Questões de Inglês

TEXT:

The net isn’t as important as we think

 

Ha-Joon Chang, born in South Korea in 1963, is an economist based at Cambridge University specializing in development. He is the author of several books, including Kicking Away the Ladder (2002) and Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2008). In his new book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism (Allen Lane) Chang debunks many myths about the free market. In one chapter, he says: “The washing machine changed the world more than the internet.”

 

Is it really true that the washing machine has changed the world more than the internet?

 

When we assess the impact of technological changes, we tend to downplay things that happened a while ago. Of course, the internet is great – I can now google and find the exact location of a restaurant in Liverpool, or whatever. But when you look at the impact of this on the economy, it’s mainly in the area of leisure.

 

The internet may have significantly changed the working patterns of people like you and me, but we are in a small minority. For most people, its effect is more about keeping in touch with friends and looking up things here and there. Economists have found very little evidence that since the internet revolution productivity has grown.

 

And the washing machine was more transformative?

 

By liberating women from household work and helping to abolish professions such as domestic service, the washing machine and other household goods completely revolutionized the structure of society. As women have become active in the labor market they have acquired a different status at home – they can threaten their partners that if they don’t treat them well they will leave them and make an independent living. And this had enormous economic consequences. Rather than spend their time washing clothes, women could go out and do more productive things. Basically, it has doubled the workforce.

 

The washing machine is just one element here. Other factors have contributed to the liberation of women feminism, the pill and so on.

 

Yes, but feminism couldn’t have been implemented unless there was this technological basis for a society where women went out and worked. Of course it’s not just the washing machine, it’s piped water, electricity, and son on.

 

Do we tend to overestimate the importance of communications revolutions?

 

Not always. The invention of the printing press was one of the most important events in human history. But we overestimate the internet and ignore its downsides. There’s now so much information out there that you don’t actually have time to digest it.

 

But what about the sheer speed at which it allows us to do things?

 

That is exaggerated too. Before the invention of the telegraph in the late 19th century, it took two to three weeks to carry a message across the Atlantic. The telegraph reduced it to 20 or 30 minutes – an increase of 2,000 – 3,000 times. The internet has reduced the time of sending, say, three or four pages of text from the 30 seconds you needed with a fax machine down to maybe two seconds – a reduction by a factor of 15. I can’t think of anything where it’s really so important that we send it in two seconds rather than a few minutes.

 

Do we fundamentally misunderstand the nature of capitalism, as the title of your book implies?

 

Let me start by saying that I am an advocate of capitalism. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I think it’s the worst economic system except for all the others. So I’m not an anti-capitalist, or anarchist. I want capitalism to work. But the version of capitalism that we have practiced in the past two or three decades is a very extreme free-market version which, contrary to the claims of many economists, is not the only or best way to run things. There are many different ways and in the book I show that countries that have run capitalism differently – even if they practice free-market capitalism today have done much better.

(FONTE: By William Skidelsky – The Observer – in Speak Up Magazine issue 285)

 

“(…) the washing machine and other household goods completely revolutionized the structure of society.”

Keeping the same idea, the underlined word can be replaced by, EXCEPT:

TEXT:

The net isn’t as important as we think

 

Ha-Joon Chang, born in South Korea in 1963, is an economist based at Cambridge University specializing in development. He is the author of several books, including Kicking Away the Ladder (2002) and Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2008). In his new book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism (Allen Lane) Chang debunks many myths about the free market. In one chapter, he says: “The washing machine changed the world more than the internet.”

 

Is it really true that the washing machine has changed the world more than the internet?

 

When we assess the impact of technological changes, we tend to downplay things that happened a while ago. Of course, the internet is great – I can now google and find the exact location of a restaurant in Liverpool, or whatever. But when you look at the impact of this on the economy, it’s mainly in the area of leisure.

 

The internet may have significantly changed the working patterns of people like you and me, but we are in a small minority. For most people, its effect is more about keeping in touch with friends and looking up things here and there. Economists have found very little evidence that since the internet revolution productivity has grown.

 

And the washing machine was more transformative?

 

By liberating women from household work and helping to abolish professions such as domestic service, the washing machine and other household goods completely revolutionized the structure of society. As women have become active in the labor market they have acquired a different status at home – they can threaten their partners that if they don’t treat them well they will leave them and make an independent living. And this had enormous economic consequences. Rather than spend their time washing clothes, women could go out and do more productive things. Basically, it has doubled the workforce.

