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THE GAP of INGENUITY 2
Ingenuity, as I define it here, consists not only of ideas for new technologies like computers or drought-resistant crops but, more fundamentally, of ideas for better institutions and social arrangements, like efficient markets and competent governments.
How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society requires depends on a range of factors, including the society's goals and the circumstances within which it must achieve those goals——whether it has a young population or an aging one, an abundance of natural resources or a scarcity of them, an easy climate or a punishing one, whatever the case may be.
How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society supplies also depends on many factors, such as the nature of human inventiveness and understanding, the rewards an economy gives to the producers of useful knowledge, and the strength of political opposition to social and institutional reforms.
A good supply of the right kind of ingenuity is essential, but it isn't, of course, enough by itself. We know that the creation of wealth, for example, depends not only on an adequate supply of useful ideas but also on the availability of other, more conventional factors of production, like capital and labor. Similarly, prosperity, stability and justice usually depend on the resolution, or at least the containment, of major political struggles over wealth and power. Yet within our economics ingenuity often supplants labor, and growth in the stock of physical plant is usually accompanied by growth in the stock of ingenuity. And in our political systems, we need great ingenuity to set up institutions that successfully manage struggles over wealth and power. Clearly, our economic and political processes are intimately entangled with the production and use of ingenuity.
The past century’s countless incremental changes in our societies around the planet, in our technologies and our interactions with our surrounding natural environments have accumulated to create a qualitatively new world. Because these changes have accumulated slowly, It’s often hard for us to recognize how profound and sweeping they've. They include far larger and denser populations; much higher per capita consumption of natural resources; and far better and more widely available technologies for the movement of people, materials, and especially information.
In combination, these changes have sharply increased the density, intensity, and pace of our inter actions with each other; they have greatly increased the burden we place on our natural environment; and they have helped shift power from national and international institutions to individuals and subgroups, such as political special interests and ethnic factions.
As a result, people in all walks of life-from our political and business leaders to all of us in our day-to-day——must cope with much more complex, urgent, and often unpredictable circumstances. The management of our relationship with this new world requires immense and ever-increasing amounts of social and technical ingenuity. As we strive to maintain or increase our prosperity and improve the quality of our lives, we must make far more sophisticated decisions, and in less time, than ever before.
When we enhance the performance of any system, from our cars to the planet's network of financial institutions, we tend to make it more complex. Many of the natural systems critical to our well-being, like the global climate and the oceans, are extraordinarily complex to begin with. We often can't predict or manage the behavior of complex systems with much precision, because they are often very sensitive to the smallest of changes and perturbations, and their behavior can flip from one mode to another suddenly and dramatically. In general, as the human-made and natural systems we depend upon become more complex, and as our demands on them increase, the institutions and technologies we use to manage them must become more complex too, which further boosts our need for ingenuity.
The good news, though, is that the last century's stunning changes in our societies and technologies have not just increased our need for ingenuity; they have also produced a huge increase in its supply. The growth and urbanization of human populations have combined with astonishing new communication and transportation technologies to expand interactions among people and produce larger, more integrated, and more efficient markets. These changes have, in turn, vastly accelerated the generation and delivery of useful ideas.
But—and this is the critical "but"——we should not jump to the conclusion that the supply of ingenuity always increases in lockstep with our ingenuity requirement: While it's true that necessity is often the mother of invention, we can't always rely on the right kind of ingenuity appearing when and where we need it. In many cases, the complexity and speed of operation of today's vital economic, social, arid ecological systems exceed the human brains grasp. Very few of us have more than a rudimentary understanding of how these systems work. They remain fraught with countless "unknown unknowns," which makes it hard to supply the ingenuity we need to solve problems associated with these systems.
In this book, explore a wide range of other factors that will limit our ability to supply the ingenuity required in the coming century. For example, many people believe that new communication technologies strengthen democracy and will make it easier to find solutions to our societies' collective problems, but the story is less clear than it seems. The crush of information in our everyday lives is shortening our attention span, limiting the time we have to reflect on critical matters of public policy, and making policy arguments more superficial.
