2014英语专业八级全真模拟试题(3)

TEXT D
A funny thing happened on the way to the communications revolution: we stopped talking to one another.
I was walking in the park with a friend recently, and his ,cell phone rang, interrupting our conversation. Therewe were, walking and talking on a beautiful sunny day and--poof!--I became invisible, absent from theconversation.

The park was filled with people talking on their cell phones. Th.ey were passing other people without lookingat them, saying hello, noticing their babies or stopping to pet their puppies. Evidently, the untethered electronievoice is preferable to human contact.

The telephone used to connect you to the absent. Now it makes people sitting next to you feel absent. Recently,I was in a ear with three friends. The driver shushed the rest of us because he could not hear the person on the otherend of his cell phone, There we were, four friends zooming down the highway, unable to talk to one anotherbecause of a gadget designed to make communication easier.

Why is it that the more eormected we get, the more diseormeeted I feel? Every advance in communicationstechnology is a ~tbaek to the intimacy of human interaction. With e-mail and instant messaging over the Internet,we can now communicate without seeing or talking to one another. With voice mail, you can conduct entireconversations without ever reaching anyone. If my room has a question, I just leave the answer on her machine.

As almost every conceivable contact between human beings gets automated, the alienation index goes up, Youcan't even call a person to get the phone number of another person anymore. Directory assistance is almost alwaysfully automated.

Pumping gas at the station? Why say good-morning to the attendant when you can swipe your credit card atthe pump and save yourself the both.
Making a deposit at the bank? Why talk to a clerk who might live in the neighborhood when you can just insert your card into the-ATM?

Pretty soon you won't have the burden of making eye contact at the grocery store. Some supermarket chainsare using a self-scanner so you can check yourself out, avoiding those annoying clerks who look atyou and askhow you are doing.

I am no Luddite. I own a cell phone, an ATM card, a voice-mail system, an e-mail account. Giving them upisn't an option--they're great for what they're intended, to do.It's their unintended eonsequences that make mecringe.

More and more, I find myself hiding behind e-mail to do a job meant for conversation. Or being relieved thatvoice mail picked up because I didn't really have time to talk. The industry devoted to helping me keep in touch ismaking me lonelier--or at least facilitating my antisocial instincts.

So I've put myself on technology restriction: no instant messaging with people who live near me, no cell-phoning in the presence of friends, no letting the voice mail pick up when Fm home. What good is all this gee-whiz technology if there's no one in the room to hear you exclaim, Gee wmz.

26. By saying "the untethered electronic voice is preferable to, human contact," the author is____.
A. telling the truth
C. being sarcasfic
B. expressing his opinion
D. explaining a phenomenon

27. What can NOT communications technology do according to the passage?
A. To help people communicate without seeing each other.
B. To help conduct the conversation without talking with each other directly.
C. To help people get other's phone numbers.
D. To help shorten the distance between people.

28. The word "Luddite" in paragraph 10 is closest in meaning to ___
A. lunatic
B. anti-technology
C. idealist
D. isolated from the outside world

29. What does the author think of communications technology?
A. Convenient but threatening.
B. Impersonal but useful.
C. Marvelous and indispensable.
D. Important but inaccessible.

30. It can be inferred from the passage that the author would NOT__
A. send messages to people living far from her/him
B. use cell-phones on no occasion
C. answer the phone himself when at home
D. Use the ATM card when necessary

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