历年考研英语阅读理解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[01:44.60]their outdated anti-colonial prejudices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.
