2 . “May 17, 2157

Dear diary,

Today, Tommy found a real book!...”

“What’s it about?” Margie asked.

“School.” replied Tommy, turning the yellow pages.

“Why would anyone write about school? I hope they can take my geography teacher away.”

“It’s not our school. This is the old sort that they had centuries ago.”

“Anyway, they had a teacher.” Margie said, reading the book over his shoulder.

“Sure, they had a teacher, but it wasn’t a regular teacher. It was a man.”

“A man? How could a man be a teacher?”

“Well, he just told the boys and girls things and gave them assignments and asked them questions.”

“A man isn’t smart enough.”

“Sure, he is. My father knows as much as my teacher.”

Margie wasn’t prepared to argue about that. She said, “I wouldn’t want a strange man in my house to teach me.”

Tommy laughed. “The teachers didn’t live in the house. They had a special building and all the kids went there.”

“And all the kids learned the same thing?”

“Sure, if they were the same age.”

“But my mother says a teacher has to be adjusted to fit the mind of each boy and girl it teaches and that each kid has to be taught differently.”

“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to read the book.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” Margie said quickly.

They weren’t even half-finished when Margie’s mother called, “Margie! School!”

“Not yet, Mamma.”

“Now!” said Mrs. Jones.

Margie said to Tommy, “Can I read the book some more with you after school?”

“Maybe,” Tommy said.

Margie went into the schoolroom, right next to her bedroom, and the mechanical teacher was on waiting for her.

The screen was lit up, and it said, “Please insert yesterday’s assignments in the proper slot.”

Margie was still thinking about the old schools they had when her grandfather’s grandfather was a little boy. All the kids from the whole neighborhood came, laughing and shouting in the schoolyard, sitting together in the schoolroom, going home together at the end of the day. They learned the same things, so they could help one another on the assignments and discussed them.

And the teachers were people…

Traditionally,     1     the year winds down, it’s a time for reflections—to give thanks, reconnect with loved ones, and cherish the more meaningful parts of life, removed from our usual day-to-day distractions.

Of course, the events of 2020 haven’t shown a lot of respect for our traditions. In a year of so much tragedy, it can be tough to give thanks when you’re doing your best to get by. And far too many of us will have to gather around a table with an empty chair, if we were able to gather together at all.

One thing, though, we can say about 2020 is that it forced us all to cherish what is most important, what’s most meaningful in our lives. To stop taking things for granted,     2     truly matters. To be grateful for what we have, and to be alive to the pain of those     3     (fortunate).

Throughout this challenging year, I’ve been moved, again and again, by the sacrifices so many were willing to make on behalf of others. The healthcare professionals who risked their lives to save ours. The workers who have kept our lights on and our shelves stocked, always essential to our economy, but finally     4     (recognize) for it. The protesters of every race and age who saw injustice in their streets and their institutions and demanded change. And the less heralded leaders, the quiet change-makers who saw need in their own communities and leapt to address it. They checked in on their neighbors, delivered food and PPE to seniors and those experiencing hardship, offered mental health support to those     5    (recover) from trauma.     6     holes this pandemic tore wide in our social fabric, these emerging leaders stepped forward to patch it up.

These are exactly the leaders Michelle and I started our Foundation to support. We always thought they     7     (lead) us into a bright future, if only we     8     empower them, connect them with each other, and give them a dose of inspiration when they needed it.

What we learned in 2020 is that these emerging leaders aren’t just building a brighter future, they’re safeguarding our present. In hard times, they are the ones who’ve given me solace. It’s     9     sacrifice in which I found hope. And as we begin to close the chapter on a difficult year with encouraging news on the horizon, it’s their leadership     10     will guide us today and tomorrow.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everybody.

—Quoted from Barack Obama’s Christmas speech in 2020

6 . When people talk about the future, we like to think that we will be able to drive out of our garages and take to the ________ in our own personal flying car. The advantages are obvious. Some people ________ this technology will allow complete three-dimensional freedom of movement. We could fly at 489 kilometres per hour, ________ traffic lights, busy roads and speeding tickets. However, some people point to the disadvantages of flying cars. They claim that there are certain to be problems with traffic ________. Another big problem is mechanical ________. What will happen if they break down? ________, if they become popular, there is likely to be another big problem: air traffic congestion. So it looks like flying cars face more than a few problems if they are to get off the ground!

Most of us have printed out an electronic document on paper, but think about the ________ of printing out a three-dimensional object in plastic. 3D printers build an object using layers line-by-line like a(n) ________ printer until the object is complete. Vehicle companies like BMW and Volkswagen already use 3D printers to make life-size models of car parts. At the moment the process is slow and quality is ________, but before long it might be possible to see a product on a website and then ________ it to your printer at home. In the future we could make our own furniture, jewellery, cups, plates, shoes and toys from designs on our computers, and reduce the amount of ________ we have to do.

Imagine having your own Ironman suit. There are several companies trying to build a practical robot ‘exoskeleton’. This is a suit of robot arms and legs which follows your ________. It will allow the wearer to lift heavy objects, walk long distances and even punch through walls! There are ________ military advantages for this technology and might help people to walk again after disease or injury. However, besides cost and battery life, another problem is that a badly ________ robot suit could injure the wearer because you wouldn’t want your robot leg or arm bending the ________ way.

8 . A robot with a sense of touch may one day feel “pain”, both its own physical pain and sympathy for the pain of its human companions. Such touchy-feely robots are still far off, but advances in robotic touch-sensing are bringing that possibility closer to reality.

Sensors set in soft, artificial skin that can detect both a gentle touch and a painful strike have been hooked up to a robot that can then signal emotions, Asada reported February 15 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This artificial “pain nervous system,” as Asada calls it, may be a small building block for a machine that could ultimately experience pain. Such a feeling might also allow a robot to “sympathize” with a human companion’s suffering.

Asada, an engineer at Osaka University, and his colleagues have designed touch sensors that reliably pick up a range of touches. In a robot system named Affetto, a realistic looking child’s head, these touch and pain signals can be converted to emotional facial expressions.

A touch-sensitive, soft material, as opposed to a rigid metal surface, allows richer interactions between a machine and the world, says neuroscientist Kingson Man of the University of Southern California. Artificial skin “allows the possibility of engagement in truly intelligent ways”.

Such a system, Asada says, might ultimately lead to robots that can recognize the pain of others, a valuable skill for robots designed to help care for people in need, the elderly, for instance.

But there is an important distinction between a robot that responds in a predictable way to a painful strike and a robot that’s able to compute an internal feeling accurately, says Damasio, a neuroscientist also at the University of Southern California. A robot with sensors that can detect touch and pain is “along the lines of having a robot, for example, that smiles when you talk to it,” Damasio says. ‘It’s a device for communication of the machine to a human.” While that’s an interesting development, “it’s not the same thing” as a robot designed to compute some sort of internal experience, he says.