单选题 A great deal of attention is being paid today to the so-called digital divide the division of the world into the info (information) rich and the info poor. And that divide does exist today. My wife and I lectured about this looming danger twenty years ago. What was less visible then, however, were the new, positive forces that work against the digital divide. There are reasons to be optimistic.
There are technological reasons to hope the digital divide will narrow. As the Internet becomes more and more commercialized, it is in the interest of business to universalize access-after all, the more people online, the more potential customers there are. More and more governments, afraid their countries will be left behind, want to spread Internet access. Within the next decade or two, one to two billion people on the planet wilt be netted together. As a result, I now believe the digital divide will narrow rather than widen in the years ahead. And that is very good news because the Internet may well be the most powerful tool for combating world poverty that we've ever had.
Of course, the use of the Internet isn't the only way to defeat poverty. And the Internet is not the only tool we have. But it has enormous potential.
To take advantage of this tool, some impoverished countries will have to get over their outdated anti-colonial prejudices with respect to foreign investment. Countries that still think foreign investment is an invasion of their sovereignty might well study the history of infrastructure (the basic structural foundations of a society) in the United States. When the United States built its industrial infrastructure, it didn't have the capital to do so. And that is why America's second Wave infrastructure--including roads, harbors, highways, ports and so on-were built with foreign investment. The English, the Germans, the Dutch and the French were investing in Britain's former colony. They financed them. Immigrant Americans built them. Guess who owns them now? The Americans. I believe the same thing would be true in places like Brazil or anywhere else for that matter. The more foreign capital you have helping you build your Third Wave infrastructure, which today is an electronic infrastructure, the better of you're going to be. That doesn't mean lying down and becoming fooled, or letting foreign corporations run uncontrolled. But it does mean recognizing how important they can be in building the energy and telecom infrastructures needed to take full advantage of the Internet.

单选题 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

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】本题为细节题。穷国和富国在信息化上的差异不会因互联网而扩大，反而会随着互联网的普及而缩小，故A项错。富国应该对这种差异负责吗?文中没说，故B项错。穷国与富国的信息差异是好事吗?不可能，故D项也错。首段中提到作者和妻子20年前就谈到这种隐隐出现的危险，可以推知C项为正确答案。
[主旨大意]本文谈到了利用外资，建好基础设施，扩充互联网，消灭贫困等问题。
[名师点津]
1．To take advantage of this tool．some impoverished countries will have to get over their outdated anti—colonial prejudices with respect to foreign investment：要想利用互联网这个工具，某些贫困国家必须克服在外国投资方面的过时的反殖民偏见。take advantage of意为“利用”，impoverished意为“穷困的”，get over意为“克服，忘记”，如：He was disappointed at not getting the job，but he'11 get over it．outdated意为“落伍的，过时的”。
2．The more foreign capital you have helping you build your Third Wave infrastructure，which today is an electronic infrastructure，the better off you're going to be：你拥有的去建造第三次浪潮基础设施(今天主要指电子基础设施)的外国资金越多，那么你就越富裕。本句是"the more…the more"的结构。"which today is an electronic infrastructure"是修饰"Third Wave infrastructure"的非限定性定语从句。

单选题 Which of the following is the closest in meaning to the word "looming" as used in the first paragraph?
A. unpleasant
B. emerging
C. appealing
D. interesting

单选题 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

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】本题为细节题。由第二段可以看出，因互联网的商业化和推广会带来许多潜在用户，各国惟恐落后，纷纷普及网络。由此可知，一些国家和政府重视互联网是因为其“经济上的潜力”，故应选A项。选项B认为“可以带来海外投资”，这仅仅是局部因素。选项C中虽然作者提到了“互联网的利用可能是战胜贫困的工具”，但这仅仅是一种潜在的力量，并没有说能够很快消除贫困。选D项也是因特网的一个主要功能，但是也不是政府重视的主要原因。