There’s a great story about an old Finnish woman who, without quite realizing it, was

using her cell-phone to access the Internet and track her city’s public transit system. (有个好故事是关于一位芬兰老妇女的，她在完全不了解的情况下用她的手机上网并追踪她城市的公共交通系统。)When asked why she used the wireless Internet so frequently, she replied, “What are you talking about？ I don’t know anything about this wireless Internet stuff. I just know the bus is here.”

Regardless of whether you want to admit it, a lot of us are like that old Finnish woman. When it comes to new mobile applications, many of us do not realize the capability and power that we hold, literally, in our hands.

What we are looking at today is the mobile Internet in its infancy. Now that using the Internet from home or work has saturated much of society, the next logical step is to be able to use the Net when you are far away from your desktop or laptop. Speech recognition is one way to do this, and there are a number of services, collectively called the “voice Web”, that will make this possible. All you do is to use a phone or wireless device to call a phone number, and speak commands to an intuitive system. It will then give you the information you’re seeking, using either a synthesized voice or an audio file.

In the United States and Europe, the hot technology for wireless devices is called WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), which is being considered as the world standard. WAP is supported by major phone companies including Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson, and is simply a means of transmitting information, much like HTML which is a means of communicating on the Internet.

Currently, wireless Internet connections may give you news, sports scores, stock quotes, and the weather if you’re lucky. But if you’ve ever used this technology, you know it’s slow, costly and doesn’t seem worth the time and effort, if it works at all. All of this technology points to easier living. Perhaps you’ll need to find a restaurant for an occasional business meeting. You’ll press a button on your mobile phone, and access the Internet to pull up a list of great restaurants in your immediate area. You’ll hit another button, say a few words into the handset and you’ve got a reservation for four.

1.The author uses the story of an old Finnish woman to indicate that __________.

A.she is ignorant of some common knowledge

B.public transit system contains the accessory to Internet

C.many people are unaware of the function of the new appliances being used

D.the Internet is experiencing rapid growth

2.The word “saturate”(Para. 3) most probably means _________.

A.state

B.utilize

C.despise

D.fill

3.According to the text, WAP is a __________.

A.technology standard set by major phone companies