The concept of man versus machine is at least as old as the industrial revolution, but this phenomenon tends to be most acutely felt during economic downturns and fragile recoveries. And yet, it would be a mistake to think we are right now simply experiencing the painful side of a boom and bust cycle. Certain jobs have gone away for good, outmoded by machines. Since technology has such an insatiable appetite for eating up human jobs, this phenomenon will continue to restructure our economy in ways we can’t immediately foresee.

    When there is exponential improvement in the price and performance of technology, jobs that were once thought to be immune from automation suddenly become threatened. This argument has attracted a lot of attention, via the success of the book Race Against the Machine, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, who both hail from MIT’s Center for Digital Business.

    This is a powerful argument, and a scary one. And yet, John Hagel, author of The Power of Pull and other books, says Brynjolfsson and McAfee miss the reason why these jobs are so vulnerable to technology in the first place.

    Hagel says we have designed jobs in the U. S. that tend to be “tightly scripted” and “highly standardized” ones that leave no room for “individual initiative or creativity”. In short, these are the types of jobs that machines can perform much better than human beings. That is how we have put a giant target sign on the backs of American workers, Hagel says.

    It’s time to reinvent the formula for how work is conducted, since we are still relying on a very 20th century notion of work. Hagel says. In our rapidly changing economy, we more than ever need people in the workplace who can take initiative and exercise their imagination “to respond to unexpected events”. That’s not something machines are good at. They are designed to perform very predictable activities.

    As Hagel notes, Brynjolfsson and McAfee indeed touched on this point in their book. We need to reframe race against the machine as race with the machine. In other words, we need to look at the ways in which machines can augment human labor rather than replace it. So then the problem is not really about technology, but rather, “how do we innovate our institutions and our work practices?”

答案精析：根据题目可定位至最后一段，从关键词Brynjolfsson and McAfee可定位到最后一句。定位句指出，两人提及的是指代上文的this point，即第五段论点：现代社会需要能发挥主动性和想象力的人，机器并不具有这些能力，机器只是执行那些可预测的工作。该论点表明机器并不能取代人类，社会依然需要人类参与工作，因此选D。

错项排除：A项对应原文第五段最后一句，机器被设计出来执行可预测的工作，并非机器本身的工作可预测。B项关键词formula位于第五段第一句，但仍属于黑格尔的观点，并非后面两人的讨论内容，故A排除。C项表示机器正在取代人力，但下文第六段中内容提到，我们应该关注如何增强人力，而非让机器取代人类，原文语义与C项表述矛盾，故排除。