英二 真题 2001年 (完结)

Section I Use of English




Section II Reading Comprehension

Text 1

    Specialisation can be seen as a response to the problem of an increasing accumulation of scientific knowledge. By splitting up the subject matter into smaller units, one man could continue to handle the information and use it as the basis for further research. But specialisation was only one of a series of related developments in science affecting the process of communication. Another was the growing professionalisation of scientific activity.

    No clear-cut distinction can be drawn between professionals and amateurs in science: exceptions can be found to any rule. Nevertheless, the word "amateur" does carry a connotation that the person concerned is not fully integrated into the scientific community and, in particular, may not fully share its values. The growth of specialisation in the nineteenth century, with its consequent requirement of a longer, more complex training, implied greater problems for amateur participation in science. The trend was naturally most obvious in those areas of science based especially on a mathematical or laboratory training, and can be illustrated in terms of the development of geology in the United Kingdom.

    A comparison of British geological publications over the last century and a half reveals not simply an increasing emphasis on the primacy of research, but also a changing definition of what constitutes an acceptable research paper. Thus, in the nineteenth century, local geological studies represented worthwhile research in their own right; but, in the twentieth century, local studies have increasingly become acceptable to professionals only if they incorporate, and reflect on, the wider geological picture. Amateurs, on the other hand, have continued to pursue local studies in the old way. The overall result has been to make entrance to professional geological journals harder for amateurs, a result that has been reinforced by the widespread introduction of refereeing, first by national journals in the nineteenth century and then by several local geological journals in the twentieth century. As a logical consequence of this development, separate journals have now appeared aimed mainly towards either professional or amateur readership. A rather similar process of differentiation has led to professional geologists coming together nationally within one or two specific societies, whereas the amateurs have tended either to remain in local societies or to come together nationally in a different way.

    Although the process of professionalisation and specialisation was already well under way in British geology during the nineteenth century, its full consequences were thus delayed until the twentieth century. In science generally, however, the nineteenth century must be reckoned as the crucial period for this change in the structure of science.


专业化可以被看作是对科学知识不断积累这一问题的一种回应。通过将主题分解成更小的单元,一个人可以继续处理信息,并将其作为进一步研究的基础。但专业化只是影响交流过程的一系列相关科学发展之一。另一个原因是科学活动日益职业化。

在科学领域,专业人士和业余爱好者之间划不出泾渭分明的界限:任何规则都有例外。然而,“业余”一词确实有这样一种含义,即有关的人没有完全融入科学界,特别是可能没有完全分享科学界的价值观。19世纪专业化的发展,以及随之而来的对更长、更复杂的训练的要求,给业余爱好者参与科学工作带来了更大的问题。自然,这种趋势在那些特别以数学或实验室训练为基础的科学领域表现得最为明显,并且可以用英国地质学的发展来说明。

对过去一个半世纪英国地质学出版物的比较表明,不仅越来越强调研究的首要地位,而且构成可接受的研究论文的定义也在变化。因此,在19世纪,地方地质研究本身就是有价值的研究;但是,在20世纪,局部研究越来越为专业人员所接受,前提是它们必须包含和反映更广泛的地质图景。另一方面,业余爱好者继续以旧的方式进行本地研究。总的结果是,业余爱好者在专业地质杂志上发表文章变得更加困难,而论文评审制度的广泛引入又进一步强化了这一结果。这一制度先是在19世纪的国家级刊物上采用,后来在20世纪又在几家地方性地质杂志上采用。这种发展的逻辑结果是,现在出现了主要面向专业读者或业余读者的独立期刊。一个相当类似的分化过程导致专业地质学家聚集在一个或两个全国性的特定社团中,而业余地质学家往往要么留在地方社团,要么以另一种方式聚集在全国各地。

尽管职业化和专门化的进程在19世纪的英国地质学中已经进行得很好,但它的全面后果直到20世纪才出现。然而,就一般科学而言,十九世纪必须被认为是科学结构发生这种变化的关键时期。

