新视野大学英语读写教程听力 第四册 课文 4t04b

[by:和谐英语学习网|http://www.hxen.net|和谐英语||和谐英语学习网]
[00:00.00]喜欢hxen.net，就把hxen.net复制到QQ个人资料中！The Information Superhighway
[00:-1.00]Are you too tired to go to the video store
[00:-2.00]but you want to see the movie Beauty and the Beast at home?
[00:-3.00]Want to listen to your favorite guitar player's latest jazz cassette?
[00:-4.00]Need some new reading material,like a magazine or book? No problem.
[00:-5.00]Just sit down in front of your home computer or TV and enter what you want,
[00:-6.00]when you want it, from an electronic catalogue containing thousands of titles.
[00:-7.00]Your school has no professors of Japanese,
[00:-8.00]a language you want to learn
[00:-9.00]before visiting Japan during the coming summer holiday.
[00:10.00]Don't worry.Just sign up for the language course
[00:11.00]offered by a school in another district or city,
[00:12.00]have the latest edition of the course teaching materials sent to your computer,
[00:13.00]and attend by video.
[00:14.00]If you need extra help with a translation assignment or your pronunciation,
[00:15.00]a tutor can give you feedback via your computer.
[00:16.00]Welcome to the information superhighway.
[00:17.00]While nearly everyone has heard of the information superhighway,
[00:18.00]even experts differ on exactly what the term means
[00:19.00]and what the future it promises will look like.
[00:20.00]Broadly speaking,however,
[00:21.00]the superhighway refers to the union of today's broadcasting,
[00:22.00]cable,video,telephone,and computer and semiconductor industries
[00:23.00]into one large all-connected industry.
[00:24.00]Directing the union are technological advances
[00:25.00]that have made it easier to store and rapidly transmit information
[00:26.00]into homes and offices.Fiber-optic cable,for example
[00:27.00]— made up of hair-thin glass fibers
[00:28.00]— is a tremendously efficient carrier of information.
[00:29.00]Lasers shooting light through glass fiber
[00:30.00]can transmit 250,000 times as much data as a standard telephone wire,
[00:31.00]or tens of thousands of paragraphs such as this one every second.
[00:32.00]The greatly increased volume and speed of data transmission
[00:33.00]that these technologies permit
[00:34.00]can be compared to the way in which a highway
[00:35.00]with many lanes allows more cars to move at faster speeds
[00:36.00]than a two-lane highway — hence,the information superhighway.
[00:37.00]The closest thing to an information superhighway today is the Internet,
[00:38.00]the system of linked computer networks
[00:39.00]that allows up to 25 million people in 135 countries to exchange information.
[00:40.00]But while the Internet primarily moves words,
[00:41.00]the information superhighway
[00:42.00]will soon make routine the electronic transmission of data
[00:43.00]in other formats,such as audio files and images.
[00:44.00]That means,for example,that a doctor in Europe
[00:45.00]who is particularly learned will be able to treat patients in America
[00:46.00]after viewing their records via computer,
[00:47.00]deciding the correct dose of medicine to give the patient,
[00:48.00]or perhaps even remotely controlling a blade wielding robot during surgery.
[00:49.00]"Sending a segment of video mail down the hall
[00:50.00]or across the country will be easier
[00:51.00]than typing out a message on a keyboard,"
[00:52.00]predicts one correspondent who specializes in technology.
[00:53.00]The world is on "the eve of a new era",
[00:54.00]says the former United States Vice President Al Gore,
[00:55.00]the Clinton administration's leading high-technology advocate.
[00:56.00]Gore wants the federal government to play the leading role
[00:57.00]in shaping the superhighway.
[00:58.00]However,in an era of smaller budgets,
[00:59.00]the United States government is unlikely to come up with the money needed
[-1:00.00]during the next 20 years to construct the superhighway.
[-1:-1.00]That leaves private industry —computer,phone,and cable companies
[-1:-2.00]—to move into the vacuum left by the government's absence.
[-1:-3.00]And while these industries are pioneering the most exciting new technologies,