Questões de Inglês

Mobile milestones: how your phone

 became an essential part of your life

    Has any device changed our lives as much, and as quickly, as the mobile phone? There are people today for whom the world of address books, street atlases and phone boxes seems very far away, lost in the mists of time. Following, there are just some of the big milestones from the past 30 years that have made almost everything we do easier, more public and very, very fast.

• The first phones arrive – and become status symbols

    Few people got the chance to use the very early mobile phones. The first call was made in New York in 1973, but handsets with a network to use were not available until 1983 in the US, and 1985 in the UK. That first British mobile phone was essentially a heavy briefcase with a receiver attached by a wire. It cost £2,000 (£5,000 in today’s prices), and gave you half an hour’s chat on an overnight charge. Making a call was not something you could do subtly, but that wasn’t the point; the first handsets were there to be seen. They sent a message that you were bold and confident with new technology, that you were busy and important enough to need a mobile phone, and were rich enough to buy one.

• Text messages spawn a whole new language

    The first mobiles worked with analogue signals and could only make phone calls, but the digital ones that followed in the early 1990s could send SMS messages as well. After the first message was sent on 3 December 1992, texting took off like a rocket, even though it was still a pretty cumbersome procedure. Handsets with predictive text would make things easier, but in the 1990s you could save a lot of time by removing all excess letters from a message, often the vowels, and so txtspk ws brn. Today the average mobile phone sends more than 100 texts per month.

• Phones turn us all into photographers...

    There seemed to be no good reason for the first camera phones, which began to appear in 2002, with resolutions of about 0.3 megapixels. They took grainy, blurry pictures on postage stamp-sized screens, and even these filled the phone’s memory in no time. Gradually, though, as the quality improved, the uses followed. As well as the usual photos of friends and family, they were handy for “saving” pieces of paper, and in pubs you could take a picture of the specials board and take it back to your table. Modern camera phones have changed beyond recognition in the past 20 years. The new mobile phones boast the highest resolution dual camera on a smartphone: a 16-megapixel camera and a 20-megapixel camera side-by-side. The dual camera allows users to focus on their subjects, while blurring out the background, producing professional-looking portraits.

• …and we turn ourselves into celebrities

    Twenty years ago people would have thought you a little strange if you took flattering photos of yourself and your lifestyle and then distributed them to your friends – let alone to members of the public. If you used printed photographs rather than a smartphone app, they would still think so today. Yet sharing our lives on social media is now the norm, not the exception – and it was the camera phone that made it all possible. Now, some phones come with an enormous 64GB of memory, so you can capture, share and store an almost countless number of videos and pictures – well, certainly enough to keep up with the Kardashians.

(www.theguardian.com, 07.07.2017. Adaptado.)

No trecho do terceiro parágrafo “by removing all excess letters from a message, often the vowels, and so txtspk ws brn”, o termo em destaque indica ideia de

Mobile milestones: how your phone

 became an essential part of your life

    Has any device changed our lives as much, and as quickly, as the mobile phone? There are people today for whom the world of address books, street atlases and phone boxes seems very far away, lost in the mists of time. Following, there are just some of the big milestones from the past 30 years that have made almost everything we do easier, more public and very, very fast.

• The first phones arrive – and become status symbols

    Few people got the chance to use the very early mobile phones. The first call was made in New York in 1973, but handsets with a network to use were not available until 1983 in the US, and 1985 in the UK. That first British mobile phone was essentially a heavy briefcase with a receiver attached by a wire. It cost £2,000 (£5,000 in today’s prices), and gave you half an hour’s chat on an overnight charge. Making a call was not something you could do subtly, but that wasn’t the point; the first handsets were there to be seen. They sent a message that you were bold and confident with new technology, that you were busy and important enough to need a mobile phone, and were rich enough to buy one.

• Text messages spawn a whole new language

    The first mobiles worked with analogue signals and could only make phone calls, but the digital ones that followed in the early 1990s could send SMS messages as well. After the first message was sent on 3 December 1992, texting took off like a rocket, even though it was still a pretty cumbersome procedure. Handsets with predictive text would make things easier, but in the 1990s you could save a lot of time by removing all excess letters from a message, often the vowels, and so txtspk ws brn. Today the average mobile phone sends more than 100 texts per month.

• Phones turn us all into photographers...

