An Interactive Life

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An Interactive Life

• By
• Barbara Kantrowitz with Joshua Cooper Ramoby

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Background Information

• The text is taken from American Newsweek.
  Newsweek is American news weekly established in
  Dayton, Ohio in 1933. In it domestic and
  international news is summarized, analyzed and
  categorized according to topics each week. It
  also has special sections devoted to arts,
  science, medicine, sports, etc. it is one of the
  three largest newsweeklies of America and has a
  wide domestic and international circulation. The
  authors of the text, Barbara Kantrowitz and
  Joshua Cooper Ramo are regular contributors to
  Newsweek

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The general idea of the text

• An interactive life will put the world at your
  finger tips, changing the ways you shop, play and
  learn. The ultimate promise of the interactive
  life is that you will be able to get a large
  amount of information over a wide range of topics
  by pressing a button. The dreams are possible
  thought theres a dark side. The advice is hang
  on for the ridewait for the future changes.

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Words and expressions

• the display the display of various phonographs
  invented by Edison and other competitors
  represent the development of the phonograph
  machine in the tens of years/time of their
  development, and their development reflect the
  change of idea and purpose of the recording of
  sound in peoples mind.

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• Interactivity
• Interactive (computer?) that allows information
  to be passed continuously and in both directions
  between a computer and the person who use
  it/????,????????

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• hype n. (infml. often derog.) loud, exaggerated
  promotion or publicity attempts to get a lot of
  public attention for things or people by saying
  loudly and often that they are very good, or
  better than they really are/?????(???)
• e.g. media hype ????
• to hype v. hyping their latest record with a lot
  of interviews ????????????????

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• Terminator XII an American science fiction movie
  series, starring the popular actor, Arnold
  Schwarzengger. The number XII implies a future
  installment of the series.
• ???????

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• nailing down making sure, settling
• to nail sb. down a) to force (a person) to state
  clearly their intention or wishes./??(??)????
• e.g. Before they repair the car, nail them down
  to a price.(make them tell how much it will
  cost).
• ?????,??????????
• b) AmE to reach a final and
  definite decision about something/?????,?????
• Two days isnt enough time to nail down the
  details of an agreement.
• ???????????????,??????????
• nail sth.down make sth.secure with nails define
  sth.precisely ????????,????
• ? they havent nailed down when and where
  to have a meeting.?????????????
• to nail sth. up If you nail sth. up, you fix it
  to a vertical surface using nails.
• e.g. the warning notice that he had nailed up on
  the pole

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• Infrastructure the basic systems or structures
  that a country or organization needs in order to
  work properly, for example, transport,
  communications, and banking systems/????(???,??,??
  ???),????
• A countrys economic infrastructure/?????????

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• CD-ROM Compact Discs with Read-Only-Memory

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• Buzzword a word or phrase, especially one
  connected with a particular subject, that has
  become fashionable and popular and is used a lot
  in newspaper etc./(????????)
• "intelligent agents" man-made robots with
  similar intelligence with man/??????

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• agents with specific marching orders each of the
  four agents do different things based on
  different orders of the computer operator
• each of the four agents are represented by four
  images of people wearing different clothes on the
  computer screen.
• Implication(?????)These agents are just images
  and not actual robots that are actually produced
  in reality.

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• keep a tab/tabs on sth./sb. keep account of
  sth./sb.keep sb./ sth.under observation?????,????
  (??)
• ? keep tabs on whos using the phone?????????
• it is not always possible to keep tabs on
  everyones movements.
• ?????????????????
• The police have been keeping tabs/ a tab on him.

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• spy on sb to keep watch secretly/????????
• spy on the enemys movements/??????
• spy into other peoples affairs/???????
• Im sure my neighbors spy on me.
• ???????????

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• levy a fee (to , upon) v. to demand and collect
  money officially collect (a payment, etc) by
  authority or force/????(???)?????
• levy sth on sb
• a departure tax levied on all travelers/??????????
  ?
• e.g. to levy a tax on tobacco ?????

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• elitism n. U derog. (behavior based on) the
  belief that there should be elites and that they
  deserve power, influence, special treatment,
  etc. (believe in a) system, leadership, etc.
  that aims at developing an elite/?????????????(???
  )????
• many people believe that private education
  encouraged elitism.
• ?????????????????
• populism n. type of politics that claims to
  represent the interests of ordinary
  people/???????(?????????????)
• populist a person who claims to believe in the
  wisdom and judgment of ordinary people, esp. in
  political matters./?????????

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• it's one thing ... (it's) quite another this is
  a useful pattern, denoting contrast ...
  ????,??????
• e.g It is one thing for a teacher to speak and
  understand a language, quite another to
  consciously understand and explain the system of
  that language.
• Its one thing to think, and quite another to
  practice.
• Its one thing to talk big, and quite another to
  put your words into practice.

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• Spin (sb) a yarn tell (usu long) story, often in
  order to deceive sb/???(????,?????)
• The old sailor loves to spin yarns about his life
  at sea.
• ??????????????????
• He spun us his unlikely yarn about being trapped
  for hours in a broken lift.
• ??????????????????

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• hang on for the ride we should hang on for the
  ride in the vehicle (car/train) of the
  interactive technology
• we should grip the ??? tightly for the ride in
  the vehicle of the interactive technology so as
  to walk the right way and keep the going of the
  car safe and so as not to let the vehicle of the
  interactive technology go astray
• ride???????? the instead of ???? a,
  ?????????
• ??????metaphor???,????????????

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Paraphrase

• To get an idea of what the future might bring,
  step into the past.
• Paraphrase In order to form a view of what will
  happen in the future, you need only to have a
  look at what happened in the past.

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• His competitors envisioned the greater potentia
  for entertainment and art. Where he saw internal
  memos, someone else saw Beethoven
• Paraphrase His business rivals saw in their
  minds that there was great possibility of using
  the machine for entertainment and art.

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• Game fanatics may be able to do the same from
  another electronic library filled with realistic
  video versions of arcade shoot-'em-ups.
• Paraphrase Those who are obsessed in video
  games may do it in the same way by contacting
  another electronic library which has a large
  number of video tapes recording the actual
  shootings and killings seen in video game shops.

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• "Interactivity" may be the biggest buzzword of
  the moment, but "convergence" is a close second.
• Paraphrase "Interactivity" for the time being
  may be the most used word which has little
  meaning but sounds impressive to outsiders while
  "convergence" follows "interactivity" closely in
  the second place in frequency.

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• Imagine the conversation "Have I got a
  compatible user for you!" .
• Paraphrase Try to think what the conversation
  would be like I have got a user who will suit
  you fine!

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• If the tolls for using the information highway
  are too high, interactivity may widen the gap
  between the haves and the have-nots, the rich and
  wired vs. the poor and un-plugged.
• Why may interactivity widen the gap?
• Because those who have access to the information
  may have better opportunities since information
  and the speed of acquiring information are
  decisive in today's competition.

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Figure of Speech

• Simile
• Metaphor
• Synecdoche

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Structural Analysis

• 1. Paragraphs 1-2 Introduction of interactive
  life
• a huge amount of information available to anyone
  at the touch of a button
• 2. Paragraphs 3-18 description of interactive
  life
• A. difficult to understand because its still a
  long way
• B. four phases fake interactive, true
  interactive, complete viewer control, and final
  frontier
• C. possible dreams because of large capacity
  chip, fibre optic cables and digitalization
• D. dark side no privacy, wide gap, considerable
  debate
• 3. Paragraph 19 Suggestion
• hanging on for the ride

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• Thank You