Tolive in the United States today is to gain an appreciation for Dahrendorf'sassertion that social change exists everywhere.Technology,the application ofknowledge for practical ends,is a major source of social change.

Yet wewould do well to remind ourselves that technology is a human creation;it doesnot exist naturally.A spear or a robot is as much a cultural as a physicalobject.Until humans use a spear to hunt game or a robot to produce machineparts,neither is much more than a solid mass of matter.For a bird looking foran object on which to rest,a spear or robot serves the purpose equally well.

Theexplosion of the Challenger space shuttle and the Russian nuclear accident atChernobyl drive home the human quality of technology;they provide cases inwhich well-planned systems suddenly went haywire and there was no ready hand toset them right.Since technology is a human creation,we are responsible forwhat is done with it.Pessimists worry that we will use our technology eventuallyto blow our world and ourselves to pieces.But they have been saying this fordecades,and so far we have managed to survive and even flourish.Whether wewill continue to do so in the years ahead remains uncertain.Clearly,theimpact of technology on our lives deserves a closer examination.

Fewtechnological developments have had a greater impact on our lives than thecomputer revolution.Scientists and engineers have designed specializedmachines that can do the tasks that once only people could do.There are thosewho assert that the switch to an information-based economy is in the same campas other great historical milestones,particularly the Industrial Revolution.Yet when we ask why the Industrial Revolution was a revolution,we find that itwas not the machines.The primary reason why it was revolutionary is that itled to great social change.

It gaverise to mass production and,through mass production,to a society in whichwealth was not confined to the few.

Insomewhat similar fashion,computers promise to revolutionize the structure ofAmerican life,particularly as they free the human mind and open newpossibilities in knowledge and communication.The Industrial Revolutionsupplemented and replaced the muscles of humans and animals by mechanicalmethods.The computer extends this development to supplement and replace someaspects of the mind of human beings by electronic methods.And it's thecapacity of the computer for solving problems and making decisions thatrepresents its greatest potential and that poses the greatest difficulties inpredicting the impact on society.

Byusing the phrase"the human quality of technology",the authorrefers to the fact that

technology_______.查看材料

• A.has agreat impact on human life
• B.hassome characteristics of human nature
• C.canreplace some aspects of the human mind
• D.doesnot exist in the natural world