首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
No revolutions in technology have as visibly marked the human condition as those in transport. Moving goods and people, they hav
No revolutions in technology have as visibly marked the human condition as those in transport. Moving goods and people, they hav
admin
2015-04-18
65
问题
No revolutions in technology have as visibly marked the human condition as those in transport. Moving goods and people, they have opened continents, transformed living standards, spread diseases, fashions and folk around the world. Yet technologies to transport ideas and information across long distances have arguably achieved even more they have spread knowledge, the basis of economic growth.
The most basic of all these, the written word, was already ancient by 1000. By then China had, in basic form, the printing press, using carved woodblocks. But the key to its future, movable metal type, was four centuries away. The Chinese were hampered by their thousands of ideograms. Even so, they quite soon invented the primitive movable type, made of clay, and by the 13th century they had the movable wooden type. But the real secret was the use of an easily cast metal.
When it came, Europe-aided by simple Western alphabets-leapt forward with it. One reason why Asia’ s civilizations, in 1000 far ahead of Europe’ s, then fell behind was that they lacked the technology to reproduce and diffuse ideas. On Johannes Gutenberg’ s invention in the 1440s were built not just the Reformation and the Enlightenment, but Europe’ s agricultural and industrial revolutions too.
Yet information technology on its own would not have got far. Literally: better transport technology too was needed. That was not lacking, but here the big change came much later; it was railways and steamships that first allowed the speedy, widespread
dissemination
of news and ideas o-ver long distances. And both technologies in turn required people and organizations to develop their use. They got them; for individual communication, the postal service; for wider publics, the publishing industry.
Throughout the 19th century, the postal service formed the bedrock of national and international communications. Crucial to its growth had been the introduction of the stamp, combined with a low price, and payment by the sender. Britain put all three of these ideas into effect in 1840.
By then, the world’ s mail was taking off. It changed the world. Merchants in America’ s eastern cities used it to gather information, enraging far-off cotton growers and farmers, who found that New Yorkers knew more about crop prices than they did. In the American debate about slavery, it offered abolitionists a low-cost way to spread their views, just as later technologies have cut the cost and widened the scope of political lobbying. The post helped too to integrate the American nation, tying the newly opened west to the settled east.
Everywhere,
its development
drove and was driven by those of transport. In Britain, travelers rode by mail coach to posting inns. In America, the post subsidized road-building. Indeed, argues Dan Schiller, a professor of communications at the University of California, it was the connection between the post, transport and national integration that ensured that the mail remained a public enterprise even in the United States, its first and only government-ran communications medium, and until at least the 1870s, the biggest organization in the land.
The change
has not only been one of speed and distance, though, but of audience. About 200 years ago, a man’ s words could reach no further than his voice, not just in range but in whom they reached. But, for some purposes, efficient communication is mass communication, regular, cheap, quick and reliable. When it became possible, it transformed the world.
The words "its development" underlined in Paragraph 7 refer to the development of______.
选项
A、the American nation
B、the mail coach
C、road building
D、the postal service
答案
D
解析
根据文章第五、六段的内容可知,这两段都在讲邮电业的发展,及其作用。据此可推出,此处的its development指的就是邮政服务的发展。所以,答案是D。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/vTwO777K
本试题收录于:
CATTI三级笔译综合能力题库翻译专业资格(CATTI)分类
0
CATTI三级笔译综合能力
翻译专业资格(CATTI)
相关试题推荐
ConsumerDemandandDevelopmentofGreenCarsThedayautomakersputtheearthatthetopoftheiragendawillgodowninhi
GreenPowerYou’veinsulatedtheattic,installedtriple-glazedwindows,andboughthigh-efficiencyappliances.Canyoumake
HenryFordExperimentingwithhouseholdobjectscanoftengetyoungpeopleintrouble,butforoneintelligent,inquisitive
Observationsofcetaceansinthewildhaveprovidedsomeinsightsontheirlearningabilities.Severalbottlenosedolphinsoffw
Ifyoucouldchangeoneimportantthingaboutyourhometown,whatwouldyouchange?Usereasonsandspecificexamplestosupport
AttemptsatDeterminingEarth’sAgeP1:Sincethedawnofcivilization,peoplehavebeencuriousabouttheageofEarth.What’s
Theresidents,______hadbeendamagedbytheflood,weregivenhelpbytheRedCross.
Thesenseofmistrustiscompoundedbysmallerannoyancesthatleavethefamiliesfeelingasthoughnooneinauthoritycaresab
Inthepast10years,thecompanyhasgradually______allofitssmallerrivals.
Ifyouwanttobuythishouse,thepaymentmaybemadeinfive______.
随机试题
科学社会主义的题中应有之义是
就诊患者的肝炎二对半检测结果:HB-sAg(-)、HBeAg(-)、抗-HBe(+)、抗-HBc(+)、抗-HBs(+),应考虑该患者是
男性,45岁,拟行疝修补术,术前常规禁饮时间不得少于
A.早晨4时B.上午8时C.中午12时D.下午7时E.午夜以后硫酸亚铁服药的最佳时间是
男,16岁。发热10天伴食欲减退,体弱。体检:体温39.6℃,脉搏74次/分,肝肋下2.0cm,脾肋下1.0cm。外周血白细胞2.6×109/L,中性粒细胞0.85,淋巴细胞0.14,嗜酸性粒细胞0.01,临床上拟诊断伤寒,为确定诊断选用下列哪一种培养最恰
患者两天前受寒,出现恶寒发热、头身疼痛,鼻塞流涕,舌淡红,苔薄白,脉象轻取即得,重按稍减而不空,举之有余,如水上的漂木。根据脉诊的内容,回答以下问题。若脉象按之有力,则为
某自诉案件被告人患有严重心脏病,在自诉人提交自诉状后,法院进行审查的过程中,被告人死亡,那么法院应当如何处理?
对从事有害作业的人员,用工单位应按国家颁布的《中华人民共和国职业病预防》等有关规定进行职业性健康体检,对健康有特殊要求的劳动者,用工单位必须对其进行()健康检查,不得安排有职业禁忌的劳动者从事所禁忌的工作。
下列荷载属于可变作用荷载的有()。
凡是逾期送达要约人的承诺,只要要约人缄默,合同即告成立。()
最新回复
(
0
)