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  3. Yet these global trends hide starkly different national and regional stories. Vittorio Colao, the boss of Vodafone, which operat

Yet these global trends hide starkly different national and regional stories. Vittorio Colao, the boss of Vodafone, which operat

admin2013-01-12  57
问题     Yet these global trends hide starkly different national and regional stories. Vittorio Colao, the boss of Vodafone, which operates or partially owns networks in 31 countries, argues that the farther south you go, the more people use their phones, even past the equator: where life is less organized, people need a tool, for example to rejig appointments. "Culture influences the lifestyle, and the lifestyle influences the way we communicate," he says. "If you don’t leave your phone on in a meeting in Italy, you are likely to miss the next one. "
    Other mundane factors also affect how phones are used. For instance, in countries where many people have holiday homes they are more likely to give out a mobile number, which then becomes the default where they can be reached, thus undermining the use of fixed-line phones. Technologies are always "both constructive and constructed by historical, social, and cultural contexts," writes Mizuko Ito, an anthropologist at the University of California in Irvine, who has co-edited a book on Japan’s mobile-phone subculture.
    Indeed, Japan is a good example of how such subcultures come about. In the 1990s A-mericans and Scandinavians were early adopters of mobile phones. But in the next decade Japan was widely seen as the model for the mobile future, given its early embrace of the mobile internet. For some time Wired, a magazine for technology lovers, ran a column called "Japanese schoolgirl watch", serving readers with a stream of mobile oddities. The implication was that what Japanese schoolgirls did one day, everyone else would do the next.
    The country’s mobile boom was arguably encouraged by underlying social conditions. Most teenagers had long used pagers to keep in touch. In 1999 NTT, Japan’s dominant operator, launched i-mode, a platform for mobile-internet services. It allowed cheap e-mails between networks and the Japanese promptly signed up in droves for mobile internet. Ms Ito also points out that Japan is a crowded place with lots of rules. Harried teenagers, in particular, have few chances for private conversations and talking on the phone in public is frowned upon, if not outlawed. Hence the appeal of mobile data services.
    The best way to grasp Japan’s mobile culture is to take a crowded commuter train. There are plenty of signs advising you not to use your phone. Every few minutes announcements are made to the same effect. If you do take a call, you risk more than disapproving gazes. Passengers may appeal to a guard who will quietly but firmly explain; "dame desu" —it’s not allowed. Some studies suggest that talking on a mobile phone on a train is seen as worse than in a theatre. Instead, hushed passengers type away on their handsets or read mobile-phone novels (written Japanese allows more information to be displayed on a small screen than languages that use the Roman alphabet).
The author suggests that Japan leads the world in the mobile-phone culture in that
选项 A、the Japanese are the earliest mobile phone users
B、the Japanese are the chattiest mobile phone users
C、the Japanese use mobile internet early on
D、Japan provides the best mobile phone services
答案C
解析 本题考查文章事实细节。题目的问题是“作者暗示日本引领世界移动电话文化的原因是什么”。文章第三段第三句：But in the next decade Japan was widely seen as the model for the mobile future，given its early embrace of the mobile internet．据此可以知道日本人很早就使用移动互联网，所以C项符合题意。
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