问答题Practice 1　　Our feverish planet badly needs a cure. It was probably always too much to believe that human beings would be responsible stewards of the planet. Yet make a mess we have. If droughts and wildfires, floods and crop failures, collapsing clima

To live in the United States today is to gain an appreciation for Dahrendorf′s assertion that social change exists everywhere. Technology, the application of knowledge for practical ends, is a major source of social change.
Yet we would do well to remind ourselves that technology is a human creation; it does not exist naturally. A spear or a robot is as much a cultural as a physical object. Until humans use a spear to hunt game or a robot to produce machine parts, neither is much more than a solid mass of matter. For a bird looking for an object on which to rest, a spear or robot serves the purpose equally well. The explosion of the Challenger space shuttle and the Russian nuclear accident at Chernobyl drive home the human quality of technology; they provide cases in which well-planned systems suddenly went haywire and there was no ready hand to set them right. Since technology is a human creation, we are responsible for what is done with it. Pessimists worry that we will use our technology eventually to blow our world and ourselves to pieces. But they have been saying this for decades, and so far we have managed to survive and even flourish. Whether we will continue to do so in the years ahead remains uncertain. Clearly, the impact of technology on our lives deserves a closer examination.
Few technological developments have had a greater impact on our lives than the computer revolution. Scientists and engineers have designed specialized machines that can do the tasks that once only people could do. There are those who assert that the switch to an information-based economy is in the same camp as other great historical milestones, particularly the Industrial Revolution. Yet when we ask why the Industrial Revolution was a revolution, we find that it was not the machines. The primary reason why it was revolutionary is that it led to great social change. It gave rise to mass production and, through mass production, to a society in which wealth was not confined to the few.
In somewhat similar fashion, computers promise to revolutionize the structure of American life, particularly as they free the human mind and open new possibilities in knowledge and communication. The Industrial Revolution supplemented and replaced the muscles of humans and animals by mechanical methods. The computer extends this development to supplement and replace some aspects of the mind of human beings by electronic methods. And it′s the capacity of the computer for solving problems and making decisions that represents its greatest potential and that poses the greatest difficulties in predicting the impact on society.
According to the passage, when will a spear or a robot has the quality of technology?

A.When it is utilized by human beings.
B.When it is used to produce new products.
C.When it has some culture meanings as physical object.
D.when it is useful for both man and animal.

Early in the age of affluence that followed World War II,an American retailing analyst named Victor Lebow proclaimed,
“Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life,that we convert the buying and
use of Eoods into rituals,that we seek our spiritual satisfaction,our ego satisfaction,in consumption...We need things
consumed,burned up,worn out,replaced and discarded at an ever increasing rate.”
Americans have responded to Lebow’s call,and much of the world has followed.Consumption has become a central pillar of life in industrial lands and is even embedded in social values.
Opinion surveys in the world’s two largest economies-Japan and the United States-show consumerist definitions of
success becoming ever more prevalent.
Overconsumption by the world’s fortunate is an environmental problem unmatched in severity by anything but perhaps
population growth.Their surging exploitation of resources threatens to exhaust or unalterably spoil forests,soils,water,air and climate.
Ironically,high consumption may be a mixed blessing in human terms,too.The time-honored values of integrity of
character,good work,friendship,family and community have often been sacrificed in the rush to riches.Thus many in the
industrial lands have a sense that their world,of plenty is somehow hollow-that,misled by a consumerist culture,they have
been fruitlessly attempting to satisfy what are essentially social,psychological and spiritual needs with material things.
Of course,the opposite of overconsumption-poverty-is no solution to either environmental or human problems.It is infinitely worse for people and bad for the natural world too.Dispossessed peasants slash-and-burn their way into the rain forests of
Latin American,and hungry nomads turn their herds out onto fragile African grassland,reducing it to desert.If environmental
destruction results when people have either too little or too much,we are left to wonder how much is enough.What level of
consumption can the earth support When does having more cease to add noticeably to human satisfaction

It can be inferred from the passage that___________.《》（）

A.human spiritual needs should match material affluence
B.there is never an end to satisfying people’s material needs
C.whether high consumption should be encouraged is still an issue
D.how to keep consumption at a reasonable level remains a problem

