首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
PASSAGE THREE (1) Innovation, the elixir of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution artis
PASSAGE THREE (1) Innovation, the elixir of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution artis
admin
2022-07-06
107
问题
PASSAGE THREE
(1) Innovation, the elixir of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution artisan weavers were swept aside by the mechanical loom. Over the past 30 years the digital revolution has displaced many of the mid-skill jobs that underpinned 20th-century middle-class life. Typists, ticket agents, bank tellers and many production-line jobs have been dispensed with, just as the weavers were.
(2) For those who believe that technological progress has made the world a better place, such churn is a natural part of rising prosperity. Although innovation kills some jobs, it creates new and better ones, as a more productive society becomes richer and its wealthier inhabitants demand more goods and services. Optimism remains the right starting-point, but for workers the dislocating effects of technology may make themselves evident faster than its benefits. Even if new jobs and wonderful products emerge, in the short term income gaps will widen, causing huge social dislocation and perhaps even changing politics.
(3) Why be worried? It is partly just a matter of history repeating itself. In the early part of the Industrial Revolution the rewards of increasing productivity went disproportionately to capital; later on, labor reaped most of the benefits. The pattern today is similar. The prosperity unleashed by the digital revolution has gone overwhelmingly to the owners of capital and the highest-skilled workers. Over the past three decades, labor’s share of output has shrunk globally from 64% to 59%. Meanwhile, the share of income going to the top 1% in America has risen from around 9% in the 1970s to 22% today. Unemployment is at alarming levels in much of the rich world, and not just for cyclical reasons. Fifteen years ago, 65% of working-age Americans were in work; since then the proportion has fallen, during good years as well as bad, to the current level of 59%.
(4) Worse, it seems likely that this wave of technological disruption to the job market has only just started. From driverless cars to clever household gadgets, innovations that already exist could destroy swathes of jobs that have hitherto been untouched. The public sector is one obvious target: it has proved singularly resistant to tech-driven reinvention. But the step change in what computers can do will have a powerful effect on middle-class jobs in the private sector too.
(5) Until now the jobs most vulnerable to machines were those that involved routine, repetitive tasks. But thanks to the exponential rise in processing power and the ubiquity of digitised information ("big data"), computers are increasingly able to perform complicated tasks more cheaply and effectively than people. Clever industrial robots can quickly "learn" a set of human actions. Services may be even more vulnerable. Computers can already detect intruders in a closed-circuit camera picture more reliably than a human can. By comparing reams of financial or biometric data, they can often diagnose fraud or illness more accurately than any number of accountants or doctors.
(6) At the same time, the digital revolution is transforming the process of innovation itself. Thanks to off-the-shelf code from the internet and platforms that host services (such as Amazon’s cloud computing), provide distribution (Apple’s app store) and offer marketing (Facebook), the number of digital startups has exploded. Just as computer-games designers invented a product that humanity never knew it needed but now cannot do without, so these firms will no doubt dream up new goods and services to employ millions. But for now they are singularly light on workers. When Instagram, a popular photo-sharing site, was sold to Facebook for about $1 billion in 2012, it had 30 million customers and employed 13 people. Kodak, which filed for bankruptcy a few months earlier, employed 145,000 people in its heyday.
(7) The problem is one of timing as much as anything. Google now employs 46,000 people. But it takes years for new industries to grow, whereas the disruption a startup causes to incumbents is felt sooner. Airbnb may turn homeowners with spare rooms into entrepreneurs, but it poses a direct threat to the lower end of the hotel business—a massive employer.
(8) If this analysis is halfway correct, the social effects will be huge. Many of the jobs most at risk are lower down the ladder (logistics, haulage), whereas the skills that are least vulnerable to automation (creativity, managerial expertise) tend to be higher up, so median wages are likely to remain stagnant for some time and income gaps are likely to widen.
(9) Anger about rising inequality is bound to grow, but politicians will find it hard to address the problem. Shunning progress would be as futile now as the Luddites’ protests against mechanised looms were in the 1810s, because any country that tried to stop would be left behind by competitors eager to embrace new technology. The freedom to raise taxes on the rich to punitive levels will be similarly constrained by the mobility of capital and highly skilled labour.
(10) The main way in which governments can help their people through this dislocation is through education systems. One of the reasons for the improvement in workers’ fortunes in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution was because schools were built to educate them—a dramatic change at the time. Now those schools themselves need to be changed, to foster the creativity that humans will need to set them a-part from computers. There should be less rote-learning and more critical thinking. Technology itself will help, whether through MOOCs (massive open online courses) or even video games that simulate the skills needed for work.
