Material culture refers to the touchable, material “things”—physical objects that can be seen, held, felt, used—that a culture produces. Examining a culture’s tools and technology can tell us about the group’s history and way of life. Similarly, research into the material culture of music can help us to understand the music-culture. The most vivid body of “things” in it, of course, are musical instruments. We cannot hear for ourselves the actual sound of any musical performance before the 1870s when the phonograph was invented, so we rely on instruments for important information about music-cultures it the remote past and their development. Here we have two kinds of evidence: instruments well preserved and instruments pictures in art. Through the study of instruments, as well preserved Paintings, written documents, and so on, we can explore the movement of music from the Neat East to China over a thousand years ago, or we can outline the spread of Near eastern influence to Europe that results in the development of most of the instruments on the symphony orchestra.
    Sheet music or printed music, too is material culture. Scholars once defined folk music-cultures as those in with people learn and sing music by ear rather than from print, but research show mutual influence among oral and written sources during the past few centuries in Europe, Britain, and America, printed versions limit variety because they tend to standardize any song, yet they stimulate people to create new and different songs. Besides, the ability to read music notation has a far-reaching effect on musicians and, when it becomes widespread, on the music-culture as a whole.
    One more important part of music’s material culture should be singled out the influence of the electronic media-radio, record player, tape recorder, television, and videocassette, with the future promising talking and singing computers and other developments. This all part of the “information revolution,” a twentieth century phenomenon as important as the industrial revolution was in the nineteenth. These electronic media are not just limited to modem nations; they have affected music-cultures all over the globe.

    The question of whether war is inevitable is one which has concerned many of the world’s great writers. Before considering this question, it will useful to introduce some related concepts. Conflict, defined as opposition among social entities directed against one another is distinguished from competition, defined as opposition among social entities independently striving for some thing which is in inadequate supply. Competitors may not be aware of one another, while the parties to a conflict are. Conflict and vice of one another.
    Opposition is thus contrasted with cooperation, the process by which social entities function in the service of one another. These definitions are necessary because it is important to emphasize that competition between individuals or groups is inevitable in a world of limited resources, but conflict is not. Conflict, nevertheless, is very likely to occur, and is probably an essential and desirable element of human societies.
    Many authors have argued for the inevitability of war from the premise that in the struggle for existence among animal species, only the fittest survive. In general, however this struggle in nature’s competition, not conflict. Social animals, such as monkeys and cattle, fight to win or maintain leadership of the group. The struggle for existence occurs not in such fights but in the competition for limited feeding areas and for the occupancy of areas free from meet-eating animals. Those who fail in competition starve to death or become victims to other species. This struggle for existence does not resemble human war, but rather the competition of individuals for jobs, markets, and materials. The essence of the struggle is the competition for the necessities of life that are insufficient to satisfy all.
    Among nations there is competition in developing resources trades, skills, and a satisfactory way of life. The successful nations grow and prosper; the unsuccessful decline. While it is true that this competition may induce efforts to expand territory at the expense of others, and thus lead to conflict, it cannot be said that war-like conflict among nations is inevitable, although competition is.

    As Dr. Samuel Johnson said in a different era about ladies preaching, the surprising thing about computer is not that they think less well than a man, but that they think at all. The early electronic computer did not have much going for it except a marvelous memory and some good math skills. But today the best models can be wired up to learn by experience, follow an argument, ask proper questions and write poetry and write poetry and music. They can also carry on somewhat puzzling conversations.
    Computers imitate life. As computer get more complex, the imitation gets better. Finally, the line between the original and the copy becomes unclear. In another 15 years or so, we will the computer as a new form of life.
    The opinion seems ridiculous because, for one thing, computers lack the drives and emotions of living creatures. But drives car can be programmed into the computer’s brain just as nature programmed them into our human brains as a part of the equipment for survival.
    Computers match people in some roles, and when fast decisions are needed in a crisis, they often surpass them. Having evolved when the pace of life was slower, the human brain has an inherent defect that prevents it from absorbing several streams of information simultaneously and acting on them quickly. Throw too many things at the brain one time and it freezes up.
    We are still control, but the capabilities of computer are increasing at a fantastic rate, while raw human intelligence is changing slowly, if as all. Computer power has increased ten times every eight years since 1946. In the 1990s, when the sixth generation appears, the reasoning power of an intelligence built out of silicon will begin to match that of the human brain.
    That does not mean the evolution of intelligence has ended on the earth. Judging by the he past, we can expect that a new species will arise out of man, surpassing his achievements those of his predecessor. Only a carbon chemistry enthusiast would assume that the new species must be man’s flesh-and-blood descendants. The new kind of intelligent life is more I likely to be made of silicon.

    Video recorders and photocopiers, even ticket machines on the railways, often seem unnecessarily difficult to use. Last December I bought myself a Video cassette recorder (VCR) described as “simple to use”. In the first three weeks I failed repeatedly to program the machine to record from the TV, and after months of practice I still made mistakes. I am not alone. According to a survey last year by Ferguson, the British manufacturer, more than one in four VCR owners never use the timer on their machines to record a programme: they don’t use it because they’ve found it far too hard to operate.
    So why do manufacturers keep on designing and producing VCRS that are awkward to use if the problems are so obvious?
    First, the problems we notice are not obvious to technically minded designers with years of experience and trained to understand how appliances work. Secondly, designers tend to add one or two features at a time to each model, whereas you or I face all a machine’s features at once. Thirdly, although find problems in a finished product is easily, it is too late by then to do anything about the design. Finally, if manufacturers can get away with selling products that are difficult to use it, it is not worth the effort of any one of them to make improvements.
    Some manufacturers say they concentrate on providing a wide range of features rather than on making the machines easy to use. But that gives rise to the question, “why can’t you have features that are easy to use?” The answer is you can.
    Good design practice is a mixture of specific procedures and general principles. For a start, designers should build an original model of the machine and try it out on typical members of the public-not on colleagues in the development laboratory. Simple pubic trials would quickly reveal many design mistakes. In an ideal world, there would be some ways of controlling quality such as that the VCR must be redesigned repeatedly until, say, 90 percent of users can work 90 per cent of the features correctly 90 per cent of the time.

    Most studies suggest that when women and men do the same job and have the experience, pay rates tend to be similar. Most of the dollar differences stem from fact that (S1)women tend to be more recently employed and have more (S2) years on the job. Whether women who have started a career will attain pay equality with men rest on at least two factors. (S3)
    First, will most of them continue part time at their jobs after (S4)they have children? A break in their employment, or a decision (S5) to work part time, will slow its raises and promotions because it would for men. Second, will male-dominated (S6)companies elevate women to higher-paid jobs at the different (S7)rate as they elevate men? On some fields, this had clearly not (S8)happened. Many men, for example, have committed their (S9)lives to teaching careers, yet relative few have become (S10) principals or headmasters.

Why I Take the College English Test Band 6?