"It is impossible that old prejudices and hostilities should longer exist, while such an instrument has been created for the exchange of thought between all the nations of the earth, "acclaimed Victorian enthusiasts the arrival in 1858 of the first transatlantic telegraph cable. People say that sort of things about new technologies, even today. Biotechnology is said to be the cure for world hunger. The sequencing of the human genome(基因组) will supposedly uproot cancer and other diseases. The wildest optimism, though, has greeted the Internet. A whole industry of Internet has attracted audiences with claims that the Internet will prevent wars, reduce pollution, and combat various forms of inequality. However, although the Internet is still young enough to inspire idealism, it has also been around long enough to test whether the prophets(先知) can be right.
Grandest of all the claims are those made by some of the experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about the Internet's potential as a force for peace. Nicholas Negroponte, has declared that, thanks to the Internet, the children of the future "are not going to know what nationalism is". His colleague, Michael Dertouzos, has written that digital communications will bring" computer-aided peace" which" may help avoid future fight of ethnic hatred and national breakups". The idea is that improved communications will reduce misunderstandings and transfer conflict.
This is not new, any more than were the claims for the peace-making possibilities of other new technologies. In the early years of the 20th century, airplanes were expected to end wars, by promoting international communication and (less credibly) by making armies out-of-date, since they would be weak to attack from the air. After the First World War had dispelled such notions, it was the turn of radio. "Nation shall speak peace unto nation," ran the fine motto of Britain's BBC World Service.Sadly, Radio of Rwanda disproved the idea that radio was an intrinsically (固有的) peace force once and for all.
The mistake people make is to assume that wars are caused simply by the failure of different peoples to understand each other adequately. Indeed, even if that were true, the Internet can also be used to advocate conflict. Hate speech and intolerance develop in its dark comers, where government finds it hard to intervene. Although the Internet undeniably fosters communication, it will not put an end to war.
Nowadays, the 1858 acclaim by enthusiasts is still used to describe ______.
A. the merits of biotechnology
B. the significance of new technology
C. the prospect of the Internet
D. the sequencing of human genome
Best Time Keeper
Waldo Wilcox knew there was trouble the moment he saw the mauled(受伤的)deer carcass, not far from one of the meadows where his cattle grazed. His dogs, Dink and Shortie, sensed it too—mountain lion. He grabbed his pistol and a rope from his truck, and said, "let's get him". Then he headed up the mountainside, his hounds racing far ahead.
Wilcox moved in long strides up the rocky grade. Still, it took some time before he topped the summit. The big cat was not 50 yards in front of him, its fangs(尖牙)bared, cornered by the dogs on a massive sandstone bluff.
Wilcox gripped his gun. He hoped to take the mountain lion alive and sell it to a zoo. He'd done that before and made a tidy profit. Wilcox took quick aim, his pistol cracked, and there was a sudden silence as the animal fell limp to the ground.
It wasn't until the red dust had settled and Wilcox's pulse had slowed that he gazed around. What he saw stunned him. High on the bluff lay an archeological(考古学的)treasure trove(珍藏物)—large pieces of pottery, stone shelters that once housed whole families, and domed structures that had held wild grains harvested centuries before Europeans set foot in North America.
Wilcox made his discovery on the bluff almost 20 years ago—but it was not the first time he had found relics on his land. Since 1951, when his father bought the high-valley Range Creek ranch, a year had seldom passed in which Wilcox did not come upon some spot of archeological interest. Occasionally he stumbled across burial plots.
Native American Culture
For nearly half a century, he kept quiet about the riches, telling hardly anyone outside his immediate family what was hidden in the isolated valley 160 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. When he discovered a new site, Wilcox would note its location—then just let things be.
Now the secret of Range Creek is finally out. Four years ago, forced by time to give up ranching, Wilcox, 75, sold his beef-cattle property in a deal that ultimately put the land in state hands. Thanks to Wilcox's silence, the 4 200-acre ranch is one huge, untouched archeological site. Today, scientists from Utah's Division of State History and the University of Utah are busily cataloguing magnificent, previously unknown ruins on the property.
What the scientists are learning at Range Creek has already begun to shed light on one of the greatest mysteries of Native American history—the fate of the Fremont culture, which had thrived in Utah for almost 1 000 years, then vanished virtually over-night in the 1300s.
The very existence of the Fremont did not come to light until the late 1920s, when a Harvard University expedition discovered evidence of an ancient people who settled along the Fremont River in southern Utah. Farmers and hunter-gatherers who arrived in the region at about A. D. 400, the Fremont lived in one-room homes dug into the earth and finished off with stacked-stone walls and roofs made of reeds and mud. Carbon dating of corncobs found on the Wilcox ranch hinted that Range Creek was buzzing with activity from roughly A. D. 900 to 1100.
But right around the beginning of the 14th century, some great shift occurred. The drawings, pottery and structures particular to the Fremont culture ceased to be made—anywhere. Some experts guess that other peoples pushed Out the Fremont. Others speculate that some climatic event forced the Fremont to move south, where they may have integrated with other tribes.
A Living Monument
"In terms of history and archeological study, Range Creek is essential to the state," explains former governor Olene S. Walker. "It gives us a view into a period for which we have no written history." She is speaking primarily about the Fremont culture, but A World That Time Forgot. Even today, the valley resembles a world that time forgot.
A. Y
B. N
C. NG