Hardly a week goes by without some advance in technology that would have seemed incredible 50 years ago. And we can expect the rate of change to accelerate rather than slow down within our lifetime. The developments in technology are bound to have a dramatic effect on the future of work. By 2010, new technology will have revolutionized communications. People will be transmitting messages down telephone lines that previously would have been sent by post. Not only postmen but also clerks and secretaries will vanish in a paper-free society. All the routine tasks they perform will be carried on a tiny silicon chip so that they will be as obsolete as the horse and cart after the invention of the motorcar. One change will make thousands, if not millions, redundant.
Even people in traditional professions, where expert knowledge has been the key, are unlikely to escape the effects of new technology. Instead of going to a solicitor, you might go to a computer that is programmed with all the most up-to-date legal information. Doctors, too, will find that an electronic competitor will be able to carry out a much quicker and more accurate diagnosis and recommend more efficient courses of treatment. In education, teachers will be largely replaced by teaching machines far more knowledgeable than any human being. Most learning will take place in the home via video conferencing. Children will still go to school though, until another place is created where they can make friends and develop social skills.
What can we do to avoid the threat of unemployment? We shouldn’t hide our heads in the sand. Unions will try to stop change but they will be fighting a losing battle. People should get computer literate as this just might save them from professional extinction. After all, there will be a few jobs left in law, education and medicine for those few individuals who are capable of writing and programming the software of the future. Strangely enough, there will still be jobs like rubbish collection and cleaning as it is tough to program tasks that are largely unpredictable.
21. According to the author, the rate of change in technology _________.
A) will remain the same B) will slow down C) will speed up D) cannot be predicted
22. The author expects that by 2010 new technology will have revolutionized communications and _______.
A) bookshops will not exist B) the present postal system will disappear
C) people will no longer write letters D) postmen will have been replaced by the motorcar
23. From the passage, we can infer that ______.
A) professionals won’t be affected by new technology
B) doctors won’t be as efficient as computers
C) computers cannot replace lawyers
D) experts will know less in the future
24. The passage tells us that in the future ______.
A) children will not be taught in schools B) no teachers will be needed
C) teachers will be less knowledgeable D) children will learn social skills at school
25. In the writer’s view, ______.
A) people should be prepared for the future B) there exists no threat of unemployment
C) unions can stop the unfavorable changes D) people had better become cleaners
Passage Two
Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage.
When it comes to singling out those who have made a difference in all our lives, you cannot overlook Henry Ford. A historian a century from now might well conclude that it was Ford who most influenced all manufacturing, everywhere, even to this day, by introducing a new way to make cars — one, strange to say, that originated in slaughterhouses.
Back in the early 1900’s, slaughterhouses used what could have been called a “disassembly line”. Ford reversed this process to see if it would speed up production of a part of an automobile engine called a magneto (磁发电机). Rather than have each worker completely assemble a magneto, one of its elements was placed on a conveyer, and each worker, as it passed, added another component to it, the same one each time. Professor David Hounshell of the University of Delaware, an expert on industrial development, tells what happened:
“The previous day, workers carrying out the entire process averaged one assembly every 20 minutes. But on that day, on the line, the assembly team averaged one every 13 minutes and 10 seconds per person.”
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