Урок 31
12.03.20
Тема. Як інтернет "з'їв" світ.
How the Internet Ate the World
In barely two decades, the Internet has transformed the way we
communicate, search, learn and shop. But is that a good thing? Jon
Henley meets the sceptic who believes the Internet is making fools
and victims of us all.
During every minute of every day
of 2014, according to Andrew Keen’s
new book, the world’s Internet users
— all three billion of them — sent
204 million emails, undertook four
million Google searches, shared 2,46
million pieces of Facebook content,
published 277,000 tweets, posted
216,000 new photos on Instagram
and spent $83,000 on Amazon. For a
network that has existed recognisably for barely 20 years the numbers
are astonishing: the Internet, plainly, has transformed our lives, making so much of what we do every day — communicating, shopping,
finding, booking — unimaginably easier than it was.
So it takes a brave man to argue that there is another side of the
Internet. Keen, who was once so sure that the Internet was the answer
that he sank all he had into …(1), is now a thoughtful …(2) who believes
the Internet is actually doing untold damage. The net, he argues, was
meant to bring “power to the people, a platform for equality”. Instead,
it has handed extraordinary power and wealth to a tiny handful of
people, while simultaneously, for the rest of us, compounding existing inequalities — cultural, social and economic. Individually, it may
work wonders for us. Collectively, it’s doing no good at all. “It was
supposed to be a …(3)”, Keen declares. “The network’s users were supposed to be its beneficiaries. But in a lot of ways, we are its victims”.
The numbers Keen reels off are …(4): Google, which now handles
3,5 billion searches daily and controls more than 90 % in some countries, including Britain, was valued at $400bn last year — seven
times more than the General Motors, which employs nearly four times
more people. Its two founders, Larry Page and Serhii Brin, are worth
$30bn apiece. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, head of the world’s second biggest Internet site — used by 19 % of people in the world, half
of whom access it six days a week or more — is …(5), while at $190bn
in July last year, his company was worth more than Coca-Cola, Disney
and AT&T.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon is also worth $30bn. Uber, a five-year-old
start-up employing about 1,000 people, was valued last year at more
than $18bn — roughly the same as Hertz and Avis combined. The
700-staff lodging rental site Airbnb was valued at $10bn.
Part of the problem here, argues Keen, is that the digital economy is, by its nature, …(6). “There are just certain structural qualities
that mean the Internet lends itself to monopolies. The Internet is a
perfect global platform for free-market capitalism — a pure, frictionless, borderless economy”. Keen cites San Francisco writer Rebecca
Solnit’s incisive take on Google: “Imagine it is 100 years ago, and
the post office, the phone company, the public libraries, the printing
houses, Ordnance Survey maps and the cinemas were all controlled
by the same secretive and unaccountable organisation. Plus, he adds,
102
“Google doesn’t just own the post office — it has the right to open
everyone’s letters”.
This, Keen argues, is the net economy’s natural tendency: “Google is the search and information monopoly, Uber’s about being the
transport monopoly; Airbnb is the hospitality monopoly. These are
all, ultimately, monopoly plays — that’s the logic. And that should
worry people”. It is already having consequences, Keen says, in the
real world. Take surely the most …(7) — Amazon. Keen’s book cites
a 2013 American survey which found that while it takes, on ave rage,
a regular …(8) store’s 47 employees to generate $10m in turnover,
Jeff Bezos’s …(9), all-consuming and completely ruthless “Everything
Store” achieves the same with 14. Amazon, that report concluded,
probably destroyed 27,000 US jobs in 2012.
“And we love it”, Keen says. “We all use Amazon. We strike this
…(10). It’s ultra-convenient, fantastic service, great interface, absurdly cheap prices. But what’s the cost? Truly appalling working conditions; we know this. Deep hostility to unions. A massive impact on
independent retail; savage bullying of publishers. Amazon has told us
what we want to hear. Bezos says, “This is about you, the consumer”.
The problem is, we’re not just consumers. We’re citizens, too”.
Завдання
Виконати впр. 1, 7, с. 99, 102-103(записати слова з перекладом).
Домашнє завдання - перекласти вище вказаний текст.
Підручник. Буренко. Англ.мова. 11 клас
Виконати впр. 2,4,5 с. 121-123, впр.3,4,5 с. 126-128
