要点如下:1.网络新闻媒体的现状;
2.网络新闻媒体的优缺点;
3.网络新闻媒体的未来发展趋势。
Dear Doctor Li,
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Yours,
Li Hua
2 . A couple of years ago Brian Arthur, an academic of the Palo Alto Research Centre, made a surprising prediction. In the next two to three decades, Western digital networks would end up performing functions equal to the size of the “real” US economy. Or, to put it another way, if you looked at all the work being done by electronic supply chains, robots, communications systems—and the bar code—then the digital economy would “exceed the physical economy in size”, Arthur wrote, on the basis of productivity and output calculations.
It sounds impressive. But it also raises a crucial question: as those digital networks increase in size, what are flesh-and-blood workers going to do in this future world? Simon Head, an academic who teaches at the University of Oxford and New York University, joined in this debate with a book entitled Mindless: Why Smarter Machines Are Making Dumber Humans.
As the subtitle suggests, Head is extremely pessimistic. He thinks the digital networks keep replacing jobs that used to be performed by the middle classes, throwing them out of work or into thankless, dull ones, as a few groups of skilled managers (or business owners) get wealthier. As a result, income inequality keeps growing and digital systems increasingly influence what we all do, overriding human common sense. This can be seen in the financial sector, Head argues, pointing out that digitization has overtaken many manufacturing companies.
But the real foretaste of the future—and digital hell—is with companies such as Walmart and Amazon, he claims. While the word “Amazon” tends to bring delight to consumers, given its wonderfully efficient shopping experience, people working inside the company’s warehouses live in a world of electronic observation, low wages and physically demanding work. And, of course, the rise of Amazon has also been deeply painful for many independent retailers, suppliers and writers.
On one level, Head’s anger is nothing new. Academics have been writing about the digitization revolution for some time. But what is perhaps most interesting of all about Head’s view is that while he writes from an annoyed viewpoint, even he cannot find any answers.
Unlike those early Luddites who simply destroyed 19th-century weaving machines, Head does not want to ban bar codes. Instead, he wants “higher-paying, higher-skilled jobs, with the digital networks used to supplement (增补) rather than replace employees’ expert knowledge or skill” in a new corporate culture where workers are treated with respect (or at least more attention than those robots). But while he mentions a few “case histories where alternative, employee-friendly cultures have taken root”, he also admits “these are not easily copied elsewhere”.
Thus, he admires “Germany’s culture of codetermination and labour-management partnership”, for example, or “the John Lewis Partnership in the United Kingdom, the employee-owned and the best high-quality retail chain in the country” or “exceptional US companies like Lincoln Electric”. But he also warns that “it would be delusional (妄想的) to think that, in the United States, the area of these alternative work cultures will expand naturally”. The Amazon example is just too strong.
The real problem of invisible digitization is exactly that: the revolution is unseen. Thus, while “the progressive response to the cruelty of 19th-century capitalism was fueled by a growing awareness of what was going on behind factory walls, digital networks are invisible”.
If you want to be cheerful, it is possible to hope that this howl of anger is simply a passing phrase. When millions of people lost their agricultural jobs in earlier centuries, nobody foresaw these labourers would find factory work. But it is also possible to imagine a darker future: as the French economist Thomas Piketty writes in another thought-provoking book, Capital in the Twenty-first Century, it is not clear what could stop this digitization trend—and the growing inequality it causes.
Either way, the key point is this: we have barely begun to understand the full implications of this second, digitized economy. That is a point we all need to consider more deeply. Start, perhaps, on the next occasion when you scan a bar code or place an order on Amazon with ease.
1. Amazon is mentioned to indicate that digital networks __________.A.make the middle-class workers worse off |
B.improve the efficiency of physical workers |
C.exercise little influence on traditional retailing |
D.bring customers excellent shopping experiences |
A.free people from physical work | B.create an employee-friendly culture |
C.assist workers with real skills | D.improve employers’ income and skills |
A.By making a comparison. | B.By giving an example. |
C.By confirming a prediction. | D.By challenging an assumption. |
A.Doubtful. | B.Favourable. |
C.Negative. | D.Cautious. |
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