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  3. Our social relationships are changing and technology is at the centre of this unfolding story. Take stock of your own world. You

Our social relationships are changing and technology is at the centre of this unfolding story. Take stock of your own world. You

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问题     Our social relationships are changing and technology is at the centre of this unfolding story. Take stock of your own world. You probably have a few family members and friends who mean the world to you. Then there are the many acquaintances, contacts, "followers" and "consequential strangers" who you only interact with occasionally but who serve useful purposes when you have questions, need to make decisions or require a helping hand. Your ties to all of them, especially those in the outer reaches of your network, are increasingly mediated through digital technology — from email to Facebook to Skype calls.
    This new social operating system has been emerging for several generations but has accelerated in growth thanks to the recent triple revolution: the widespread adoption of broadband, ubiquitous mobile connectivity and the move from bounded groups—largely closed circles of interlinked contacts - to multiple social networks.
    We have dubbed the result networked individualism because loose-knit networks are overtaking more densely knit groups and traditional hierarchies as the dominant structure of social interaction. In the world of networked individuals, the individual is the focus, not the family, the work unit, the neighbourhood or the social group. Each person creates their own network tailored to their needs, maintaining it through their email address and address book, screen name, social and technological filters, and cellphone number.
    This revolution doesn’t mean physical isolation, as some fear. People still value neighbours, because they remain important for everyday socialising and emergencies. Yet neighbours are only about 10 per cent of our significant ties. While people see co-workers and neighbours often, the most important contacts tend to be with people who live elsewhere in the city, region, nation - and abroad. The new media are able to facilitate such contact, and, in effect, have become the neighbourhood. And it is heavily populated. Data from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project suggests that more than two-thirds of American adults and three-quarters of teenagers have become online content creators through social media and rankings, ratings, commenting and remixing applications. In this world, people can easily locate and connect with others who share their tastes, lifestyles, politics or professional aspirations.
    With such a fundamental social shift linked to still-developing technology, how it unfolds needs to be considered. Evolving social norms will push both ways. Some will encourage openness as people want to connect; others will encourage limits as the hassled and hard-pressed withdraw occasionally. In short, the world will fragment, with some parts moving towards the brighter side of networked individualism and other parts moving towards gated communities and more tightly controlled information flows.
    The triple revolution has given rise to far-reaching consequences, though it is not yet clear what the outermost points of impact will be. What is evident is that networked individualism is tightly tied to technological changes on the horizon and that the time is ripe to contemplate the shape of things to come.
It can be learned from Paragraph 4 that______.
选项 A、people nowadays communicate less with their physical neighbours
B、people interact more often with those nearby than those faraway
C、neighbourhoods are becoming more heavily populated
D、a digital form of neighbourhood has come into being
答案D
解析 本段指出，人们最重要的联系往往是与居住在其他地方的人进行的；新媒体能够促进这种联系，实际上，新媒体已经成为(人们互动的)“社区”，且人口众多。数据显示，美国大多数成年人及青少年参与新媒体；在新媒体的世界中，人们能够轻易找到与自己有共同爱好、生活方式、政见等等的人．并与之联系。由此可见，数字媒介使得不居住在一起的人们通过网络实际上形成了“社区”，[D]选项正确。
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