导航2007年考研英语写作辅导讲义王轶群主讲2(1)

文章作者 100test 发表时间 2007:02:25 10:07:52
来源 100Test.Com百考试题网

2001

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

　　71) There will be television chat shows hosted by robots, and cars with pollution monitors that will disable them when they offend. 72) 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 BTs 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.

　　73) 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, computer 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. 74) 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." 来源：www.examda.com

　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. 75) 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.

　　2002

　　Almost all our major problems involve human behavior, and they cannot be solved by physical and biological technology alone. What is needed is a technology of behavior, but we have been slow to develop the science from which such a technology might be drawn. 61) One difficulty is that almost all of what is called behavioral science continues to trace behavior to states of mind, feelings, traits of character, human nature, and so on.. Physics and biology once followed similar practices and advanced only when they discarded them. 62) The behavioral sciences have been slow to change partly because the explanatory items often seem to be directly observed and partly because other kinds of explanations have been hard to find. The environment is obviously important, but its role has remained obscure. It does not push or pull, it 0selects, and this function is difficult to discover and analyze. 63) The role of natural 0selection in evolution was formulated only a little more than a hundred years ago, and the 0selective role of the environment in shaping and maintaining the behavior of the individual is only beginning to be recongnized and studied. As the interaction between organism and environment has come to be understood, however, effects once assigned to states of mind, feelings, and traits are beginning to be traced to accessible conditions, and a technology of behavior may therefore become available. It will not solve our problems, however, until it replaces traditional prescientific views, and these are strongly entrenched. Freedom and dignity illustrate the difficulty. 64) They are the possessions of the autonomous (self-governing) man of traditional theory, and they are essential to practices in which a person is held responsible for his conduct and given credit for his achievements. A scientific analysis shifts both the responsibility and the achievement to the environment. It also raises questions concerning "values". Who use a technology and to what ends? 65) Until these issues are resolved, a technology of behavior will continue to be rejected, and with it possibly the only way to solve our problems.

　　2003

　　Human beings in all times and places think about their world and wonder at their place in it. Humans are thoughtful and creative, possessed of insatiable curiosity. (61) Furthermore, humans have the ability to modify the environment in which they live, thus subjecting all other life forms to their own peculiar ideas and fancies. Therefore, it is important to study humans in all their richness and diversity in a calm and systematic manner, with the hope that the knowledge resulting from such studies can lead humans to a more harmonious way of living with themselves and with all other life forms on this planet Earth.

　　"Anthropology" derives from the Greek words anthropos "human" and logos "the study of." By its very name, anthropology encompasses the study of all humankind. Anthropology is one of social sciences. (62) Social science is that branch of intellectual enquiry which seeks to study humans and their endeavors in the same reasoned, orderly, systematic, and dispassioned manner that natural scientists use for the study of natural phenomena.

　　Social science disciplines include geography, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology. Each of these social sciences has a subfield or specialization which lies particularly close to anthropology.

　　All the social sciences focus upon the study of humanity. Anthropology is a field-study oriented discipline which makes extensive use of the comparative method in analysis. (63) The emphasis on data gathered first-hand, combined with a cross-cultural perspective brought to the analysis of cultures past and present, makes this study a unique and distinctly important social science. 来源：www.examda.com

　　Anthropological analyses rest heavily upon the concept of culture. Sir Edward Tylors formulation of the concept of culture was one of the great intellectual achievements of 19th century science. (64) Tylor defined culture as "... that complex whole which includes belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." This insight, so profound in its simplicity, opened up an entirely new way of perceiving and understanding human life. Implicit within Tylors definition is the concept that culture is learned. shared, and patterned behavior.

　　(65) Thus, the anthropological concept of "culture," like the concept of "set" in mathematics,is an abstract concept which makes possible immense amounts of concrete research and understanding.

　　2004

　　The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many centuries. (61) The Greeks assumed that the structure of language had some connection with the process of thought, which took root in Europe longbefore people realized how diverse languages could be.

　　Only recently did linguists begin the serious study of languages that were very different from their own. Two anthropologist-linguists, Franz Boas Edward Sapir, were pioneers in describing many native languages of North and South America during the first half of the twentieth century. (62) We are obliged to them because some of these languages have since vanished, as the peoples who spoke them died out or became assimilated and lost their native languages. Other linguists in the earlier part of this century, however, who were less eager to deal with bizarre data from "exotic" language, were not always so grateful. (63) The newly described languages were often so strikingly different from the well studied languages of Europe and Southeast Asia that some scholars even accused Boas and Sapir of fabricating their data. Native American languages are indeed different, so much so in fact that Navajo could be used by the US military as a code during World War II to send secret messages.

　　Sapirs pupil, Benjamin Lee Whorf, continued the study of American Indian languages. (64) Being interested in the relationship of language and thought, Whorf developed the idea that the structure of language determines the structure of habitual thought in a society. He reasoned that because the structure of habitual thought in a society. He reasoned that because it is easier to formulate certain concepts and not others in a given language, the speakers of that language think along one track and not along another. (65) Whorf came to believe in a sort of linguistic determinism which, in its strongest form, states that language imprisons the mind, and that the grammatical patterns in a language can produce far-reaching consequences for the culture of a society. Later, this idea became to be known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but this term is somewhat inappropriate. Although both Sapir and Whorf emphasized the diversity of languages, Sapir himself never explicitly supported thenotion of linguistic determinism.

　　2005

　　It is not easy to talk about the role of the mass media in this overwhelmingly significant phase in European history. History and news become confused, and ones impressions tend to be a mixture of skepticism and optimism. (46)Television is one of the means by which these feelings are created and conveyed-and perhaps never before has it served to much to connect different peoples and nations as is the recent events in Europe .The Europe that is now forming cannot be anything other than its peoples, their cultures and national identities. With this in mind we can begin to analyze the European television scene. (47) In Europe, as elsewhere multi-media groups have been increasingly successful groups which bring together television, radio newspapers, magazines and publishing houses that work in relation to one another. One Italian example would be the Berlusconi group while abroad Maxwell and Murdoch come to mind.

　　Clearly, only the biggest and most flexible television companies are going to be able to compete complete in such a rich and hotly-contested market. (48) This alone demonstrates that the television business is not an easy world to survive in a fact underlined by statistics that show that out of eighty European television networks no less than 50% took a loss in 1989.

　　Moreover, the integration of the European community will oblige television companies to cooperate more closely in terms of both production and distribution.

　　(49) Creating a “European identity” that respects the different cultures and traditions which go to make up the connecting fabric of the Old continent is no easy task and demands a strategic choice - that of producing programs in Europe for Europe. This entails reducing our dependence on the North American market, whose programs relate to experiences and cultural traditions which are different from our own.

　　In order to achieve these objectives, we must concentrate more on co-productions, the exchange of news, documentary services and training. This also involves the agreements between European countries for the creation of a European bank will handle the finances necessary for production costs. (50) In dealing with a challenge on such a scale, it is no exaggeration to say “United we stand, divided we fall” -and if I had to choose a slogan it would be “Unity in our diversity.” A unity of objectives that nonetheless respect the varied peculiarities of each country.