Text 2

    A great deal of attention is being paid today to the so-called digital divide-the division of the world into the info (information) rich and the info poor. And that divide does exist today. My wife and I lectured about this looming danger twenty years ago. What was less visible then, however, were the new, positive forces that work against the digital divide. There are reasons to be optimistic

    There are technological reasons to hope the digital divide will narrow. As the Internet becomes more and more commercialized, it is in the interest of business to universalize access-after all, the more people online, the more potential customers there are. More and more governments, afraid their countries will be left behind, want to spread Internet access. Within the next decade or two, one to two billion people on the planet will he netted together. As a result, I now believe the digital divide will narrow rather than widen in the years ahead. And that is very good news because the Internet may well be the most powerful tool for combating world poverty that we've ever had.

    Of course, the use of the Internet isn't the only way to defeat poverty. And the Internet is not the only tool we have. But it has enormous potential.

    To take advantage of this tool, some impoverished countries will have to get over their outdated anti-colonial prejudices with respect to foreign investment. Countries that still think foreign investment is an invasion of their sovereignty might well study the history of infrastructure (the basic structural foundations of a society) in the United States. When the United States built its industrial infrastructure, it didn't have the capital to do so. And that is why America's Second Wave infrastructure-including roads, harbors, highways, ports and so on-were built with foreign investment. The English, the Germans, the Dutch and the French were investing in Britain's former colony. They financed them. Immigrant Americans built them. Guess who owns them now? The Americans. I believe the same thing would be true in places like Brazil or anywhere else for that matter. The more foreign capital you have helping you build your Third Wave infrastructure, which today is an electronic infrastructure, the better off you're going to be. That doesn't mean lying down and becoming fooled, or letting foreign corporations run uncontrolled. But it does mean recognizing how important they can be in building the energy and telecom infrastructures needed to take full advantage of the Internet.


今天,人们非常关注所谓的数字鸿沟,即将世界划分为信息丰富和信息贫乏。这种分歧今天确实存在。20年前,我和妻子就这种迫在眉睫的危险进行了演讲。然而,当时不太明显的是对抗数字鸿沟的新的积极力量。我们有理由保持乐观。

我们有技术上的理由希望数字鸿沟会缩小。随着互联网变得越来越商业化,普及上网对企业有利——毕竟上网的人越多,潜在的客户就越多。越来越多的政府担心自己的国家会落后,希望普及互联网接入。在未来的一二十年里,地球上的人口总数将达到10到20亿。因此,我现在相信,在未来的几年里,数字鸿沟将会缩小,而不是扩大。这是一个非常好的消息,因为互联网很可能是我们有史以来对抗世界贫困的最有力的工具。

当然,使用互联网并不是消除贫困的唯一途径。互联网并不是我们拥有的唯一工具。但它有巨大的潜力。

为了利用这一工具,一些贫穷国家必须克服它们对外国投资的过时的反殖民偏见。那些仍然认为外国投资是对其主权的侵犯的国家,最好研究一下美国基础设施(一个社会的基本结构基础)的历史。当美国建设其工业基础设施时,它没有资本这样做。这就是为什么美国的第二次浪潮基础设施——包括道路、港口、高速公路、港口等等——都是由外国投资建造的。英国人、德国人、荷兰人和法国人都在英国的前殖民地投资。他们资助了他们。是美国移民建造的。猜猜现在谁拥有它们?美国人。我相信同样的事情也会发生在巴西或其他任何地方。你拥有越多的外国资本来帮助你建设第三波基础设施,今天是电子基础设施,你的情况就会越好。这并不意味着躺下上当,或者让外国公司不受控制地运转。但这确实意味着要认识到它们在建设充分利用互联网所需的能源和电信基础设施方面的重要性。

Text 3

    Why do so many Americans distrust what they read in their newspapers? The American Society of Newspaper Editors is trying to answer this painful question. The organization is deep into a long self-analysis known as the journalism credibility project.

