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考研英语历年真题来源报刊阅读100篇Text5 |
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Behind the bleeding edge
MANKIND’S progress in developing new gizmos is often referred to as the "march of technology". That conjures up images of constant and relentless forward movement orchestrated with military precision. In reality, technological progress is rather less orderly. Some technologies do indeed improve at such a predictable pace that they obey simple formulae such as Moore’s law, which acts as a battle plan for the semiconductor industry. Other technologies proceed by painful lurches-think of thirdgeneration mobile phones, or new versions of Microsoft Windows. And there are some cases, particularly in the developing world, when technological progress takes the form of a leapfrog.
Such leapfrogging involves adopting a new technology directly, and skipping over the earlier, inferior versions of it that came before. By far the bestknown example is that of mobile phones in the developing world. Fixedline networks are poor or nonexistent in many developing countries, so people have leapfrogged straight to mobile phones instead. The number of mobile phones now far outstrips the number of fixedline telephones in China, India and subSaharan Africa.
There are other examples. Incandescent light bulbs, introduced in the late 1870s, are slowly being displaced in the developed world by more energyefficient lightemitting diodes (LEDs), in applications from traffic lights to domestic lighting. LEDs could, however, have an even greater impact in parts of the developing world that lack mains power and electric lighting altogether. LEDs’ greater energy efficiency makes it possible to run them from batteries charged by solar panels during the day.
Being behind the "bleeding edge" of technological development can sometimes be a good thing, in short. It means that early versions of a technology, which may be buggy, unreliable or otherwise inferior, can be avoided. America, for example, was the first country to adopt colour television, which explains why American television still looks so bad today: other countries came to the technology later and adopted technically superior standards.
The lesson to be drawn from all of this is that it is wrong to assume that developing countries will follow the same technological course as developed nations. Having skipped fixedline telephones, some parts of the world may well skip desktop computers in favour of portable devices, for example. Entire economies may even leapfrog from agriculture straight to hightech industries. That is what happened in Israel, which went from citrus farming to microchips; India, similarly, is doing its best to jump straight to a hightech service economy.
Those who anticipate and facilitate leapfrogging can prosper as a result. Those who fail to see it coming risk being jumped over. Kodak, for example, hit by the sudden rise of digital cameras in the developed world, wrongly assumed that it would still be able to sell oldfashioned film and film cameras in China instead. But the emerging Chinese middle classes leapfrogged straight to digital cameras-and even those are now outnumbered by camera phones.
precision
n.精确，精确度
［真题例句］ The tests themselves are merely tools, with characteristics that can be measured with reasonable precision under specified conditions.［1995年翻译］
［例句精译］ 这些测试本身只是一种工具，其各种特性是可以在规定的条件下用相当的精度来测定的。
skip
v.跳，蹦，急速改变，跳读，遗漏，跳跃；n.跳跃
inferior
a.①（to）下等的，下级的；②差的，次的；n.下级，晚辈
［真题例句］ He will not do so for long, for mercifully the public has the good sense not to buy the inferior (a.②) article more than once.［1995年阅读1］
［例句精译］ 他这样做的时间不会长，因为庆幸的是，公众有良好的判断力，他们不会一而再、再而三地去购买劣质商品。
version
n.①型，版本；②译本，译文；③说法，看法；④（某种）形式
［真题例句］ And if scientists have yet to create the mechanical version (④) of science fiction, they have begun to come close.［2002年阅读2］
［例句精译］ 如果科学家们还没有在机械上实现科幻小说的幻想，那么他们也已经很接近这个目标了。
assume
v.①假装；②假定，设想；③采取，承担；④呈现；⑤以为，认为
［真题例句］ (71) Actually, it isnt, because it assumes (②) that there is an agreed account of human rights, which is something the world does not have.［1997年翻译］
［例句精译］ （71）事实并非如此，因为这种问法是以人们对人的权利达成共识为基础的，而这种共同认识并不存在。
［真题例句］ (41：Neither) kind of sleep is at all wellunderstood , but REM sleep is (42：assumed) (⑤) to serve some restorative function of the brain.［1995年完形］ |
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