文章大意:这是一篇说明文。作者主要说明了少数高科技公司监控我们的活动,并且在无形中控制着我们的思想和行为的现象。文章举出谷歌的例子,说明科技是如何控制我们思想的,作者对此表示担忧。
Over the past century, more than a few great writers have expressed concern about humanity’s future. In Brave New World (1932), the British author Aldous Huxley pictured a near-perfect society in which unhappiness and aggression had been removed out of humanity through a combination of genetic engineering and psychological conditioning.
It might surprise you to hear this, but these things have already happened. Now we are living in a world in which a handful of high-tech companies are not only monitoring much of our activity, but are also invisibly controlling more and more of what we think, feel, do and say.
Take Google, the biggest and the best search engine. It gives us exactly the information we are looking for, almost instantly and almost always in the first position of the list after we launch our search—the list of “search results”. And that ordered list is so good, in fact, that about 50 per cent of our clicks go to the top two items, and more than 90 per cent of our clicks go to the 10 items listed on the first page of results. Seconds later, the decision we make or the opinion we form is determined by that short list we are shown, even though we have no idea how the list was generated.
Of course, Google decides which of the billions of web pages it is going to include in our search results, and it also decides how to rank them. However, how it decides these things is a deep, dark secret—one of the best-kept secrets in the world, like the formula for Coca-Cola.
The technology that now surrounds us is not just a harmless toy; it has also made possible undetectable and untraceable control of entire populations. If we choose to ignore this, we do so at our own risk.
12. Why does the author mention the book
Brave New World?
A.To introduce the book. | B.To lead in the topic. |
C.To arouse readers’ interest. | D.To get readers into thinking. |
13. According to the passage, how does Google invisibly control us?
A.By monitoring what we are searching. | B.By offering us a wealth of information. |
C.By presenting what it would like us to see. | D.By ranking the research results by importance. |
14. How does the author sound when discussing the problem?
A.Cautious. | B.Worried. | C.Humorous. | D.Curious. |
15. Which of the following can be the best title of the passage?
A.The New Mind Control. | B.A Bad Choice of Technology. |
C.Connecting Through the Internet. | D.A Double-edged Sword. |