2021 年 06 月大学英语六级考试真题（第 1 套）

A)A hundred years before iconic figures like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs permeated our lives, an Irish Italian inventor laid the foundation of the communication explosion of the 21st century. Guglielmo Marconi was arguably the first truly global figure in modern communication. Not only was he the first to communicate globally, he was the first to think globally about communication. Marconi may not have been the greatest inventor of his time, but more than anyone else, he brought about a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.

B)Today's globally networked media and communication system has its origins in the 19th century, when, for the first time, messages were sent electronically across great distances. The telegraph, the telephone, and radio were the obvious predecessors of the Internet, iPods, and mobile phones. What made the link from then to now was the development of wireless communication. Marconi was the first to develop and perfect this system, using the recently-discovered "air waves" that make up the electromagnetic spectrum.

C)Between 1896, when he applied for his first patent in England at the age of 22, and his death in Italy in 1937, Marconi was at the center of every major innovation in electronic communication. He was also a skilled and sophisticated organizer, an entrepreneurial innovator, who mastered the use of corporate strategy, media relations, government lobbying, international diplomacy, patents, and prosecution. Marconi was really interested in only one thing: the extension of mobile, personal, long distance communication to the ends of the earth (and beyond, if we can believe some reports). Some like to refer to him as a genius, but if there was any genius to Marconi it was this vision.

D)In 1901 he succeeded in signaling across the Atlantic, from the west coast of England to Newfoundland in the USA, despite the claims of science that it could not be done. In 1924 he convinced the British government to encircle the world with a chain of wireless stations using the latest technology that he had devised, shortwave radio. There are some who say Marconi lost his edge when commercial broadcasting came along; he didn't see that radio could or should be used to frivolous (无聊的) ends. In one of his last public speeches, a radio broadcast to the United States in March 1937, he deplored that broadcasting had become a one-way means of communication and foresaw it moving in another direction, toward communication as a means of exchange. That was visionary genius.

E)Marconi's career was devoted to making wireless communication happen cheaply, efficiently, smoothly, and with an elegance that would appear to be intuitive and uncomplicated to the user-user friendly, if you will. There is a direct connection from Marconi to today's social media, search engines, and program streaming that can best be summed up by an admittedly provocative exclamation: the 20th century did not exist. In a sense, Marconi's vision jumped from his time to our own.

F)Marconi invented the idea of global communication-or, more straightforwardly, globally networked, mobile, wireless communication. Initially, this was wireless Morse code telegraphy (电报通讯), the principal communication technology of his day. Marconi was the first to develop a practical method for wireless telegraphy using radio waves. He borrowed technical details from many sources, but what set him apart was a self-confident vision of the power of communication technology on the one hand, and, on the other, of the steps that needed to be taken to consolidate his own position as a player in that field. Tracing Marconi's lifeline leads us into the story of modern communication itself. There were other important figures, but Marconi towered over them all in reach, power, and influence, as well as in the grip he had on the popular imagination of his time. Marconi was quite simply the central figure in the emergence of a modern understanding of communication.

G)In his lifetime, Marconi foresaw the development of television and the fax machine, GPS, radar, and the portable hand-held telephone. Two months before he died, newspapers were reporting that he was working on a "death ray," and that he had "killed a rat with an intricate device at a distance of three feet." By then, anything Marconi said or did was newsworthy. Stock prices rose or sank according to his pronouncements. If Marconi said he thought it might rain, there was likely to be a run on umbrellas.

H)Marconi's biography is also a story about choices and the motivations behind them. At one level, Marconi could be fiercely autonomous and independent of the constraints of his own social class. On another scale, he was a perpetual outsider. Wherever he went, he was never "of" the group; he was always the "other," considered foreign in Britain, British in Italy, and "not American" in the United States. At the same time, he also suffered tremendously from a need for acceptance that drove, and sometimes stained, every one of his relationships.

I)Marconi placed a permanent stamp on the way we live. He was the first person to imagine a practical application for the wireless spectrum, and to develop it successfully into a global communication system-in both terms of the word; that is, worldwide and all-inclusive. He was able to do this because of a combination of factors-most important, timing and opportunity-but the single-mindedness and determination with which he carried out his self-imposed mission was fundamentally character-based; millions of Marconi's contemporaries had the same class, gender, race, and colonial privilege as he, but only a handful did anything with it. Marconi needed to achieve the goal that was set in his mind as an adolescent; by the time he reached adulthood, he understood, intuitively, that in order to have an impact he had to both develop an independent economic base and align himself with political power. Disciplined, uncritical loyalty to political power became his compass for the choices he had to make.

J)At the same time, Marconi was uncompromisingly independent intellectually. Shortly after Marconi's death, the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi-soon to be the developer of the Manhattan Project-wrote that Marconi proved that theory and experimentation were complementary features of progress. "Experience can rarely, unless guided by a theoretical concept, arrive at results of any great significance ... on the other hand, an excessive trust in theoretical conviction would have prevented Marconi from persisting in experiments which were destined to bring about a revolution in the technique of radio-communications." In other words, Marconi had the advantage of not being burdened by preconceived assumptions.

