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Reading 2/2:
Has the Internet brought us together or driven us apart?
(1) In recent years, the Internet has totally transformed the world. But as we welcome this new-found connectedness, asks Johann Hari, are we losing our culture?
(2) The Internet has changed the way we think about ourselves the groups we belong to, the information we know, even the people we date. The story of this century so far is the story of the
World Wide Web.
(3) It has transformed the way we interact with our friends. When I sent my first email. I was at university, and my main way of contacting my friends found their phone was off was to leave a
written note - on a piece of paper! - on their door. When I told this to my 10-year-old nephew, he was astonished, as if I was describing how we had to hunt our own food and then cook it on
an open fire built from damp branches.
(4)The web also contains a huge amount of information, but there's a catch. We expect this information to be free no matter what it costs to produce. This has virtually destroyed the
newspaper and record industries, whose products are available online across the world for free. This is obviously good news for the consumer in the short term but only while enough other
people pick up the bill by buying the print copies and CDs. As their numbers decline, there will be a hole left. We will never know all the news stories that won't get written, or the songs that
will never be recorded- and there will be many.
(5) In the time I have been writing this article. I have received 36 emails, four texts, two phone calls, and seven instant messenger chat requests. We live in a state of 'permanent partial
attention', where we are attempting to focus simultaneously on a whole range of things. But as human beings, we're not very good at "it". We evolved to focus on one big task at a time. We
can adjust to a degree: if you look at brain images of 'digital natives' - kids who were born in the Internet age - they look different to us 'digital migrants', who came to it as adults. They can
focus on more varied distractions for longer. But we can only adjust so far.
(6) There's another strange aspect to Internet communication: our manners haven't caught up. I find it much easier to get into arguments with people online than I ever would on the phone.
or in person. It's partly because you can't hear their tone of voice: you can read unfriendliness where there is none. We write emails as casually as we make a phone call - but we read them
with the seriousness with which we take a letter. Something written in a casual second can be reread and reread for hours.
(7) As I was trying to think through all the complexities of the Internet. I had a thought. What if we logged on tomorrow and the Internet had vanished? Would we be relieved to be suddenly
freed from the endless arrival of emails and updates? Would we find our concentration spans mysteriously widening again? Would we see the newspaper and record industries rise again, as
people had to pay for their goods once more? Maybe. But I suspect we would feel oddly alone if the great global conversation with 3.2 billion other people the conversation that has defined
this century so far - went dead.
1) How does the author feel about free music and news from the internet?
A. Access to it will always be beneficial to the general population.
B. Record labels and media outlets will be the only ones that suffer from it.
C. Higher costs will result for those who continue to purchase records and newspapers.
D. Eventually, there won't be as much reporting and writing.
2) What does 'it' in the sentence "But as human beings, we're not very good at "it" from Paragraph (5) refer to?
A. conversing with individuals in various ways
B. behaving in the way a person is expected to
C. paying attention to several things at once
D. focusing solely on a single topic for a brief period of time
3) In the last paragraph, what point is the author trying to make?
A. At this point, there is no turning back the damage the Internet has done.
B. Individuals rely on the communication facilitated by the Internet to connect with others.
r Thoro aro nrowing numhare of nannlo who wich the Internat had novor hoon created
