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SECTION 2: READING TEST  (部分考题欠奉)

Directions: In this section you will read several passages. Each one is followed by several questions about it. You are to choose ONE best answer, (A), (B), (C) or (D), to each question. Answer all the questions following each passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in that passage and write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.

Questions 1-5
 

Years ago, when I first started building websites for newspapers, many journalists told me that they saw the Internet as the end of reliable journalism. Since anyone could publish whatever they wanted online, "real journalism" would be overwhelmed, they said. Who would need professional reporters and editors if anyone could be a reporter or an editor? I would tell them not to worry. While my personal belief is that anyone can be a reporter or editor, I also know that quality counts. And that the "viral" nature of the Internet means that when people find quality, they let other people know about it. Even nontraditional media sites online will survive only if the quality of their information is trusted. The future of online news will demand more good reporters and editors, not fewer.

So I was intrigued when Newsweek recently published a story called "Revenge of the Expert." It argued that expertise would be the main component of "Web 3.0." "The wisdom of the crowds has peaked," says Jason Calacanis, founder of the Maholo "people-powered search engine" and a former AOL executive. "Web 3.0 is taking what we've built in Web 2.0 - the wisdom of the crowds - and putting an editorial layer on it of truly talented, compensated people to make the product more trusted and refined." Well, yes and no. Sure, it is important for people to trust the information they find online. And as the Newsweek article argues, the need for people to find trusted information online is increasing, thus the need for more expertise. But the article fails to mention the most important feature of the world of digital information. It's not expertise - it's choice.

In many cases the sites that people come to trust are built on nontraditional models of expertise. Look at sites like , , or . There, users provide the expertise on which others depend. When many users select a particular story, that story accumulates votes of confidence, which often lead other users to choose that story. The choices of the accumulated community are seen as more trustworthy than the "gatekeeper" model of traditional news and information. Sometimes such sites highlight great reporting from traditional media. But often they bring forward bits of important information that are ignored (or missed) by "experts." It's sort of the "open source" idea of information - a million eyes looking on the Web for information is better than a few.

Jay Rosen, who writes the PressThink blog, says in an e-mail that he's seen this kind of story before, calling it a "kind of pathetic" trend reporting. "I said in 2006, when starting NewAssignment.Net, that the strongest editorial combinations will be pro-am. I still think that. Why? Because for most reporters covering a big sprawling beat, it's still true what Dan Gillmor said: ‘My readers know more than I do.' And it's still the case that tapping into that knowledge is becoming more practical because of the Internet."

J.D. Lasica, a social-media strategist and former editor, also says he sees no departure from the "wisdom of the crowds" model. "I've seen very little evidence that the sweeping cultural shifts we've seen in the past half dozen years show any signs of retreating," Mr. Lasica says. "Young people now rely on social networks ... to take cues from their friends on which movies to see, books to read.... And didn't ‘Lonely Planet Guide' explore this terrain for travel and Zagat's for dining back in the ‘90s?"

In many cases, traditional media is still the first choice of online users because the reporters and editors of these media outlets have created a level of trust for many people - but not for everyone. When you combine the idea of expertise with the idea of choice, you discover nontraditional information sites that become some of the Internet's most trusted places. Take , written by lawyers about cases in the Supreme Court. It has become the place to go for other lawyers, reporters, and editors to find in-depth information about important cases. The Internet also allows individuals to achieve this level of trust. For instance, the blog written by Robert Scoble. Mr. Scoble, a former Microsoft employee and tech expert, is widely seen as one of the most important people to read when you want to learn what's happening in the world of technology. He built his large audience on the fact that people trust his writing.

To me, it's the best of all possible information worlds.

Questions 6-10

Perhaps we could have our children pledge allegiance to a national motto. So thick and fast and inchoate tumble the ideas about Britishness from the Government that the ridiculous no longer seems impossible. For the very debate about what it means to be a British citizen, long a particular passion of Gordon Brown, brutally illustrates the ever-decreasing circle that new Labour has become. The idea of a national motto has already attracted derision on a glorious scale -- and there's nothing more British than the refusal to be defined. Times readers chose as their national motto: No motto please, we're British.

