Contemporary worries about the impact of technology are part of a historical pattern.

Contemporary worries about the impact of technology are part of a historical pattern. The new technologies that dominated the past decade seem to be making things worse. Parents worry that smartphones have turned their children into screen-addicted zombies. The technologies expected to dominate the new decade also seem to cast a dark shadow. Artificial intelligence (AI) may well deepen bias and prejudice, threaten your job and shore up authoritarian rulers.
Today’s gloomy mood is centred on smartphones and social media, which took off a decade ago. Yet concerns that humanity has taken a technological wrong turn, or that particular technologies might be doing more harm than good, have arisen before. Stand back, and in these historical cases disappointment arose from a mix of unrealised hopes and unforeseen consequences. Technology frees the forces of creative destruction, so it is only natural that it leads to anxiety: for any given technology its drawbacks sometimes seem to outweigh its benefits. When this happens with several technologies at once, as today, the result is a wider sense of techno-pessimism.
However, that pessimism can be overdone. Too often people focus on the drawbacks of a new technology while taking its benefits for granted. Worries about screen time should be weighed against the much more substantial benefits of instant communication and access to information and entertainment that smartphones make possible. A further danger is that efforts to avoid the short-term costs associated with a new technology will end up denying access to its long-term benefits—something called a “technology trap”. Fears that robots will steal people’s jobs may prompt politicians to tax them, for example, to discourage their use. Yet in the long run countries that wish to maintain their standard of living as their workforce ages and shrinks will need more robots, not fewer.
That points to another lesson, which is that the remedy to technology-related problems very often involves more technology. And the most important lesson is about technology itself. Any powerful technology can be used for good or ill. Biotechnology can raise crop yields and cure diseases, but it could equally lead to deadly weapons. Technology itself has no agency: it is the choices people make about it that shape the world. Thus the techlash (技术鞭策) is a necessary step in the adoption of important new technologies. At its best, it helps frame how society comes to terms with innovations and imposes rules and policies that limit their destructive potential, accommodate change or strike a trade-off. Healthy skepticism means that these questions are settled by a broad debate, not by a group of technologists.
Perhaps the real source of anxiety is not technology itself but growing doubts about the ability of societies to hold this debate and come up with good answers. In that sense, techno-pessimism is a symptom of political pessimism. Yet there is something comforting about this: a gloomy debate is much better than no debate at all. And history still argues, on the whole, for optimism.
28. What is Paragraph 2 mainly about?
A. Reasons for techno-pessimism. B. History of technology development.
C. Consequences of technological turns. D. Attitude towards particular technologies.
29 What can we learn from the passage?
A. Worries about technology started a decade ago.
B. The drawbacks of technology are always neglected.
C. Skepticism is helpful for technology development if properly applied.
D. There isn’t much we can do to limit the destructive potential of technology.
30. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?
A. History vs. Today. B. Technology vs. Debate.
C. Technology vs. Society. D. Pessimism vs. progress.
31. Which of the following shows the development of ideas in this passage?
I: Introduction   P: Point   Sp: Sub-point (次要点)   C: Conclusion
A. B.
C. D.

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