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  3. A great deal of attention is being paid today to the so-called digital divide—the division of the world into the info(informatio

A great deal of attention is being paid today to the so-called digital divide—the division of the world into the info(informatio

admin2008-12-26  79
问题     A great deal of attention is being paid today to the so-called digital divide—the division of the world into the info(information) rich and the info poor. And that divide does exist today. My wife and I lectured about this looming danger twenty years ago. What was less visible then, however, were the new, positive forces that work against the digital divide. There are reasons to be optimistic.
    There are technological reasons to hope the digital divide will narrow. As the Internet becomes more and mere commercialized, it is in the interest of business to universalize access—after all, the more people online, the more potential customers there are. More and more governments, afraid their countries will be left behind, want to spread Internet access. Within the next decade or two, one to two billion people on the planet will be netted together. As a result, I now believe the digital divide will narrow rather than widen in the years ahead. And that is very good news because the Internet may well be the most powerful tool for combating world poverty that we’ve ever had.
    Of course, the use of the Internet isn’t the only way to defeat poverty. And the Internet is not the only tool we have. But it has enormous potential.
    To take advantage of this tool, some impoverished countries will have to get over their outdated anti-colonial prejudices with respect to foreign investment. Countries that still think foreign investment is an invasion of their sovereignty might well study the history of infrastructure (the basic structural foundations of a society) in the United States. When the United States built its industrial infrastructure, it didn’t have the capital to do so. And that is why America’s Second Wave infra structure—including roads, harbors, highways, ports and so on—were built with foreign investment. The English, the Germans, the Dutch and the French were investing in Britain’s former colony. They financed them. Immigrant Americans built them. Guess who owns them now? The Americans. I believe the same thing would be true in places like Brazil or any where else for that matter. The more foreign capital you have helping you build your Third Wave infrastructure, which today is an electronic infrastructure, the better off you’re going to be. That doesn’t mean lying down and becoming fooled, or letting foreign corporations run uncontrolled. But it does mean recognizing how important they can be in building the energy and telecom infrastructures needed to take full advantage of the Internet.
选项 A、getting worse because of the Internet
B、the rich countries are responsible for
C、the world must guard against
D、considered positive today
答案C
解析 作者在短文的开头就对数字化划分(digital divide)进行了界定：即世界被划分成信息富国和信息穷国两部分。在文章的第二段首句作者写到：从技术的角度讲，我们有理由相信这个数字化界线会变得越来越窄。这里所讲的技术理由就是作者在下面所论述的互联网(Internet)在现代社会经济生活中所起的作用。因此，Internet并未使数字化界线越拉越大。虽然作者暗示了穷国还有过时的反殖民化的狭隘的民族心理(outdated anti-colonial Prejudices)在作祟而不愿接受外国投资，但并未明确指出数字化界线是富国造成的。因此，"富国应对数字化界线这一现象负责"这一表述不正确。作者说，一个好消息是：数字化界线在以后的几年里会变得越来越窄而不是越来越宽(第二段最后两句)，那么就不可能是"(数字化界线)被认为是积极的(因素)"；既然数字化划分是个消极现象，那么该题的答案就应该是"(数字化界线)是全世界应该提高警惕的现象"。
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