Question ID:PT13 S4 Q9 Passage:Oscar: Emerging information technologies will soon make speed of information processing the single most important factor in the creation of individual, corporate, and national wealth. Consequently, the division of the world into northern countries—in general rich—and southern countries—in general poor—will soon be obsolete. Instead, there simply will be fast countries and slow countries, and thus a country’s economic well-being will not be a function of its geographical position but just a matter of its relative success in incorporating those new technologies.Sylvia: But the poor countries of the south lack the economic resources to acquire those technologies and will therefore remain poor. The technologies will thus only widen the existing economic gap between north and south. Stem:The reasoning that Oscar uses in supporting his prediction is vulnerable to criticism on the ground that it Correct Answer Choice:CChoice A:overlooks the possibility that the ability of countries to acquire new technologies at some time in the future will depend on factors other than those countries’ present economic status Choice B:fails to establish that the division of the world into rich countries and poor countries is the single most important problem that will confront the world economy in the future Choice C:ignores the possibility that, in determining a country’s future wealth, the country’s incorporation of information-processing technologies might be outweighed by a combination of other factors Choice D:provides no reason to believe that faster information processing will have only beneficial effects on countries that successfully incorporate new information technologies into their economies Choice E:makes no distinction between those of the world’s rich countries that are the wealthiest and those that are less wealthy