Questões do ENEM: Linguagens

Technology isn’t working

The digital revolution has yet to fulfil its promise of higher productivity and better jobs

      If there is a technological revolution in progress, rich economies could be forgiven for wishing it would go away. Workers in America, Europe and Japan have been through a difficult few decades. In the 1970s the blistering growth after the second world war vanished in both Europe and America. In the early 1990s Japan joined the slump, entering a prolonged period of economic stagnation. Brief spells of faster growth in intervening years quickly petered out. The rich world is still trying to shake off the effects of the 2008 financial crisis. And now the digital economy, far from pushing up wages across the board in response to higher productivity, is keeping them flat for the mass of workers while extravagantly rewarding the most talented ones.

      It seems difficult to square this unhappy experience with the extraordinary technological progress during that period, but the same thing has happened before. Most economic historians reckon there was very little improvement in living standards in Britain in the century after the first Industrial Revolution. And in the early 20th century, as Victorian inventions such as electric lighting came into their own, productivity growth was every bit as slow as it has been in recent decades.

<http://tinyurl.com/lv6rj7b>Acesso em: 18.02.2015. Adaptado.

Technology isn’t working

The digital revolution has yet to fulfil its promise of higher productivity and better jobs

      If there is a technological revolution in progress, rich economies could be forgiven for wishing it would go away. Workers in America, Europe and Japan have been through a difficult few decades. In the 1970s the blistering growth after the second world war vanished in both Europe and America. In the early 1990s Japan joined the slump, entering a prolonged period of economic stagnation. Brief spells of faster growth in intervening years quickly petered out. The rich world is still trying to shake off the effects of the 2008 financial crisis. And now the digital economy, far from pushing up wages across the board in response to higher productivity, is keeping them flat for the mass of workers while extravagantly rewarding the most talented ones.

      It seems difficult to square this unhappy experience with the extraordinary technological progress during that period, but the same thing has happened before. Most economic historians reckon there was very little improvement in living standards in Britain in the century after the first Industrial Revolution. And in the early 20th century, as Victorian inventions such as electric lighting came into their own, productivity growth was every bit as slow as it has been in recent decades.

<http://tinyurl.com/lv6rj7b>Acesso em: 18.02.2015. Adaptado.

Learn ‘n’ go

How quickly can people learn new skills?

Jan 25th 2014 – from the print edition

      In 2012, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee took a ride in one of Google’s driverless cars. The car’s performance, they report, was flawless, boring and, above all, “weird”. Only a few years earlier, “We were sure that computers would not be able to drive cars.” Only humans, they thought, could make sense of the countless, shifting patterns of driving a car – with oncoming1 traffic, changing lights and wayward2 jaywalkers3 .

      Machines have mastered driving. And not just driving. In ways that are only now becoming apparent, the authors argue, machines can forecast home prices, design beer bottles, teach at universities, grade exams and do countless other things better and more cheaply than humans. (…)

      This will have one principal good consequence, and one bad. The good is bounty4 . Households will spend less on groceries, utilities and clothing; the deaf will be able to hear, the blind to see. The bad is spread5 . The gap is growing between the lucky few whose abilities and skills are enhanced6 by technology, and the far more numerous middle-skilled people competing for the remaining7 jobs that machines cannot do, such as folding towels and waiting at tables. (…) People should develop skills that complement, rather than compete with computers, such as idea generation and complex communication. (…)

<http://tinyurl.com/m2zmazg>Acesso em: 27.07.2015. Adaptado.

Glossário

1oncoming: iminente; próximo.

2wayward: desobediente; instável.

3jaywalker: pedestre imprudente.

4bounty: recompensa.

5spread: propagação; extensão.

6enhanced: aprimorado(a).

7remaining: remanescente.

Adapted from The Economist, January 24, 2015.

Adapted from Natural History, March 2015. 

Adapted from Natural History, March 2015. 

 Read the text and choose the best alternative.

                                Don’t Set Goals: Use Systems

Have you already set your goals for the New Year? Do you want to lose 10 kilos, run a marathon or speak fluent English? Some experts believe that you need systems, not goals. A system is something you do on a regular basis. This means focusing on what you can control (your actions) rather than what you can’t (the unpredictable). For example, don’t focus on losing 10 kilos, focus on shopping for healthy food and cooking something light every day. Don’t focus on the marathon; focus on the training schedule. Invent a system to improve your English, one step at a time. Good luck!

Disponível em: . Acesso em: junho de 2015.

According to the text we can state that:

I. In order to achieve something you should focus on your actions.

II. In order to achieve something you should eat healthy food every day.

III. In order to achieve something you should set your systems for the New Year.

IV. In order to achieve something you should take one step at a time.  

Read the text and choose the best alternative for the underlined word.

                       Pictures of Ascent in the Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe.

                                                                                                    By Douglas Anderson.

                                             New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2009. xi, 201 pp. $ 80.00.