Passage 2
Birds are a critical part of our ecological system. But more than ever, birds are threatened byhuman pollution and climate change.
We need the birds to eat insects, move seeds and pollen around, transfer nutrients from sea toland, clean up after the mass death of the annual Pacific salmon runs, or when a wild animal fallsanywhere in a field or forest.
How could we enjoy spring without the birds flitting busily in our garden or dropping by tocheck out the flowers in our urban window box Can you contemplate America without the soaringbald eagle, or even those scavengers like the pigeons and gulls that clean up discarded food scrapson our city streets and waterfronts How diminished our lives would be without them
Scavenging eagles and condors need hunters to behave responsibly and bury, or remove, theremains of any shot deer peppered with fragments of lead bullets. Loons, ducks and other water birdswill be poisoned by lead bullets and lead fishing sinkers if we allow such objects to drop in theirfeeding space.
All sea and shore birds, even the puffins and guillemots of the otherwise pristine Aleutians,need us to make sure that no other heavy metals, like mercury and cadmium, are dumped in riversand make their way across the oceans.
Birds like the terns, knots and shearwaters that migrate between the far north and deep, deep,south of our planet need people everywhere to cease and desist from filling in their wetland fuelstops and rest stations, and from constructing golfing resorts and factories in their feeding andbreeding grounds.
Seabirds are among the most endangered vertebrate species on the planet, with the InternationalUnion for Conservation of Nature classifying 97 species as globally threatened, and 17 in the highestcategory of critically threatened. Of greatest concern are the pelicans of the southern oceans and thespectacular, but slow-breeding albatross.
Plastic bags must be eliminated from natural environments so sea and shore birds don′tmistakenly carry such debris back to feed their chicks, with invariably lethal consequences. Thealbatross, cormorants and herons need us to stop over-fishing and compromising their normal foodsupply.
The pelicans, penguins and all the birds that inhabit, or visit, our coastlines need us to ensurethat we do not dump oil into gulfs and bays, or release so much carbon dioxide into the atmospherethat the oceans turn acidic and we lose the mussels and oysters, the mass of calcareous plankton thatfeeds so many creatures, and the coral reefs that nurture enormous numbers of edible species.
Think about it: We share this small green planet. As they fly, feed and nest, the birds monitorthe health of the natural world for us, provided that we, in turn, make the effort to access that keyinformation.
The birds and humans are both large, complex and ultimately vulnerable organisms that inhabitthe top of the food chain. At the end of the day, their fate will be our fate.
What does the author intend to do in writing the passage

A.To evaluate our needs of birds to save our earth.

B.To describe various measures to protect the birds.

C.To criticize the effects of human pollution on birds.

D.To explain a basic tie between birds and human beings.

To live in the United States today is to gain an appreciation for Dahrendorf′s assertion that social change exists everywhere. Technology, the application of knowledge for practical ends, is a major source of social change.
Yet we would do well to remind ourselves that technology is a human creation; it does not exist naturally. A spear or a robot is as much a cultural as a physical object. Until humans use a spear to hunt game or a robot to produce machine parts, neither is much more than a solid mass of matter. For a bird looking for an object on which to rest, a spear or robot serves the purpose equally well. The explosion of the Challenger space shuttle and the Russian nuclear accident at Chernobyl drive home the human quality of technology; they provide cases in which well-planned systems suddenly went haywire and there was no ready hand to set them right. Since technology is a human creation, we are responsible for what is done with it. Pessimists worry that we will use our technology eventually to blow our world and ourselves to pieces. But they have been saying this for decades, and so far we have managed to survive and even flourish. Whether we will continue to do so in the years ahead remains uncertain. Clearly, the impact of technology on our lives deserves a closer examination.
Few technological developments have had a greater impact on our lives than the computer revolution. Scientists and engineers have designed specialized machines that can do the tasks that once only people could do. There are those who assert that the switch to an information-based economy is in the same camp as other great historical milestones, particularly the Industrial Revolution. Yet when we ask why the Industrial Revolution was a revolution, we find that it was not the machines. The primary reason why it was revolutionary is that it led to great social change. It gave rise to mass production and, through mass production, to a society in which wealth was not confined to the few.
In somewhat similar fashion, computers promise to revolutionize the structure of American life, particularly as they free the human mind and open new possibilities in knowledge and communication. The Industrial Revolution supplemented and replaced the muscles of humans and animals by mechanical methods. The computer extends this development to supplement and replace some aspects of the mind of human beings by electronic methods. And it′s the capacity of the computer for solving problems and making decisions that represents its greatest potential and that poses the greatest difficulties in predicting the impact on society.
By using the phrase "the human quality of technology", the author refers to the fact that technology _____________.

A.has a great impact on human life
B.has some characteristics of human nature
C.can replace some aspects of the human mind
D.does not exist in the natural world