1、考研英语（阅读）模拟试卷 69 及答案与解析Part ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)0 An advertising agency has monopolised, disorganised, and commercialised the largest library in human history. Without a fundamental rethinking of the way
2、 knowledge is organised in the digital era, Googles information coup detat will have profound existential consequences.Google was originally conceived to be a commercial-free search engine. The inventors of Google warned that advertising corrupts search engines. Under the sway of CEO Eric Schmidt, G
3、oogle currently makes nearly all its money from practices its founders once rightly abhorred. In the gleeful words of Schmidt, “We are an advertising company. “ Google is not a search engine; it is the most powerful commercialising force on the internet.Every era believes their way of organising kno
4、wledge is ideal and dismisses prior systems as nonsensical. Academic libraries in the US use subject categorisation derived from Sir Francis Bacons 17th-century division of all knowledge into imagination, memory and reason. Yet who today, aside from one or two exceptions, would try to organise the i
5、nternet using a handful of categories? For a generation trained to use Google, this approach seems outmoded, illogical or impossible. But modern search engines, which operate by indexing instead of categorising, are fundamentally flawed.Three hundred years ago, Jonathan Swift foresaw the cultural da
6、nger of relying on indexes to organise knowledge. He believed index learning led to superficial thinking. Swift was right and a growing number of teachers and public intellectuals are coming to the realisation that search engines encourage skimming, light reading and trifling thoughts. Whereas subje
7、ct classification creates harmony and encourages unexpected findings, indexes fracture knowledge into pieces making us stupid. Thanks to Google, the superficiality of index learning is infecting our culture, our society, and our civilisation.Google did not invent the index. Nor was Google the first
8、to dream of indexing all of human knowledge. And Google was not the first to cynically dump advertisements into the search-engine index. What makes Google unique is the extent to which it has, oblivious to the consequences, made a business out of commercialising the organisation of knowledge.The vas
9、t library that is the internet is flooded with so many advertisements that many people claim not to notice them anymore. As evidenced by the tragic reality that most people cant tell the difference between ads and content any more, this commercial barrage is having a cultural impact. The omnipresenc
10、e of internet advertising constrains the horizon of our thought. The prevalence of commercial messages traps us in the marketplace. No wonder it has become nearly impossible to imagine a world without consumerism. Advertising has become the distorting frame through which we view the world.There is n
11、o system for organising knowledge that does not carry with it social, political and cultural consequences. Nor is an entirely unbiased organising principle possible. The trouble is that too few people realise this today. Weve grown complacent as researchers; lazy as thinkers. We place too much trust
12、 in one company, a corporate advertising agency, and a single way of organising knowledge, automated keyword indexing.1 Which of the following statements about Google is true?（A）It has monopolized digital information.（B） It is viewed as the largest library in human history.（C） It is an inborn commer
13、cial search engine（D）Its advertising practices are opposed by its current CEO.2 According to the author, the shift from categorizing to indexing_.（A）is an inevitable phenomenon in the information era（B） is a regrettable lapse in knowledge organization（C） has caused our overdependence on Google（D）bro
14、ught about the commerialisation of Google3 Modern search engines have the effect of_.（A）bringing together fragments of knowledge（B） encouraging shallow modes of thinking（C） providing readers with unexpected findings（D）facilitating our reading activities4 The author criticises online advertisements m
15、ainly because_.（A）they are too prevalent to bear（B） they confuse advertising with knowledge（C） they narrow peoples vision scope（D）they make search engines biased5 Concerning knowledge acquirement, the author might suggest that we should_.（A）find an unbiased knowledge organizing system（B） abandon the
16、 mode of keyword indexing（C） utilize non-commercial search engines（D）combine multi information-inquiry channels5 Intensifying agriculture is never going to be the new rock n roll, but the idea is pretty fashionable right now. Last week a major study led by the UK governments chief scientist John Bed
17、dington warned that the only way to feed the world is to produce more food from the same amount of land.Some say that misses the point: we already produce enough food to feed 10 billion people, if only we didnt waste so much. But there is another argument for intensifying agriculture: to save the ra
