The Robot Invasion1

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The question that haunted the post-war industrial tech boom of the 1950s is rising again:2. haunt： 萦绕在心头，长期困扰；boom： 繁荣，景气。Have we reached a stage at which technology is destroying more jobs than it’s creating?

If you want a sense of where the nation’s job market is headed,a good place to stand is inside the half-mile-long Skechers warehouse in Moreno Valley, California, where box after box of shoes is stacked upon row after row of shelving, which soars some 40 feet in the air.3. 如果你想知道美国的就业市场在哪里，你可以去斯凯奇在加州莫雷诺谷的仓库站会儿。这个仓库长达半英里，一箱箱的鞋子被堆放在一排排的架子上，这些架子都高达40英尺。Skechers： 斯凯奇，全球最受欢迎鞋类产品的品牌之一，1992年诞生在加州的一个海滨小城市，现在它在美国市场是仅次于耐克的第二大鞋类品牌；stack： 堆，垛；soar： 高耸，屹立。Physically, the place is a wonder—quiet,sleek, and environmentally friendly (at 1.8 million square feet,it’s the largest of ficially certi fied “LEED Gold” building in the country).4. sleek： 整洁的；certify： 书面证明，颁发证书；LEED Gold： LEED是由美国绿色建筑委员会（USCBC）制定并推出的能源与环境建筑认证系统（Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design Building Rating System），国际上简称LEED。LEED产品分为四个级别，金级需满足至少60分。But what’s most remarkable about the $250 million structure, which opened in 2011, is how few people work there.

A driverless crane swung into motion nearby, delivering a box of shoes to its appointed spot in the stacks.5. swing： 摇摆，悬摆；appointed： 指定的。A moment later, guided by a web of sensors and software, the mammoth contraption plucked another box and shuttled it in a different direction.6. sensor： 传感器；mammoth： 庞然大物；contraption：奇妙的装置，新发明；pluck： 摘；shuttle： 以短程往复方式运送（货物等）。Then it zipped7. zip： 快速移动，飞速行动。back, red lights flashing. In this immense section of the facility, nobody lays a finger on any of the goods, all stamped “Made in China.”

关于机器人的好莱坞大片有不少，但是你是否认真考虑过这种类似机器人的高科技给人们生活带来的影响？事物都有两面性，高科技的到来也是有利有弊，但是究竟是利大还是弊大，这种发展又是否是可持续的呢？

About 700 people work in the Skechers warehouse, and as many as 300 more could be added in the next few years as business expands. That,however, is about 30 percent fewer jobs than one would expect at a more traditional logistics operation8. logistics operation： 物流运作，物流操作。of the same size. A local newspaper,The Press-Enterprise, reported last year that because Skechers transferred work to Moreno Valley from a handful of less-automated warehouses, it has meant a net loss of as many as 400 jobs across the area.9. 一家名为《商报》的地方报纸报道说，斯凯奇公司去年把工作由自动化程度不高的几个仓库转移到莫雷诺谷，相当于这个地区直接丢失400个就业机会。(Skechers of ficials declined to comment.)

Perhaps. But looking around the warehouse, much of which feels like a ghost town, one can’t help but wonder: Where does it all end?

Fears that automation will eat employment are hardly new. A decade or so after the end of World War II, concerns about what some were calling the“Second Industrial Revolution” mounted10. mount： 增加，上升。.

Corporate executives of the era largely dismissed these worries,maintaining that for every worker cast aside by a machine, even more jobs were being generated.11. 多数企业的高管们想消除这些担忧，他们声明说对于机器所替换下来的每一个工人，有更多新出现的就业机会在等着他们。cast aside：抛弃，废除。“Technological progress sets off a sort of chain reaction of economic growth,” Ralph Cordiner, the president of General Electric, assured Congress in 1955.12. set off： 引起，引发；chain reaction：连锁反应。Ralph Cordiner： 拉尔夫·科迪纳，1950至1963年间任通用电气公司CEO；assure： 向……保证，使……确信，使……放心。

Mostly, job gains were realized at the very same companies where new technology was being deployed, as huge increases in output led to the need for more workers overall—of fice personnel, engineers, maintenance staff,factory hands—to keep up with rising consumer demand.13. 通常情况下，实现就业增长的恰巧是那些采用新科技的公司，因为产量的增长使对劳动者的需求增加——办公室人员、工程师、维修人员以及工厂工人——为了跟上消费需求的增长。deploy： 有效地利用，配置，开展。Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein has pointed out that payrolls in the U.S. automobile industry swelled14. swell： 增长，膨胀。by about 15 percent through the 1950s and 1960s even as technology spread and factory productivity more than doubled.

More broadly, a 1963 study by University of Chicago economist Yale Brozen found that while 13 million jobs had been destroyed during the 1950s, the adoption of new technology was among the key ingredients15. ingredient： 要素，因素。that led to the creation of more than 20 million jobs.

