英語(yǔ)范文背誦精華 30.1 Looking to the 21st Century
1. Your Future
The future does not determine itself. The actions of the present determine it
Edward Cornish, editor of The Futurist magazine published by the World Future Society, says:
"The responsibility we have for the future begins when we recognize that we ourselves create the future — that the future is not something imposed upon us by fate or other forces beyond our control. We ourselves build the future both through what we do and what we do not do."
2. Your Brain
Your brainwaves may be checked to see whether you are busy, tired or doing your work properly.
Psychologist Arthur F. Kramer tested volunteers working on arithmetic problems. He could predict their performance from the strength of the brain's electrical activity measured through the head.
The future? Bosses could measure brain activity to learn worker quality. Frequent computer analysis could tell whether workers, like air traffic controllers, are seeing all activity clearly enough to monitor it properly.
3. Your Doctor
More and more, doctors will use visual information about your condition from computers, instead of textbooks, for diagnosis and treatment.
Home computers will enable you to answer interactive questions about your health and show the alternative results should you act in a certain way.
4. Your Car
Cars will be almost entirely controlled by computers.
To pay for costs, cars will be billed for using high-speed toll roads. Computers will record the passage of the car and automatically take the money from the owner's computer bank account.
Computers will show drivers maps of districts the car is crossing on a small screen in the car.
Computers will diagnose any problems with the engine. Computer connections will list the nearest places of repair, tell the cost of new parts and the place where they can be bought.
5. The Computer-Home
More than half of the home computers sold in the United States in recent years will become essential to home life in the West. Future tasks computers already do at home include:
Computers turn on the lights, heating and essential household services before people arrive home from work. Computers control cooking, hot water, security.
Computers enable homework assignments to be done with worldwide resources, using sites like museums and science facilities around the world. Homework help can come equally from the local library, or libraries and databases in places as far apart as New York and London, or from teachers and fellow students around the globe.
6. The Workplace
The changing face of work and the workplace is one of the most widespread influences in Western society.
Women now form more than half the workers; the percentage is rising as they start up small businesses of their own, often working from home.
People are changing careers on average every ten years now, instead of staying in a job for life.
Increases in information and knowledge-based businesses are reducing levels of middle management. Top managers get all the information needed to work together with front-line staff.
Specialists are becoming more important than general workers.
7. The Environment
Protection of the environment used to be the concern of special groups. Now governments and businesses realise bad air and water pollution affect everyone, making it difficult for cities to survive and for businesses to make a profit.
London, England's biggest city, often suffers from air pollution which causes more than 1,000 deaths a year. Especially the very young, the elderly and cigarette smokers are at high risk.
Many European countries and the United States check vehicles for gas and smoke emissions to make sure the levels are below the permitted output. For example, Germany has 600 sites that monitor carbon monoxide.
8. Your Health
Physical fitness and healthy lifestyles have changed from fashion and hobby for a few to official policy for many businesses and governments.
Smoking cigarettes is under siege as a habit. Smoking advertising is banned in many areas.
Although pills for tension, heart conditions, weight and other life-threatening conditions are prescribed by Western doctors, most now require patients to develop healthy lifestyles by changing diets and exercising more to keep well.
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