1 . What will the future be like? Will the world be greener and more beautiful? Will people live more happily and more conveniently? Probably people will lead a better life.
The Spring Festival, the most important Chinese holiday when everyone returns home has caused headaches for millions of Chinese. More than 2 billion people travel at the same time, making getting travel tickets and the journey arduous. But in several decades, the Spring Festival travel may not be a problem at all. China plans to build more than 120,000 kilometers of railway and a fast transportation network that will serve 90% of the population.
And because most of China will be cities, people will not have to go to other places to find jobs, so it will no longer be a problem. In the future, new information about timely events will be sent by humans or even robots to personal web tools through the Internet. That means only digital (数字化的) newspapers can be seen. Readers can discuss topics with journalists and editors. Information will move faster.
Oil is running out faster than expected. But scientists have found something else for oil as fuel. Coal, natural gas, solar power, nuclear power and even water can take the place of oil as sources (来源) of energy.
Schools will go electronic. Everything will be in the computer and students will not need to bring books to school. They will find information on the Internet. A computer will be the students’ library, schoolbag and connection to the outside world. There will be robot teachers, who will check homework on computers and communicate with the students’ parents through emails. And school buses will be like spaceships, comfortable and safe.
However, what can the future actually become? It remains to be seen.
1. What does the underlined word “arduous” in paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Possible. | B．Necessary. | C．Difficult. | D．Boring. |
| A．Traditional newspapers will disappear completely. |
| B．Transportation networks will be in severe situations. |
| C．Sources of new energy will be very hard to discover. |
| D．People will be in face of having fewer jobs to take up. |
| A．Students will be free of homework. | B．Computers will play a key role in it. |
| C．Students will travel into space daily. | D．It is much more colorful than before. |
| A．Worries on Life in the Future | B．A Great Lifestyle in the Future |
| C．Ways to Succeed in the Future | D．Predictions on Life in the Future |
2 . There’s a good chance something you've bought online has been in the hands of a “ picker” first. These are the workers in warehouses(仓库)who pick, pack and ship all those things we’re ordering.
At Amazon and other companies, they’re working side by side with robots. Experts say while the robots are replacing some human workers, the machines aren't quite ready to take over completely.
When a robot finds its storage unit, it slides underneath, lifts it up and then delivers it to a worker 一 they’re called pickers. On a recent day, the computer told a picker to grab what looked like a fantasy board (棋盘)game. The picker found it, canned it and placed it on the conveyor belt.
“In a traditional fulfillment center where the associate would walk to the different items , it can take hours to fulfill a customer order. “ Robinson says.
Now, with the help of robots, that task takes minutes 一 and fewer humans.
So is this a sign we're entering a new industrial revolution?
“It’s definitely going to take over a lot of jobs. " says Karen Myers, a scientist at SRI, one of Silicon Valley's oldest research centers.
At the same time, she says, we're running against the limits of technology. Take “the picker” at the Amazon fulfillment center. Myers says those skills are proving to be uniquely human.
“Our fingers are incredibly flexible and the current generation of robotic operators, they’re getting much, much better,” she says. “But they're just not quite there yet. ”
There’s also the robot’s brain.
Remember that board game the Amazon worker was looking for? She could barely see the box filled into the storage bin — but she could tell it was a board game. Robots can’t do that.
Technologists say that, increasingly, humans will work side by side with robots — instead of robots working alone.
Amazon says robots and humans enabled the Tracy warehouse to fulfill customer orders faster. That means more customers and more human workers.
1. A picker does some tasks except .| A．picking goods | B．producing goods | C．spotting goods | D．packing goods |
| A．more efficient | B．less straight | C．more difficult | D．less profitable |
| A．powerful | B．artificial | C．flexible | D．energetic |
| A．Robots replacing humans completely. |
| B．The advantages of shopping online. |
| C．The future of robots. |
| D．Robots and humans working side by side. |