Undaunted, here comes the Government with another one: a review of citizenship, which suggests that schoolchildren be asked to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen. It would be hard to think of something more profoundly undemocratic, less aligned to Mr Brown's supposed belief in meritocracy and enabling all children to achieve their full potential. Today you will hear the Chancellor profess the Government's continuing commitment to the abolition of child poverty, encapsulating a view of Britain in which the State tweaks the odds and the tax credit system to iron out inherited inequalities.

You do not need to ask how this vision of Britain can sit easily alongside a proposal to ask kids to pledge allegiance to the Queen before leaving school: it cannot. The one looks up towards an equal society, everyone rewarded according to merit and not the lottery of birth; the other bends its knee in obeisance to inherited privilege and an undemocratic social and political system. In Mr Brown's view of the world, as I thought I understood it, an oath of allegiance from children to the Queen ought to be anathema, grotesque, off the scale, not even worth considering.

Why, then, could No 10 not dismiss it out of hand yesterday? Asked repeatedly at the morning briefing with journalists whether the Prime Minister supported the proposal, his spokesman hedged his bets. Mr Brown welcomed the publication of the report; he thinks the themes are important; he hopes it will launch a debate; he is very interested in the theme of Britishness. []But no view as to the suitability of the oath. It is baffling in the extreme. Does this Prime Minister believe in nothing, then? A number of things need to be unpicked here. First, to give him due credit, the report from the former Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith contains much more than the oath of allegiance. That is but "a possibility that's raised". The oath forms a tiny part of a detailed report about what British citizenship means, what it ought to mean and how to strengthen it.

It is a serious debate that Mr Brown is keen to foster about changing the categories of British citizenship, and defining what they mean. But it is in him that the central problem resides: the Prime Minister himself is uncertain what Britishness is, while insisting we should all be wedded to the concept. No wonder there is a problem over what a motto, or an oath of allegiance, should contain. Britain is a set of laws and ancient institutions - monarchy, Parliament, statutes, arguably today EU law as well. An oath of allegiance naturally tends towards these.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. In its younger and bolder days, new Labour used to argue that the traditional version of Britain is outdated. When Labour leaders began debating Britishness in the 1990s, they argued that the institutions in which a sense of Britain is now vested, or should be vested, are those such as the NHS or even the BBC, allied with values of civic participation, all embodying notions of fairness, equality and modernity absent in the traditional institutions. Gordon Brown himself wrote at length about Britishness in The Times in January 2000: "The strong British sense of fair play and duty, together embodied in the ideal of a vibrant civic society, is best expressed today in a uniquely British institution -- the institution that for the British people best reflects their Britishness -- our National Health Service."

An oath of allegiance to the NHS? Ah, those were the days. They really thought they could do it; change the very notion of what it meant to be British. Today, ten years on, they hesitatingly propose an oath of allegiance to the Queen. Could there be a more perfect illustration of the vanquished hopes and aspirations of new Labour? Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair. Ah, but I see there is to be a national day as well, "introduced to coincide with the Olympics and Diamond Jubilee - which would provide an annual focus for our national narrative". A narrative, a national day, glorifying the monarchy and sport? Yuck. I think I might settle for a national motto after all.

Questions 11-15

Over lunch, a writer outlined a new book idea to his editor. It was to be a niche concern but promised much. The writer left the restaurant with a glow and decided to get an outline over, pronto. But days and weeks of being too busy turned to months and then, eventually, came the shocking discovery that his editor had been rather elusive of late for a reason: he had been busy crafting a book based on the writer's idea, and it was now in the shops. An apocryphal tale, maybe, but it will send shivers down any writer's spine. What's more, if the writer were to turn to the law in such a dread scenario, the law would be of no use to him at all.