 

The washing machine is just one element here. Other factors have contributed to the liberation of women feminism, the pill and so on.

 

Yes, but feminism couldn’t have been implemented unless there was this technological basis for a society where women went out and worked. Of course it’s not just the washing machine, it’s piped water, electricity, and son on.

 

Do we tend to overestimate the importance of communications revolutions?

 

Not always. The invention of the printing press was one of the most important events in human history. But we overestimate the internet and ignore its downsides. There’s now so much information out there that you don’t actually have time to digest it.

 

But what about the sheer speed at which it allows us to do things?

 

That is exaggerated too. Before the invention of the telegraph in the late 19th century, it took two to three weeks to carry a message across the Atlantic. The telegraph reduced it to 20 or 30 minutes – an increase of 2,000 – 3,000 times. The internet has reduced the time of sending, say, three or four pages of text from the 30 seconds you needed with a fax machine down to maybe two seconds – a reduction by a factor of 15. I can’t think of anything where it’s really so important that we send it in two seconds rather than a few minutes.

 

Do we fundamentally misunderstand the nature of capitalism, as the title of your book implies?

 

Let me start by saying that I am an advocate of capitalism. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I think it’s the worst economic system except for all the others. So I’m not an anti-capitalist, or anarchist. I want capitalism to work. But the version of capitalism that we have practiced in the past two or three decades is a very extreme free-market version which, contrary to the claims of many economists, is not the only or best way to run things. There are many different ways and in the book I show that countries that have run capitalism differently – even if they practice free-market capitalism today have done much better.

(FONTE: By William Skidelsky – The Observer – in Speak Up Magazine issue 285)

 

According to the text, the workforce has double due to

Text II

 

India is now both rich and poor, and this is the way it is likely to stay. The world’s largest economies in the future—India, China, Brazil—will contain large numbers of poor people, as India does today. It also has many super-rich, like Sunil Mittal, who in the 1970s was running a little factory in Punjab making bicycle parts. In 1995 Mittal launched a telecom company, Airtel, which now has 223 million subscribers across 19 countries, giving him an estimated net worth of $8 billion.

India’s economic rise is not eating American jobs, as I learned while researching my book. Trade happens in many directions, and the attraction of cheap labor overseas is only part of the story. When Airtel needed to expand fast during the early years of the cell-phone revolution, Mittal realized he would not be able to build infrastructure fast enough to keep up with demand. So he reverse-outsourced, giving work to foreign companies like Nokia, IBM, and Ericsson.

India’s contradictions are less confusing to Indians than they are to foreigners. New technology is not really regarded as alien or ―Western,‖ and tends to quickly become indigenous since India is a flexible and adaptive society. K. Radhakrishnan, the head of the Indian Space Research Organization, learned of his appointment while stripped to the waist, performing rituals as a pilgrim at a Hindu temple.

Women in India are usually portrayed as oppressed—and often they are—but in some circumstances can have opportunities that they would not have elsewhere. Leading financial institutions in India, like HSBC, RBS, JPMorgan Chase, ICICI, and UBS, are all run by women. Big political names like Sonia Gandhi are not alone. Mayawati Kumari, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, represents a grassroots revolution: one of nine children, she was raised on the edge of Delhi in a poor family of former ―untouchables.‖ She now rules a state with a population nearly equal to that of Brazil.

Source: Newsweeek (Adapted from: http://www.newsweek.com/,June/2011)

Choose the appropriate question tag for the following sentence:

“Women in India are usually portrayed as oppressed, ____________?” 

Text II

 

India is now both rich and poor, and this is the way it is likely to stay. The world’s largest economies in the future—India, China, Brazil—will contain large numbers of poor people, as India does today. It also has many super-rich, like Sunil Mittal, who in the 1970s was running a little factory in Punjab making bicycle parts. In 1995 Mittal launched a telecom company, Airtel, which now has 223 million subscribers across 19 countries, giving him an estimated net worth of $8 billion.

India’s economic rise is not eating American jobs, as I learned while researching my book. Trade happens in many directions, and the attraction of cheap labor overseas is only part of the story. When Airtel needed to expand fast during the early years of the cell-phone revolution, Mittal realized he would not be able to build infrastructure fast enough to keep up with demand. So he reverse-outsourced, giving work to foreign companies like Nokia, IBM, and Ericsson.

