Практичний курс англійської мови навчальний посібник з практики усного та письмового мовлення для студентів 4 курсу

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PART 4 DEVELOPING READING SKILLS TEXT 1 “The Government Should Not Subsidize Internet Access”
4.2 Read the text “The Government Should Not Subsidize Internet Access” by Mark I. Schwartz
Essay on Criticism

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PART 4 DEVELOPING READING SKILLS

TEXT 1 “The Government Should Not Subsidize Internet Access”

4.1 Study the glossary to the article. Find the words in the context and choose the proper translation.

innovation 1) нововведення ; інновація, новаторство, новація ( in ) a daring innovation — нахабне новаторство 2) новинка, нова ідея, чи метод, механізм Syn: novelty, innovation banks- інноваційні банки, іnnоvаtіоn factor- поправочний коэффициент, іnnоvаtіоn group- група впровадження нових виробів ( ідповідальна за планування і реалізацію нових видів виробів ), innovation policy інноваційна политика, іnnоvаtіоn strategy - інноваційна стратегія, іnnоvаtіоn technique -інноваційна технологія, іnnоvаtіvе activity- створення нових продуктів; розробка нової технологии

provide 1) заготовляти, запасати; зберігати 2) а) постачати; доставляти; забезпечувати ( чем-л. матеріальним ) ( with ) to provide smb. with goods — постачити кого-л. товарами He provided a car with a radio. — Він у машину установив радиоприемник. б) давати, надавати; забезпечувати to provide military aid — надати воєнну допомогу provide housing for — надавати житлоплощу There is no way that we can provide another teacher for that class. — У нас немає ніякої можливості запросити ще одного вчителя в цей клас. 3) забезпечувати засобами до існування ( provide for ) to provide a family for — містити родину Has every member of the family been equally provided for? — чи Кожен член родини одержує те, що йому необхідно? 4) а) уживати заходів, готуватися to provide against an inflationary economy — ужити заходів проти інфляції Steps can be taken to provide against a severe winter. — Можна підготуватися до суворої зими. б) передбачати ( provide for ) Expenses provided for in the budget. — Витрати, передбачені в бюджеті . 5) обумовлювати, передбачати (that - за умови) The new law provides for equality of human rights. — Новий закон установлює рівність прав усіх людей. Section 17 provides that all decisions must be circulated in writing. — Роздягнув 17 передбачає, що всі рішення повинні передаватися в писемній формі.

affordable можливий; припустимий; по средствамаffоrd a basis служити опорою, підставою to afford a basis for conclusions — служити підставою для выводоваffоrd an opportunity надати возможностьаffоrd ground for давати підстави для; надавати возможностьаffоrd proof представити доказу

intervention 1) інтервенція 2) утручання armed, military intervention — збройне втручання divine intervention — сила провидіння government intervention — втручання уряду, державне вмешательствоіntеrvеntіоn by government втручання уряду; державне втручання

digital 1) а) имеющий відношення до пальців б) пальцевидный, пальцеобразный, перстовидный Syn: digitate , finger-shaped 2) цифровий, числовий - digital computer - digital audio tape Syn: numerical 2.1) перст, палець 2) клавіша ( музичного інструмента ) Syn: keydigital communication цифрова связь dіgіtаl diary електронний ежедневникdіgіtаl electronics цифрова електронна апаратура; цифрові електронні схеми

4.2 Read the text “The Government Should Not Subsidize Internet Access” by Mark I. Schwartz

The explosive growth of the Internet has raised concerns about the creation of a "digital divide" between those who can afford Internet access and those who cannot. Will the poor be left behind as jobs and other opportunities in the world economy increasingly shift to Internet-related businesses? Will those with Internet access enjoy educational advantages over those without such access? Should the government step in to help? Attorney Mark Schwartz argues that free-market forces are lowering costs and expanding access more quickly and efficiently than any government action could.

The Government Should Not Subsidize Internet Access

By Mark I. Schwartz

About the author: Mark I. Schwartz is an attorney in the Washington, D.C. office of Piper Marbury Rudnick & Wolfe LLP, where he practices venture capital and technology law. He has authored numerous articles relating to technology, markets, and government.