    Sad to say, this project has turned out to be mostly low-level findings about factual errors and spelling and grammar mistakes, combined with lots of headscratching puzzlement about what in the world those readers really want.

    But the sources of distrust go way deeper. Most journalists learn to see the world through a set of standard templates (patterns) into which they plug each day's events. In other words, there is a conventional story line in the newsroom culture that provides a backbone and a ready-made narrative structure for otherwise confusions news.

    There exists a social and cultural disconnect between journalists and their readers which helps explain why the "standard templates"of the newsroom seem alien many readers. In a recent survey, questionnaires were sent to reporters in five middle size cities around the country, plus one large metropolitan area. Then residents in these communities were phoned at random and asked the same questions.

    Replies show that compared with other Americans, journalists are more likely to live in upscale neighborhoods, have maids, own Mercedeses, and trade stocks, and they're less likely to go to church, do volunteer work, or put down roots in community.

    Reporters tend to be part of a broadly defined social and cultural elite, so their work tends to reflect the conventional values of this elite. The astonishing distrust of the news media isn't rooted in inaccuracy or poor reportorial skills but in the daily clash of world views between reporters and their readers.

    This is an explosive situation for any industry, particularly a declining one. Here is a troubled business that keeps hiring employees whose attitudes vastly annoy the customers. Then it sponsors lots of symposiums and a credibility project dedicated to wondering why customers are annoyed and fleeing in large numbers. But it never seems to get around to noticing the cultural and class biases that so many former buyers are complaining about. If it did, it would open up its diversity program, now focused narrowly on race and gender, and look for reporters who differ broadly by outlook, values, education, and class.


为什么这么多美国人不信任他们在报纸上读到的东西?美国报纸编辑协会正试图回答这个令人痛苦的问题。该组织正在深入进行一项长期的自我分析,即新闻可信度项目。

遗憾的是,这个项目大多是关于事实错误、拼写和语法错误的低级发现,以及关于这些读者到底想要什么的许多令人挠头的困惑。

但不信任的根源要深远得多。大多数记者学会通过一套标准模板(模式)来观察这个世界,他们把每天发生的事件都塞进去。换句话说,在新闻编辑室文化中,有一种传统的故事线,为其他令人困惑的新闻提供了支柱和现成的叙事结构。

记者和读者之间存在着社会和文化上的脱节,这有助于解释为什么新闻编辑室的“标准模板”对许多读者来说是陌生的。在最近的一项调查中,调查问卷分发给了全国五个中等城市和一个大都市区的记者。然后随机打电话给这些社区的居民,问他们同样的问题。

调查结果显示,与其他美国人相比,记者更有可能住在高档社区,有女佣,拥有奔驰汽车,交易股票,他们不太可能去教堂,做志愿者工作,或扎根于社区。

记者往往是广义的社会和文化精英的一部分,因此他们的工作往往反映了这一精英的传统价值观。人们对新闻媒体惊人的不信任,根源并不在于不准确或糟糕的报道技巧,而是在于记者和读者之间每天的世界观冲突。

对于任何行业来说,这都是一个爆炸性的局面,尤其是一个正在衰退的行业。这是一家陷入困境的企业,它一直在雇佣那些态度严重惹恼客户的员工。然后,它赞助了许多研讨会和一个可信度项目,致力于研究为什么客户会感到恼火并大量逃离。但它似乎从来没有注意到许多前买家抱怨的文化和阶级偏见。如果有的话,它就会开放其多元化项目,现在只关注种族和性别,寻找那些在观点、价值观、教育程度和阶层上有很大差异的记者。

Text 4

    The world is going through the biggest wave of mergers and acquisitions ever witnessed. The process sweeps from hyperactive America to Europe and reaches the emerging countries with unsurpassed might. Many in these countries are looking at this process and worrying: "Won't the wave of business concentration turn into an uncontrollable anti-competitive force?"

