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  3. In 19th-century England, craftsmen donned masks and rioted lo force the destruction of textile machines that were stealing their

In 19th-century England, craftsmen donned masks and rioted lo force the destruction of textile machines that were stealing their

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问题     In 19th-century England, craftsmen donned masks and rioted lo force the destruction of textile machines that were stealing their jobs. The rebellion was crushed and the followers of Luddites have come to be viewed as hapless rubes standing in the way of progress. But they had a point: automation causes unemployment.
    The wave of automation now crashing onto the economy looks especially broad and powerful. Although its full impact is unclear, it could cause worker dislocation on a scale not seen since the Industrial Revolution, experts say. Eventually, technology creates more jobs than it takes away, they add.
(41)______
    Take industrial robots. Over the past 10 years, companies have spent some $ 100 billion installing them. Nearly 1 million are nowr on the job. The investment has proven spectacularly effective. The productivity of these machines has risen about 7 percent a year for the past decade.
(42)______
    These havens aren’t safe anymore. "Smart systems" , computers that can do relatively routine tasks well, are beginning to gobble up jobs ranging from check-out clerks at Home Depot to airline ticket a-gents and hotel desk clerks—even to insurance underwriters and software customer support staff.
(43)______ When the seven "Baby Rells" emerged from the_1984 breakup of AT&T, the companies embarked on a crash course of modernization from analog to digital technology. Over the past two decades, they also shed about half of their jobs. Today’s phone companies use computer-controlled, highly automated systems that often diagnose and even repair themselves. One could argue that 300,000 to 400,000 jobs, some of the best the country has ever created, have disappeared from the telecommunications sector.
(44)______With the advent of e-mail, the letter-delivery business is going to disappear. We’ll see kiosks replacing people, whether it’s at airline counters or anything else. We already have gasoline pumps that take credit cards. You’ll see some replacement in grocery stores, travel agents, tellers in banks, people who do accounting services.
(45)______Three or four years ago, those people were extremely well paid. Now there are fewer jobs in that space, and they’re not quite as well paid as they used to be.
    Policymakers must focus on this shift and its impact on society. They have to figure out what steps are needed to mitigate its ill effects. There’s going to have to be a multifaceted approach to this problem , and it’ s not going to be easy to get a bead on it.
[A] High-value jobs are also being cut. As corporations try to consolidate their computer systems; they’ve winnowed out some highly paid positions.
[B] Although there are no exact data yet on how automation will affect the job market over the next decade, a look at the recent past suggests a not-too-rosy future.
[C] Even a creative field like journalism, job-stealing technology has crept in an automated system could follow set formulas and write routine articles, such as traffic reports and obituaries.
[D] But the human cost has been immense. Automation has eliminated some 10 million jobs, mostly in manufacturing, over the same time period. And the traditional advice to workers— join the computer based "knowledge economy" or move to the service sector—looks suspect.
[E] So far, though, automation doesn’t appear to have had a deep impact on job loss. For exam-pie, despite its airline kiosks and a tough travel economy, Continental says it has seen only a 4 percent decrease in ticket agents since "9. 11".
[F] Similar trends are showing up in the service sector. Businesses have found "you can shift many things to the customer. You can shift many things to a computer".
[G] But in the short term, its effect on job loss is very significant, affecting more sectors of the labor market than in past eras of rapid technological change.
选项
答案B
解析 此题主要考虑与下文意思的一致。下文主要讲了自1984年AT&T公司分解成7个子公司后，这几家公司都开始了现代化的进程，从模拟技术转向数字技术；在过去20年间，它们淘汰掉了原来工作机会的一半。现在的电话公司采用计算机控制且高度自动化的系统，这些系统通常能够自己发现问题并进行修复。因此我们可以认为：有30万到40万个工作机会，其中一些是这个国家创造的最好的就业机会，现在已经在电信行业消失了。由此可知：这是对过去这些年的回顾，正与B最后一句衔接起来，所表达的意思也是对B的进一步阐述。B意为：虽然对自动化在未来10年如何影响就业市场还没有确切的数据，但回头看看刚刚过去的这些年，可以看出前景并不乐观。
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