浙江省天台县平桥第二中学 2014 届高三英语 上学期读写备考训练 7The internet will open up new vistas (前景), create the global village- -you can make new friends all around the world. That, at least, is what it promised us. The difficulty is that it did not take the human mind into account. The reality is that we cannot keep relationships with more than a limited number of people. No matter how hard the internet tries to put you in communication, its best efforts will be defeated by your mind.The problem is twofold（双重的）. First, there is a limit on the number of people we can hold in mind and have a meaningful relationship with. That number is about 150 and is set by the size of our brain. Second, the quality of your relationships depends on the amount of time you invest （投入） in them . We invest a lot in a small number of people and then distribute what’s left among as many others as we can. The problem is that if we invest little time in a person, our engagement with that person will decline（减弱）until eventually it dies into “someone I once knew”.This is not, of course, to say that the internet doesn’t serve a socially valuable function. Of course it does. But the question is not that it allows you to increase the size of your social circle to include the rest of the world, but that you can keep your relationships with your existing friends going even though you have to move to the other side of the world.In one sense, that’s a good thing. But it also has a disadvantage. If you continue to invest in your old friends even though you can no longe r see them, then certainly you aren’t using your time to make new friends where you now live. And I suspect...