    There's no question that the big are getting bigger and more powerful. Multinational corporations accounted for less than 20% of international trade in 1982. Today the figure is more than 25% and growing rapidly. International affiliates account for a fast-growing segment of production in economies that open up and welcome foreign investment. In Argentina, for instance, after the reforms of the early 1990s, multinationals went from 43% to almost 70% of the industrial production of the 200 largest firms. This phenomenon has created serious concerns over the role of smaller economic firms, of national businessmen and over the ultimate stability of the world economy.

    I believe that the most important forces behind the massive M&A wave are the same that underlie the globalization process: falling transportation and communication costs, lower trade and investment barriers and enlarged markets that require enlarged operations capable of meeting customers' demands. All these are beneficial, not detrimental, to consumers. As productivity grows, the world's wealth increases.

    Examples of benefits or costs of the current concentration wave are scanty. Yet it is hard to imagine that the merger of a few oil firms today could re-create the same threats to competition that were feared nearly a century ago in the U.S., when the Standard Oil trust was broken up. The mergers of telecom companies, such as WorldCom, hardly seem to bring higher prices for consumers or a reduction in the pace of technical progress. On the contrary, the price of communications is coming down fast. In cars, too, concentration is increasing-witness Daimler and Chrysler, Renault and Nissan-but it does not appear that consumers are being hurt.

    Yet the fact remains that the merger movement must be watched. A few weeks ago, Alan Greenspan warned against the megamergers in the banking industry. Who is going to supervise, regulate and operate as lender of last resort with the gigantic banks that are being created? Won't multinationals shift production from one place to another when a nation gets too strict about infringements to fair competition? And should one country take upon itself the role of "defending competition" on issues that affect many other nations, as in the U S. vs. Microsoft case ?


世界正在经历有史以来最大的并购浪潮。这一进程从极度活跃的美国席卷到欧洲,并以无与伦比的力量波及新兴国家。这些国家的许多人都在关注这一进程,并担心:“企业集中的浪潮会不会变成一股无法控制的反竞争力量?”

毫无疑问,大公司正变得越来越大,越来越强大。1982年,跨国公司只占国际贸易的不到20%。如今,这一数字已超过25%,而且还在迅速增长。在那些开放并欢迎外国投资的经济体中,国际子公司在生产中占据了一个快速增长的部分。例如,在阿根廷,在20世纪90年代早期的改革之后,跨国公司在200家最大公司的工业生产中所占的比例从43%上升到近70%。这一现象引起了人们对小型经济公司、民族商人的作用以及世界经济的最终稳定的严重关切。

我认为,大规模并购浪潮背后最重要的力量,也是全球化进程的基础:运输和通信成本的下降,贸易和投资壁垒的降低,以及市场的扩大,这些都需要扩大业务,以满足客户的需求。所有这些对消费者都是有益的,而不是有害的。随着生产力的增长,世界的财富也在增加。

关于当前并购浪潮的利与弊的例子并不多。然而,很难想象今天几家石油公司的合并会对竞争造成类似近百年前美国标准石油托拉斯(Standard oil trust)解体时的那种威胁。世界通信(WorldCom)等电信公司的合并,似乎并没有给消费者带来更高的价格,也没有减缓技术进步的步伐。相反,通信的价格正在迅速下降。在汽车行业,集中度也在提高——看看戴姆勒和克莱斯勒,雷诺和日产,但消费者似乎并没有受到伤害。

然而,合并运动仍然必须受到关注。几周前,艾伦•格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)对银行业的大型并购提出了警告。谁来监督、管理和运营正在创建的大型银行的最后贷款人?当一个国家对公平竞争的侵权行为过于严厉时,跨国公司不会把生产从一个地方转移到另一个地方吗?一个国家是否应该在影响许多其他国家的问题上承担起“捍卫竞争”的角色,就像美国诉微软案那样?

Text 5

    When I decided to quit my full time employment it never occurred to me that I might become a part of a new international trend. A lateral move that hurt my pride and blocked my professional progress prompted me to abandon my relatively high profile career although, in the manner of a disgraced government minister, I covered my exit by claiming "I wanted to spend more time with my family".