The material world and the ability to transcend it are at the heart of this study of Edgar Allan Poe’s writings. In chapters such as “Problems of Disposal” and “The Gravity of Things,” Anderson contrasts the “weight of living” present in Poe’s life and work with, in Italo Calvino’s words, the “lightness of thoughtfulness.” This book provides a taxonomy of Poe’s literary imagination through suggestive literary analyses of the fictive environments that inhabit and undergird his stories, and it expands the purview of Poe studies as well as of nineteenth-century American literature.

Available in: <http://americanliterature.dukejournals.org/content/82/3/663.full.pdf> . Access on: August 2015.

Taxonomy means 

Atenção: Para responder à questão, considere o texto abaixo.

      Com base numa ideia central de Lucien Goldmann, o crítico e historiador Alfredo Bosi propõe, para a moderna ficção brasileira, enquadramentos como estes:

I. romances de tensão mínima: as personagens não se destacam visceralmente da estrutura social e da paisagem que as condicionam. Exemplos, as histórias populistas de Jorge Amado.

II. romances de tensão crítica: o herói opõe-se e resiste agonicamente às pressões da natureza e da exploração social. Exemplos, os romances de Graciliano Ramos.

III. romances de tensão transfigurada: o herói procura ultrapassar o conflito que o constitui existencialmente pela transmutação mítica ou metafísica da realidade: Exemplos, Guimarães Rosa e Clarice Lispector.

                         (Apud História concisa da literatura brasileira. São Paulo: Cultrix, 1970) 

Atenção: Para responder à questão, considere o texto abaixo.

      No fim de 1944 estávamos em regime de ditadura no Brasil, como todos sabem. Uma ditadura que já se ia dissolvendo, porque o ditador de então começara a acertar o passo com as chamadas Potências do Eixo; mas quando os Estados Unidos entraram na guerra e pressionaram no mesmo sentido os seus dependentes, ele não só passou para o outro lado, como teve de concordar que o país interviesse efetivamente na luta, como aliás pedia a opinião pública, às vezes em manifestações de massa que foram as primeiras a quebrar a rotina disciplinada de tranquilidade aparente nas grandes cidades.

            (CÂNDIDO, Antonio. Teresina etc. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1980, p. 107-108) 

Atenção: Para responder à questão, considere o texto abaixo.

      Retrato do Brasil: ensaio sobre a tristeza brasileira, de Paulo Prado (escritor a quem Mário de Andrade dedicou Macunaíma), é hoje um livro quase esquecido. Quando saiu, porém, alcançou êxito excepcional: quatro edições entre 1928 e 1931. O momento era propício para tentar explicações do Brasil, país que se via a si mesmo como um ponto de interrogação. Terra tropical e mestiça condenada ao atraso ou promessa de um eldorado sul-americano?

                                              (BOSI, Alfredo. Céu, Inferno. São Paulo: Ática, 1988, p. 137) 

Atenção: Para responder à questão, considere o texto abaixo.

      Contraditoriamente, foi o patrocínio da fração mais europeizada da aristocracia rural de São Paulo, aberta às influências internacionais, que permitiu o florescimento das inovações estéticas. O café pesou mais do que as indústrias. Os velhos troncos paulistas, ameaçados em face da burguesia e da imigração, se juntaram aos artistas numa grande “orgia intelectual”, conforme a definição de Mário de Andrade. Segundo ele, “foi da proteção desses salões literários [promovidos pela aristocracia rural] que se alastrou pelo Brasil o espírito destruidor do movimento modernista.”

(MARQUES, Ivan. Cenas de um modernismo de província. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2011, p. 11)

Atenção: Para responder à questão, considere o texto abaixo.

      Contraditoriamente, foi o patrocínio da fração mais europeizada da aristocracia rural de São Paulo, aberta às influências internacionais, que permitiu o florescimento das inovações estéticas. O café pesou mais do que as indústrias. Os velhos troncos paulistas, ameaçados em face da burguesia e da imigração, se juntaram aos artistas numa grande “orgia intelectual”, conforme a definição de Mário de Andrade. Segundo ele, “foi da proteção desses salões literários [promovidos pela aristocracia rural] que se alastrou pelo Brasil o espírito destruidor do movimento modernista.”

(MARQUES, Ivan. Cenas de um modernismo de província. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2011, p. 11)

Atenção: Para responder à questão, considere o texto abaixo.

      Nos poemas indianistas, o heroísmo dos indígenas em nenhum momento é utilizado como crítica à colonização europeia, da qual a elite era a herdeira. Ao contrário, pela resistência ou pela colaboração, os indígenas do passado colonial, do ponto de vista dos nossos literatos, valorizavam a colonização e deviam servir de inspiração moral à elite brasileira. (...) Já o africano escravizado demorou para aparecer como protagonista na literatura romântica. Na segunda metade do século XIX, Castro Alves, na poesia, e Bernardo Guimarães, na prosa, destacaram em obras suas o tema da escravidão.

(Adaptado de: NAPOLITANO, Marcos e VILLAÇA, Mariana. História para o ensino médio. São Paulo: Atual Editora, 2013, p. 436-37)