In the future the little privacy we now have will be gone. Some people call this loss of privacy ’’Orwellian"，harking back to 1984. George Orwell’s classic work on privacy and autonomy. In that book, Orwell imagined a future in which a totalitarian state used spies, video surveillance, and control over the media to maintain its power. But the age of monolithic state control is over. The future we're rushing toward isn't one in which our every move is watched and recorded by an all-known government. It is instead a future of a hundred electronic monitors who constantly watch and interrupt our daily lives, and where threats to privacy find their roots in the free market, advanced technology, and the unbridled exchange of electronic information.
The problem with the word "privacy"’ is that it falls short of conveying the really big picture. Privacy isn't just about hiding things. It’s about self-possession, autonomy, and integrity. As we move into the computerized world of the 21 century, privacy will be one of our most important civil rights. But this right of privacy isn't the right of people to close their doors and pull down their window shades-perhaps because they want to engage in some sort of illicit or illegal activity. It’s the right of people to control which details about their lives stay inside their own houses and which leak to the outside.
Today's war on privacy is intimately related to the recent dramatic advances in technology. Many people today say that in order to enjoy the benefits of modem society, we must necessarily relinquish some degree of privacy. If we want the convenience of paying for a meal by credit card, then we must accept the routine collection of our purchases in a large database over which we have no control.
This trade-off is both unnecessary and wrong. It reminds me of another crisis our society faced back in the fifties and sixties-the environmental crisis. Then, advocates of big business said that poisoned rivers and lakes were the necessary costs of economic development, jobs, and an improved standard of living. Poison was progress: anybody who argued otherwise simply didn’t understand the facts.
Today we know better. Today we know that sustainable economic development depends on preserving the environment. Similarly, in order to reap the benefits of technology. It is more important than ever for us to use technology to protect personal freedom.
1.The passage indicates that privacy is （ ）.
2.In line 18, the underlined ”degree” most nearly means （ ）.
3.Lines 18-20("If we....control”) primarily serve to （ ）.
4.The statements in lines 24-25(’’poison" facts”) is intended to represent the point of view of （ ）.
5.The passage concludes by suggesting that if technology is to have a positive effect on people’s lives, then （ ）.
6.The author supports the idea that privacy can be protected（ ）.
