2018年考研英语二真题及答案15

2018年考研英语二真题及答案15

2018年考研英语二真题及答案汇总

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The power and ambition of the giants of the digital economy is astonishing—Amazon has just announced the purchase of the upmarket grocery chain Whole Foods for$13.5bn,but two years ago Facebook paid even more than that to acquire the WhatsApp messaging service,which doesn’t have any physical product at all.What WhatsApp offered Facebook was an intricate and finely detailed web of its users’friendships and social lives.

Facebook promised the European commission then that it would not link phone numbers to Facebook identities,but it broke the promise almost as soon as the deal went through.Even without knowing what was in the messages,the knowledge of who sent them and to whom was enormously revealing and still could be.What political journalist,what party whip,would not want to know the makeup of the WhatsApp groups in which Theresa May’s enemies are currently plotting?It may be that the value of Whole Foods to Amazon is not so much the 460 shops ft owns,but the records of which customers have purchased what.

Competition law appears to be the only way to address these imbalances of power.But it is clumsy.For one thing,it is very slow compared to the pace of change within the digital economy.By the time a problem has been addressed and remedied it may have vanished in the marketplace,to be replaced by new abuses of power.But there is a deeper conceptual problem,too.Competition law as presently interpreted deals with financial disadvantage to consumers and this is not obvious when the users of these services don’t pay for them.The users of their services are not their customers.That would be the people who buy advertising from them—and Facebook and Google,the two virtual giants,dominate digital advertising to the disadvantage of all other media and entertainment companies.

The product they're selling is data,and we,the users,convert our lives to date for the benefit of the digital giants.Just as some ants farm the bugs called aphids for the honeydew the produce when they feed,so Google farms us for the data that our digital lives yield.Ants keep predatory insects away from where their aphids feed;Gmail keeps the spamme out of our inboxes.It doesn't feel like a human or democratic relationship,even if both sides benefit.

33.【题干】According to the author，competition law

【选项】

A.should serve the new market powers

B.may worsen the economic imbalancens

C.should not provide just one legal solution

D.cannot keep pace with the changing market

34.【题干】Competition law as presently interpreted can hardly protect Facebook nsers

Because

【选项】

A.they are no defined as customers

B.they are not financially reliable

C.these rvices aregenerally digital

D.the services are paid for by advertisers

33—34参考答案及解析：

33.【答案】［D］cannot keep pace with the changing market

【解析】细节题。根据题干关键词competition law定位到第三段第一句。该句指出“竞争法似乎成为解决这些不平等权力的唯一办法，但是此法案太过笨拙”。下一句提到“一方面，相比于数据经济变化的速度，此法案发展是非常缓慢的”。由此可知，该法案跟不上当前市场变化的步伐。因此D项为正确答案。

34.【答案】［D］the services are paid for by advertisers.

【解析】根据题目中的because可确定为因果细节题。题干中的信息出现在第三段后半部分，是题目中的原词competition law as presently interpreted，而原因在其后面的句子。下文写到，the users of their services are not，读到这里的not，一定要找而是谁。继续读下一句，That would be the people who buy advertising from them…，与选项对应，可得出［D］the services are paid for by advertisers。