Английский язык: Аннотирование и реферирование текста

223 computers bring to modern society: efficient invasion of privacy, over- reliance on polling in politics, even abdication of control over military decision-making. Data glut obscures basic questions of justice and pur- pose and may even hinder rather than enhance our productivity. Edu- tainment software and computer games degrade the literacy of children. On the other hand, only a few use PCs on network to share information and ideas. In most cases IT is used to speed routine tasks, to automate manual processes rather than to change work patterns and business practices. Most managers use their PCs to edit documents – not a good use of their time when they could be dreaming up creative applications. It is time to evaluate anew the role of science and technology in the af- fairs of the human species. So, if you are riding on the information highway, you should take steps to cope with information overload. The gift of boundless informa- tion is causing a new kind of stress known alternately as technostress, information overload or Information Fatigue Syndrome. Some experts say that we don't get anywhere near the data it takes to overload our neurons. According to some estimates, our mind is capable of process- ing and analyzing many gigabytes of data per second – a lot more data than any of today's supercomputers can process and act on in real time. We feel overloaded by the quantity of information because we are get- ting it unfiltered. We should filter out the junk and turn data into shapes that make sense to us. Stress in moderation is good: it drives us to achieve, stimulates our creativity and is the force behind social and technological breakthroughs. Stress is revealing how humans are in some ways more primitive than the technology they have created. Meditation, muscular relaxation, aerobics, jogging, yoga can be effec- tive stress relievers, but no technique is universal: experiment and find the one that best works for you. The cornerstone of an economy are land, labor, capital and en- trepreneurial spirit. That traditional definition is now being challenged. Today you find a fifth key economic element: information dominant.