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
Farewell, Libraries? Amazon, corn’s recent announcement that sales of e-books at the online megastore had overtaken sales of
Farewell, Libraries? Amazon, corn’s recent announcement that sales of e-books at the online megastore had overtaken sales of
admin
2012-07-05
15
问题
Farewell, Libraries?
Amazon, corn’s recent announcement that sales of e-books at the online megastore had overtaken sales of hardcover books came as no surprise. It had to happen sometime. But the news did conjure quite an interesting mental image: libraries that from now on will look smaller and less crowded.
For the moment, let’s not argue with the proposition that people will read as much as they ever have, no matter whether they read an actual book or a book on a screen. The habits of readers may not change (if anything, people may read more, or at least buy more— several stories have quoted e-book owners who say they buy more titles for their e-readers than they did when they were buying hardcover books). But if readers aren’t changing, their environments will. Rooms that once held books will—well, whatever they hold from now on, it won’t be books, or not as many books. Theoretically, your space will be more spare, more serenely uncluttered. That’s the theory, at least. My experience is that stuff expands to fill the space available. But you can dream.
All of this has already happened big time in the music business, where downloads have gradually but surely replaced CDs. I don’t know how many people I’ve overheard crowing because they managed to transfer their entire music collections onto their computers. All those CDs taking up space on the wall have gone—All those CDs that travel from car to kitchen to bedroom to living room, with the CD and the case getting separated somewhere along the way—a problem no more in the digital age. From now on, we’ll own what might be described as the idea of stuff, since the actual physical things—records, tapes, photographs, CDs, and now books—have been as good as vaporized, with the information contained therein stored away on a hard drive.
This, of course, is merely collateral (并行的) damage in the digital revolution, if damage it is. There’s as yet no way to tell if this transition is good, bad, both, or neither, but surely the absence of a physical library, be it musical or literary, marks a fundamental shift in the way we live and think about things. In music, for example, the rise of iTunes, Pandora, YouTube, and all the other online music players has quickly eroded our devotion to the long-playing album as the principal means of organizing music. After a half century of neglect, the lowly single is back on top. Most immediately this has consequences for artists, maybe not so much for the people who buy their music. But who knows?
With books, the absence of packaging does nothing to the contents. I can buy a hardcover copy of Moby-Dick or download it onto an e-reader, and Melville is still Melville. But I grew up loving Rockwell Kent’s illustrations of that novel, and later Barry Moser’s. It’s hard to think of the book without them. I can do that, certainly, but some little thing is lost.
Paperbacks and public libraries made books cheap or free but certainly available to millions who might otherwise not have been able to afford them, and all that happened long before I was born. Nevertheless, I was brought up by people who had been taught—and who taught me—that books were valuable things, things to be cared for and cherished, and I have owned some volumes for close to half a century (almost none of them, I should point out, qualify as "collectible" or valuable to an antiquarian book collector; owning a rare book makes me nervous. I like books I can hold, read, and even—here my mother is spinning in her grave— write in).
I come from a generation for whom the books and records on the shelf signaled, in some way, who you were (starting with the fact that you were a person who owned books or records or CDs). If you visited a friend, you took the first chance you had to secretly scan that friend’s shelves to get a handle on the person. I suppose I could sneak a peek at a friend’s Kindle, but is that the same? And try that kind of snooping on a bus or in a coffee shop and you’ll probably get arrested.
The stuff of our lives is a comfort. We look up at the shelves and we see old friends. Yes, there are books on my shelves that aren’t my friends, that I haven’t finished or even started, but someday I will, I promise—my home library is a physical manifestation of ambivalence. There is comfort in the continuity of seeing the same books year after year. I guess there might be some of the same pleasure in scrolling through a digital library or music play list, but somehow I think something will be lost.
For years audiophiles (音响爱好者) have tried to persuade more casual music fans that a vinyl record played on a decent sound system sounds better than a digital recording played on the same system. Digital sound is not as warm, not as seductive to the ear. The resurgence, albeit modest, of vinyl, especially among young listeners and musicians, proves that this argument is not generational. It’s not, in other words, just old fogies versus young hipsters.
