六级快速阅读Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning)(15 minutes)Passage1:The Next SocietyThe new economy may or may not materialize,but there is no doubt that the next society willbe with us shortly.In the developed world,and probably in the emerging countries as well,thisnew society will be a good deal more important than the new economy (if any).It will be quitedifferent from the society of the late 20th century,and also different from what most people expect.Much of it will be unprecedented.And most of it is already here,or is rapidly emerging.In the developed countries,the dominant factor in the next society will be something towhich most people are only just beginning to pay attention:the rapid growth in the olderpopulation and the rapid shrinking of the younger generation.Politicians everywhere still promiseto save the existing pension system,but they--and their constituents--know perfectly well that inanother 25 years people will have to keep working until their mid-70s,health permitting.What has not yet sunk in is that a growing number of older people--say those over 50--willnot keep on working as traditional full time nine-to-five employees,but will participate in thelabor force in many new and different ways:as temporaries,as part-timers,as consultants onspecial assignments,and so on.What used to be personnel and are now known as human resourcesdepartments still assume that those who work for an organization are full-time employees.Employment laws and regulations are based on the same assumption.Within 20 or 25 years,however,perhaps as many as half the people who work for an organization will not be employedby it,certainly not on a full-time basis.This will be especially true for older people.New ways ofworking with people at arm's length will increasingly become the central managerial issue ofemploying organizations,and not just of businesses.The shrinking of the younger population will cause an even greater upheaval,if only becausenothing like this has happened since the dying centuries of the Roman Empire.In every singledeveloped country,but also in China and Brazil,the birth rate is now well below the replacementrate of 2.2 live births per woman of reproductive age.Politically,this means that immigration willbecome an important and highly divisive issue in all rich countries.It will cut across all traditionalpolitical alignments.Economically,the decline in the young population will change markets infundamental ways.Growth in family formation has been the driving force of all domestic marketsin the developed world,but the rate of family formation is certain to fall steadily unless bolsteredby large-scale immigration of younger people.The homogeneous mass market that emerged in allrich countries after the Second World War has been youth-determined from the start.It will nowbecome middle-age-determined,or perhaps more likely it will split into two:amiddle-age-determined mass market and a much smaller youth-determined one.And because thesupply of young people will shrink,creating new employment pattems to attract and hold thegrowing number of older people (especially older educated people)will become increasinglyimportant.Knowledge is allThe next society will be a knowledge society.Knowledge will be its key resource,andknowledge workers will be the dominant group in its workforce.Its three main characteristics willbe:第1页共38页六级快速阅读Borderlessness,because knowledge travels even more effortlessly than money.Upward mobility,available to everyone through easily acquired formal education.The potential for failure as well as success.Anyone can acquire the "means of production",i.e,the knowledge required for the job,but not everyone can win.Together,those three characteristics will make the knowledge society a highly competitiveone,for organizations and individuals alike.Information technology,although only one of manynew features of the next society,is already having one hugely important effect:it is allowingknowledge to spread near-instantly,and making it accessible to everyone.Given the ease andspeed at which information travels,every institution in the knowledge society--not only businesses,but also schools,universities,hospitals and increasingly govemment agencies too--has to beglobally competitive,even though most organizations will continue to be local in their activitiesand in their markets.This is because the Internet will keep customers everywhere informed onwhat is available anywhere in the world,and at what price.This new knowledge economy will rely heavily on knowledge workers.At present,this termis widely used to describe people with considerable theoretical knowledge and learning:doctors,lawyers,teachers,accountants,chemical engineers.But the most striking growth will be in"knowledge technologists"~computer technicians,software designers,analysts in clinical labs,manufacturing technologists,paralegals.These people are as much manual workers as they areknowledge workers;in fact,they usually spend far more time working with their hands than withtheir brains.But their manual work is