Unit 10

Test A

What will our future be like? What might happen in the year 2144? How far can your imagination take you into the future? Let's see what a newspaper in New Zealand tells us.

The Future

Will the future be one of robots and spaceships, or meditation and organic food? Today and next Wednesday The Post steps into the future, and asks the experts what they think the world of tomorrow will be like.
Imagine you are holding the December 11, 2144 edition of The Evening Post. It won't be made of paper, but a thin screen that can be folded up and put in your pocket or bag. You'll use the same screen tomorrow, when the day's news will be beamed to its tiny modem via satellite.
The modem will chatter away all day, updating stories from around the world as they happen, complete with moving pictures and sound. A retina scanner will follow your eye, scrolling each page as you get near the bottom. The paper's computer will record which stories interest you most and design a custom menu every time you switch it on.
Let's see what's happening today. Again, the big local story is the disappearing apartment blocks at Happy Valley. Built over an old landfill, this expensive new development is slowly sinking into the ground. Engineers suspect plastic milk bottles dumped with their caps screwed on in the late-20th century are bursting under the weight of the buildings. "People back then," says Wellington's Mayor in a live interview, "were pretty stupid."
Overseas a power failure at a cryo-prison in Alabama during the holiday weekend saw 50,000 inmates thawed prematurely, and in Bangladesh monsoon floods have wiped out hundreds of villages. Some things don't change.
In reality, we can't predict what the pages of this newspaper will contain 144 years from now because we can't predict the future. But in two weeks we will arrive in the new millennium, a date long held up as the future, but which will soon represent a new beginning.
Thirty years ago it was expected that by 2000 commuters would fly to work on highways in the sky, that robots with pinnies would do the vacuuming, that humans would have colonised our near planets and the moon.
Our cars are still stuck firmly on the ground, although even the most basic family runabout has a powerful electronic brain which tells it how much fuel to use and figures out in milliseconds how to save the occupants in a crash.
We still do the vacuuming ourselves, although our ovens tell us when food is ready. We can download whole libraries through our home computers and view snaps of friends on the other side of the world seconds after they are taken.
We have yet to live anywhere other than Earth, although missions into space have allowed us to develop new medicines, information chips and superconductors to make life better down here.
Who would have believed we'd be altering the genetic make-up of animals so they can grow replacement organs for us? Who'd have believed the drink machine in the foyer dials for supplies when it senses it's getting low?
At the dawn of the new millennium the future seems to be coming at us at a frightening pace, with the world seeming to change almost weekly.
What then, will it be like in 100 years? 500? 1000? Will it be a technological future with space hotels, rocket cars, genetically engineered people and automated homes? Or will it be an organic future with a new emphasis on spirituality and nature?
Will humankind still be blighted by war? Will we be able to cure cancer? Will we still get married? What sort of world will our children inherit?
Over the past few months The Post has been asking experts in their fields to take an educated, but fanciful, guess. None claims to be able to tell the future, but by tracking current trends they can give us an idea of what to expect in the world of tomorrow.
You won't be around to read the December 11, 2144 edition of The Evening Post, but this is the next best thing.
Welcome to the future.
(666 words)

New Words

robot
n. an automatic machine that can perform the actions of a person 機器人

spaceship
n. a vehicle used for travelling in space 航天器；宇宙飛船

organic
a. 1. not using artificial chemicals in the production of plants and animals for food 施有機肥料的
2. of, found in, or formed by living things 生物體的；有機體的

expert
n. a person with special knowledge, skill or training in a particular field 專家；能手