A great deal ofattention is being paid today to the so-called digital divide—the divisionof the world into the info(information) rich and the info poor. And that dividedoes exist today. My wife and I lectured about this looming danger twenty yearsago. What was less visible then, however, were the new, positive forces thatwork against the digital divide. There are reasons to be optimistic。
There are technological reasons to hope the digital divide willnarrow. As the Internet becomes more and more commercialized, it is in theinterest of business to universalize access—after all, the morepeople online, the more potential customers there are. More and moregovernments, afraid their countries will be left behind, want to spreadInternet access. Within the next decade or two, one to two billion people onthe planet will be netted together. As a result, I now believe the digitaldivide will narrow rather than widen in the years ahead. And that is very goodnews because the Internet may well be the most powerful tool for combatingworld poverty that we've ever had。
Of course, the use of the Internet isn't the only way to defeatpoverty. And the Internet is not the only tool we have. But it has enormouspotential。
To take advantage of this tool, some impoverished countries willhave to get over their outdated anti-colonial prejudices with respect toforeign investment. Countries that still think foreign investment is aninvasion of their sovereignty might well study the history of infrastructure(the basic structural foundations of a society) in the United States. When theUnited States built its industrials infrastructure, it didn't have the capital todo so. And that is why America's Second Wave infrastructure—includingroads, barbors, highways, ports and so on—were built withforeign investment. The English, the Germans, the Dutch and the French wereinvesting in Britain's former colony. They financed them. Immigrant Americansbuilt them. Guess who owns them now? The Americans. I believe the same thingwould be true in places like Brazil or anywhere else for that matter. The moreforeign capital you have helping you build your Third Wave infrastructure,which today is an electronic infrastructure, the better off you're going to be.That doesn't mean lying down and becoming fooled, or letting foreigncorporations run uncontrolled. But it does mean recognizing how important theycan be in building the energy and telecom infrastructures needed to take fulladvantage of the Internet。
25. Digital divide is something _________。
[A]getting worse because of the Internet
[B]the rich countries are responsible for
[C]the world must guard against
[D]considered positive today
26. Governments attach importance to the Internet because it_________。
[A]offers economic potentials
[B]can bring foreign funds
[C]can soon wipe out world poverty
[D]connects people all over the world
27. The writer mentioned the case of the United States to justifythe policy of _________。
[A]providing financial support overseas
[B]preventing foreign capital's control
[C]building industrial infrastructure
[D]accepting foreign investment
28. It seems that now a country's economy depends much on _________。
[A]how well-developed it is electronically
[B]whether it is prejudiced against immigrants
[C]whether it adopts America's industrial pattern
[D]how much control it has over foreign corporations
