歷年考研英語(yǔ)閱讀理解2001年02

[00:02.92]2001 Passage2 [00:06.95]A great deal of attention is being paid today [00:09.79]to the so-called digital divide [00:12.52]--the division of the world into the info(information) rich [00:17.15]and the info poor. [00:19.17]And that divide does exist today. [00:22.80]My wife and I lectured about [00:24.81]this looming danger twenty years ago. [00:28.04]What was less visible then, however, were the new, [00:31.47]positive forces that work against the digital divide. [00:35.61]There are reasons to be optimistic. [00:38.84]There are technological reasons to hope [00:41.07]the digital divide will narrow. [00:43.89]As the Internet becomes more and more commercialized, [00:47.33]it is in the interest of business to universalize access [00:52.16]--after all, the more people online, [00:54.89]the more potential customers there are. [00:57.70]More and more governments, [00:59.42]afraid their countries will be left behind, [01:01.95]want to spread Internet access. [01:04.77]Within the next decade or two, [01:06.89]one to two billion people on the planet [01:09.42]will be netted together. [01:11.54]As a result, I now believe the digital divide [01:14.88]will narrow rather than widen in the years ahead. [01:18.61]And that is very good news because the Internet [01:21.27]may well be the most powerful tool for [01:24.24]combating world poverty that we've ever had. [01:28.49]Of course, the use of the Internet [01:30.72]isn't the only way to defeat poverty. [01:33.44]And the Internet is not the only tool we have. [01:37.17]But it has enormous potential. [01:39.56]To take advantage of this tool, [01:41.68]some impoverished countries will have to get over [01:44.60]their outdated anti-colonial prejudices [01:47.93]with respect to foreign investment. [01:50.86]Countries that still think foreign investment [01:53.87]is an invasion of their sovereignty [01:56.19]might well study the history of infrastructure [01:59.83](the basic structural foundations of a society) [02:03.25]in the United States. [02:05.38]When the United States built its industrial infrastructure, [02:08.91]it didn't have the capital to do so. [02:11.63]And that is why America's Second Wave infrastructure [02:15.46]--including roads, harbors, highways, ports [02:19.39]and so on--were built with foreign investment. [02:23.58]The English, the Germans, the Dutch [02:26.12]and the French were investing in Britain's former colony. [02:29.86]They financed them. [02:32.08]Immigrant Americans built them. [02:34.59]Guess who owns them now? [02:36.41]The Americans. [02:38.13]I believe the same thing would be true in places [02:40.74]like Brazil or anywhere else for that matter. [02:44.07]The more foreign capital you have helping you [02:46.41]build your Third Wave infrastructure, [02:49.44]which today is an electronic infrastructure, [02:52.56]the better off you're going to be. [02:55.46]That doesn't mean lying down and becoming fooled, [02:58.89]or letting foreign corporations run uncontrolled. [03:02.64]But it does mean recognizing [03:04.45]how important they can be in building the energy [03:07.77]and telecom infrastructures [03:09.69]needed to take full advantage of the Internet.

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