单选题 E-mail—can't live with it, can't live without it. Con artists and real artists, advertisers and freedom fighters, lovers and sworn enemies-they’ve all flocked to email as they would to any new medium of expression. E-mail is convenient, saves time, brings us closer to one another, helps us manage our ever-more-complex lives. Books are written, campaigns conducted; crimes committed-all via e-mail. But it is also inconvenient, wastes our time, isolates us in front of our computers and introduces more complexity into our already too-harried lives. To skeptics, E-mails just the latest chapter in the evolving history of human communication. A snooping husband now discovers his wife's affair by reading her private e-mail--but he could have uncovered the same sin by finding letters a generation ago.
Yet E-mail-and all online communication-is in fact something truly different; it captures the essence of life at the close of the 20th century with an authority that few other products of digital technology can claim. Does the pace of life seam ever faster? E-mail simultaneously allows us to cope with that acceleration and contributes to it. Are our attention spans shriveling under barrages of new, improved forms of stimulation? The quick and dirty E-mail is made to order for those whose ability to concentrate is measured in nanoseconds. If we accept that the creation of the globespanning Internet is one of the most important technological innovations of the last half of this century, then we must give E-mail--the living embodiment of human connections across the Net--pride of place. The way we interact with each other is changing; E-mail is both catalyst and the instrument of that change.
The scope of the phenomenon is mind-boggling. Worldwide, 225 million people can spend and receive E-mail. Forget about the Web or e-commerce or even online pornography: E-mail is the Internet's true killer app—the software application that we simply must have, even if it means buying a $2,000 computer and plunking down ＄20 a month to America Online. According to Donna Hoffman, a professor of marketing at Vanderbilt University, one survey after another finds that when online users are asked what they do on the Net, "E-mail is always No. 1."
Oddly enough, no one planned it, and one predicted it. When research scientists first began cooking up the Internet's predecessor, the Arpanet, in 1968, their primary goal was to enable disparate computing centers to share resources. "But it didn't take very long before they discovered that the most important thing was the ability to send mail around, which they had not anticipated at all," says Eric Auman, chief technical officer of Sendmail, Inc.

单选题 What does the first sentence of the passage mean?

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】推断题。
题意为：“文中第一句的意思是______。”文章首段提到电子邮件的两个方面：一方面，它方便，省时，将大家紧密联系在一起，帮助我们管理越来越复杂的生活。通过它可以写书、作战、犯罪。另一方面，它也不方便，浪费时间，将我们绑在计算机前使我们隔离开来，使我们的生活越来越复杂。因此，选项A“E-mail方便也不方便”为正确答案。选项B“E-mail使我们的生活变得复杂。”；选项C“E-mail把我们联系在一起，也把我们隔离开来”；选项D“E-mail吸引了大量有它既能活又不能活的人”。

单选题 Despite the vast popularity of E-mail, there are still people who don' t think much of it because______.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】推断题。
题意为：“尽管E-mail颇受人欢迎，仍有许多人对它不以为然，因为______。”请注意第一段倒数第一、二句：对E-mail持怀疑态度的人来说，它只是人类交流史上的最新阶段罢了；丈夫可能偷看妻子的E-mail发现妻子的私情，但是上一代人也可能读妻子的信件知道这一切。可知选项C“他们认为E-mail并不比老的交流方式好”为正确答案。选项A“他们认为E-mail作为交流技术的最近发明还没有发展到极限；选项B“他们认为新的交流技术会取代E-mail，就像E-mail取代老的交流方式一样”；选项D“他们认为E-mail的发明就和老的交流方式的发明一样是人类进化必由之路”。

单选题 To the author E-mail is______.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】细节题。
题意为：“作者认为E-mail是______。”选项A“加快生活步伐的权威”。请注意第二段第三句：E-mail使我们跟得上生活的步伐，同时也加快了生活的节奏。可知 A错误。选项B“生活的精髓”。文章第二段首句：然而E-mail以及网上所有的交流形式，实际上是完全不同于以往的交流方式；在20世纪末，E-mail抓住了生活的精髓，它具有其他数码技术很少拥有的权威。由此可知B错误。选项D“在所有领域中人类联系的鲜活的体现”。请注意文章第二段倒数第二句：E-mail以网络为自豪的地方是人类联系鲜活的体现。可知D不正确。事实上根据第二段末句“人类的交流方式正在改变；在这变化中，E-mail既是催化剂又是工具”，可知选项C为正确答案。