India’s contradictions are less confusing to Indians than they are to foreigners. New technology is not really regarded as alien or ―Western,‖ and tends to quickly become indigenous since India is a flexible and adaptive society. K. Radhakrishnan, the head of the Indian Space Research Organization, learned of his appointment while stripped to the waist, performing rituals as a pilgrim at a Hindu temple.

Women in India are usually portrayed as oppressed—and often they are—but in some circumstances can have opportunities that they would not have elsewhere. Leading financial institutions in India, like HSBC, RBS, JPMorgan Chase, ICICI, and UBS, are all run by women. Big political names like Sonia Gandhi are not alone. Mayawati Kumari, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, represents a grassroots revolution: one of nine children, she was raised on the edge of Delhi in a poor family of former ―untouchables.‖ She now rules a state with a population nearly equal to that of Brazil.

Source: Newsweeek (Adapted from: http://www.newsweek.com/,June/2011)

Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the text?

Text II

 

India is now both rich and poor, and this is the way it is likely to stay. The world’s largest economies in the future—India, China, Brazil—will contain large numbers of poor people, as India does today. It also has many super-rich, like Sunil Mittal, who in the 1970s was running a little factory in Punjab making bicycle parts. In 1995 Mittal launched a telecom company, Airtel, which now has 223 million subscribers across 19 countries, giving him an estimated net worth of $8 billion.

India’s economic rise is not eating American jobs, as I learned while researching my book. Trade happens in many directions, and the attraction of cheap labor overseas is only part of the story. When Airtel needed to expand fast during the early years of the cell-phone revolution, Mittal realized he would not be able to build infrastructure fast enough to keep up with demand. So he reverse-outsourced, giving work to foreign companies like Nokia, IBM, and Ericsson.

India’s contradictions are less confusing to Indians than they are to foreigners. New technology is not really regarded as alien or ―Western,‖ and tends to quickly become indigenous since India is a flexible and adaptive society. K. Radhakrishnan, the head of the Indian Space Research Organization, learned of his appointment while stripped to the waist, performing rituals as a pilgrim at a Hindu temple.

Women in India are usually portrayed as oppressed—and often they are—but in some circumstances can have opportunities that they would not have elsewhere. Leading financial institutions in India, like HSBC, RBS, JPMorgan Chase, ICICI, and UBS, are all run by women. Big political names like Sonia Gandhi are not alone. Mayawati Kumari, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, represents a grassroots revolution: one of nine children, she was raised on the edge of Delhi in a poor family of former ―untouchables.‖ She now rules a state with a population nearly equal to that of Brazil.

Source: Newsweeek (Adapted from: http://www.newsweek.com/,June/2011)

The sentence: "[…] Women in India are usually portrayed as oppressed—and often they are—but in some circumstances can have opportunities that they would not have elsewhere […]" means that:

Text II

 

India is now both rich and poor, and this is the way it is likely to stay. The world’s largest economies in the future—India, China, Brazil—will contain large numbers of poor people, as India does today. It also has many super-rich, like Sunil Mittal, who in the 1970s was running a little factory in Punjab making bicycle parts. In 1995 Mittal launched a telecom company, Airtel, which now has 223 million subscribers across 19 countries, giving him an estimated net worth of $8 billion.

India’s economic rise is not eating American jobs, as I learned while researching my book. Trade happens in many directions, and the attraction of cheap labor overseas is only part of the story. When Airtel needed to expand fast during the early years of the cell-phone revolution, Mittal realized he would not be able to build infrastructure fast enough to keep up with demand. So he reverse-outsourced, giving work to foreign companies like Nokia, IBM, and Ericsson.

India’s contradictions are less confusing to Indians than they are to foreigners. New technology is not really regarded as alien or ―Western,‖ and tends to quickly become indigenous since India is a flexible and adaptive society. K. Radhakrishnan, the head of the Indian Space Research Organization, learned of his appointment while stripped to the waist, performing rituals as a pilgrim at a Hindu temple.

Women in India are usually portrayed as oppressed—and often they are—but in some circumstances can have opportunities that they would not have elsewhere. Leading financial institutions in India, like HSBC, RBS, JPMorgan Chase, ICICI, and UBS, are all run by women. Big political names like Sonia Gandhi are not alone. Mayawati Kumari, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, represents a grassroots revolution: one of nine children, she was raised on the edge of Delhi in a poor family of former ―untouchables.‖ She now rules a state with a population nearly equal to that of Brazil.

Source: Newsweeek (Adapted from: http://www.newsweek.com/,June/2011)

Which alternative below has the CORRECT information about the word and its function in the text?