜区内的景观和自然环境,应当根据()的原则,严格保护,不得破坏或者随意改变。
三星堆遗址最具代表性的器物是()。
《人民警察法》明确规定了担任人民警察应当具备的条件之一,就是具有本科以上文化程度。()
下列关于名义利率与有效年利率的说法中,正确的是()。
A______jobobjectiveB______interestsandhohbiesC______personaldataD______degreecertificateE______fi
Lackofsleepmakesyougainweightandraisesyourriskforheartdiseaseanddiabetes,apartfromresultingin【C1】______vision
最新回复
(
0
)