It was going to have roughly the effect of a neutron bomb attack on high streets and shop ping malls. The buildings would be left standing but the people would vanish. Such was the superior efficiency of selling things via the Internet that brick-and-mortar stores would be unable to compete on price, choice or even service. Book and music sellers had already been "Amazoned". Soon web-based "category-killers", in everything from toys to pet supplies, would overwhelm their physical-world competitors. Shoppers would never be more than a mouse-click from the best deals. Traditional retailers, terrified of cannibalizing (同类相食) sales and destroying the value of their expensive properties, were already too late to meet the challenge. "In some categories," said Mary Meeker, a seer (预言家) of the Internet at Morgan Stanley, "it's already game over."
These are convenient beliefs for anyone justifying some e-commerce share prices, but they are already mostly wrong. The reasons should surprise no one. The Internet is not a dominant technology but rather a network of people. It is a rich and highly flexible means of communicating that is rapidly achieving pervasiveness because more and more people find it easy and convenient to use. But it is those people's preferences that will count; and for most people, shopping is more than just a means to an end. Even if the Internet provided a perfectly efficient way to shop it would not provide a satisfactory alternative to the physical enjoyment of sniffing a ripe melon, say, or trying on a cashmere sweater.
Of course, some products, such as music and banking, can be distributed electronically with success and cost saving. But most purchases cannot be reduced to digital code. And distributing physical goods is cumbersome (笨重的) and expensive. Behind even the most exciting user interface there are old-fashioned warehouses and lorries, customers who decline to sit at home waiting for purchases to arrive, and goods that must be re-wrapped and expensively returned. No wonder that the cost of getting goods to customers' homes so often soaks up the notional price advantages of e-commerce.
What Internet shoppers have quickly realized is that the web is an addition to, and not a substitute for, their shopping habits. It is wonderful for gathering up-to-date information about products and prices. Cyber Dialogue, a research firm, estimates that in 1998 23m Americans sought information online, but then made their purchases offline, compared with only 17.7m who did the whole thing online.
The author compares ______ of the online sale to the effect of neutron bomb attack.
A．the efficiency
B．the choice
C．the price
D．the service
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Despite their many differences of temperament and of literary perspective, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman share certain beliefs. Common to all these writers is their humanistic perspective. Its basic premises are that humans are the spiritual center of the universe and that in them alone is the clue to nature, history, and ultimately the cosmos itself. Without completely denying the existence either of a deity(the God) or of irrational matter, this perspective nevertheless rejects them as exclusive principles of interpretation and prefers to explain humans and the world in terms of humanity itself. This preference is expressed most clearly in the Transcendentalist principle that the structure of the universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self; therefore, all knowledge begins with self-knowledge.This common perspective is almost always universalized. Its emphasis is not upon the individual as a particular European or American, but upon the human as universal, freed from the accidents of time, space, birth, and talent. Thus, for Emerson, the "American Scholar" turns out to be simply "Man Thinking"; while, for Whitman, the "Song of Myself" merges imperceptibly into a song of all the "children of Adam", where "every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you".Also common to all five writers is the belief that individual virtue and happiness depend upon self-realization, which, in turn, depends upon the harmonious reconciliation of two universal psychological tendencies., first, the self-asserting impulse of the individual to withdraw, to remain unique and separate, and to be responsible only to himself or herself and second, the self-transcending impulse of the individual to embrace the whole world in the experience of a single moment and to know and become one with that world. These conflicting impulses can be seen in the democratic ethic. Democracy advocates individualism, the preservation of the individual"s freedom and self-expression. But the democratic self is torn between the duty to self, which is implied by the concept of liberty, and the duty to society, which is implied by the concepts of equality and fraternity.A third assumption common to the five writers is that intuition and imagination offer a surer road to truth than does abstract logic or scientific method. It is illustrated by their emphasis upon introspection—their belief that the clue to external nature is to be found in the inner world of individual psychology—and by their interpretation of experience as, in essence, symbolic. Both these stresses presume an organic relationship between the self and the cosmos, of which only intuition and imagination can properly take account. These writers" faith in the imagination and in themselves as practitioners of imagination led them to conceive of the writer as a seer and enabled them to achieve supreme confidence in their own moral and metaphysical insights.Notes: Transcendentalist先验论的。self-transcending;超越自我的。ethic伦理标准，道德规范。be torn between,在....之间左右为难。fraternity博爱。introspection 反省。seer预言家,先知。metaphysical形而上学的Which of the following best reflects the humanistic perspective of the five writers？
A．The spiritual and the material worlds are incompatible.B．Humanity can scarcely account for humans and the world.C．Self-knowledge stems partly from the perception of the universe.D．The structure of the universe can be discovered through self-knowledge. -
根据本文下列哪种说法正确？
A、时代不同人类所面临的问题也不同，因此古书中的经验现在完全不适用
B、古代的预言家哲学家和现代最有领悟力的作家在精神上是相通的
C、现代畅销书作家比古代作家更能体会到我们的心灵世界
D、在知识爆炸的时代精通古书就可以获得事业上的成功