In the end, the first big wave of postwar technological change was far from benign. But, on balance, it didn’t destroy nearly as many jobs as some had predicted. Even labor leaders acknowledged it was inevitable that machines would play an ever larger role in the lives of workers and that the trend could bring plenty of bene fits if managed right.

Reuther, for one, responded to advancing technology in various ways,including pushing for a guaranteed annual wage from the car companies—a cash balm for any workers idled by automation.16. 例如鲁瑟回应高新科技的方式就有很多种，包括从汽车公司争取最低年薪保证——对于因自动化而被闲置的工人来讲，这是一种慰藉。balm： 慰藉（物）；idle： 虚度，使闲置。But the surest means of keeping machines from biting17. bite： 此处引申为影响，侵害。too hard was to teach as many people as possible to use them.

Today, U.S. companies continue to invest heavily in training, pouring more than $60 billion a year into such initiatives.18. invest： 投资，投入；initiative：积极的行动，倡议。But unlike in the past, businesses say they can no longer rely on their workers’ obtaining the skills they need from another crucial source: the public classroom.

In the future, “it is a safe bet that the human labor market will center on three kinds of work,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Frank Levy and Harvard’s Richard Murnane write in “Dancing with Robots,” a report issued in June by the Washington-based think tank Third Way19. Third Way： 一家年轻的智库，宣称自己是代表中间派，服务于中产阶级的发展，主张强硬却灵活的安全政策以及清洁能源革命等。其前三任主席现在都在奥巴马团队中任高层。. The first is solving unstructured problems. The second is acquiring, making sense of, and communicating new information. Computers aren’t good at either of these tasks. The third is non-routine manual labor (like schlepping furniture), which also can’t be tackled by a computer.20. schlep： 携带，搬运；tackle：解决，处理。

As the labor market continues to struggle to recover all of the jobs lost during the Great Recession21. Great Recession： 大萧条，是指1929年至1933年之间全球性的经济大衰退。, the question that haunted the 1950s is rising again:Have we reached a stage at which technology is destroying more jobs than it is creating? After all, what took 1,000 people to churn out in 1950—when bluecollar work could launch someone with a high-school degree into the middle class—now takes fewer than 200.22. churn out： 快速生产，大量生产；launch： 开展，发动。

Most economists dismiss (or at least heavily discount) the idea. Follow the historic pattern, they argue. Innovative and entrepreneurial, the United States has always found a way to make lots of jobs out of the next new thing. It can be dif ficult getting from here to there—“very, very disruptive23. disruptive： 破坏的，扰乱的。and very, very hard” for masses of people caught in the transition, as James Cash, a Harvard business professor, puts it. But we’ve always produced enough jobs while absorbing the mechanical cotton picker, the mainframe, the microprocessor, the robot, and so much more.24. mainframe： 大型计算机；microprocessor： 微处理器。“Over the long term, employment rates are fairly stable,” Lawrence Katz told theMIT Technology Reviewearlier this year. “People have always been able to create new jobs.”

John Husing, an economist in the Inland Empire,the region east of Los Angeles where the Skechers facility is located, agrees. Even though he was the one who told me about the warehouse, marveling at the way “nobody touches a box, nobody touches a shoe,” he believes that we’re in the midst of a classic structural shift in the economy. “Do I think there will be enough jobs?” he asks. “Yes, I do.” Then he adds: “How are you going to distribute the shoes?Somebody has to drive the trucks.”

Well, maybe not for long. Over the summer,The Wall Street Journalreported on a growing phenomenon: autonomous trucks. A fleet of these driverless rigs requires “no workers’ compensation,no payroll tax,25. fleet： 车队；rig： 铰链式卡车；payroll tax：工资税。no health-care bene fits,” James Barrett, the president of a transport company in Scranton,Pennsylvania, told the Journal. “You keep going down the checklist,and it becomes pretty cheap.”

The duo, who co-authored the 2011 bookRace Against the Machine, are convinced that, as Brynjolfsson has described it, “we’re having the automation and the job destruction,” but “we’re not having the creation at the same pace” anymore. Life will change for the better in many ways because of these breakthroughs26. breakthrough： 突破。.Consumers will delight in a wealth of new products, services, and experiences. But, say Brynjolfsson and McAfee, we “also need to start preparing for a technology-fueled economy that’s ever more productive but that just might not need a great deal of human labor.”

What that portends for our social fabric, one can only imagine.27. portend： 预示，预兆；social fabric： 社会结构，社会组织。When the UAW’s Walter Reuther visited a state-of-the-art Ford plant in Cleveland in 1954, the executive showing him around pointed to a series of automated loading machines.28. state-of-the-art： 最先进的；load： 装载，装货。“How are you going to collect union dues29. union due： 工会会费。from these guys?” the executive asked. Replied Reuther: “How are you going to get them to buy Fords?”