Innovation, the elixir (灵丹妙药) of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution hand weavers were (36)_____ aside by the mechanical loom. Over the past 30 years the digital revolution has (37)_____ many of the mid-skill jobs that supported 20th-century middle-class life. Typists, ticket agents, bank tellers and many production-line jobs have been dispensed with, just as the weavers were.
For those who believe that technological progress has made the world a better place, such disruption is a natural part of rising (38)_____. Although innovation kills some jobs, it creates new and better ones, as a more (39)_____ society becomes richer and its wealthier inhabitants demand more goods and services. A hundred years ago one in three American workers was (40)_____ on a farm. Today less than 2% of them produce far more food. The millions freed from the land were not rendered (41)_____, but found better- paid work as the economy grew more sophisticated. Today the pool of secretaries has (42)_____, but there are ever more computer programmers and web designers.
Optimism remains the right starting-point, but for workers the dislocating effects of technology may make themselves evident faster than its (43)_____. Even if new jobs and wonderful products emerge, in the short term income gaps will widen, causing huge social dislocation and perhaps even changing politics.
Technology’s (44)_____will feel like a tornado (旋风), hitting the rich world first, but (45)_____ sweeping through poorer countries too. No government is prepared for it.


