1 . Futurologists are making a lot of predictions about our future life and they are predicting how we will travel, work and live in the next 30 years. By 2048, some futurologists foresee that some “talking” buildings will appear in our life.
By the middle of the century, it’s believed that buildings will be able to “talk” to people through various sensors when the heating needs to be turned on. As a result, there will be no switches. Instead, a lot of networks will appear, which can be compared to a human nervous system. In the next 30 years, buildings will be made from concrete plastics and shape-changing materials. All of them can heal themselves at that time. As architects are racing to develop the world’s tallest buildings, there will be a need for new kinds of elevators, through which vehicles could even travel into the buildings. German engineers have already started working on such technology called Multi.
By mid-century, scientists believe that buildings will be miles tall. Some of them may be very large and they can function as small cities. By comparison, at present, the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai, measures 828 metres high. As the future building can rise through the clouds, their windows will be replaced by virtual screens. In this way, people can choose any view as they like.
At height extremes, a London Spaceport is also likely to come into being by 2048 as the space industry develops very quickly. There is a huge cost advantage going to space from as high a base as possible, so a spaceport is very likely to be over 10km and even as much as 30km, using carbon - based materials.
1. How will the heating system be controlled in the future?| A．Through the net. | B．Through sensors. |
| C．Through switches. | D．Through mobiles. |
| A．They can recover by themselves. | B．They can seek help automatically. |
| C．They can transport people into space. | D．They can protect people against harm. |
| A．Seeing the scenes as you please. | B．Allowing vehicles to travel into buildings. |
| C．Connecting the earth with the space. | D．Making it possible to build high buildings. |
| A．Scientists | B．German engineers |
| C．Future buildings | D．Virtual screens. |
2 . If you think of the jobs that robots could never do, you would probably put doctors and teachers atop of the list. It’s easy to imagine robots and factory workers. But are we underestimating what robots can do?
In some cases, they already do better than doctors at diagnosing illness. Also, some patients might feel more comfortable sharing personal information with a machine than a person. Could there be a place for robots in education after all?
British education expert Anthony Seldom thinks so. He even has a date for the robot takeover of the classroom:2027. He forecasts that robots will do the main job of disseminating knowledge and teachers will be like helpers. Intelligent robots will read students’ faces, movements and even brain signals. Then they will pass the information on to each student in the way he or she can understand.
However, it’s not a popular opinion. Most people think it’s impossible that robots will have the ability to really connect with humans like another human can.
One thing is certain, though. A robot teacher is better than no teacher at all. In some parts of the world, there aren’t enough teachers and 9%-16% of children under the age of 14 don’t go to school. That problem could be partly solved by robots because the owners can teach anywhere.
Being a teacher is a difficult job and teachers often feel overworked. Perhaps the question is not “Will robots replace teachers?” but “How can’t robots help teachers?” Teachers spend a lot of time doing non-teaching work, including more than 1 hour a week marking homework. If robots could cut the time teachers spend marking homework and writing reports, teachers would have more time and energy for the parts of the job humans do best.
1. What does the author mainly intend to show in the first paragraph?| A．Robots can do creative work. |
| B．Robots will replace doctors soon. |
| C．Robots work better than humans. |
| D．Robots can do more jobs than imagined. |
| A．Storing. | B．Spreading. |
| C．Analyzing. | D．Replacing. |
| A．Unacceptable. | B．Uncreative. |
| C．Unconcerned. | D．Reasonable. |
| A．What robots are never able to do. |
| B．What the weaknesses of robots are. |
| C．Whether robots will evolve by themselves. |
| D．Whether robots will completely replace human teachers. |
