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  3. What Is the Paperless Office ? It became a classic example of a techno-Utopian prophecy becoming faulty. The notion of the "

What Is the Paperless Office ? It became a classic example of a techno-Utopian prophecy becoming faulty. The notion of the "

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问题                     What Is the Paperless Office ?
    It became a classic example of a techno-Utopian prophecy becoming faulty. The notion of the "paperless office", which dates back to the 1960s, sounded plausible enough. As computers began to spread and display technology improved, it seemed obvious that more and more documents would be written, distributed and read in electronic form, rather than on paper.
    What actually happened was that global consumption of office paper more than doubled in the last two decades of the 20th century, as digital technology made printing cheaper and easier than ever before. Not even the rise of the internet stemmed the tide. The web’s billions of pages provided a vast new source of fodder for the world’s humming printers. Although E-mail did away with much paper-based correspondence, some older, bosses who fears technology insisted on having their E-mails printed out so they could scribble their responses in pen for their secretaries to type in and send off.
    Yet the prediction seems to be coming true at last. American office workers’ use of paper has actually been in decline since 2001. What changed? The explanation seems to be sociological rather than technological. A new generation of workers, who have grown up with e-mail, word processing and the internet, feel less of a need to print documents out than their older colleagues did. Offices are still far from paperless, but the trend is clear. So does this mean that other apparently discredited technological prophecies might also benefit from a similar reversal of fortune?
    A closer look at the ones that have staged comebacks suggests three ways in which they could. The paperless office shows how a sociological shift can make the difference: although the technology did not change very much, its users did. In some cases, however, straightforward improvements in technology turn things around. As broadband grew, many predictions made during the boom—about the value of online advertising and the volume of e-commerce, for example—came true after all, albeit a few years late.
    A third way in which seemingly dying technologies can be revived is through an external shock. Perhaps the best example is the electric car. Growing concern about climate change, worries about energy security and a spike in the oil price have since effected an astonishing turnaround. Carmakers are now racing to build petrol-electric hybrid vehicles, and these are widely seen as steps on the way to all-electric ones.
According to the second paragraph, one reason for the rise of paper consumption is that new technology______.
选项 A、made printing much more popular everywhere
B、made the cost of office paper greatly reduced
C、made vast new sources available for printing
D、made paper-based correspondence increased
答案C
解析 事实细节题。根据题干关键词second paragraph和paper consumption定位到原文第二段第三句：The web’s billions of pages provided a vast new source of fodder for the world’shumming printers．数以亿计的网页为全世界轰鸣的印刷机提供了丰富的素材来源。网络即是新技术的一例，因此选[C]项。
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