问答题
In the old days, it was all done with cakes. For Marcel Proust, it
was a visit to Mother's for tea and madeleines that provided the access to "the
vast structure of recollection" that was to become
his masterpiece on memory and nostalgia,
"Remembrance of Past Things." These days, it's not necessary to evoke the past:
you can't move without tripping over it. In an age zooming
forward technologically, why all the backward glances? The Oxford English
Dictionary's first definition of nostalgia reads: "acute longing for familiar
surroundings; severe homesickness." With the speed of computers doubling every
18 months, and the net doubling in size in about half that, no wonder we're
aching for familiar surroundings. Since the cornerstone of the Information Age
is change, anything enduring becomes precious. " People are looking for
something authentic," says McLaren. Trouble is, nostalgia has succumbed to
trends in marketing, demographics and technology."Nostalgia ain't what it used
to be," says Michael J. Wolf, senior partner at Booz-Allen & Hamilton
in New York."These are the new good old days." Baby boomers
form the core of the nostalgia market. The boomers, defined by American
demographers as those born between 1946 and 1964, are living long and prosperous
lives. In both Europe and America, they remain the Holy Grail for admen, and
their past has become everyone's present. In a study on "entertainment
imprinting," two American marketing professors, Robert Schindler and Morris
Holbrook, asked people ranging in age from 16 to 86 which popular music from the
past they liked best. People's favorite songs, they found, tended to be those
that were popular when they were about 24, with their affection for pop songs
diminishing on either side of that age. Doubtless Microsoft knows about
entertainment imprinting, or at least nostalgia. The company hawks its latest
Explorer to the strains of Simon and Garfunkel's "Homeward Bound," just as it
launched Windows 98 to the tune of "Start Me up" by the Rolling Stones. Boomers
remember both tunes from their 20s. If boomers are one market
that values memories, exiles are another. According to the International
Organization of Migration, more than 150 million people live today in a country
other than the one where they were born—double the number that did so in 1965.
This mass movement has sources as dire as tyranny and as luxurious as the
freedoms of an EU passport. But exiles and refugees share one thing: homes
left behind. Type in "nostalgia" on the search engine Google, and one of the
first sites that pop up is the nostalgia page of The Iranian, an online site for
Iran's exiles, most of whom fled after 1978's Islamic revolution. Perhaps the
savviest exploitation of nostalgia has been the secondhand-book site alibris,
corn, which features stories of clients' rediscovering long-lost books on
it. One John Mason Mings writes of the glories of finding a book with
information on "Kickapoo Joy Juice," ad dreaded medicine of his youth. A
Pennsylvanian waxes over alibris's recovery of his first-grade primer "Down
cherry Street." The Net doesn't merely facilitate nostalgia—it promotes it.
Web-based auction houses have helped jump-start markets for vintage items, form
marbles to Apple Macintoshes. Cutting-edge technology,
designed to be transient, has even bred its own instanostalgia. Last year a $666
Apple I went for $18,000 to a British collector at a San Francisco
auction. "Historic! Microsoft Multiplan for Macintosh" crows one item on
eBay's vintage Apple section. Surf to The Net Nostalgia Quiz to puzzle over
questions like "In the old days, Altavista used to have which one of these
URLs?" Those who don't remember their history are condemned to
repeat it. Or so entertainment moguls hope, as they market '70s TV hits
like "Charlie's Angels" and "Scooby Doo," to a generation that can't remember
them the first time round. If you've missed a Puff Daddy track or a "Sopranos"
episode, panic not. The megahits of today are destined to be the golden oldies
of 2020, says Christopher Nurko of the branding consultant FutureBrand. "I
guarantee you, Madonna's music will be used to sell everything," he says."God
help me, I hope it's not selling insurance." It could be. When we traffic in the
past, nothing's sacred.
问答题
Explain the beginning sentence "In the old days, it was all done with cakes."
【正确答案】It means the recollection of the past often starts from tea or cakes. Such habit is always with us that it provides an access to "the vast structure of recollection"—the familiar usual surroundings and severe homesickness
【答案解析】
问答题
What is the other big group besides baby boomers which values memories? What do these people share?
【正确答案】It refers to the exiles or refugees with a population of 150 million in the world. They share one thing: homes left behind, they long for homes and past life or experience.
【答案解析】
问答题
What is "nostalgia market"? What do they sell in the nostalgia market?
【正确答案】"Nostalgia market" refers to a market that helps customers recall their past life or experience. It sells everything that has such functions, including pop songs, music or films.