K)The most controversial aspect of Marconi's life-and the reason why there has been no satisfying biography of Marconi until now-was his uncritical embrace of Benito Mussolini. At first this was not problematic for him. But as the regressive (倒退的) nature of Mussolini's regime became clear, he began to suffer a crisis of conscience. However, after a lifetime of moving within the circles of power, he was unable to break with authority, and served Mussolini faithfully (as president of Italy's national research council and royal academy, as well as a member of the Fascist Grand Council) until the day he died-conveniently-in 1937, shortly before he would have had to take a stand in the conflict that consumed a world that he had, in part, created.

Humans are fascinated by the source of their failings and virtues. This preoccupation inevitably leads to an old debate: whether nature or nurture moulds us more. A revolution in genetics has poised this as a modern political question about the character of our society: personalities are hard-wired into our genes' what can governments do to help us? It feels morally questionable, yet claims of genetic selection by intelligence are making headlines. This is down to "hereditarian" (遗传论的) science and a recent paper claimed "differences in exam performance between pupils attending selective and non-selective schools mirror the genetic differences between them". With such an assertion, the work was predictably greeted by a lot of absurd claims about "genetics determining academic success". What the research revealed was the rather less surprising result: the educational benefits of selective schools largely disappear once pupils' inborn ability and socio-economic background were taken into account. It is a glimpse of the blindingly obvious-and there's nothing to back strongly either a hereditary or environmental argument. Yet the paper does say children are "unintentionally genetically selected" by the school system. Central to hereditarian science is a tall claim: that identifiable variations in genetic sequences can predict an individual's aptness to learn, reason and solve problems. This is problematic on many levels. A teacher could not seriously tell a parent their child has a low genetic tendency to study when external factors clearly exist. Unlike-minded academics say the inheritability of human traits is scientifically unsound. At best there is a weak statistical association and not a causal link between DNA and intelligence. Yet sophisticated statistics are used to create an intimidatory atmosphere of scientific certainty. While there's an undoubted genetic basis to individual difference, it is wrong to think that socially defined groups can be genetically accounted for. The fixation on genes as destiny is surely false too. Medical predictability can rarely be based on DNA alone; the environment matters too. Something as complex as intellect is likely to be affected by many factors beyond genes. If hereditarians want to advance their cause it will require more balanced interpretation and not just acts of advocacy. Genetic selection is a way of exerting influence over others, "the ultimate collective control of human destinies," as writer H. G. Wells put it. Knowledge becomes power and power requires a sense of responsibility. In understanding cognitive ability, we must not elevate discrimination to a science; allowing people to climb the ladder of life only as far as their cells might suggest. This will need a more sceptical eye on the science. As technology progresses, we all have a duty to make sure that we shape a future that we would want to find ourselves in.

Nicola Sturgeon's speech last Tuesday setting out the Scottish government's legislative programme for the year ahead confirmed what was already pretty clear. Scottish councils are set to be the first in the UK with the power to levy charges on visitors, with Edinburgh likely to lead the way. Tourist taxes are not new. The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has a longstanding policy of charging visitors a daily fee. France's tax on overnight stays was introduced to assist thermal spa (温泉) towns to develop, and around half of French local authorities use it today. But such levies are on the rise. Moves by Barcelona and Venice to deal with the phenomenon of "over-tourism" through the use of charges have recently gained prominence. Japan and Greece are among the countries to have recently introduced tourist taxes. That the UK lags behind is due to our weak, by international standards, local government, as well as the opposition to taxes and regulation of our aggressively pro-market ruling party. Some UK cities have lobbied without success for the power to levy a charge on visitors. Such levies are no universal remedy as the amounts raised would be tiny compared with what has been taken away by the central government since 2010. Still, it is to be hoped that the Scottish government's bold move will prompt others to act. There is no reason why visitors to the UK, or domestic tourists on holiday in hot spots such as Cornwall, should be exempt from taxation-particularly when vital local services including waste collection, park maintenance and arts and culture spending are under unprecedented strain. On the contrary, compelling tourists to make a financial contribution to the places they visit beyond their personal consumption should be part of a wider cultural shift. Westerners with disposable incomes have often behaved as if they have a right to go wherever they choose with little regard for the consequences. Just as the environmental harm caused by aviation and other transport must come under far greater scrutiny, the social cost of tourism must also be confronted. This includes the impact of short-term lets on housing costs and quality of life for residents. Several European capitals, including Paris and Berlin, are leading a campaign for tougher regulation by the European Union. It also includes the impact of overcrowding, litter and the kinds of behaviour associated with noisy parties. There is no "one size fits all" solution to this problem. The existence of new revenue streams for some but not all councils is complicated, and businesses are often opposed, fearing higher costs will make them uncompetitive. But those places that want them must be given the chance to make tourist taxes work.