题目内容
It was the English scientist-philosopher Francis Bacon who said, "Knowledge itself is power. "This is an important dictum, but it has never been so true as today, with the advent of the Information Age.
At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, a country's comparative advantage depended largely on the natural resources it was endowed by Nature. People had to learn rudimentary skills when they joined manufacturing industries. They were called blue-collar workers, and they formed the majority, directed by a minority of managers.
After World War II, the invention and increasing use of the microchip brought about great changes in the structure of man's social production. While the primary industry (agriculture) and the secondary industry (manufacturing) remain to be important, there have been rapid advances in the tertiary industry (services). And there is now talk of a fourth industry, the information industry.
In the industrialized world, that is, in the US, Europe and Japan, about two thirds of jobs are now in the service sector, and the number is on the rise. Of course, there are roughly two different groups of job-holders in the service sector itself. The jobs in the first group, such as retail sales, food services, trucking and janitorial services, which are unskilled occupations, are low-wage, while in the second group are high-paid investment banker, computer programmers, high technicians, etc. , who are able to solve complicated problems by applying information. And the second group of service job-holders represent the future in economic development.
It is argued that in future people should no longer be classified as white collar or blue collar, but rather as knowledge workers and non-knowledge workers. The knowledge workers cannot only read and write and perform. rote tasks, they must meet the basic requirement of computer literacy and constantly think up new ways to meet the changing demands of increasing productivity.
More and more people are learning to be competent in using personal computers, digital communications and factory robots. Breakthroughs in bio-engineering, artificial intelligence, new materials, and still unimagined fields of technology and management will greatly advance productivity. It is people with the most advanced knowledge who will take the lead. Systems analysts, computer scientists and programmers, management analysts and inventors and developers are in most demand in the industrialized countries.
In manufacturing itself, for example, there is a move away from standardized production and toward more flexible, customized manufacturing. Hence the growth of a large number of small factories, which are owned by a few multi-skilled and ever-retrained worker-engineer-managers, and equipped with precision, reset table machines working special materials like stainless steel and titanium. They are able to produce new-designed precision turned parts at the bidding of customers, often bigger factories, and their managers work with their hands and brains at the same time.
The only way to greater knowledge is through education and training. Knowledge, as much as capital, material resources and sweat, has become an essential factor of production. The educational system of a society ought to enable its members to make a rapid transition to the above-described knowledge-based work. Otherwise, that society will inevitably lag behind.
It has been the way of developed countries to automate out of existence low-productivity factories and jobs; or transfer them to a country where costs are lower. In other words, the developed countries have been trying to keep higher wage jobs, while moving lower wage jobs to the developing countries. However, in the great worldwide movement to the Information Age, if a developed country should fail to bring up-to date its system of education and training, i
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SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. At the end of each news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions.
听力原文： Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, ER and Friends were some of the big winners at the People's Choice Awards on Sunday night.
Roberts took home the favorite motion picture actress award. Hanks won favorite motion picture actor and favorite dramatic motion picture actor, beating out last year's dual winner, Mel Gibson.
"People, love, and understanding. Thank you, everybody." Hanks said in his acceptance speech. "I'm a lucky man... I have a great job and I get to do it often enough to get me out of the house on school nights."
N Sync. Faith Hill and Garth Brooks were named favorite musicians.
The awards are decided through a public opinion poll conducted by Gallup. Favorite TV shows included ER, Friends, My Wife and Kids and Survivor: The Australian Outback.
The 28th annual People's Choice Awards took its cue from the Emmys. In apparent reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks, it was a subdued affair. Dressy business attire took the place of formal wear as performers from movies, television, and music came togehter to allow the public to honor them.
This year, people were allowed to vote online in two categories -- favorite new television comedy series and favorite new drama.
The star of King of Queens Kevin James hosted the affair and provided comic relief. One of his funnier bits came when he donned a swan dress, á la Blork at last year's Oscars, although he maintained he had the outfit first. A video clip was shown featuring him shopping, golfing and hanging out in the swan ensemble.
Which of the following words can best describe this year's celebration？
While the average website or e-mail would hardly qualify to be described as vital cultural artifacts, electronic information and communications are now so vital to every aspect of daily life that future generations could find an enormous "black hole in people's collective memory" if important digital material is allowed to disappear, according to the Digital Preservation Coalition:
At risk. is everything from government records, which would previously have been published on paper but which now exist only in electronic form, to scientific data, computer games and personal websites, representatives of the coalition--made up of 17 British libraries, museums, archiving organisations and academic bodies--hold a meeting at the House of Commons.
