What is the most suitable title of this passage?
A. The Life in America
B. A Survey of American Life
C. Housing and Education in America
D. Changes in Life Way
查看答案
Cyberspace, data superhighways, multi-media--for those who have seen the future, the linking of computers, television and telephones will change our lives for ever. Yet for all the talk of a forthcoming technological utopia little attention has been given to the implications of these developments for the poor. As with all new high technology, while the West concerns itself with the "how", the question of "for whom" is put aside once again.
Economists are only now realizing the full extent to which the communications revolution has affected the world economy. Information technology allows the extension of trade across geographical and industrial boundaries, and transitional corporations take full advantage of it. Terms of trade, exchange and interest rates and money movements are more important than the production of goods. The electronic economy made possible by information technology allows the haves to increase their control on global markets—with destructive impact on the have-nots.
For them the result is instability. Developing countries which rely on the production of a small range of goods for export are made to feel like small parts in the international economic machine. As "futures" are traded on computer screens, developing countries simply have less and less control of their destinies.
So what are the options for regaining control? One alternative is for developing countries to buy in the latest computers and telecommunications themselves—so-called "development communications" modernization. Yet this leads to long-term dependency and perhaps permanent constraints on developing countries' economies.
Communications technology is generally exported from the U. S. , Europe or Japan; the patents, skills and ability to manufacture remain in the hands of a few industrialized countries. It is also expensive, and imported products and services must therefore be bought on credit— credit usually provided by the very countries whose companies stand to gain.
Furthermore, when new technology is introduced there is often too low a level of expertise to exploit it for native development. This means that while local elites, foreign communities and subsidiaries of transitional corporations may benefit, those whose lives depend on access to the information are denied it.
From the passage we know that the development of high technology is in the interests of______.
A. the rich countries
B. scientific development
C. the elite
D. the world economy
The Watergate Scandal in 1973 forced ______ to resign, the first president to do so in the
A. Nixon
B. Truman
C. Reagan
D. Johnson
According to the interviewee Mrs. Sutter, the reason for limiting population is that ______.
A. the world has less space for people to live in
B. the underdeveloped countries have great problems in increasing their productivity to produce more materials
C. population is directly related to consuming food and other resources, which are being run out
D. people are 'always destroying their living environment
Annie Jump Cannon,______discovered so many stars that she was called "the census taker of
A. a leading astronomer,
B. who, as a leading astronomer,
C. was a leading astronomer,
D. a leading astronomer who