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Taking a cue from the history of how previous universal technologies diffused, it is not far fetched to expect that the Internet will gradually reorganize the way we produce and consume. Like the forty-year sojourn before the electric motor found full fruition by not only making possible but also boosting the productivity of modern mass-production factories and mass-consumption appliances, there are likely to be many ingrained methods, tacit and explicit ways of doing business and conducting daily life that risk being swept away.

If the Internet is to have such a pervasive impact over the next two decades it will probably be largely due to the lower cost of doing all kinds of business in cyberspace. It is widely expected that in most markets including those for goods, services, finance, and labour, the efficiency of information sharing, the lifeblood of market transactions, will improve in four ways: greater coverage as more people will have access to more information; greater speed of information acquisition allowing less planned, more spontaneous searches; less time specific, since searches can be done at anytime; and less geographically bounded, since the information flows from anywhere the Internet can reach. Should the Internet achieve these objectives and become an accessible index of much of human knowledge, then the ratio of cost to a given quality of information will fall, potentially very significantly.

Direct, accurate and fast Internet based access to suppliers of labour, services, financing and commodities, is likely to offer both producers and consumers an opportunity to diversify and deepen their market relationships with a lower risk of incurring excessive search costs or error. For many analysts this portends a disassembling of many functions formerly bound together by the lower costs of information arising in a centralized head office or wholesale distributor. With the more advanced infrastructure of the Internet it should be feasible to take a more direct, flexible and even spontaneous approach to organizing the inputs needed to produce goods and services as well as the purchasing of all manner of consumer items.

In this view, the centralized, multi-functional enterprises and distribution systems of today will dissolve into component parts, hooked into a vast and more efficient web of suppliers and consumers. Inventing products as well as selling them could reverse direction, as consumers generate the custom specifications they desire and then seek out competent producers and even other buyers. Instead of today's aggressive distribution and marketing where the vendor pursues the consumer, the Internet might usher in a world where consumers solicit bids or send out queries aimed at fulfilling their needs at the lowest price. Participants across a wide range of different types of transaction could also become much less anonymous to one another as vast databases, and virtual reality unveil exchange relationships once shrouded by the limited availability of information on price, quality and past buyer's experiences. Such a massive redistribution of the roles that currently characterize the basic structure of exchange relationships will also provoke changes in how competition is assured.

97. It cannot be inferred from the first paragraph that

[A]electric motor stimulates the growth of productivity.

[B]we can learn from history of the future trend.

[C]our daily life mode are at risk now.

[D]internet will bring about unexpected changes.

98. what is the main reason, according to the text, for the Internet's widespread influence in the future?

[A]it can attract people's attention so they will buy things through the network.

[B]it can make people share information and enjoy boundless communication.

[C]it can provide a platform for people to get in touch with strangers.

[D]it can reduce cost for various business if they are put on line.

99. When the author uses the phrase "less geographically bounded" (line 7, paragraph 2), he probably means that

[A]people can get information with no geographical concerns.

[B]people will have more geografic information on things they concern.

[C]people will be less affected by geographical factors.

[D]people will enjoy the boundless freedom in term of geology.

100. which of the following statements will the author most probably disagree?

[A]Internet buying will change the way people do business.

[B]:limited information has been uncovered by virtue reality.

[C]large enterprises will be just a link in the future exchange network.

[D]wide application of Internet will lower the cost.

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