节目资讯
刊物:生活知识家
日期:2009-07-21
难易度:High
关键字:sparsely, justify, blisteringly, elusive, TECHNOLO
(Music).
Hi, friends.
Welcome to Studio Classroom Worldwide.
My name is Steve.
Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to study with us.
We are on our second day of our TECHNOLOGY article.
It’s called The Final Mile.
If you live in the countryside, finding a broadband Internet connection might
not be easy.
Even so, our author will explain that that is, of course, changing.
Technology is always advancing.
And so those who live far from major cities will benefit.
Though maybe not as quickly as those in the city.
Two key words that you need to know for this portion of the lesson are sparsely,
as in:
Susan sat on the only chair in the middle of the sparsely decorated room.
And the verb:
justify.
The buses here are so quick that it is hard to justify owning a car.
OK. Time to open our magazines to page forty-one.
Let’s read together starting on line thirteen on the right side.
The Final Mile.
Technology experts often talk about the ”last mile” problem,
which refers to the difficulty of bringing Internet access to remote locations.
In cities and suburbs, it’s relatively easy to provide access for everyone.
It is much more difficult to deliver access to those living far from cities,
especially in developing countries.
Internet service providers, for their part, have been reluctant to provide
access to sparsely populated areas.
The handful of Internet subscribers they would reach wouldn’t justify the
expense.
But every year, technological advancements allow broadband access to reach more
and more people.
Hi, friends.
I’m Rachel.
And I’m Esther. And we’re on day two of our TECHNOLOGY article,
The Final Mile.
Now we’ve been talking about how to bring broadband or very fast Internet
connection to the backcountry,
or to places where not that many people live in.
Yesterday our author told us the story about he went to visit his friend in the
countryside and they had a hard time watching a YouTube video.
This is quite common if you do live in the country,
because often it takes a lot of time to watch videos or to get online if you
only have a dial-up modem.
So I think there are a lot of people out there who are trying to patiently wait
for high speed Internet access.
So what we’re going to do today is continue to talk about the last mile and what
this refers to.
And the technology experts have been talking about this for a while.
Right.
In fact, they say this problem, well, the problem of not everyone having
Internet access or fast Internet access,
they call this the last mile.
And think of this as a race.
If you are running a five... five-mile or ten-mile race,
the last mile is the less little bit you need to run until you get to your final
destination or until you get to the end of your race.
So this is a... a technology race for the world, for everyone, to have fast
Internet connection.
For everyone to be connected.
So this is a problem because it is difficult to bring Internet access to remote
locations.
Now let’s look at that word ”remote” for a minute.
If you live in a remote location, you live out in the country.
And we might even say:
out in the wilderness.
And I think of places even like in Canada, there are some very remote places or
in north of Canada.
And even in America, there are some uh, country... uh... small towns that would
be considered quite remote.
Very far away from a large city.
And in fact, some of these remote places you... you have to get there by boat or
other devices where the normal person...
or even up high in mountain.
It’d be hard to reach.
So our article says:
In cities and suburbs, it’s relatively easy to provide access for everyone.
If you live in a city or if you live in a suburb, an area close to city but
outside or surrouding the city,
almost everyone can have Internet access.
However, it is much more difficult to deliver access to those living far from
cities,
especially in developing countries.
Now we’ve talked so far about America, maybe Canada a little bit.
But we haven’t looked at developing countries.
These are countries that are still developing or that still are maybe a few
years behind other modern countries.
And something like Internet service providers, those... those are hard to find
in developing countries.
Even computers might be hard to find in developing countries.
Many of these developing countries are very, very poor.
So Internet service providers,
they might not want to put some money into these countries to help them build
the connections or the cables that are needed,
so that everyone can have access to Internet.
Good point, Esther.
So we see here that the Internet service providers have been reluctant.
If you are reluctant to do something, you’re hesitant; you’re unsure.
You’re... you’re just not sure that that’s a good decision.
And... and maybe a lot of these people in these sparsely populated areas don’t
even have computers.
So why would they want to go and set up high speed Internet access?
Now quickly let’s look at that word:
sparsely.
We just used the word ”remote” to talk about a place where not very many people
live far from a city.
And sparsely is kind of related to that word.
If something is sparsely populated, what does sparsely mean?
It means that there are very, very few.
So some... a place that is sparsely populated has very few people living in it.
And some of those people might live very far from each other as well.
You kind of think of them being spaced apart,
so sparsely populated.
Maybe a family here, and a mile down the road a family there.
But they live far apart from each other.
Well, the handful of Internet subscribers they would reach wouldn’t justify the
expense.
That’s what you were saying earlier, Esther... is:
Is it too expensive to try to take boradband Internet access to these countries?
Because there are very few people who could actually use the service.
Right.
That might not justify the expense.
And to justify something is to make it a right or to balance.
So when we’re talking about money,
if you want to justify the expense,
you want to have a good reason why you are using this money for this purpose.
So these Internet service providers,
they don’t want to use a lot of money if only... if there are only a handful or
just a few families that use the Internet.
So this is a very interesting topic,
something that you could discuss with another person.
There are pros and cons of taking the Internet all around the world.
But we continue to read in our article that every year, technological
advancements allow broadband access to reach more and more people.
And Esther, I’m kind of glad for this because I know it’s expensive to take the
Internet to remote places where that are sparsely populated.
But, I kind of feel that those people deserve a chance to get online too, and to
see the things that we see and to use the computer for their advantage.
I agree.
I think everyone should have a chance to have access to information and to learn
on their own.
Well, we’re going to visit the Chat Room now.
And then we’ll take a break and be right back.
Hi, everyone.
I’m Vickie.
Welcome.
And I’m Ken.
And today we continue our look at The Final Mile.
Vickie, can we call the final mile the final stretch?
Well, I guess it depends on how you use it.
In our lesson, the final mile refers to the final lag of delivering Internet
connection to customers who live in remote places.
But if you’re running the marathon, you can certainly call the final mile the
final stretch.
So a stretch is the straight section of a track or a racecourse.
That’s right.
But we can also use the final stretch figuratively.
If a woman is eight months pregnant, we can say that she’s in the final stretch
of her pregnancy.
I see.
(Chinese).
Are there any other similar expressions?
Well, if we look at time instead of space, there’s the eleventh hour.
The eleventh hour?
That’s correct.
The eleventh hour refers to the time that’s right before the deadline.
We all know that there are twelve hours on a clock.
The eleventh hour is the hour before the last hour.
So it’s the time before you run out of time?
Yes, that’s eleventh hour.
(Chinese).
And right now let’s take a break.
And then Studio Classroom will come back for the final stretch of our lesson.