Take computer games as examples, Britain is a world leader in developing computer games, with titles such as Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto bringing in bigger revenues than the domestic film and music industries combined. But some of the original 1980s games, often developed by teenagers using home computers, have all but disappeared.
The warning comes amid a growing realization internationally that society's increasing reliance on information and communications technology raises serious problem with guaranteeing long term access to material which is available only in formats that are likely to become technologically obsolete.
The task of archiving even a small slice of important digital material is massive. While books hundreds of years old can still be read, electronic material from just a few years ago may already have been lost because it was only available briefly online or was preserved in an obsolete form.
The ephemeral, do-it-yourself nature of the Internet also poses a huge challenge. Internet users may feel deluged by the vast amounts of information available online, with thousands of new pages appearing every day, the vast majority of it of little general interest.
But with the average web page enjoying an online lifespan of barely four weeks, institutions like the British Library are now working on ways to select material worthy of preservation from the millions of web pages before it disappears, and store it in a way which allows access for future generations.
"A lot of people think the web is just porn and music downloads," Helen Shenton, head of collections care at the British Library told the Guardian.
"Much of it certainly is, but there is also a lot of important stuff, ephemeral publications, for example, which would have been published on paper before but now only exist as a web page."
As the legal repository for every book published by a UK imprint, the British Library receives about 150,000 paper publications a year to archive. But it believes that thousands of digital publications are being lost.
Since January 200i, when it launched a voluntary repository for electronic material, it has received only about 3,000 items, a fraction of the amount which should be preserved.
Lloyd Grossman, broadcaster and chairman of the Campaign for Museums, contrasted the experience of e-mail with that of the telegram. While the first telegram was preserved and has now been digitalized, the first e-mail, sent 31 years ago, has been lost. Grossman said: "E-mail took many years to become today's pervasive form. of communication and we are now beginning to realise how digital materials are more ephemeral than traditional materials.
"Sometimes the significance of key developments in new technologies may take several years to be recognized. The implications for our intellectual and cultural record and their preservation are profound."
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SECTION B INTERVIEW
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.
听力原文： Kenny Enjoys Driving a Taxi
Interviewer: Well, Kenny, as a college graduate, how did you becomea a taxi driver？
Kenny: Well, you do it for money, obviously, like most jobs. But I enjoyed the urn, I suppose I enjoy being a taxi driver, because I could be my own boss, you know, doing what I want to do. You decide what area you're going to, when to have a break, stuff like that. One thing you have to be always thinking about is where you might pick up a passenger. Will the theatre be turning out？ Do they have an afternoon performance？ What time will the planes be coming in？ Are there any trains arriving？ You see, you're always sort of... scheming to make an extra bit of money. And the relationship between reward and effort is very immediate. Um you, you make the right decisions, they pay you and you get a fare. You don't have to wait until the end of the month! You meet, well you meet some people who aren't all that nice, but the vast majority of people are very nice. If you're pleased to talk to them, they're mostly pleased to talk to you. You get a feel for people who don't want to talk to you, obviously the first couple of one-word answers will tell you...
Interviewer: So you always start talking？
Kenny: I always wish people "Good morning" or "Good afternoon" or whatever that gets things off to a good start. Because quite a few people have a general dislike of taxi drivers.
Interviewer: Do they？
Kenny: Well, they do. I mean, the mere fact they can't get a cab the minute they want one makes them annoyed, you know, and if the cab takes half an hour or so to come, you know, people are beside themselves. "Why is it so？", you know, "Why didn't you come sooner？" "Well, I was on the other side of town at the time, sir!", you know. But um start them off well, on a sunny day, people are pleasant, happy. You meet some people who are famous.
Interviewer: Like？
Kenny: Well, I took Louisa Wallis to the airport on Sunday, who's ... famous, from soap operas, a big soap opera star in, um what was it？ "Fathers and Sons" —oh you must have seen it. She played Gertie for years. Oh yes, yes, famous, well-known. And I took Brian Best, the sports commentator, to a football match a little while ago. He told me a few good jokes, I remember.
Interviewer: Have you ever made a friend of somebody you took in your cab？
Kenny: No. No, I haven't actually. I suppose they're brief encounters that aren't really suitable to be extended. There're certain professional distances. I suppose. There's a line beyond which I don't feel that I want to go. I don't want to make friends of everybody in the world. I just happen to like having a little chat with them for a while, I suppose I was born to do that sort of thing. I'd have made a good shop assistant. I'd have made a lovely menswear assistant, something like that. Very nice, charming and friendly but don't need to talk at any length.
Why does Chris enjoy driving a taxi？
在实际工程应用中，对于正在运行的水泵，水泵装置总扬程可以通过以下公式进行估算，即H＝()。
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