Something of the same argument might be made for books, or for the tactile (触觉的) pleasure of holding and reading a well-made book. At its simplest, a book is a tool, or an information-delivery system, if you will, and it does what it does supremely well. To conceive of a world without physical books is to conceive of a world somehow diminished. It may be more efficient—yes, you can take a "stack" of books on vacation with an e-reader. It may spare quite a few forests from the ax. But efficiency is no substitute for pleasure. The future may be less cluttered. It may also be less fun.
What can we learn about the CDs in music business?
选项
A、They will take up much room of their collectors.
B、They will become cheaper because of less popularity.
C、They will be replaced by online music finally.
D、They will no longer appear in cars.
答案
C
解析
同义转述题。作者在本段通过CD的例子证实了电子书的发展过程,where引导的非限制性定语从句表明网上下载已经逐渐并一定会取代CD;第三句进一步证实了这一趋势——占据墙上空间的CD都没有了。由此可知,C)“它们最终将被网上音乐所取代”是对第一句的同义转述,故为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/az57777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
A、Tothemanager’soffice.B、Tothepaperbacksection.C、Tothetextbookarea.D、Tothepublishers’indexes.C细节题。当男士说需要一本关于总统选举
Mostpeoplehavenoideaofthehardworkandworryaboutgoingintocollectionofthosefascinatingbirdsandanimalsthatthey
Themanager____________(发脾气了)justbecausehissecretarywastenminuteslate.
A、atthebackoftheplane.B、inaisleseats.C、inwindowseats.D、neartothetoilets.D此题考查听细节的能力。解题关键是听到关键词“Yes,Ithinkmayb
FromTaiwantoAlgeria,thousandsofforeigners【S1】______toU.S.universitiestostudy.Thosewhocomepraisethelibrariesand
A、financialsecurity.B、education.C、career.D、age.C此题考查听细节信息。同样是时间作为关键词。同时要注意听力中的“but”等关联词。
Courtshandletwokindsofdisputes:civilandcriminal.Itisnotalwayseasytotellthe【S1】______betweenthetwo,andsomedi
Courtshandletwokindsofdisputes:civilandcriminal.Itisnotalwayseasytotellthe【S1】______betweenthetwo,andsomedi
FlagDay,June14,isthebirthdayofAmericanflag.Onthisdatein1777,theContinentalCongress【C1】______aresolutionstatin
随机试题
A.LHB.FSHC.LH、FSHD.CGE.LDL全部卵巢甾体的生成有赖于哪种激素?
“吾见申叔夫子,所谓生死而肉骨也。”《左传·照公二十五年》这句话中的“生死而肉骨”:“肉”的意思是_____。
涂敷前,涂料要充分搅拌均匀,按供应商的配比要求进行混合,通常采用()搅拌。
男性,72岁,患肺心病加重期,出现嗜睡,血气:PaO255mmHg,PaCO2,85mmHg,pH7.15,白细胞8.8×10的九次方/L,中性0.80,其神志改变考虑为
A.疥螨病B.脓皮症C.蠕形螨病D.马拉色菌病E.犬小孢子菌感染犬大量脱毛、瘙痒,用伍氏(Wood’s)灯照射患部呈现苹果绿色荧光。可能诊断为()
痰浊阻肺型的喘证治疗宜选用()。
亚洲是世界三大宗教的发源地,分别是()。
高一(1)班排球垫球新授课。张老师安排学生的第一个练习是自抛自垫,大部分学生练习积极性不高,课堂气氛比较沉闷;进入两人一组的对练练习时,由于经常掉球,大部分同学又在做自垫练习。看到这种情况,张老师及时做了微调,对全班同学说:“同学们!我们现在要不要来一
()通常在一门课程或教学活动结束后进行,是对一个完整的教学过程进行测定的评价。
要计算X的平方根并放入变量y,正确的语句是
最新回复
(
0
)