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
(1)Innovation, the elixir of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution artisan weavers were swep
(1)Innovation, the elixir of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution artisan weavers were swep
admin
2018-09-19
50
问题
(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.
It can be concluded that the author is towards _____ technological progress.
选项
A、indifferent
B、neutral
C、positive
D、negative
答案
B
解析
最后一段首先肯定了科技进步带来的创新的长处,强调没有人会愿意回到过去,接着又提到科技浪潮的初期会引起分配不均,这又是其弊端,所以作者看到其利弊双方,是中立的,故选B。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/fhEK777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
ApprenticeshipshavelongbeenpopularinEurope,butworkforce-orientedhighschooltrainingisnearlyascommonin【M1】______U
ApprenticeshipshavelongbeenpopularinEurope,butworkforce-orientedhighschooltrainingisnearlyascommonin【M1】______U
CableTVhasexperiencedtremendousgrowthasanadvertisingmediumbecauseithassomeimportantadvantages.Aprimaryoneis
CableTVhasexperiencedtremendousgrowthasanadvertisingmediumbecauseithassomeimportantadvantages.Aprimaryoneis
ForgetexpensiveeducationalDVDsandprivatetutors,thesecrettosmartchildrencouldbesosimpleasgivingbirth【M1】______
Losingweightiseasierwhenthereismoneyontheline,U.S.researcherssaidonTuesday.Theysaidweight-lossprogramsthat
当我在小学毕了业的时候,亲友一致的愿意我去学手艺,好帮助母亲。我晓得我应当去找饭吃,以减轻母亲的勤劳困苦。可是,我也愿意升学。我偷偷地考入了师范学校——制服,饭食,书籍,宿处,都由学校供给。只有这样,我才敢对母亲提升学的话。入学,要交十元的保证会。这是一笔
PASSAGEONEWhatdoesPara.2tellusabouttherestaurantbusinessontheAlentejocoastthroughouttheyear?
Foryears,nonprofithospitalshaveshiedawayfromquantifyingtheamountofcharitablecaretheyprovidecommunities.Hospit
(1)It’sagoldenageforstudyinginequality.ThomasPiketty,aFrencheconomist,setthebenchmarkin2014whenhisbook,"Capi
随机试题
解救苯巴比妥重度中毒昏迷患者时为加速毒物排泄应首选
张某再婚,其所在的某区街道办事处拒绝为张某及其再婚对象办理结婚登记。1个月后,张某以街道办事处作为婚姻登记机关不履行法定职责为由,提起行政复议。据此,本案的行政复议机关为()。
论述教师上好课的基本要求。(2015.海南)
材料内容:文段大致为一篇有关小城镇建设的问题。第一段:随着经济社会的发展,农村的发展显得更慢,不能更好地满足农民的物质文化需要,因此大力推行小城镇建设。第二段:H市有一个大河村,需要进行搬迁,市政府派遣了一个工作组进驻该村,刘华是市环保
试论述教育研究方法的一般过程。
现在燃烧化石燃料释放到大气中的大量二氧化碳实际上不会导致温室效应——即全球平均温度的上升。因为如果二氧化碳的供应量上升,植物就会更大量地消耗该气体,所以它们会长得更茂盛,繁殖得更快,那么大气中二氧化碳的浓度终将保持稳定。下面哪个,如果正确,将最严重地削弱这
“不同气候的不同需要产生了不同的生活方式;不同的生活方式产生了不同的法律”“土地贫瘠,使人勤奋、简朴、耐劳、勇敢和适宜于战争……土地膏腴使人因生活宽裕而柔弱、怠惰、贪生怕死”,对于上述说法理解正确的是
已知曲线y=y(x)经过点(1,e—1),且在点(x,y)处的切线在y轴上的截距为xy,求该曲线方程的表达式.
Withoutseemingunworldly,WilliamJamesappearedwhollyremovedfromthe____ofsociety,theconventionalityofacademe.
InthewintermonthsthetemperatureinmostofCanadausuallystaysbelow0℃.However,insomepartsofCanada,suchassouther
最新回复
(
0
)