PASSAGE III
Recently
I spent several hours sitting under a tree in my garden with the social anthropologist
William Ury, a Harvard University professor who specializes in the art of
negotiation and wrote the bestselling book, Getting to Yes. He captivated me with
his theory that tribalism protects people from their fear of rapid change. He explained
that the pillars of tribalism that humans rely on for security would always counter
any significant cultural or social change. In this way, he said, change is never
allowed to happen too fast. Technology, for example, is a pillar of society.
Ury believes that every time technology moves in a new or radical direction,
another pillar such as religion or nationalism will grow stronger -in effect,
the traditional and familiar will assume greater importance to compensate for
the new and untested. In this manner, human tribes avoid rapid change that
leaves people insecure and frightened.
But
we have all heard that nothing is as permanent as change. Nothing is guaranteed.
Pithy expressions, to be sure, but no more than cliches. As Ury says, people
don't live that way from day-to-day. On the contrary, they actively seek certainty
and stability. They want to know they will be safe.
Even
so, we scare ourselves constantly with the idea of change. An IBM CEO once said:
'We only re-structure for a good reason, and if we haven't re-structured in a while,
that's a good reason.' We are scared that competitors, technology and the consumer
will put us out of business -so we have to change all the time just to stay alive.
But if we asked our fathers and grandfathers, would they have said that they lived
in a period of little change? Structure may not have changed much. It may just be
the speed with which we do things.
Change
is over-rated, anyway. Consider the automobile. It's an especially valuable example,
because the auto industry has spent tens of billions of dollars on research and
product development in the last 100 years. Henry Ford's first car had a metal chassis
with an internal combustion, gasoline-powered engine, four wheels with rubber
tyres, a foot operated clutch assembly and brake system, a steering wheel, and
four seats, and it could safely do 18 miles per hour. A hundred years and tens
of thousands of research hours later, we drive cars with a metal chassis with
an internal combustion, gasoline-powered
engine, four wheels with rubber tyres, a foot operated clutch assembly and
brake system, a steering wheel, four seats -and the average speed in London in
2001 was 17.5 miles per hour!
That's
not a hell of a lot of return for the money. Ford evidently doesn't have much
to teach us about change. The fact that they're still manufacturing cars is not
proof that Ford Motor Co. is a sound organization, just proof that it takes
very large companies to make cars in great quantities -making for ~ almost
impregnable entry barrier.
Fifty
years after the development of the jet engine, planes are also little changed. They've
grown bigger, wider and can carry more people. But those are incremental, largely
cosmetic changes.
Taken
together, this lack of real change has come to mean that in travel –whether driving
or flying -time and technology have not combined to make things much better.
The safety and design have of course accompanied the times and the new volume
of cars and flights, but nothing of any significance has changed in the basic assumptions
of the final product.
At
the same time, moving around in cars or aeroplanes becomes less and less efficient
all the time. Not only has there been no great change, but also both forms of transport
have deteriorated as more people clamour to use them. The same is true for
telephones, which took over hundred years to become mobile, or photographic film,
which also required an entire century to change.
The
only explanation for this is anthropological. Once established in calcified organizations,
humans do two things: sabotage changes that might render people dispensable,
and ensure industry-wide emulation. In the 1960s, German auto companies
developed plans to scrap the entire combustion engine for an electrical design.
(The same existed in the 1970s in Japan, and in the 1980s in France.) So for 40
years we might have been free of the wasteful and ludicrous dependence on
fossil fuels. Why didn't it go anywhere? Because auto executives understood
pistons and carburetors, and would be loath to cannibalize their expertise,
along with most of their factories.
51.
Which of the following best describes one of the main ideas discussed in the passage?
1. Rapid change is usually welcomed in
society.
2. Industry is not as innovative as it is
made out to be.
3. We should have less change than what we
have now.
4. Competition spurs companies into radical
innovation.
52.
According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?
1. Executives of automobile companies are
inefficient and ludicrous.
2. The speed at which an automobile is driven
in a city has not changed much in a century.
3. Anthropological factors have fostered
innovation in automobiles by promoting use of new technologies.
4. Further innovation in jet engines has been
more than incremental.
53.
Which of the following views does the author fully support in the passage?
1. Nothing is as permanent as change.
2. Change is always rapid.
3. More money spent on innovation leads to
more rapid change.
4. Over decades, structural change has been
incremental.
54.
According to the passage, the reason why we continued to be dependent on fossil
fuels is that:
1. Auto executives did not wish to change.
2. No alternative fuels were discovered.
3. Change in technology was not easily
possible.
4. German, Japanese and French companies
could not come up with new technologies.
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