Phil Sherrell, a media lawyer with Eversheds, explains: "Intellectual property law protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves." Sherrell agrees that "the distinction is not always satisfactory," but says that there needs to be a limit to the protection conferred on creativity by the law. "To extend the ambit of copyright protection to embrace ideas would be difficult in practice - how would the artist prove that they have conceived the idea if it has not been reduced to a tangible form? It would also open the door to undesirably wide monopolies."

But copyright's 300-year pedigree might be a cause for concern rather than veneration. The means by which we communicate has changed out of all recognition from the time when copyright was invented. Today, in the post-modernist world, what constitutes an artistic, literary or musical work is radically different, not least in the field of conceptual art. Here, copyright's timehonoured reluctance to protect ideas is of dubious merit, according to Hubert Best, a media lawyer with Best & Soames.

"If you look at Martin Creed's [art installation] Work No. 227, The Lights Going On and Off, where is the work?" asks Best. "Is it in the fact that a light bulb goes on and off, or in the concept? I suspect it's the latter. But old-fashioned copyright law does not cover this kind of thing." Creed's Work No. 227 was an empty room in which the lights periodically switched on and off. It won the Turner Prize in 2001 to a predictable chorus of controversy. This goes with the territory in conceptual art, but other artists have found their work inspires not merely lively debate but accusations of plagiarism.

Last year, three weeks after he unveiled his diamond-encrusted, £50m skull, Damien Hirst was alleged to have stolen the idea for the work from another artist, John LeKay. In 2006, Robert Dixon, a graphics artist, said that Hirst's print, Valium, was too close for comfort to one of his circular designs in The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry. Hirst had another brush with intellectual property law when Norman Emms complained about a £1m bronze torso which, he said, was copied from a £14.99 plastic anatomical toy. Emms later received a "goodwill payment" from the artist.

As one of the world's wealthiest artists, Hirst is well-placed to fight such battles, but due allowance should be given for art's intertextual essence. Writers borrow plots and embed allusions to their forebears, artists adapt well-known motifs, musicians play each other's songs and sample existing riffs and melodies. But there is a fine line between plagiarism and creative allusion, and it was considered by the courts in the case of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. The Court of Appeal upheld the initial ruling that Brown had not reproduced substantial content from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. The decision was also widely seen as confirming English law's disinclination to protect ideas.

Yet if ideas can't be protected, where does that leave the writer aggrieved by the appearance of his idea in another's book? "It sounds harsh," says Sherrell, "but unless a writer has gone some way to creating the work - by way of an outline and perhaps a chapter or two - there is no remedy if the same idea appears under another author's name. However, given that everything is done on computers these days, it would be relatively easy to prove first creation by looking at the hard drive. Other than that, anyone in the creative arena should keep full and dated records to evidence their work."

There is another thing that can be done. "You can impose a confidentiality obligation on those with whom you want to discuss your idea," says Best. "Nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) are often used in the corporate world to give a contractual remedy for breach of confidence if an idea is stolen. But the trouble is that a writer, musician or artist who comes into a meeting wielding an NDA isn't likely to make friends. It's a fairly aggressive way to proceed." Best is doubtless correct when he says: "You've just got to get on with it and do it. Once your work exists, in material form, you can sue if anyone steals it."

Questions 16-20

A new golden age of cartography has suddenly dawned, everywhere. We can all be map-makers now, navigating across a landscape of ideas that the cartographers of the past could never have imagined. Maps were once the preserve of an elite, an expression of power, control and, latterly, of minute scientific measurement. Today map-making has been democratised by the internet, where digital technology is spawning an astonishing array of maps, reflecting an infinite variety of interests and concerns, some beautiful, some political and some extremely odd. If the Budget has made you feel gloomy, you can log on to a map that will tell you just how depressed you and the rest of the world are feeling. For more than two years, the makers of have harvested feelings from a wide variety of personal blogs and then projected these on to the globe. How happy are they in Happy Valley? How grim is Grimsby? You can find out.

