成人高等教育英語教材4 07

[00:00.00] UNIT 7
[00:03.40]Conference
[00:06.56]Integrated Skills Development
[00:11.52]Passage The knowledge Economy is coming
[00:18.18]Human society has developed through several stages.
[00:23.64]Sociologist Daniel Bell calls these stages"pre-industrial,"
[00:29.28]"industrial," and "post-industral".
[00:33.12]According to Bell,
[00:36.49]the economy of the pre-industrial society included agriculture,
[00:44.04]mining,fish-ing,lumber,oil,and gas.
[00:49.11]Natural power produced these resources.
[00:53.66]Such power included wind power,water power,
[00:59.01]and the muscle power of people and animals.
[01:03.58]This economy depended on people who worked with their hands.
[01:09.22]In the next stage,in dustrial society,people made things by using ma-chines.
[01:16.98]These machines used new forms of energy such as electricity.
[01:23.23]The industrial economy employed engineers and semi-skilled workers.
[01:29.78]The last stage,the post-industrial economy,
[01:35.66]results from a shift away from the production of goods
[01:40.81]to the production of ser-vices.
[01:44.59]They include the transportation of people and goods;
[01:49.74]utilities such as water and power supplies;
[01:54.91]financial services such as banks,trade,insurance,
[02:00.66]and real estate;and human services such as health,
[02:06.54]education,research,government,and recreation.
[02:12.00]The main resource of this economy is knowledge.
[02:17.74]Scien-tists,technologists,
[02:21.79]and other professionals use and process this knowledge.
[02:28.35]Today's economy still depends on the same major industries
[02:35.61]that were im-portant in the past.
[02:39.58]The agriculture,steel,
[02:43.42]and automobile industries are some of the giants that have led economic expansion.
[02:50.50]However,these industries are now becoming economically less important.
[02:57.16]They will probably not continue to grow and expand.
[03:02.80]Agriculture is a clear example of an important industry that is getting smaller.
[03:10.17]In 1860,40.6% of the U.S. labor worked in agriculture,
[03:18.11]but this figure was only 2.1 percent in 1980.
[03:24.67]The auto industry,which is still growing,
[03:29.53]will soon reach its limits and start to get smaller too.
[03:35.38]What are the new knowledge-bassed industries on which economic growth will depend?
[03:42.85]Peter Drucker,a well-know management expert,
[03:48.91]discusses three categories of such industries.
[03:53.35]The first of these is the information industry.
[03:58.32]This industry collects,stores,spreads,and applies knowledge.
[04:04.09]It depends on the computer.
[04:08.16]Anoter source of new industries is the science of the oceans.
[04:15.11]New tech-nologies may help to supply food and minerals from the seas.
[04:21.36]A third new source of economic growth is the materials industry.
[04:27.42]This industry provides the materials for maing objects.
[04:32.88]One such industry that has already become economically im-portant
[04:38.62]is the plastice industry.
[04:42.38]Drucker explains that throghout history
[04:47.24]our tradi-tional materials have been metals,
[04:51.92]glass,natural fibers,and paper.
[04:56.18]Today,with the help of modern science,
[05:01.35]industries can make many new materials to meet specific needs.
[05:07.30]Industries that supply traditional materal such as steel or glass
[05:13.65]will have trouble competing with those that produce these new materials.
[05:19.90]The tradition industrial economy,then,
[05:24.83]is changing into a knowledge economy in many ways.
[05:30.08]These changes are already affecting the kinds of work people do,
[05:36.54]the training they need to do it and the products they create.
[05:41.71]Clearly,society and the economy are facing a major disontinuity.