Modern markets and science are an important part of the story of how we supply ingenuity. Markets are critically important, because they give entrepreneurs an incentive to produce knowledge. As for science, although it seems to face no theoretical limits, at least in the foreseeable future, practical constraints often slow its progress. The cost of scientific research tends to increase as it delves deeper into nature. And science's rate of advance depends on the characteristic of the natural phenomena it investigates, simply because some phenomena are intrinsically harder to understand than others, so the production of useful new knowledge in these areas can be very slow. Consequently, there is often a critical time lag between the recognition between a problem and the delivery of sufficient ingenuity, in the form of technologies, to solve that problem. Progress in the social sciences is especially slow, for reasons we don't yet understand; but we desperately need better social scientific knowledge to build the sophisticated institutions today’s world demands.
Questions:
Complete each sentence with the appropriate answer, A, B, C, or D
Write the correct answer in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.
27 The definition of ingenuity
28 The requirement for ingenuity
29 The creation of social wealth
30 The stability of society
A depends on many factors including climate.
B depends on the management and solution of disputes.
C is not only of technological advance, but more of institutional renovation.
D also depends on the availability of some traditional resources.
Question 31-33
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.
Write your answers in boxes 31-33 on your answer sheet.
31 What does the author say about the incremental change of the last 100 years?
A It has become a hot scholastic discussion among environmentalists.
B Its significance is often not noticed.
C It has reshaped the natural environments we live in.
D It benefited a much larger population than ever.
32 The combination of changes has made life.
A easier
B faster
C slower
D less sophisticated
33 What does the author say about the natural systems?
A New technologies are being developed to predict change with precision.
B Natural systems are often more sophisticated than other systems.
C Minor alterations may cause natural systems to change dramatically.
D Technological developments have rendered human being more independent of natural systems.
Question 34-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 34-40 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement is true
NO if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
34 The demand for ingenuity has been growing during the past 100 years.