    There seemed to be no good reason for the first camera phones, which began to appear in 2002, with resolutions of about 0.3 megapixels. They took grainy, blurry pictures on postage stamp-sized screens, and even these filled the phone’s memory in no time. Gradually, though, as the quality improved, the uses followed. As well as the usual photos of friends and family, they were handy for “saving” pieces of paper, and in pubs you could take a picture of the specials board and take it back to your table. Modern camera phones have changed beyond recognition in the past 20 years. The new mobile phones boast the highest resolution dual camera on a smartphone: a 16-megapixel camera and a 20-megapixel camera side-by-side. The dual camera allows users to focus on their subjects, while blurring out the background, producing professional-looking portraits.

• …and we turn ourselves into celebrities

    Twenty years ago people would have thought you a little strange if you took flattering photos of yourself and your lifestyle and then distributed them to your friends – let alone to members of the public. If you used printed photographs rather than a smartphone app, they would still think so today. Yet sharing our lives on social media is now the norm, not the exception – and it was the camera phone that made it all possible. Now, some phones come with an enormous 64GB of memory, so you can capture, share and store an almost countless number of videos and pictures – well, certainly enough to keep up with the Kardashians.

(www.theguardian.com, 07.07.2017. Adaptado.)

According to the third paragraph, people started to shorten words when writing messages by mobile phone because

Mobile milestones: how your phone

 became an essential part of your life

    Has any device changed our lives as much, and as quickly, as the mobile phone? There are people today for whom the world of address books, street atlases and phone boxes seems very far away, lost in the mists of time. Following, there are just some of the big milestones from the past 30 years that have made almost everything we do easier, more public and very, very fast.

• The first phones arrive – and become status symbols

    Few people got the chance to use the very early mobile phones. The first call was made in New York in 1973, but handsets with a network to use were not available until 1983 in the US, and 1985 in the UK. That first British mobile phone was essentially a heavy briefcase with a receiver attached by a wire. It cost £2,000 (£5,000 in today’s prices), and gave you half an hour’s chat on an overnight charge. Making a call was not something you could do subtly, but that wasn’t the point; the first handsets were there to be seen. They sent a message that you were bold and confident with new technology, that you were busy and important enough to need a mobile phone, and were rich enough to buy one.

• Text messages spawn a whole new language

    The first mobiles worked with analogue signals and could only make phone calls, but the digital ones that followed in the early 1990s could send SMS messages as well. After the first message was sent on 3 December 1992, texting took off like a rocket, even though it was still a pretty cumbersome procedure. Handsets with predictive text would make things easier, but in the 1990s you could save a lot of time by removing all excess letters from a message, often the vowels, and so txtspk ws brn. Today the average mobile phone sends more than 100 texts per month.

• Phones turn us all into photographers...

    There seemed to be no good reason for the first camera phones, which began to appear in 2002, with resolutions of about 0.3 megapixels. They took grainy, blurry pictures on postage stamp-sized screens, and even these filled the phone’s memory in no time. Gradually, though, as the quality improved, the uses followed. As well as the usual photos of friends and family, they were handy for “saving” pieces of paper, and in pubs you could take a picture of the specials board and take it back to your table. Modern camera phones have changed beyond recognition in the past 20 years. The new mobile phones boast the highest resolution dual camera on a smartphone: a 16-megapixel camera and a 20-megapixel camera side-by-side. The dual camera allows users to focus on their subjects, while blurring out the background, producing professional-looking portraits.

• …and we turn ourselves into celebrities

    Twenty years ago people would have thought you a little strange if you took flattering photos of yourself and your lifestyle and then distributed them to your friends – let alone to members of the public. If you used printed photographs rather than a smartphone app, they would still think so today. Yet sharing our lives on social media is now the norm, not the exception – and it was the camera phone that made it all possible. Now, some phones come with an enormous 64GB of memory, so you can capture, share and store an almost countless number of videos and pictures – well, certainly enough to keep up with the Kardashians.

(www.theguardian.com, 07.07.2017. Adaptado.)

The mobile phones connected to a network were first accessible

Mobile milestones: how your phone

 became an essential part of your life

    Has any device changed our lives as much, and as quickly, as the mobile phone? There are people today for whom the world of address books, street atlases and phone boxes seems very far away, lost in the mists of time. Following, there are just some of the big milestones from the past 30 years that have made almost everything we do easier, more public and very, very fast.

