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  3. In a provocative research paper, economist Robert Gordon of Northwestern University asked if economic growth has essentially com

In a provocative research paper, economist Robert Gordon of Northwestern University asked if economic growth has essentially com

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问题     In a provocative research paper, economist Robert Gordon of Northwestern University asked if economic growth has essentially come to an end. He wondered if the rapid economic and technological growth of the past few centuries, so familiar to us today, might turn out to have been only a temporary thing. It might largely be over, despite current belief in the wildly creative and   "disruptive" nature of today’s high-tech industry.
    No one can truly see into the future, but it is possible to look back at data about the history of technologies, and of the inventions to which they gave rise, and to chart the pace of innovation over time. A team of scientists has recently done this using patent data over more than 200 years, and their analysis suggests that there is something real to the notion that innovation is slowing. The discovery of completely new technologies does seem to be increasing less frequent. Maybe Gordon has a point.
    After 1870, the nature of invention changed—people slowed in their invention of new technologies, but turned out new inventions just as quickly as before by putting old technologies together in new ways. Since then the process of invention has been driven almost entirely by combining existing technologies. The research also shows that in this combinatorial era, invention seems to have conformed to a fairly regular law reflecting a balance between exploitation of existing ideas and exploration for new ones. Consistently, over the past 150 years, roughly 40% of inventions have reused a previously existing combination of technologies, whereas 60% have introduced a totally new combination of technologies.
    All in all, this analysis shows that the introduction of new technologies—currently, and also for quite a while in the recent past—plays a minimal role in fuelling invention. This is at least consistent with Gordon’s assertion that we’ve found and mastered the easy, "low hanging" technologies, and that the advance of technology could be slower in the future, or at least incremental.
    If so, it’s likely that the slowing pace of innovation will have big consequences for economic organization, as today’s economies require rapid innovation. Alternatively, perhaps we only await the moment when we break through into some new domain of science, radically different from anything we currently envision, where easy innovation again becomes possible. There are certainly promising domains, such as synthetic biology or nano science. Or maybe we’ll find rapid innovation where we truly need it most—not in physics and engineering, but in technologies for tackling social problems and encouraging cooperation on global issues. That would be a surprise.
Which of the following is the best title of the text?
选项 A、Economy Collapse
B、Innovation Slowdown
C、Scientific Outbreak
D、Future Prediction
答案B
解析 本文开篇就引用Robert Gordon的话提出疑问：经济和技术的发展是不是到头了?然后介绍了一项研究。来回答Robert Gordon的质疑。第二至四段指出，研究结果与Robert Gordon的想法一致，即新技术的出现速度的确是降低了。作者在最后一段就这一趋势提出建议，可以尝试在其他科学领域，如社会问题上，进行突破。故本文实际上都是围绕科学技术发展减缓而展开的，B项正确。for…是If the market were for．．．的变形。表示与现在情况相反的假设。as引导的是方式状语从句，其中that指代报业在过去一二十年间的经历。
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