Read the following text. Choose the best word (s) for each numbered blank and mark [A], [B], [C] or [D] on ANSWER SHEET 1. (10 points)
Comparisons were drawn between the development of television in the 20th century and the diffusion of printing in the 15th and 16th centuries. Yet much had happened __21__. As was discussed before, it was not __22__ the 19th century that the newspaper became the dominant pre-electronic __23__, following in the wake of the pamphlet and the book and in the __24__ of the periodical. It was during the same time that the communications revolution __25__ up, beginning with transport, the railway, and leading __26__ through the telegraph, the telephone, radio, and motion pictures __27__ the 20th-century world of the motor car and the air plane. Not everyone sees that process in __28__. It is important to do so.
It is generally recognized, __29__, that the introduction of the computer in the early 20th century, __30__ by the invention of the integrated circuit during the 1960s, radically changed the process, __31__ its impact on the media was not immediately __32__. As time went by, computers became smaller and more powerful, and they became “personal” too, as well as __33__, with display becoming sharper and storage __34__ increasing. They were thought of, like people, __35__ generations, with the distance between generations much __36__.
It was within the computer age that the term “information society” began to be widely used to describe the __37__ within which we now live. The communications revolution has __38__ both work and leisure and how we think and feel both about place and time, but there have been __39__ view about its economic, political, social and cultural implications. “Benefits” have been weighed __40__ “harmful” outcomes. And generalizations have proved difficult.