• The first phones arrive – and become status symbols

    Few people got the chance to use the very early mobile phones. The first call was made in New York in 1973, but handsets with a network to use were not available until 1983 in the US, and 1985 in the UK. That first British mobile phone was essentially a heavy briefcase with a receiver attached by a wire. It cost £2,000 (£5,000 in today’s prices), and gave you half an hour’s chat on an overnight charge. Making a call was not something you could do subtly, but that wasn’t the point; the first handsets were there to be seen. They sent a message that you were bold and confident with new technology, that you were busy and important enough to need a mobile phone, and were rich enough to buy one.

• Text messages spawn a whole new language

    The first mobiles worked with analogue signals and could only make phone calls, but the digital ones that followed in the early 1990s could send SMS messages as well. After the first message was sent on 3 December 1992, texting took off like a rocket, even though it was still a pretty cumbersome procedure. Handsets with predictive text would make things easier, but in the 1990s you could save a lot of time by removing all excess letters from a message, often the vowels, and so txtspk ws brn. Today the average mobile phone sends more than 100 texts per month.

• Phones turn us all into photographers...

    There seemed to be no good reason for the first camera phones, which began to appear in 2002, with resolutions of about 0.3 megapixels. They took grainy, blurry pictures on postage stamp-sized screens, and even these filled the phone’s memory in no time. Gradually, though, as the quality improved, the uses followed. As well as the usual photos of friends and family, they were handy for “saving” pieces of paper, and in pubs you could take a picture of the specials board and take it back to your table. Modern camera phones have changed beyond recognition in the past 20 years. The new mobile phones boast the highest resolution dual camera on a smartphone: a 16-megapixel camera and a 20-megapixel camera side-by-side. The dual camera allows users to focus on their subjects, while blurring out the background, producing professional-looking portraits.

• …and we turn ourselves into celebrities

    Twenty years ago people would have thought you a little strange if you took flattering photos of yourself and your lifestyle and then distributed them to your friends – let alone to members of the public. If you used printed photographs rather than a smartphone app, they would still think so today. Yet sharing our lives on social media is now the norm, not the exception – and it was the camera phone that made it all possible. Now, some phones come with an enormous 64GB of memory, so you can capture, share and store an almost countless number of videos and pictures – well, certainly enough to keep up with the Kardashians.

(www.theguardian.com, 07.07.2017. Adaptado.)

No texto, um dos exemplos da expressão “big milestones” (1^o parágrafo) é

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Read the text below and answer the question that follow.

What Climate Scientists Want You to See in the Floodwaters

[…] As scientists who study climate risks and how societies can respond, we have been jolted to think hard about our best understanding of why disasters like the hurricane in Texas and the floods in Bangladesh occur, how a changing climate cranks up the odds and what we might do differently.

[…]

We start with two premises. Climate change doesn’t cause extreme events. It amplifies them. And in any weather-related calamity, our susceptibility to harm is, at its root, constructed by ourselves.

On the climate side of risk, we have unambiguous evidence that the hazards are changing. Our emissions of heat-trapping gases have already increased the likelihood and severity of heat waves, extreme rainfall and storm surges. Much of the world’s population occupies places susceptible to this kind of extreme weather that will increasingly be exacerbated by the changing climate.[…] Put simply, a warmer atmosphere can hold more water, increasing the potential for heavy downpours[…] And warmer oceans can produce more intense hurricanes, as has occurred in the North Atlantic and the Gulf. 

Unprecedented is increasingly the norm. Without ambitious efforts to drive down global emissions, the changes will be stark, with up to eight feet [2,43m] of sea level rise possible this century. […]

On the human side of risk, we should as a society embrace the fact that how and where we build our homes, plant our crops, construct our roads and bridges, and locate our schools and industries can provide resilience and safety rather than invite calamity. When rivers overtop their banks with floodwaters, for instance, does the water flow into wide-open flood plains and city streets with good drainage, or are those flood plains paved over and the drainage clogged?[…]

We can take actions today that will make us more prepared, no matter what tomorrow holds. People can elevate power outlets in their homes, know their evacuation zone and have an emergency plan. Buildings can be raised and designed to resist hurricane-force winds. Such methods are tested and known to save lives and money. […]

We are not completely at the whims of the weather. With available tools and an eye toward the future, we can limit the amount of climate change that occurs, minimize the risks that remain and build a resilient future.

Katharine MACH and Miyuki HINO, New York Times, September 2nd, 2017.

With reference to the use of the Modal Auxiliary can in the last two paragraphs of the text, it is correct to affirm that it indicates: