2014年英语二Text 3

The concept of man versus machine is at least as old as the industrial revolution, but this phenomenon tends to be most acutely felt during economic downturns and fragile recoveries. And yet, it would be a mistake to think we are right now simply experiencing the painful side of a boom and bust cycle. Certain jobs have gone away for good, outmoded by machines. Since technology has such an insatiable appetite for eating up human jobs, this phenomenon will continue to restructure our economy in ways we can't immediately foresee.

When there is exponential improvement in the price and performance of technology, jobs that were once thought to be immune from automation suddenly become threatened. This argument has attracted a lot of attention, via the success of the book Race Against the Machine, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, who both hail from MIT's Center for Digital Business. This is a powerful argument, and a scary one. And yet, John Hagel, author of The Power of Pull and other books, says Brynjolfsson and McAfee miss the reason why these jobs are so vulnerable to technology in the first place.

Hagel says we have designed jobs in the U.S. that tend to be "tightly scripted" and "highly standardized" ones that leave no room for "individual initiative or creativity." In short, these are the types of jobs that machines can perform much better at than human beings. That is how we have put a giant target sign on the backs of American workers, Hagel says. It's time to reinvent the formula for how work is conducted, since we are still relying on a very 20th century notion of work, Hagel says. In our rapidly changing economy, we more than ever need people in the workplace who can take initiative and exercise their imagination "to respond to unexpected events." That's not something machines are good at. They are designed to perform very predictable activities.

As Hagel notes, Brynjolfsson and McAfee indeed touched on this point in their book. We need to reframe race against the machine as race with the machine. In other words, we need to look at the ways in which machines can augment human labor rather than replace it. So then the problem is not really about technology, but rather, "how do we innovate our institutions and our work practices?"

人与机器的概念至少和工业革命一样古老，但这种现象在经济衰退和脆弱的复苏中往往最为强烈。然而，如果你认为我们现在正经历着繁荣和萧条周期中痛苦的一面，那你就错了。的确有些工作因为过时了而彻底消失。由于技术对人们的工作有着无法满足的胃口，这种现象将继续以我们无法立即预见的方式重新调整我们的经济结构。

 当技术的价格和性能有指数性的提高时，一度被认为不受自动化影响的工作突然受到威胁。这一说法已经吸引了很多的关注，通过这本书与机器赛跑的成功，Erik Brynjolfsson和Andrew McAfee，他们都来自麻省理工的数字商务中心。这是一个有力的论据，也是一个令人害怕的论点。然而，John Hagel对拉和其他书籍的力量一书的作者，说Brynjolfsson和McAfee错过为什么这些工作很容易受到技术的首要原因。

哈格尔说，在美国，工作往往被设计成“模式化”或者“高标准化”的一种，使得人们没有太多的个人主动权和创造性。总之，这些都是机器比人类能做得更好。这就是我们对美国工人的背上放一个大目标标志，哈格尔说。它的时间来改变公式如何工作，因为我们仍然依靠工作一个二十世纪的概念，哈格尔说。在我们快速变化的经济中，我们比以往任何时候都更需要工作场所的人，他们能够主动地发挥自己的想象力“应对突发事件”，这不是机器擅长的事情。它们被设计用来执行非常可预测的活动。

正如哈格尔指出，Brynjolfsson和McAfee的确打动了在这一点上他们的书。我们需要用机器与机器比较。换言之，我们需要看看机器能否增加人类劳动而不是取代它。因此，问题并不在于技术，而是在于“我们如何创新我们的机构和工作实践？”