考研英语历年阅读理解真题精析--2001年part2

考研英语历年阅读理解真题精析--2001年part2

Part Two

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To take advantage of this tool, some impoverished countries will have to get over their outdated anti-colonial prejudices with respect to foreign investment.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 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.

5．Digital divide is something _________.

［A］getting worse because of the Internet ［B］the rich countries are responsible for

［C］the world must guard against ［D］considered positive today

6．Governments attach importance to the Internet because it _________.

［A］offers economic potentials ［B］can bring foreign funds

［C］can soon wipe out world poverty ［D］connects people all over the world

7．The writer mentioned the case of the United States to justify the policy of _________.

［A］providing financial support overseas ［B］preventing foreign capital's control

［C］building industrial infrastructure ［D］accepting foreign investment

8．It seems that now a country's economy depends much on _________.

［A］how well developed it is electronically

［B］whether it is prejudiced against immigrants

［C］whether it adopts America's industrial pattern

［D］how much control it has over foreign corporations

Unit 8 （2001） Part2

重点词汇：

1.divide（分开；分配；除）是division / （分开；部门；除法）的动词形式。The only way on earth to multiply happiness is to divide it.世上能使幸福成倍增加的方法是将其分作几份。Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.悲伤只需其自身就足够了，然而要获取一件乐事的充分价值，你就必须找人分享。Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.为取代性别这种荒唐的区别，他们应该把人分成静态与动态两种。

2.loom （v.隐约出现；织布机）可看作loo+m，loo即数字100，m即国际单位\米\，能织出100米长的布的\织布机\；另外布在织成以前是透明的，所以布后面的东西是可以\隐约出现\的。

3.commercialize（使商业化）即commercial+ize，commercial（商业的）←commerc（e）+ial，-ize动词后缀\使......化\。Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of commercial life.礼貌是社会生活固定的中介，就像硬币之于商业生活。

4.universalize（使普遍化）即universal+ize，universal（宇宙的；普遍的）←univers（e）+al，-ize动词后缀\使......化\。Envy is the most universal passion.忌妒是最普遍的情感。universe - merely a fleeting idea in God's mind - a pretty uncomfortable thought, Particularly if you're just made a down payment on a house 宇宙--不过是上帝头脑里一个稍纵即逝的想法--一种让人很不舒服的想法，特别是在你刚预付过房子的定