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
2015-05-12
94
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 over 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-run 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.
According to the passage, Asian civilizations, which were ahead of Europe’s, fell behind because______.
选项
A、Asian languages were more difficult to learn
B、European languages had simple alphabets
C、they didn’t have the technology to spread ideas
D、people’s communication skills were not good enough
答案
C
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://www.kaotiyun.com/show/AOgO777K
本试题收录于:
CATTI二级笔译综合能力题库翻译专业资格(CATTI)分类
0
CATTI二级笔译综合能力
翻译专业资格(CATTI)
相关试题推荐
Teachersneedtobeawareoftheemotional,intellectual,andphysicalchangesthatyoungadultsexperience.Andtheyalsoneed
ThePresidentcalledOraclea"greatcompany",buthedeclinedtosaywhetherhebelievedOraclewasthebestoptionthanMicros
TheCommissionisexpectedtoproposeallowingpeopletochoosewhichlegaljurisdictiontheywouldcomeunder,basedontheir(
A、Ithadfallen21pointsyesterday.B、Therewillbegoodnewsforthemarket.C、Itbadlyneedsgoodnewstoimprovethecurrent
Asalways,IampleasedtobehereattheNationalPressClubformy(1)Speech.ThisistheseventhtimeIhavehadthe(2)to
A、comfortablebutexpensiveB、hardbutcheapC、comfortableandcheapD、hardandexpensiveD事实细节的找寻和判断;根据题干专有名词可定位到原文相关信息Peoplew
Notalleducatedmenarecollegegraduates,norareallcollegegraduateseducatedmen.Aneducatedmanisonewhoisusefulto
Somechildrendisplayanunacceptablecuriosityabouteverynewthingtheyencounter.
Thecampers______theirtentinashelteredvalley.
Everyoneshouldgetthedimetoday,oritwillbetoolatetogetthecontract.
随机试题
固定资产的预计使用寿命和净残值发生变更,这一变更属于
试述北洋军阀统治时期行政执行的基本趋向和行政执行混乱的原因。
能力与知识、技能的关系如何?(4分)
男性,55岁,患“肝硬化”5年,加重1周。查体:少量腹水,双下肢可凹性水肿。该患者欲消除水肿,宜首选的利尿剂是
A.妊娠28周至出生后7天B.出生脐带结扎到满7天C.出生脐带结扎到满28D.妊娠28周至出生后28天E.出生脐带结扎到满30天新生儿期是指
罗厚森是一家著名大型物流公司的职员,年纪不大的他已经在事业上小有成就,是同学、朋友圈中令人羡慕的“先富阶层”。但是为了以后的生活理想,特想作一理财规划,经过初步沟通面谈后,你获得了以下家庭、职业与财务信息:一、案例成员二、月度收支状况收入方面:1
某企业发奖金是根据利润提成的,利润低于或等于10万元时可提成10%;低于或等于20万元时,高于10万元的部分按7.5%提成,高于20万元的部分按5%提成。当利润为40万元时,应发放奖金()万元。
“明清之际思想批判的实质是儒家思想在新的历史条件下的活跃,他们使儒家思想更趋实事求是,与国计民生靠得更近。”这里“新的历史条件”是指()。①蓬勃发展的商品经济②新的生产因素和生产关系的萌芽③思想界因循守旧、陈腐不化
我们人类很自以为是,往往把这个世界及其历史甚至史前都看作是通往那个伟大的时刻——人类将至高无上地统治一切。事实上,尽管可能有些令人难以接受,我们在这个星球上的卓越表现并非预先注定的。我们人类的祖先本来也可能步恐龙的后尘,而他们确实差点就与恐龙一样灭绝了。自
网状结构除存在于丘脑,主要位于
最新回复
(
0
)