    Curiously, some two-and-a-half years and two novels later, my experiment in what the Americans term "downshifting"has turned my tired excuse into an absolute reality. I have been transformed from a passionate advocate of the philosophy of "having it all", preached by Linda Kelsey for the past seven years in the pages of She magazine, into a woman who is happy to settle for a bit of everything.

    I have discovered, as perhaps Kelsey will after her much-publicized resignation from the editorship of She after a build-up of stress, that abandoning the doctrine of "juggling your life", and making the alternative move into "downshifting" brings with it far greater rewards than financial success and social status. Nothing could persuade me to return to the kind of life Kelsey used to advocate and I once enjoyed: 12-hour working days, pressured deadlines, the fearful strain of office politics and the limitations of being a parent on "quality time”.

    In America, the move away from juggling to a simpler, less materialistic lifestyle is a well-established trend. Downshifting-also known in America as "voluntary simplicity" has, ironically, even bred a new area of what might be termed anticonsumerism. There are a number of bestselling downshifting self-help books for people who want to simplify their lives; there are newsletter's, such as The Tightwad Gazette, that give hundreds of thousands of Americans useful tips on anything from recycling their cling-film to making their own soap; there are even support groups for those who want to achieve the mid- '90s equivalent of dropping out.

    While in America the trend started as a reaction to the economic decline— after the mass redundancies caused by downsizing in the late'80s-and is still linked to the politics of thrift, in Britain, at least among the middle-class downshifters of my acquaintance, we have different reasons for seeking to simplify our lives.

    For the women of my generation who were urged to keep juggling through the'80s, downshifting in the mid-'90s is not so much a search for the mythical good life-growing your own organic vegetables, and risking turning into one—as a personal recognition of your limitations.


当我决定辞掉我的全职工作时,我从未想过我可能会成为一种新的国际趋势的一部分。一次横向调动伤害了我的自尊心,阻碍了我的职业发展,促使我放弃了自己相对较高的职业,尽管我以一名失势的政府部长的方式,以“我想花更多的时间与家人在一起”来掩盖自己的退出。

奇怪的是,在大约两年半的时间里,我写了两部小说,在美国人称之为“放慢生活节奏”的实验中,我那陈词滥调的借口变成了绝对的现实。我已经从琳达•凯尔西(Linda Kelsey)过去7年在《她》(She)杂志上宣扬的“拥有一切”哲学的热情倡导者,变成了一个乐于满足于任何东西都得到一点的女人。

我发现,放弃“忙忙碌碌地生活”的信条,转向“放慢生活节奏”所带来的回报,远比经济上的成功和社会地位要大得多。或许凯尔西也会发现,在她因压力过大而高调辞去《她》杂志主编一职后,她也会发现这一点。没有什么能说服我回到凯尔西曾经倡导的、我也曾经享受过的那种生活:每天工作12个小时,有压力的最后期限,可怕的办公室政治压力,以及为人父母在“优质时间”上的限制。

在美国,从杂耍转向更简单、更不物质的生活方式是一种既定的趋势。具有讽刺意味的是,在美国也被称为“自愿简单”的降级甚至孕育了一个可以被称为反消费的新领域。对于那些想简化生活的人来说,有很多畅销的降档自助书籍;有一些时事通讯,如《紧缩公报》,为数十万美国人提供了从回收保鲜膜到自制肥皂的有用提示;甚至还有一些支持团体,支持那些想在90年代中期实现相当于辍学的目标的人。

在美国,这一趋势最初是对经济衰退的一种反应——在80年代末裁员导致大规模裁员之后——现在仍然与节俭的政治有关,而在英国,至少在我所认识的中产阶级简化者中,我们有不同的理由寻求简化我们的生活。

对于我们这一代在上世纪80年代一直被催促着忙活的女性来说,90年代中期的放慢生活节奏与其说是寻找神话般的美好生活——自己种有机蔬菜,并冒着变成一种有机蔬菜的风险——不如说是对自身局限性的个人认识。




Part B

Part B

    In less than 30 years' time the Star Trek holodeck will be a reality. Direct links between the brain's nervous system and a computer will also create full sensory virtual environments, allowing virtual vacations like those in the film Total Recall.

