Cast your mind back to the past twenty years and hardly did anyone have their own email account. The Internet had just taken off in 1991 and people were only using office and PCbased email exchanges.
In the mid 1990s external email providers appeared. The most famous of these was Hotmail, the first free email provider and webbased email service. Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched Hotmail on July 4, 1996. And Microsoft took note of and bought Hotmail for $400 million on December 30, 1997, a nice birthday present for Bhatia who turned 29 that day. It was relaunched as MSN Hotmail and in 2007 was relaunched again as Windows Live Hotmail.
Fast forward the present day and most of us have at least a personal webbased email account. It seems impossible to live without them. One of the biggest advantages of email is the fact that munication has bee so much easier, especially with those across different time zones. Email takes seconds to send a message whereas letters, as we used to municate by, could take weeks. Of course there was the fax, that beeping invention from the 1980s, but it wasn’t as secure as email and you never knew if the person on the other end had picked up your fax or if it had got lost somewhere in the office.
In conclusion, one of the best inventions from the 1990s has to be email. But sometimes people are too closely connected to their email and have a pulsion to check it several times a day. At work, people have bee lazy and instead of going to speak to the person sitting next to them, they send an email，causing an in box to pile up with more time spent reading email and responding rather than working. Clearly, an invention that saved time because of its quick and speedy connection can now also cause us to waste a lot of time.
【小题1】The earliest web-based email came into being probably .A．in 1991B．in 1996C．in 1997D．in 2007【小题2】The author mentions “fax” in the third paragraph in order to tell us that .A．it is exactly as good as emailB．it is much better than emailC．it is less convenient than emailD．it is easier and faster than email【小题3】The underlined word “pulsion” in Paragraph 4 probably means “ ”.A．strong desireB．mon senseC．special curiosityD．general idea【小题4】Which is the main idea of the last paragraph?A．We should check email boxes frequently.B．Lazy people like sending an email.C．Email brings us great convenience.D．Good inventions also cause problems.B
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(答案→)B
解析：文章介绍了通信方式的发展变化。自从有了互联网，电子邮件快速发展，得到了广泛的应用。几乎每个人都有一个电子邮件账号。但是，发明给我们带来便利的同时，也会附带有一些问题的出现。
【小题1】根据“In the mid 1990s external email providers appeared. The most famous of these was Hotmail, the first free email provider and webbased email service. Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched Hotmail on July 4, 1996.”可知，基于网络的最早的电子邮件出现在二十世纪九十年代中期，故选B。
【小题2】根据第三段“Of course there was the fax, that beeping invention from the 1980s, but it wasn’t as secure as email and you never knew if the person on the other end had picked up your fax or if it had got lost somewhere in the office.”可知，传真没有电子邮件安全，无法知道对方是否接收了传真，或者把传真的文件放丢了。传真没有电子邮件方便，故选C。
【小题3】根据最后一段“But sometimes people are too closely connected to their email and have a pulsion to check it several times a day.”可知，有时候，人们与电子邮件的联系过于密切，以至于有一种一天查收好几次的欲望。故选A。
【小题4】根据最后一段“Clearly, an invention that saved time because of its quick and speedy connection can now also cause us to waste a lot of time.”可知，好的发明在带来便利的同时，也会引起许多问题。故选D。