hce_tcu
113年
英文
第 43 題
📖 題組：
【C】Even if the term “appropriate technology” is a relatively new one, the concept certainly isn’t. In the 1930s, Mahatma Gandhi claimed that the advanced technology used by Western industrialized nations did not represent the right route to progress for his homeland, India. His favorite machines were the sewing machine, a device invented “out of love,” he said, and the bicycle, which he rode all his life. He wanted the poor villagers of India to use technology that empowered them and helped them to become self-reliant. This was also the philosophy promoted by E. F. Schumacher in his famous 1970s book Small Is Beautiful, which called for “intermediate technology” solutions. Do not start with technology and see what it can do for people, he argued. Instead, “find out what people are doing and then help them to do it better.” According to Schumacher, it did not matter whether the technological answers to people’s needs were simple or sophisticated. What was important was that solutions were long-term, practical, and, above all, firmly in the hands of the users. More recently, the term “appropriate technology” has come to mean not just technology which is suited to the needs and capabilities of the user, but technology that takes particular account of environmental, ethical, and cultural considerations. This is clearly a much more difficult thing to achieve. Often appropriate technology is found in rural communities in developing or less industrialized countries. For example, solar-powered lamps that bring light to areas with no electricity and water purifiers that work simply by the action of sucking through a straw. But the principle of appropriate technology does not only apply to developing countries. It also has its place in the developed world. For example, a Swedish state-owned company has found a way to harness the energy produced by the 250,000 bodies rushing through Stockholm’s central train station each day. The body heat is absorbed by the building’s ventilation system, then used to warm up water that is pumped through pipes over to the new office building nearby. It’s old technology, a system of pipes, water, and pumps, but used in a new way. It is expected to bring down central heating costs in the building by up to 20 percent. However, wherever it is deployed, there is no guarantee that appropriate technology will in fact be appropriate. After some visiting engineers observed how labor-intensive and slow it was for the women of a Guatemalan village to shell corn by hand, they designed a simple mechanical device to do the job more quickly. The new device certainly saved time, but after a few weeks the women returned to the old manual method. Why? Because they valued the time that hand-shelling gave them to chat and exchange news. In another case, in Malawi, a local entrepreneur was encouraged to manufacture super-efficient wood-burning stoves to sell to local villagers. Burning wood on an open fire, which is traditional in the developing world, is responsible for 10-20 percent of all global $CO_2$ emissions, so this seemed to be an excellent scheme. However, the entrepreneur was so successful that he bought himself a whole fleet of gas-guzzling cars. “We haven’t worked out the $CO_2$ implications of that yet,” said a spokesman for the organization that promoted the scheme.
【C】Even if the term “appropriate technology” is a relatively new one, the concept certainly isn’t. In the 1930s, Mahatma Gandhi claimed that the advanced technology used by Western industrialized nations did not represent the right route to progress for his homeland, India. His favorite machines were the sewing machine, a device invented “out of love,” he said, and the bicycle, which he rode all his life. He wanted the poor villagers of India to use technology that empowered them and helped them to become self-reliant. This was also the philosophy promoted by E. F. Schumacher in his famous 1970s book Small Is Beautiful, which called for “intermediate technology” solutions. Do not start with technology and see what it can do for people, he argued. Instead, “find out what people are doing and then help them to do it better.” According to Schumacher, it did not matter whether the technological answers to people’s needs were simple or sophisticated. What was important was that solutions were long-term, practical, and, above all, firmly in the hands of the users. More recently, the term “appropriate technology” has come to mean not just technology which is suited to the needs and capabilities of the user, but technology that takes particular account of environmental, ethical, and cultural considerations. This is clearly a much more difficult thing to achieve. Often appropriate technology is found in rural communities in developing or less industrialized countries. For example, solar-powered lamps that bring light to areas with no electricity and water purifiers that work simply by the action of sucking through a straw. But the principle of appropriate technology does not only apply to developing countries. It also has its place in the developed world. For example, a Swedish state-owned company has found a way to harness the energy produced by the 250,000 bodies rushing through Stockholm’s central train station each day. The body heat is absorbed by the building’s ventilation system, then used to warm up water that is pumped through pipes over to the new office building nearby. It’s old technology, a system of pipes, water, and pumps, but used in a new way. It is expected to bring down central heating costs in the building by up to 20 percent. However, wherever it is deployed, there is no guarantee that appropriate technology will in fact be appropriate. After some visiting engineers observed how labor-intensive and slow it was for the women of a Guatemalan village to shell corn by hand, they designed a simple mechanical device to do the job more quickly. The new device certainly saved time, but after a few weeks the women returned to the old manual method. Why? Because they valued the time that hand-shelling gave them to chat and exchange news. In another case, in Malawi, a local entrepreneur was encouraged to manufacture super-efficient wood-burning stoves to sell to local villagers. Burning wood on an open fire, which is traditional in the developing world, is responsible for 10-20 percent of all global $CO_2$ emissions, so this seemed to be an excellent scheme. However, the entrepreneur was so successful that he bought himself a whole fleet of gas-guzzling cars. “We haven’t worked out the $CO_2$ implications of that yet,” said a spokesman for the organization that promoted the scheme.
What does the figure “250,000” in the fourth paragraph refer to?
- A The number of citizens who live in Stockholm, Sweden
- B The heating costs that can be cut in the office buildings near the station
- C The number of pipes to help pump energy to heat the train station
- D The daily number of visitors at Stockholm’s central train station
思路引導 VIP
請試著回到第四段找到這個數字所在的句子，先觀察這個數字後面緊跟著的名詞指的是什麼？接著再看看這個名詞所描述的對象，在那個句子的脈絡中是在哪一個特定的地點活動呢？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
太棒了！你能精準鎖定文章中的數據並正確對應主體，這代表你的資訊檢索與細節比對能力非常紮實，這是閱讀理解中非常重要的基本功。
數據與主體的精準對位
這題的關鍵在於第四段的描述："...harness the energy produced by the 250,000 bodies rushing through Stockholm’s central train station each day." 這裡的數字 250,000 直接修飾 "bodies"（人體/人流），明確指涉每天穿梭在斯德哥爾摩中央車站的旅客人數，因此選項 (D) 是完全正確的對應。
▼ 還有更多解析內容