Passage three
The Internet, E-commerce and globalization are making a new economic era possible. By the middle of the 21st century, capitalist markets will largely be replaced by a new kind of economic system based on networked relationships, contractual arrangements and access rights.
Has the quality of our lives at work, at home and in our communities increased in direct proportion to all the new Internet and business-to-business Internet services being introduced into our lives? I have asked this question of hundreds of CEOS and corporate executives in Europe and the United States. Surprisingly, virtually everyone has said, “ No ,quite contrary.”
The very people responsible for ushering(展示)in what some have called a “technological renaissance” say they are working longer hours, feel more stressed, are more impatient, and are even less civil in their dealings with colleagues and friends---not to mention strangers. And what’s more revealing, they place much of the blame on the very same technologies they are so aggressively championing.
The techno gurus(领袖) promised us that access would make life more convenient and give us more time. Instead, the very technological wonders that were supposed to liberate us have begun to enslave us in a web of connections from which there seems to be no easy escape.
If an earlier generation was preoccupied with the quest to enclose a vast geographic frontier, the .com generation, it seems, is more caught up in the colonization of time. Every spare moment of our time is being filled with some form of commercial connection, making time itself the most scarce of all resources. Our e-mail, voice mail and cell phones, our 24-hour Internet news and entertainment all holler(唤起) for our attention
31. The author suggests that the most resource in today’s society is .
A technology B economic assets C access to information D time