Where maps once described mountains, forests and rivers, now they depict the contours of human existence from quite different perspectives: maps showing the incidence of UFOs, speed cameras or the density of doctors in any part of the world. A remarkable new map reflects global telephone usage as it happens, starkly illustrating the technological gap between, say, New York and Nairobi. Almost any measurable human activity can be projected, using a computer "mash-up". A new online map called allows American hypochondriacs to track who is ill with what and where at any given moment. A hilarious disclaimer adds: "whoissick is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice." The new generation of amateur map-makers are doing for the traditional atlas what Wikipedia has already done to the encyclopaedia, adding layer upon layer of new information, some that is fascinating and useful, much that is pointless and misleading, and almost all from a distinctly personal perspective.

The new digital geography marks a return to an earlier form of cartography, when maps were designed to reveal the world through a particular prism. The earliest maps each told a story framed by politics, culture and belief. Ancient Greeks painted maps depicting unknown lands and strange creatures beyond the known world. Early Christian maps placed Jerusalem at the middle of the world. British imperial maps showed the great advance of pink colonialism spreading outwards from our tiny islands at the centre.

Maps were used to settle scores and score points, just as they are today. When Jesuit map-makers drew up a chart of the Moon's surface in 1651, craters named after heretical scientists such as Copernicus and Galileo were dumped in the Sea of Storms, while more acceptable thinkers were allowed to float in the Sea of Tranquillity. The 19th century heralded a more scientific approach to map-making; much of the artistry and symbolism was stripped away in an attempt to create a two-dimensional representation of three-dimensional reality. Maps became much more accurate, but less imaginative and culturally revealing.

The boom in amateur mapping, by contrast, marks a return to the earlier way of imagining the world when maps were used to tell stories and impose ideas, to interpret the world and not simply to describe its physical character. New maps showing how to avoid surveillance cameras, or the routes taken by CIA planes carrying terrorist suspects on "extraordinary rendition", are political statements rather than geographical descriptions.

The earliest maps were also philosophical guides. They showed what was important and what was peripheral and what might be imagined beyond the edges of the known. A stunning tapestry map of the Midlands made around the time of Shakespeare and recently rediscovered, depicts forests, churches and the houses of the most powerful families, yet not a single road. It does not purport to show a physical landscape, but a mental one. Maps have always tried to show where we are, literally or philosophically. The explosion of online mapping, however, offers something even broader: a set of maps that combine to express individual personality.

Oscar Wilde wrote that "a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail." If Utopia means knowing where you fit in your own world - knowing how many UFOs hover above you, how much graffiti has appeared overnight, how happy your next-door neighbour is and whether he is likely to have picked up anything contagious - then humanity may finally have a map showing how to get there.

16. According to the passage, the makers of ____ on the maps.

(A) have marked how happy people are around the world

(B) have shown different feelings people have in different parts of the world

(C) have depicted how depressed people are in the world today

(D) have illustrated the changes of personal feeling for peoplr of the world

17. The word "preserve" in the sentence "Maps were once the preserve of an elite" (para.1) can best be paraphrased as _____.

(A) unique preservation   (B) privileged right  (C) exclusive enjoyment  (D) advantageous activity

18. Copernicus and Galileo are mentioned in the passage because ___.

(A) they were considered acceptable thinkers by Jesuit map-makers then

(B) they were condemned by Jesuit map-makers in their charting of the Moon's surface

(C) they were famous for their annoucement of the sun-centered theory to the world

(D) they were the first scientists who had drawn the map of the Moon's surface

19. At the end of passage, the author quoted Oscar Wilde _____.

(A) to give the rationale for all these changes in map-making with digital technology

(B) to tell the readers the definition of maps given by the famous British playwright

(C) to introduce the changes in the definition of the word Utopia over the centuries

(D) to provide the background for all these changes in the practice of cartography

20. Which of the following can best express the main idea of the passage?

(A) The new digital geography marks a return to an earlier form of cartography.

(B) Any measurable human activity can be projected and shown through different maps.

(C) With digital technology, map-making has been undergoing a most radical change.

(D) Different types of maps can reveal a wide variety of purposes and perspectives.