    41) There will be television chat shows hosted by robots, and cars with pollution monitors that will disable them when they offend. 42) Children will play with dolls equipped with personality chips. computers with in-built personalities will be regarded as workmates rather than tools, relaxation will be in front of smell television, and digital age will have arrived.

    According to BT's futurologist, Ian Pearson, these are among the developments scheduled for the first few decades of the new millennium (a period of 1,000 years), when supercomputers will dramatically accelerate progress in all areas of life.

    43) Pearson has pieced together the work of hundreds of researchers around the world to produce a unique millennium technology calendar that gives the latest dates when we can expect hundreds of key breakthroughs and discoveries to take place. Some of the biggest developments will be in medicine, including an extended life expectancy and dozens of artificial organs coming into use between now and 2040.

    Pearson also predicts a breakthrough in computer-human links. "By linking directly to our nervous system, computers could pick up what we feel and, hopefully, simulate feeling too so that we can start to develop full sensory environments, rather like the holidays in Total Recall or the Star Trek holodeck, " he says. 44) But that, Pearson points out, is only the start of man-machine integration: "It will be the beginning of the long process of integration that will ultimately lead to a fully electronic human before the end of the next century."

    Through his research, Pearson is able to put dates to most of the breakthroughs that can be predicted. However, there are still no forecasts for when faster-than-light travel will be available, or when human cloning will be perfected, or when time travel will be possible. But he does expect social problems as a result of technological advances. A boom in neighborhood surveillance cameras will, for example, cause problems in 2010, while the arrival of synthetic lifelike robots will mean people may not be able to distinguish between their human friends and the droids.

    45) And home appliances will also become so smart that controlling and operating them will result in the breakout of a new psychological disorder—kitchen rage.


在不到30年的时间里,《星际迷航》全息甲板将成为现实。大脑神经系统和计算机之间的直接连接也将创造出完整的感官虚拟环境,让人们可以像电影《全面回忆》中那样享受虚拟假期。

将会有由机器人主持的电视访谈节目,还有装有污染监控器的汽车,一旦污染超标,监控器就会使汽车熄车。42)孩子们会玩装有个性芯片的娃娃。内置个性的电脑将被视为工作伙伴而非工具,人们将在嗅觉电视前放松,数字时代将到来。

英国电信的未来学家伊恩·皮尔森(Ian Pearson)表示,这些都是新千年(1000年)头几十年的发展计划之一,届时超级计算机将极大地加速生活各个领域的进步。

43)皮尔森汇集了世界各地数百名研究人员的成果,编制了一份独特的技术千年日历,列出了我们预计将出现数百项重大突破和发现的最迟日期。一些最大的发展将出现在医学领域,包括延长预期寿命,从现在到2040年将有数十种人造器官投入使用。

皮尔逊还预测了人机联系的突破。他说:“通过与我们的神经系统直接连接,计算机可以捕捉到我们的感觉,并希望模拟出我们的感觉,这样我们就可以开始开发完整的感觉环境,就像《全面回忆》中的假期或《星际迷航》中的全息甲板一样。”44)但皮尔森指出,这仅仅是人机集成的开始:“这将是漫长的集成过程的开始,最终将在下个世纪末之前产生一个完全电子化的人类。”

通过他的研究,皮尔森能够为大多数可以预测的突破设定日期。然而,对于什么时候能够实现超光速旅行,或者什么时候人类克隆技术能够完善,或者什么时候时间旅行成为可能,仍然没有任何预测。但他确实预计技术进步会导致社会问题。例如,2010年,社区监控摄像头的激增将引发问题,而合成的逼真机器人的到来将意味着人们可能无法区分他们的人类朋友和机器人。

45)家用电器也将变得如此智能,以至于控制和操作它们将导致一种新的心理障碍的爆发——厨房狂躁症。

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