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  3. "IT is an evil influence on the youth of our country." A politician condemning video gaming? Actually, a clergyman denouncing ro

"IT is an evil influence on the youth of our country." A politician condemning video gaming? Actually, a clergyman denouncing ro

admin2012-01-05  52
问题     "IT is an evil influence on the youth of our country." A politician condemning video gaming? Actually, a clergyman denouncing rock and roll 50 years ago. But the sentiment could just as easily have been voiced by Hillary Clinton in the past few weeks as in saying video games is "a silent epidemic of media desensitization and stealing the innocence of our children".
    The opposition to gaming springs largely from the neophobia that has pitted the old against the entertainments of the young for centuries. Novels were once considered too low-brow; Waltz music and dancing were condemned in the 19th century; rock and roll was thought to encourage violence. But what of the specific complaints—that games foster addiction and encourage violence?
    There’s no good evidence for either. On addiction, if the worry is about a generally excessive use of screen-based entertainment, critics should surely concern themselves about television rather than games. As to the minority who seriously overdo it research suggests that they display addictive behavior in other ways too. The problem, in other words, is with them, not with the games.
    Most of the research on whether video games encourage violence is unsatisfactory, focusing primarily on short-term effects. In the best study so far, frequent playing of a violent game sustained over a month had no effect on participants’ level of aggression. And, during the period in which gaming has become widespread in America, violent crime has fallen by half. Perhaps, as some observers have suggested, gaming actually makes people less violent, by acting as a safety valve.
    So are games good, rather than bad, for people? Good ones probably are. Games are widely used as educational tools, not just for pilots, soldiers and surgeons, but also in schools and businesses. Games require players to construct hypotheses, solve problems, develop strategies, and learn the rules of the in-game world through trial and error. Gamers must also be able to juggle several different tasks, evaluate risks and make quick decisions. Playing games is, thus, an ideal form of preparation for the workplace of the 21st century, as some forward-thinking firms are already starting to realize.
    Pointing all this out makes little difference, though, because the controversy over gaming, as with rock and roll, is more than anything else the consequence of a generational divide. Can the disagreements between old and young over new forms of media ever be resolved? Sometimes attitudes can change relatively quickly, as happened with the Internet. Once condemned as a cesspool of depravity, it is now recognized as a valuable new medium. Attitudes changed because critics of the Internet had to start using it for work, and then realized that, like any medium, it could be used for good purposes as well as bad. They have no such incentive to take up gaming, however.
    Eventually, objections to new media resolve themselves, as the young grow up and the old die out. As today’s gamers grow older—the average age of garners is already 30—video games will ultimately become just another medium, alongside books, music and films. And soon the greying gamers will start tut-tutting about some new evil threatening to destroy the younger generation’s moral fiber.  
What does the word "neophobia" (Line 1, Para. 2) most probably mean?
选项 A、The entertainment of the young.
B、The violence on the Internet.
C、The change of the society.
D、The skepticism of new things.
答案D
解析 推断题。根据倒数第2段最后两句可以知道，批评因特网的人因为在工作上开始使用因特网而慢慢改变了对因特网的看法，末句中的have no such incentive表示批评游戏的人因为没有机会真正使用游戏，所以不会改变对游戏的看法，也就是说，作者认为批评游戏的人如果也像批评因特网的人那样在工作上使用到游戏的话，他们也会慢慢改变对游戏的看法，综上所述，可判断选项D为本题答案。
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