Reading
Questions
Reading 2/2:
Reading Text
Has the Internet brought us together or driven us apart?
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(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.
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(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) Talking to his nephew is mentioned by the author to demonstrate how much
A. our communication has changed due to the Internet.
B. the way we handle domestic chores has changed.
. the last ten years have seen changes in mobile phones.CD. friendship's significance has evolved.
2) What is the author's perspective on the impact of the Internet on the newspaper and record industries?A. The author suggests that the Internet has had a negative impact on these industries.
B. The author believes the Internet has greatly benefited these industries.