based on a substantial amount of theoretical knowledgewhich can be acquired only through formal education,not through an apprenticeship.They are not,as a rule,much better paid than traditional skilled workers,but they see themselves as"professionals".Just as unskilled manual workers in manufacturing were the dominant social andpolitical force in the 20th century,knowledge technologists are likely to become the dominantsocial--and perhaps also political--force over the next decades.The new protectionismStructurally,too,the next society is already diverging from the society almost all of us stilllive in.The 20th century saw the rapid decline 'of the sector that had dominated society for 10,000years:agriculture.In volume terms,farm production now is at least four or five times what it wasbefore the First World War.But in 1913 farm products accounted for 70%of world trade,whereasnow their share is at most 17%.In the early years of the 20th century,agriculture in mostdeveloped countries was the largest single contributor to GDP;now in rich countries itscontribution has dwindled to the point of becoming marginal.And the farm population is downto a tiny proportion of the total.Manufacturing has traveled a long way down the same road.Since the Second World War,manufacturing output in the developed world has probably tripled in volume,but inflationadjusted manufacturing prices have fallen steadily,whereas the cost of prime knowledgeproducts-health care and education-has tripled,again adjusted for inflation.The relativepurchasing power of manufactured goods against knowledge products is now only one-fifth orone-sixth of what it was 50 years ago.Manufacturing employment in America has fallen from35%of the workforce in the 1950s to less than half that now,without causing much socialdisruption.But it may be too much to hope for an equally easy transition in countries such asJapan or Germany,where blue-collar manufacturing workers still make up 25--30%of the laborforce.第2页共38页六级快速阅读The decline of farming as a producer of wealth and of livelihoods has allowed farmprotectionism to spread to a degree that would have been unthinkable before the Second WorldWar.In the same way,the decline of manufacturing will trigger an explosion of manufacturingprotectionism-even as lip service continues to be paid to free trade.This protectionism may notnecessarily take the form of traditional tarffs,but of subsidies,quotas and regulations of all kinds.Even more likely,regional blocks will emerge that trade freely internally but are highlyprotectionist extemally.The European Union,NAFFA and Mercosur already point in thatdirection.The future of the corporationStatistically,multinational companies play much the same part in the world economy as theydid in 1913.But they have become very different animals.Multinationals in 1913 were domesticfirms with subsidiaries abroad,each of them self-contained,in charge of a politically definedterritory,and highly autonomous.Multinationals now tend to be organized globally alongproduct or service lines.But like the multinationals of 1913,they are held together and controlledby ownership.By contrast,the multinationals of 2025 are likely to be held together and controlledby strategy.There will still be ownership,of course.But alliances,joint ventures,minority stakes,know-how agreements contracts will increasingly be the building blocks of a confederation.Thiskind of organization will need a new kind of top management.In most countries,and even in a good many large and complex companies,top managementis still seen as an extension of operating management.Tomorrow's top management,however,islikely to be a distinct and separate organ:it will stand for the company.One of the most importantjobs ahead for the top management of he big company of tomorrow,and especially of themultinational,will be to balance the conflicting demands on business being made by the need forboth short-term and long-term results,and by the corporation's various constituencies:customers,shareholders,knowledge employees and communities.1.The new society will be much more important than the new economy only in thedeveloped countries.2.In another 25 years people will have to keep working as full-time employees until theirmid-70s if health permits.3.Nowadays in China,because of the population policy,the birth rate has decreased.4.In developed countries,the issue of immigration will become important politically.5.The dominant part in the next society's work force is6.makes knowledge spread rapidly and available to everyone7.had dominated society for 10,000 years but declined rapidly in the 20th century.8.In order to adjust for inflation,the cost ofwhich are the main knowledge productswas tripled.9.Multinationals in 1913 were composed of a domestic firms and its self-contained andautonomous10.Top management in the Next society will be aorgan.Passage2:Rain forestsTropical rainforests are the most diverse ecosystem(生态系统)on Earth,and also the oldest..Today,tropical rainforests cover only 6 percent of the Earth's ground surface,but they are home to第3页共38页