Questão 2850154

Text for items from 16 to 20.

1 We are often told that we are in the midst of a

technological revolution. That business and the world

of work continue to be transformed and improved

4 by computers, the Internet, the increased speed

of communication, data processing, robotics, and

now ‑ artificial intelligence.

7 There is only one small problem with all

this ‑ none of it seems to show up in the economic data.

If all this technology really is making us all work faster

10 and better, there is precious little evidence.

It feels like we are continuing to go through

a huge period of innovation and technological

13 advancement, but at the same time, productivity

has slowed to a crawl. How can you explain this

apparent paradox?

16 It might be that we are all just using the

technology to avoid doing work. Such as endlessly

messaging friends on WhatsApp, watching videos on

19 YouTube, arguing angrily on Twitter, or simply mindlessly

surfing the Internet.

Or there might, of course, be bigger

22 underlying factors.

Productivity is something economists look

at very closely. And while it is a complicated issue,

25 with the 2008 financial crisis and current high

inflation having a negative impact, there are said to

be two main explanations for why technology is not

28 boosting productivity.

The first is that we are just not measuring

the impact of technology properly. The second is that

31 economic revolutions tend to be rather slow‑burning

affairs. And therefore, technological change is happening,

but it just might be decades before we see the

34 full benefits.

The technology is seemingly not the problem,

and in some respects it is not the solution either. High

37 productivity growth will come only to those that learn

how to use it best.

Internet: <www.bbc.com> (with adaptations).

About the sentence “It feels like we are continuing to go through a huge period of innovation and technological advancement, but at the same time, productivity has slowed to a crawl” (lines from 11 to 14), select the incorrect alternative.