2001 Passage 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-cutdistinction can be drawn between professionals and amateurs in science: exceptions can be found to any rule. Nevertheless, the word \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, where as 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.
专业化可被视为针对科学知识不断膨胀这个问题所做出的反应。通过将学科细化,个人能够继续处理这些不断膨胀的信息并将它们作为深入研究的基础。但是专业化仅是科学领域内一系列影响交流过程的有关现象之一。另一现象是科学活动的日益职业化。
在科学领域内,专业与业余之间没有绝对的区分:任何规律都有其例外。但是“业余”这个词的确具有特殊的含义,那就是所指的那个人没有完全融入某个科学家群体,具体地说,他可能并不完全认同这个群体的价值观。世纪的专业化的
发展,以及随之而来的对训练的长期性和复杂性的要求,对业余人员进入科学界造成了更大的困难。特别是在以数学和实验室训练为基础的科学领域,这种倾向自然尤为明显,这可以通过英国的地质学发展过程得到证实。
对过去一个半世纪的英国地质出版物进行比较,我们不但发现人们对研究的重视程度在不断增加,而且人们对可以接受的论文的定义也在不断变化。因此,在19世纪,局部的地质研究本身就可形成一种有价值的研究;而到了20世纪,如果局部的研究能够被专业人员接受,那么它越来越倾向于必须体现或思考更广阔的地质面貌。另一方面业余人员继续以旧的方式从事局部的研究。其整体的结果是使业余人员进入专业性地质学杂志更加困难,而审稿制度的全面引进使这个结果得到加强,这一制度开始是在19世纪的全国性杂志进行,进入20世纪后也在一些地方性地质杂志实行。这样发展的必然结果是出现了针对专业读者和业余读者的不同杂志。类似的分化过程也导致专业地质学家聚集起来,形成一两个全国性的团体,而业余地质学家则要么留在地方性团体中,要么以不同方式组成全国性的团体。
虽然职业化和专业化过程在19世纪的英国地质学界中已经得到迅速发展,但是它的效果直到20世纪才充分显示出来。然而,从科学这个整体来看,19世纪必须被视为科学结构发生变化的关键时期。
2001 Passage 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 be 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,人们十分关注所谓的是信息差异问题——世界上信息资源丰富的地区和信息资源贫乏的地区之间的差异;这个差异确实存在,我和我妻子20年前就曾谈及这个临近的危险。然而,那时还不太明显的是一些抵制信息差异的、新的积极因素。实际上我们是完全有理由感到乐观的。
一些技术上的因素使我们有理由期望差异会缩小。随着互联网的日趋商业化,上网普及对商家是有利的——毕竟,上网人数越多,潜在的客户就越多。越来越多的政府,惟恐自己的国家落后,纷纷推广互联网的普及。一二十年之内,全球将有一二十亿人互联。因此,我认为在未来的数年中,信息差异将缩小而不会变大。那是好消息,因为互联网很可能成为我们消除所面临的贫困的最强有效的工具。
当然,使用互联网不是惟一消灭贫困的方法。互联网也不是我们所拥有的惟一工具,但它却有巨大的潜力。
要想利用互联网,某些贫困国家必须克服对国外投资所持的过时了的反殖民的种种偏见。那些认为外国投资是对本国主权的侵犯的国家最好还是研究一下美国的基础设施(社会的基本结构基础)建设历史。当初美国建设自己的工业基础设施时,缺乏必要的资金,因此美国的第二次浪潮基础设施——包括公路、港口,高速公路、港口城市等等——都是用国外资金建造的。英国人、德国人、荷兰人和法国人都在前英国殖民地投资。他们提供资金,美洲移民建造。想想看,现在谁拥有这一切?美国人。我想,在这件事上,像巴西或其他任何地方同样也该这样。你拥有的去建造第三次浪潮基础设施(今天主要指电子基础设施)的外国资金越多,那么你的情况就越好。这并不是说卑躬屈膝,任人愚弄,也不是对外国公司不加控制。但这的确意味着你已认识到外国公司对本国能源及通信基础设施建设的重要性,这些基础设施是充分利用互联网所必要的。
2001 Passage 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 head-scratching 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 confusing news.
There exists a social and cultural disconnect between journalists and their
readers, which helps explain why the \templates\of the newsroom seem alien to 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 a 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.
为什么那么多美国人不相信自己在报纸上看到的东西?美国新闻编辑协会正试图回答这个痛苦的问题。该组织正深深陷入一个长期的自我剖析过程,即新闻可信度调查项目。
遗憾的是,这次新闻机构可信度调查计划结果只获得了一些肤浅的发现,诸如新闻报道中的事实错误,拼写或语法错误,和这些低层次发现交织在一起的还有许多令人挠头的困惑,譬如读者到底想读些什么。
但这种对媒体的不信任有更深刻的根源。多数新闻记者都学着用一套标准的模式去看待世界,并把每天发生的事件纳入这种模式。换言之,在媒介机构的新闻采编室文化中存在着一套约定俗成的写作模式,为纷繁复杂的新闻报道提供了一个主干框架和一个现成的故事叙述结构。
新闻记者和读者之间存在着社会和文化方面的脱节,这就是为什么新闻编辑室的“标准模式”与众多读者的意趣相差甚远的原因。在最近一次调查中,问卷被送到了全国五座中等城市及一座大都市的记者手中,然后随机地给这些城市的居民打电话,问他们同样的问题。
结果表明,与其他美国人相比,新闻记者更有可能居住在富人区,有女佣,有奔驰车,炒股,而他们去教堂,参加支援服务,扎根社区的可能性却很小。
记者们往往属于广义的社会文化精英的一个部分,因此他们的工作往往反映了这些精英传统的价值观。读者对新闻媒介令人震惊的不信任的根源并非是报道失实或低下的报道技巧,而是记者与读者的世界观每天都发生着碰撞。
这对任何一个工业产业来说都算是爆炸性的形势,对于一个正在衰落的行业来说尤其如此。这是一个棘手的行业,却不断地雇用观点总体上使客户恼怒的雇员。然后它又出资组织研讨会和可信度调查项目,去探究为什么顾客们恼火了,为什么会有那么多人逃避新闻。但它似乎从来就没回过头来去注意那么多以前的顾客所抱怨的文化和阶级偏见。如果它能注意这个问题的话,它就应该进一步开
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