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
2013-05-05
99
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.
Which of the following statements is NOT true about the postal service?
选项
A、American abortionists were not happy about it.
B、The stamp was invented in Britain.
C、It helped the independence of America.
D、In the 1840s it was the major means of national communications in Britain.
答案
A
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://www.kaotiyun.com/show/C8gO777K
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
InthebookMenAreFromMars,WomenAreFromVenus,theauthorstatesthatmostcommonrelationshipproblemsbetweenmenandwo
Unlovedandunwantedyoungstersmaybetemptedtorunawayfromhometoescapetheirproblems,buttofindbiggeronesincities
Hemingwayoncewrotethatcourageisgraceunderpressure.ButIwouldratherthinkwiththe18th-centuryItaliandramatist,Vit
TheAmericanAcademyofPediatrics(AAP)justreleaseditsupdatedguidelinesforchildren’smediause.Therecommendations
TheAmericanAcademyofPediatrics(AAP)justreleaseditsupdatedguidelinesforchildren’smediause.Therecommendations
IknowwhatyouwilljoinmeinexpressingourdeepcondolencestothepeopleofHaitiandourgratitudetothemanywhoarerus
Computerswilldevelopmoresuccessfullybecausetheyenableustofulfilltasksthatwasn’tabletoundertakeeverbefore.
Ihavenoticed,withadmiration,thatinItalyrathermoreattentiontendstobepaidtointellectuallifethanitdidelsewhere
ThefirstContinentalCongress,whichmetinPhiladelphiain1774,wasformedofdelegatesfromalltheAmericancoloniesexcept
Itisclearthatwearerapidlybecomingaglobalculture.Newformsofinformationtechnology,intercontinentaltravel,andthe
随机试题
A.溃疡呈环形与肠的长轴垂直B.溃疡呈椭圆形与肠的长轴平行C.溃疡呈烧瓶状口小底大D.溃疡边缘呈堤状隆起E.溃疡表浅呈地图状细菌性痢疾的肠溃疡特征为()
根据材料回答以下问题老王头马上就到退休年龄了,他最近想买一份养老保险。于是他打算向你请教这方面的知识,他希望了解国内外的发展情况。退休后的收入来源渠道有以下几种,即()。
根据民事诉讼法律制度的规定,下列关于公开审判制度的表述中,正确的有()。
“三会一课”制度是党的组织生活的基本制度。“三会”指的是:定期召开(),“一课”指的是:按时上好党课
两个或两个以上机关联合行文时,必须经过的一道程序是()。
1937年,()召开,毛泽东在会上指出,必须把过去的正规军和运动战变为分散使用的游击军和游击战。
给定资料1.在某大学生创业大赛现场,5名女孩准备筹集40万元资金,到武汉近邻去承包50亩地,种植有机蔬菜。台上陈述的女孩充满激情和自信,台下观众也不时报以阵阵掌声。当评委问到“你们种过蔬菜吗?”“你们的创业资金从哪里来?”“农民凭什么把土地转包给
比较正强化、负强化、惩罚与奖励之间的异同。
Es-tumieuxaujoud’hui? -Non,______jevaistéléphoneraumédecin.
Sincesheisangry,we______leaveheralone.
最新回复
(
0
)