[简答题]A级: The diffusion of knowledge is the dominant trend of our time. What was happening in Britain duringthe Industrial Revolution was not an isolated phenomenon. A succession of visitors to Britain would go backto their countries to report on the technological innovations they saw there. Sometimes societies were able tolearn extremely fast, as in the United States. Others, like Italy, benefited from starting late, leapfrogging thelong-drawn-out process that Britain went through. This diffusion of knowledge accelerated dramatically in recent years. Over the last 30 years we havewatched countries like Japan, Singapore and now China grow at a pace that is four times that of Britain at tilepeak of the Industrial Revolution. They have been able to do this because of their energies, of course, butalso because they cleverly adopted certain ideas about development that had worked in the Westrelatively free markets, open trade, a focus on science and technology, among them. And this shift ishap