18、inforests. At last Decembers climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, many delegates called for investment in farming to be included in REDD, the fund that will pay tropical countries to protect their rainforests and the carbon they lock away. The argument runs like this. As demand for food increases,
19、farmers already the biggest destroyers of forest are likely to chop down yet more trees. So to prevent further destruction, we urgently need to intensify agriculture. As climate economics guru Nicholas Stern put it in Cancun: “Cattle pasture in Brazil has only one animal per hectare. Raise that to t
20、wo and you can save the Amazon rainforest. “ The Brazilian governments strategy is based on exactly that premise. The World Bank, which will run the fund, made the same pitch.The idea that intensifying agriculture relieves pressure on land is sometimes called the Borlaug hy pothesis after Norman Bor
21、laug, the pioneer of the green revolution, who first articulated it. But before we go ahead we had better be sure that it is true.The counter-argument is that farmers dont clear forests to feed the world; they do it to make money. So helping farmers become more efficient and more productive especial
22、ly those living near forests wont reduce the threat. It will increase it. Tony Simons put it this way, “Borlaug thought that if you addressed poverty in the forest border, theyd stop taking their machetes into the forest. Actually, they get enough money to buy a chainsaw and do much more damage. “On
23、e recent study seems to bear out this contrarian view. Thomas Rudel of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, compared trends in national agricultural yields with the amount of land under crops since 1990. If Borlaug was right then where yields rose fastest, the rise in cropland should be
24、least. It might even go into reverse. No such luck. Mostly, yields and cultivated area rose together. Rudel compared the finding to the Jevons paradox, named after the 19th-century economist William Jevons who found that increasing the efficiency of coal burning led to more, not less, coal being bur
25、ned.Thats not to say intensification isnt needed the world has to be fed, after all. But it wont necessarily save the forests. Any climate protection scheme that assumes it does is likely to be handing out money for nothing.6 Which of the following is true according to paragraph 1 and 2?（A）Waste is
26、the root cause of current food shortage.（B） REDD is a fund dedicated to intensifying agriculture.（C） Intensified farming is greatly motivated by forest protection.（D）Intensified farming has been proved to be a feasible idea.7 Tony Simons implies that intensifying agriculture_.（A）wont help farmers sh
27、ake off poverty（B） will increase the rate of deforestation（C） will damage those living near forests（D）wont relieve global grain supply pressure8 Who is most likely to contend that intensified farming will save the rainforest?（A）John Beddington（B） Norman Borlaug（C） Tony Simons（D）Thomas Rudel9 Accordi
28、ng to Jevons paradox, intensifying agriculture would bring_.（A）a swift growth in crop yields（B） a fast increase in the burning of coal（C） a dramatic decline of forests（D）a shocking decrease in farmlands10 The author suggests that the effect of intensifying agriculture in coping with poverty is_.（A）d
29、esirable（B） harmful（C） profound（D）questionable10 Hurling brickbats at bankers is a popular pastime. The “Occupy Wall Street“ movement and its various branches complain that a vicious 1%, many of them bankers, are ripping off the virtuous 99%. Hollywood has vilified financiers in “Wall Street“ and “W
30、all Street 2“. Mountains of books make the same point without using Michael Douglas.Anger is understandable. The financial crisis of 2007 08 has produced the deepest recession since the 1930s. Most of the financiers at the heart of it have got off unharmed. The biggest banks are bigger than ever. Bo
31、nuses are flowing once again. The old saw about bankersthat they believe in capitalism when it comes to pocketing the profits and socialism when it comes to paying for the lossesis too true for comfort.But is the fierce reaction in danger of going too far? A glance at history suggests that we should
32、 be nervous. For centuries the hatred of moneylending went hand in hand with a hatred of rootlessness. Cosmopolitan moneylenders were harder to tax than immobile landowners, governments muttered. In a denouncement of the Rothschilds, Heinrich Heine, a German poet, fumed that money “is more fluid tha
33、n water and less steady than air. “ This prejudice has proven dangerous. Without money to grease them, the wheels of commerce turn slowly or not at all. Civilisations that have eased the ban on moneylending have grown rich. Those that have retained it have stagnated. Northern Italy boomed in the 15t
34、h century when the Medicis and other banking families found ways to bend the rules. Economic leadership passed to Protestant Europe when Luther and Calvin made moneylending acceptable. As Europe pulled ahead, the usury-banning Islamic world remained trapped in poverty.The rise of banking has often b
35、een accompanied by a flowering of civilisation. Great financial centres have often been great artistic centresfrom Florence in the Renaissance to Amsterdam in the 17th century to London and New York today. Countries that have chased away the moneylenders have been artistic-deserts. Where would New Y
36、orks SoHo be without Wall Street?Prejudice against financiers can cause non-economic damage, too. Throughout history, moneylenders have been persecuted. Ethnic minoritiesmost obviously the Jews in Europe and Americahave clustered in the financial sector first because they were barred from more “resp
37、ectable“ pursuits and later because success generates success. At times, anti-banking prejudice has acquired a strong color of ethnic hatred. A survey in the Boston Review in 2009 found that 25% of non-Jewish Americans blamed Jews for the financial crisis. Today, the combination of hard times and ha
38、rsh rhetoric could also produce something nasty.The crisis of 2008 showed that global finance requires tough medicine. Banks must be forced to hold bigger reserves. “Weapons of mass destruction“ must be removed. The culture of short-term incentives needs to be revised. But demonising bankers will no
39、t solve these problemsand may well, if unchecked, bring a lot of ancient ugliness back to life.11 According to the first two paragraphs, bankers_.（A）are depriving the masses of their interest（B） are also victims of the previous recession（C） bear some responsibility for the past crisis（D）are criticis
40、ed for inconsistent work standards12 The Northern Italy prosperity in the I5lh century is mentioned to show_.（A）the development of civilisations（B） the rising of banking industry（C） the mobile nature of money lenders（D）the decisive effect of banking on economy13 Paragraph 4 mainly illustrates that b
41、anking industry often_.（A）thrives in great artistic centers（B） develops with civilization（C） accelerates cultural prosperity（D）produces financial centers14 The major drive behind persecutions of moneylenders throughout history was_.（A）the prejudice against the rootless（B） the contempt for humble occ
42、upations（C） the flaming up of ethnic hatred（D）the hatred of the rich15 The text tries to convey the idea that hatred of bankers is_.（A）a most dangerous prejudice（B） a natural response to recession（C） an unignorable warning to financiers（D）a historically justified phenomenon15 For a subject that arou
43、ses such strong passions, “network neutrality“ is fiendishly difficult to pin down. Ask five geeks and you may well be given six definitions of it. The basic concept sounds simple e-nough; that the internets pipes should show no favours and blindly deliver packets of data from one place to another r
44、egardless of their origin, destination or contents. But the devil is in the detail. What happens if some people want to pay for their data to go faster?This debate is loudest in America, uncoincidentally the developed market with the least competitive market in internet access. Democrats, who are in
45、 favour of net-neutrality rules, insist regulation is needed to prevent network operators discriminating in favour of their own services. A cable-TV firm that sells both broadband internet access and television services over its cables might, for example, try to block internet-based video that compe
46、tes with its own television packages. Republicans, meanwhile, worry that net neutrality will be used to justify a takeover of the internet by government bureaucrats, stifling innovation.From a consumers perspective, both sides are half right. Without some neutrality rules it is unclear how a network
47、 operator can be stopped from blocking particular sites or services. But overly prescriptive rules that fossilise the internet in its current form could indeed hamper innovation. Firms that come up with faster and fancier services should be able to charge a premium.So the fact that zealots on both s
48、ides are moaning about the new regime finally passed by Americas telecoms regulator on December 21st is on the whole a good sign. Two of the three new rules from the Federal Communications Commission(FCC)are relatively straightforward. The difficulty comes with the FCCs third rule, prohibiting “unre
49、asonable discrimination“. Discrimination, in this context, means letting some packets of data travel faster than others. To net-neutrality purists, any kind of discrimination is unacceptable: by allowing the “reasonable“ sort the FCC has, in their view, left open a vast loophole. That seems overly conservative, to this newspaper. Why on earth shouldnt a company be able to charge more for, say, faster delivery of video or special broadband links that ensure snappy connections for video-ga