(11) Yet however well people are taught, their abilities will remain unequal, and in a world which is increasingly polarised economically, many will find their job prospects dimmed and wages squeezed. The best way of helping them is not, as many on the left seem to think, to push up minimum wages. Jacking up the floor too far would accelerate the shift from human workers to computers. Better to top up low wages with public money so that anyone who works has a reasonable income, through a bold expansion of the tax credits that countries such as America and Britain use.
(12) Innovation has brought great benefits to humanity. Nobody in their right mind would want to return to the world of handloom weavers. But the benefits of technological progress are unevenly distributed, especially in the early stages of each new wave, and it is up to governments to spread them. In the 19th century it took the threat of revolution to bring about progressive reforms. Today’s governments would do well to start making the changes needed before their people get angry.
Why is it harder for the politicians to address the problem?
选项
A、 The mobility of the national capital is confined.
B、Protest against digitalized technology is singularly strong.
C、They cannot afford to get around the new technology.
D、The analysis of new technology is only halfway correct.
答案
C
解析
根据题干中的politicians定位到第9段。第9段第3句提到,回避进步(Shunning progress)是徒劳的,根据语境可知,此处的progress指的就是科技的进步,故选项C为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/JGnD777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
使用VC++6.0打开考生文件夹下的源程序文件3.cpp。其中定义的类不完整,按要求完成下列操作,将类的定义补充完整。(1)基类People完成打印功能,定义其中的打印函数为虚函数。请在注释1后添加适当的语句。(2)类Boy继承于类Pe
Ifyouarelooking【C1】________information,libraryshelvesareagoodplace【C2】________.Butifyouneedup-to-the-minutedatao
Ifyouarelooking【C1】________information,libraryshelvesareagoodplace【C2】________.Butifyouneedup-to-the-minutedatao
Thereisdistinctionbetweenreadingforinformationandreadingforunderstanding.【B1】________Thefirstsenseistheonei
WhenIwasyoung,bedtimewasalwaysmyfavoritepartoftheday.WearingsoftpajamasandwithTom,mystuffedmonkey,inmyar
ItwasClark’sfirstvisittoEngland,andhewaslookingforwardtohisfirstjourneyonLondon’sUndergroundRailway.Against【
Wefeelitisimportanttostartreadingtoyourchildrightfromthestart—theyoungerthebetter!Withlittleones(childrenf
EachtimeItaketheunderground1findmyself【K1】________(surround)bydozensofpassengersplayingsmart-phones.Theyalmostw
Whenshouldalistenertalktothesupervisor?
PASSAGETWO(1)In1823,ThomasJeffersonwrote:"IamnotfullyinformedofthepracticesatHarvard,butthereisonefrom
随机试题
对清管段基本情况描述不考虑安全工作压力。()
A.残气量B.功能余气量C.肺活量D.用力肺活量E.用力呼气量属于基本肺容积的是
三大营养物质在体内代谢的叙述,错误的是
患者,女,38岁。2年前因跌伤,左眼下睑皮肤裂伤,自行愈合。1年后下睑中下方发现一小包块,皮肤破溃并结痂愈合,反复不愈。6个月前出现下睑外翻,两次外翻矫正手术均未成功。眼科检查:左眼下睑局部皮肤下陷粘连,眼睑明显外翻畸形。询问病史应重点注意
关于扣缴义务人,下列哪一说法是错误的?(2011年卷一30题)
(2008)剩余电流(漏电)保护不能作为哪类保护功能使用?
背景资料:某大型水利水电工程由政府投资兴建。项目法人委托某招标代理公司代理施工招标。招标代理公司依据有关规定确定该项目采用公开招标方式招标,招标公告在当地政府规定的招标信息网上发布。招标文件中规定:投标担保可采用投标保证金或投标保函方式担保。评标方法采用
光华股份有限公司注册资本为9000万元,2004年末的净资产为12000万元,法定盈余公积余额为4500万元,2005年初,经股东大会决议通过,拟将法定盈余公积金转增股本,本次转增股本最多不得超过()万元。
关于“丝绸之路经济带”下列说法正确的是()。①是中国经济发展及外交事业的一大重要构想②东边牵着亚太经济圈,西边系着欧洲经济圈③被认为是“世界上最长,最具有发展潜力的经济大走廊”④首先是一个“政治带”概念
“教育成本分摊机制”提出于()
最新回复
(
0
)