Free-market capitalism is the engine that created the technological wonderland that we both marvel at and take for granted today. Market forces are rapidly expanding Internet access across society, but the economics behind the Internet's phenomenal growth remain poorly understood by many people. Some observers recommend that the government step in to bridge the "digital divide" between those who can afford Internet access and those who cannot. Government intervention will only distort markets and will ultimately hurt everyone.

Current proposals call for the government to intervene in two ways, and both of them are harmful. One would impose new taxes to subsidize Internet access. The other would impose new regulations that could, among other things, force Internet service providers (ISPs) to give away some access. Each time the government taxes or regulates citizens or companies, it alters the playing field, voiding countless potential exchanges and innovations that would otherwise have taken place. For example, if new regulations cut into the revenues of an ISP, the ISP will have a smaller budget to pursue innovations. The reduction in innovation will harm both the company and its customers.

The free market can correct the digital divide on its own. It is important to understand that by providing economic opportunity and empowering consumers, free-market economies are better at assisting the poor than those characterized by government intervention. Free markets are an integral part of our overall freedom. Government intervention can prove to be harmful to the economy and democratic society as a whole.

The key to making something universally available is affordability, the key to affordability is innovation, and the key to innovation is a free market in goods and services. The explosion of PC and Internet usage clearly demonstrates the power of the free market. According to the research firm PC Data, Inc., from 1995 to 1999 the average price of a PC dropped by almost 50 percent to just over $900. During the same period, the amount of instructions the average computer can process each second has more than doubled. In terms of power for each dollar spent, PC prices have declined to a small fraction of what they were just a few years ago. During this period Internet access has also seen price reductions and a move to monthly rather than hourly rates. Some ISPs are now even providing free service.

Internet access is accelerating the pattern we have already witnessed in the growth of consumer technologies such as televisions, CD players, and a host of others that have become commonplace in American society, all without government intervention. No one would now claim that there was a television divide or a microwave divide. Interestingly, today the price of the average computer is rapidly falling, and in the near future we can expect them to drop below the price of the average television set. Monthly Internet access is already in many cases less expensive than cable television service.

In short, market forces are rapidly bringing computer and Internet access into every home. This is occurring because companies recognize the economic benefits of wiring the countrie’s landscape.

Economic and political freedoms are two sides of the same coin, and anything that reduces freedom in one area of our lives is likely to affect freedom in the rest of our lives.

Government intervention also impedes innovation. The experience of the automobile and railroad industries provides an illustration. These industries serve similar markets and provide similar services. Nevertheless, the passenger rail industry is backward, inefficient, and has displayed little innovation over the past several decades. Do trains in the United States look very different today than they did 20 years ago? By contrast the automobile industry is dynamic. New models and innovations such as satellite navigation, airbags, and antilock brakes appear nearly every year. The passenger rail industry is regulated and protected from competition, whereas the automobile industry is competitive and each company must continually improve its products.

The computer, the commercial Internet, and a nearly endless list of other technologies have taken root in the United States and flourished because of the free market. The free market makes them universally available because it encourages people and companies to find innovative ways of reducing production costs and expanding markets. A popular axiom in economics suggests that if you tax or regulate something, you will end up with less of it. The last thing that the United States needs is less innovation and less creation of wealth in the technology industry, especially since this also means that people will be less free as a result.

4.3 Use the expressions below in the sentences of your own. Try to make a connected text on the problem of developing new technologies in Ukraine.

jobs and other opportunities in the world economy
increasingly shift to Internet-related businesses
free-market forces
lowering costs and expanding access
create the technological wonderland
phenomenal growth
to bridge the divide
impose new taxes
void countless potential exchanges and innovations
provide economic opportunity
empower consumers
to make something universally available
the average price of a … dropped by
in terms of power for each dollar spent
decline to a small fraction of what they are
provide free service
recognize the economic benefits of
economic and political freedoms
two sides of the same coin
continually improve its products
a nearly endless list of other technologies
flourish because of the free market

4.4 Discuss the following questions:

What is the main idea of the essay? What can be said about its structure?
Find the key-word of the essay and speak of its role.
Account for the question mark in the title.
Comment on the author’s conclusion.
Characterize the language of the essay, the author’s choice of words and such stylistic devices as metaphors, epithets, parallel constructions, rethorical questions and speak of their emotional value.