35 The ingenuity we have may be inappropriate for solving problems at hand.
36 There are very few who can understand the complex systems of the present world.
37 More information will help us to make better decisions.
38 The next generation will blame the current government for their conduct.
39 Science tends to develop faster in certain areas than others.
40 Social science develops especially slowly because it is not as important as natural science.
篇章結構
體裁：論說文
題目：創新的空白2
結構：(一句話概括每段大意)
A段:創新的定義
B段:一個社會需要多少創造及哪種創造，取決於多種因素
C段:一個社會能提供多少或何種創造，同樣取決於多種因素
D段:充足優質的創造非常重要，但是還不夠
E段:這些年來發生了很多重大改變，但是整個改變過程比較慢，人們可能沒意識到它們有多重要
F段:改變使人們之間的互動變得多了，壓力變得大了，環境被破壞了
G段:呼籲人們做出精準的抉擇
H段:控制生存體系的制度和科技增強對創意的需求
I段:社會與科技的變革加速了創意時代的解放思想
J段:對於經濟、社會、生態系統的未知使人們很難創造充足的創意解決問題
K段:新世紀中限制人們設計創意能力的各種因素
L段:現代市場和科學是創意設計的重要組成成分
參考譯文：
創新過程的空白
創造，就像筆者在這裏定義的一樣，不僅僅指那些關於計算機、抗早作物之類的新科技的構想，更重要的是指那些關於優化制度和社會安排的思想，例如高效市場、法定 政府等。
一個社會需要多少創造及哪種創造，取決於多種因素，包括社會目標和達成這些社會目標時所處的社會環境一一無論它是年輕型社會還是老齡化社會：是自然物資豐富或是物資匱乏;是氣候宜人或氣候惡劣。
一個社會能提供多少或何種創造，同樣取決於衆多因素，例如人類創造和理解的本性、 有用知識的製造者所獲得的經濟回報、以及社會制度改革的'政治反對派的力量等。
充足優質的創造非常重要，當然這還不夠。例如，我們知道財富的創造不僅取決於充足 的、有價值的創意，還需要更多其他傳統生產因素，如資本和勞動力。同樣，繁榮、穩定、公正通常取決於對財富和權力的重大政治鬥爭的決議,或者至少是針對它們的遏制政策。然而目前，我們的經濟創意常常將勞動力排擠在外，隨着創意的增長，機器設備實體通常也隨之增長。在現有的政治體系中，我們需要更多的創意來建設社會制度,從而成功地管控財富和權力鬥爭。很明顯，我們的經濟政治進程正緊密地與這些創意產物 結合在一起。
過去的一個世紀中，在我們的整個社會範圍、科技領域和我們與周圍自然環境的互動中產生的不計其數並不斷增加的變化，己經積累到了足以創造一個高品質的新世界。由於這些變化是慢慢積累起來的，所以我們通常很難認識到它們所影響的深度與廣度。這些變化波及了更廣泛、更密集的人羣，它們使得人均自然資源消耗變得更高，並提供了更有效、更廣泛的交通運輸技術，尤其是信息傳播技術。
總的來說，這些變化已經大大增加了我們彼此互動的深度、強度和速度：但也顯著增加 了人類對自然環境造成的負擔;同時也促使人類社會將權力從國家和國際組織轉移到 個人和羣體組織中，例如特殊政治利益和民族派別。
因此，來自不同領域的人們——從政治經濟領袖到我們日常生活中的普通人——必須 應對更爲複雜、緊迫、甚至不可預料的社會環境。我們需要大量的、不斷增長的社會和 技術創新來處理我們與新世界的關係。當人類努力保持或增強社會繁榮、提高生活質量時，我們必須在比以往更短的時間內做出更精確的決策。
從汽車到環球金融網絡，我們再提升任何一個體系的效能時，都會不由自主地把它複雜化。人類賴以生存的自然環境體系通常也是相當複雜的，例如全球氣候和海洋。由於這些複雜體系對微小擾動極其敏感，系統表現可以從一種模式急劇切換到另一種模式，所以人類很難精確預測它們的各種變化。通常，當我們賴以生存的人造體系和自然體系越來越複雜時，當我們對這些生存體系的要求越來越多時，我們用來控制這些體系的制度和科技也會越來越複雜，而這則會進一步增強我們對創意的需求。
好消息是，在社會與技術發生巨大變革的上個世紀中，我們不進增加了對創意的需求， 也創造出了大量的創意.隨着人口的增加、城市化進程的加速，新的通訊和物流技術也迅速增長，這大大拓展了人與人之間的交流，並催生了更廣泛、更綜合、更高效的市場： 反過來，這些變化在很大程度上也加速了這個創意時代的思潮解放。
但是——用批判的眼光來看——我們不能直接得出結論說，我們的創意能一直跟上需求的腳步：雖然說需求是創造之母，但我們不能總指望在我們有需要的時候，恰好就有相應的創造產生。今天，在許多情況中，經濟、社會、生態系統運轉的複雜性和速度， 都遠遠超出了人類大腦的應變範圍。大部分人對這些系統的運轉原理都知之甚少，人們仍然充滿了數不勝數的“未知的未知”，這些未知使得人們很難創造出充足的創意來解決生活體系中的種種問題。
本書中，筆者研究分析了那些可能在新世紀中制約我們設計創意能力的各種因素。例如，許多人認爲新的信息技術增強了社會民主性,並使得人們解決社會羣體事件變得更容易，但事實似乎並非如此.日常生活中的信息擁塞反而分散了我們的注意力，減少了 人們對公共政治等重要事件的思考時間，並使得政治觀點更加表面化。
現代市場和科學是我們創意設計的重要組成部分。市場的重要性在於，它爲企業家創造 知識提供了經濟動力。對於科學來說，儘管似乎沒什麼理論限制，但在實踐環節上的制約會減緩科學的實現進程，至少在今後一段時間內都會如此。隨着科學研究的深入， 其成本也在逐漸上升。同時，科學的進步速率取決於人們研究的自然現象的特徵，有些現象或領域就是比其他的現象或領域難,所以這些領域中的知識進步會非常緩慢。因此，在人們發現問題到提供解決問題的創意或技術之間，通常會有一段很長的滯後期。由於某些未知的原因，社會科學的進步尤其緩慢：但我們迫切需要更好的社會科學理論，以 建立起符合現代世界需求的龐大制度體系。
