Questions 56 to 60 are based on the following passage.

　　The "paperless office" has earned a proud place on lists of technological promises that did not come to pass. Surely, though, the more modest goal of he carbon-paperless office is within the reach of mankind? Carbon paper allows two copies of a document to be made at once. Nowadays, a couple of keystrokes can do the same thing with a lot less fuss.

　　Yet carbon paper persists. Forms still need to be filled out in a way that produces copies. This should not come as a surprise. Innovation tends to create new niches( 合适的职业), rather than refill those that already exist. So technologies may become marginal, but they rarely go extinct. And today the little niches in which old technologies take refuge are ever more viable and accessible, thanks to the Internet and the fact that production no longer needs to be so mass; making small numbers of obscure items is growing easier.

　　On top of that, a widespread Technology of nostalgia(技术怀旧 ) seeks to preserve all the ways people have ever done anything, simply because they are kind of neat. As a result technologies from all the way back to the stone age persist and even flourish in the modern world. According to What Technology Wants, a book by Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired magazine, America's flintknappers (燧石) produce over a million new arrow and spear heads every year. One of the things technology wants, it seems, is to survive.

　　Carbon paper, to the extent that it may have a desire for self-preservation, may also take comfort in the fact that, for all that this is a digital age, many similar products are hanging on, and even making comebacks. Indeed, digital technologies may prove to be more transient than their predecessors. They are based on the idea that the medium on which a file's constituent 0s and 1s are stored doesn't matter, and on Alan Turing's insight that any computer can mimic any other, given memory enough and time. This suggests that new digital technologies should be able to wipe out their predecessors completely. And early digital technologies do seem to be vanishing. The music cassette is enjoying a little renaissance, its very faithlessness apparently part of its charm; but digital audio tape seems doomed.

　　So revolutionary digital technologies may yet discard older ones to the dustbin. Perhaps this will be the case with a remarkable breakthrough in molecular(分子的) technology that could, in principle, store all the data ever recorded in a device that could fit in the back of a van. In this instance, it would not be a matter of the new extinguishing the old. Though it may never have been used for MP3s and PDFs before, DNA has been storing data for over three billion years. And it shows no sign of going extinct.

　　56. Which of the following is TRUE about the carbon paper?

　　A) It is the key to paperless office.

　　B) It will be replaced by the computer soon.

　　C) It is more troublesome than the computer.

　　D) It can hardly survive in the digital age.

　　57. According to the passage, "viable" ( Line 4, Para. 2) means __

　　A) secure

　　B) dynamic

　　C) feasible

　　D) flexible

　　58. Why does the author mention the example of What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly?

　　A) To point out that old Technology of nostalgia will flourish in the modern world.

　　B) To illustrate the importance of flintknappers.

　　C) To show that flintknapping is one of the stone age technologies.

　　D) To prove that old technologies seemingly never die.

　　59. What can be inferred about digital technologies?

　　A) Digital audio tape will be vanished because of its accuracy.

　　B) Digital technologies have been proved to outlive the old technologies.

　　C) Early digital technologies will never go extinct.

　　D) The future of digital technologies will be used for DNA research.

　　60. The passage mainly concerned with

　　A) the difficulty of the realization of paperless office

　　B) the fact that newest technologies may die out while the oldest survive

　　C) the reason why old technologies will never be on the edge of extinction

　　D) the importance of keeping improving technologies all the time

　　参考答案：

　　56.C)。本题考查对复写纸的理解。由定位句“复写纸可迅速地把一份文件印出两份复件。如今，敲几下键盘就可以做到同样的事情，而且还省去了不少麻烦”可知，复写纸使用起来要比计算机麻烦，故答案为C)。

　　57.C)。本题考查“viable”的词意。定位句提到“现如今，由于互联网技术以及不再需要大规模生产这一事实，那些古老技术赖以延续的微小职业正变得越来越容易存活并且容易入门”，根据上下文可推断出，viable应与accessible为同一语义场，即“可行的，易存活的”，故正确答案为C)。

　　58.D)。本题考查作者以凯文·凯利所著《技术想要什么》为例的目的。定位句提到“《连线》杂志创始人之一凯文·凯利在其《技术想要什么》一书中称，美国的燧石工每年生产超过100万支新箭头和矛头，技术所想露的事情之一似乎就是存活下去。”而作者在定位句前一句指出“所以，从石器时代以来的技术得以存在，甚至在现代世界兴盛起来。”故本文作者以凯文·凯利所著《技术想要什么》为例旨在证明旧技术似乎永远都不会消亡，故D)为答案。

　　59.A)。本题考查对数字技术的理解。由定位句可知“音乐磁带正悄然成为复兴的潮流，失真特质似乎正是其魅力的一部分;但数字录音带似乎难逃消亡厄运”，由此可推出，数字录音带似乎难逃消亡厄运是由于其保真，可被复制，故答案为A)。

　　60.B)。文章以复写纸为例说明旧技术不会消亡，接下来论证其原因，最后表明最新的技术看起来最有可能消失;而最古老的技术有可能一直与我们相伴，故答案为B)。