Evaluating a story. Study the piece of theory below and define the style of Text One. Prove your point of view with examples.

Essay, literary composition devoted to the presentation of the writer's own ideas on a topic and generally addressing a particular aspect of the subject. Often brief in scope and informal in style, the essay differs from such formal expository forms as the thesis, dissertation, or treatise.

The essay is fundamentally an invention of the European Renaissance and particularly of the French writer Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. The development of the form may be considered a result of the Renaissance emphasis on the individual, which fostered exploration of one's inner self in relation to the outside world. Montaigne's Essais (as he called the brief personal meditations in prose that he began to publish in 1580) were created in a time of great intellectual and social reorientation—a time when Europeans were readjusting their visions and values with respect to a vast number of matters, including death and the possibility of an afterlife, travel and exploration, and social relationships. All of these remain major themes of the essay.
When Renaissance individualism began to decline, essayists very commonly assumed personas, using descriptive pseudonyms, or they remained anonymous. Their themes continued, however, to be determined by personal points of view. A pseudonym often persuaded readers that they shared something in common with the essayist. Thus, not only for his own protection but perhaps also to establish rapport with his audience, the Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift signed himself “A Drapier” in The Drapier's Letters (1724-1725), and pretended to be an economist in “A Modest Proposal” (1729)—both highly provocative commentaries on conditions in Ireland. In calling his essays on London life Sketches by Boz (1836)—borrowing his brother's childhood nickname—the English writer Charles Dickens continued the tradition. Perhaps the most prodigious assumer of personas was the American humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens , whose social criticism was voiced in essays variously signed Sergeant Fathom, Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, Satan, or W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blabb and Twain, Mark.
Because the essay allows the full range and expression of personal concerns, its style is not fixed. It is not even confined to prose, as the poems Essay on Criticism (1711) and Essay on Man (1733) by the English writer Alexander Pope illustrate. The essay is a flexible form and can be developed at the writer's will. It may be formal, as in Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral (1597-1625) of the English philosopher and statesman Sir Francis Bacon, or casually conversational, as in “On the Pleasure of Hating” (1823) by the English critic William Hazlitt. It may be lyrical, as in Maine Woods (1864) by the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau, or oracular, as in the essays of another American transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson—for example “Fate” (1860). An essay may adopt the form of a letter, embodying whimsical comments on contemporary values, as in the works of the British writers Oliver Goldsmith (Citizen of the World,1762) and C. S. Lewis (Screwtape Letters,1942). Bold contemporary experimenters in the essay form include the American writers Norman Mailer, who developed a style combining biography, cinematic documentary, history, journalism, and fiction in such works as Armies of the Night (1968), reflections on the protests against the Vietnam War (1959-1975); and Tom Wolfe, whose essays (many of them collected in The Purple Decades,1982) are devastatingly witty commentaries on contemporary American trends.

Prominent Russian essayists include Ivan Turgenev (in A Sportsman's Sketches,1852) and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who a century later continued Turgenev's tradition of realistically portraying social injustices. Like Mailer, Solzhenitsyn combined fiction with reportage, and he expanded the essay form to monumental proportions in The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (three volumes, 1974-1978). Thus, despite the opinion popularly held in the later 20th century that the essay had declined or had ceased to be written and read, the form has continued to grow, modified by changing times and values. Additionally, the essay has been translated into the medium of the motion picture. In Louisiana Story (1948), a movie documentary by the American director Robert Flaherty, the narrator focuses events into a point of view as surely as the photographer and the director frame the same events. The documentary in turn influenced the development of the television concept of a “visual periodical,” in programs such as “60 Minutes”; “America,” narrated by the Anglo-American journalist Alistair Cooke; and “Civilisation,” narrated by the English art historian Sir Kenneth Clark.

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