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  3. Silicon Valley likes to think of itself as morally exceptional. When Google went public in 2004, the company’s founders penned a

Silicon Valley likes to think of itself as morally exceptional. When Google went public in 2004, the company’s founders penned a

admin2014-10-24  96
问题     Silicon Valley likes to think of itself as morally exceptional. When Google went public in 2004, the company’s founders penned a letter to prospective shareholders that has become the Internet industry’s version of the Magna Carta. In it, they pledged that Google was "not a conventional company" but one focused on "making the world a better place. "
    Though Silicon Valley’s newest billionaires may anoint themselves the saints of American capitalism, they’re beginning to resemble something else entirely: robber barons. Like their predecessors in railroads, steel, banking, and oil a century ago, Silicon Valley’s new entrepreneurs are harnessing technology to make the world more efficient. But along the way, that process is bringing great economic and labor dislocation, as well as an unequal share of the spoils.
    Take Apple’s manufacturing practices inChina. By systematically outsourcing the assembly of iPhones and other gadgets to contract manufacturers like China’s Foxconn, Apple has reduced its overall cost of production and increased profit margins for shareholders. That’s neither unique nor necessarily evil. It’s a practice regularly adopted by all kinds of industries. But establishing an arm’s-length commercial relationship does not absolve a company from moral responsibility for the way its chosen partners treat workers. Labor issues at Foxconn have attracted bad press for some time. It was not until that negative publicity on New York Times last year that Apple took more meaningful action, allowing the Fair Labor Association to conduct special audits of its suppliers’ factories in China.
    A bigger battle remains to be fought on the privacy front, where Silicon Valley’s misdemeanors are even more upsetting. Pushing the boundaries of what is generally considered acceptable, even decent, when it comes to exploiting personal information is a daily sport in the online world. That’s because a tweak here or there to the privacy settings of a social network or a tiny change to the code on a mobile application can mean a world of difference in the value of information an advertiser can access about a usually unaware user. Perhaps swayed by Silicon Valley’s altruistic spin or slow to catch up with its rapid growth, Washington has, up to now, largely left the industry to regulate itself on privacy. That’s clearly not working. Hardly a day passes without some new revelation of an Internet or mobile company stepping a byte too far into the private business of its customers.
    The original robber barons had decent intentions when they built railroads to connect America’s emerging cities and drilled oil wells that fueled the nation’s growth, but their empires still needed to be regulated, reined in, and in some cases broken up by vigilant watchdogs. Lofty words and ideals are fine for motivating employees and even for spurring sales, but they can also serve as cover for motives that clash with the broader interests of consumers and society. We need more than fancy promises to ensure that the rise of the Silicon Valley engineer is good for the world.
In the author’s opinion, entrepreneurs in silicon valleys______.
选项 A、fail to change the world substantially like their business predecessors
B、usually fulfill moral pursuits at price of economic gains
C、hold lofty moral ideals that separate them from earlier industry tycoons
D、are not unlike from other business organizations when it comes to profit making
答案D
解析 作者在第一段中主要介绍了硅谷高新技术产业的自我描述。他们往往将自己美化为与以往的企业完全不同、不以追求利益为最高目标，而以让世界尽善尽美为最高目标的企业。但是作者在第二段中抨击了他们的这种自我意识。作者把他们称之为“贵族式强盗”(robber barons)，和一个世纪前投身于钢铁、铁路、石油行业的企业大亨并没有本质区别。这一题问的是作者的观点，因此正确答案应该选[D]。[A]选项错误，作者在第二段中承认，和他们的前辈一样，现在的硅谷巨头们在使世界变得更高效方面也是功勋卓著。(Silicon Valley’s new entrepreneurs are harnessing technology to make the world moreefficient)，不能说他们没有改变世界。[B]和[C]两个选项都是硅谷企业自我标榜的话语，而不是作者的观点。
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