当代研究生英语课件U8_Text_A.ppt

Unit 8 Content  Main Idea and Structure First reading: Scan the text and try to catch the main idea. The following words are for your reference to organize the idea: three waves; computer industry; wealth created; typical companies; Internet industry; remarkable; speed; way Text Study Para. 1-2 1 The recent boom in technological advances, formation of new businesses, and personal fortunes is the third, and most dramatic wave generated by the computer industry in the last twenty-five years. The first wave involved tangible products—“hardware”, as opposed to the computer programs that constitute software. In the 1960s and 1970s companies in the Santa Clara Valley, between San Jose and San Francisco, produced silicon memory chips for computers—thus the name Silicon Valley. Then they produced silicon logic chips, which direct a computer’s operation. Then many produced computers as well. 2 The great fortunes from the hardware era include those of the Hewlett and Packard families, of Hewlett-Packard, which started making money in the pre-silicon era, with scientific instruments. The Packard Foundation, with assets of $ 10 billion, recently overtook the Ford Foundation as the nation’s third-largest private foundation. The dominant hardware company of the 1990s is Intel, whose Pentium and other processing chips are used in most personal computers other than the Macintosh. The assets of Gordon Moore, one of Intel’s Para. 2-4 founders are estimated to be worth $15 billion, making him the tenth-richest person in the country. Apple, the first famous personal-computer company, is still based in Silicon Valley. So is Sun Microsystems, a hybrid hardware-software company whose products are used to run many Internet sites and which therefore has been enjoying boom times. Other nearby hardware companies that provide the necessary physical components for the Internet include Cisco Systems and 3Com. 3 But the largest fortune based o