4 . Do you know what will happen in the future? Life in the twenty-first century will be very ________ , I suppose. Many changes will take place, but ________ will the changes be?

As we all know the population in the earth is growing ________. There will be a great many ________ in the world and most of them will live ________ than people in the twentieth century.

Computers will be much smaller and ________ and there will be at least one in every ________. And ________ studies will be one of the important subjects in school then.

People will work ________ and they will have more free time for taking exercise, reading, watching TV and traveling all over the world. ________ will be much easier and cheaper. And many more people will go to ________ countries for holidays.

There will be changes in our ________, too. May be no one will eat meat every day. Instead, they eat more fruit and vegetables without pollution. Maybe people will be ________. Work in the future will be different, too. ________ and hard work can be done by robots. Because of this, ________ people will not have enough work to do. This will be a problem.

5 . Once upon a time, there was a man who believed he could see the future through the stars. He called himself an astrologer and got used to _______ at the sky all night. He was always busy worrying about the _______ . The _______ often came to him, hoping to know what their future would be like.

One evening he was _______ on the main road outside the village. His eyes were fixed on the stars. He thought he saw that the end of the world was near. He was concentrated on thinking about the future. When he looked up at the stars, he walked without looking _______ . Suddenly he fell into a ditch (沟渠) full of _______ and water.

He was _______ in the muddy water, and _______ trying to climb out. Being unable to crawl (爬行) out and fearing for his _______ , he started to shout for help and his ________ soon brought the villagers running towards him.

As they pulled him out of the mud, one of them said, “You ________ to read the future in the stars, and yet you ________ to see what is at your feet! This may teach you to pay more attention to what is right in front of you, and let the future take care of itself.”

“What use is it,” said another, “to read the stars, when you can’t see what’s right here on the earth?”

We all want our future to be ________ and happy. However, the time doesn’t stop for anyone. There is always a tomorrow to look forward to and ________ , but you can’t go back to yesterday. So, maintain your ________ life while you work for a better tomorrow.

6 . Modern inventions have speeded up people’s lives amazingly. Motor cars ________ a hundred miles in more than an hour, aircraft cross the world within a day, while computers operate at lightning speed. Indeed, this love of ________ seems never-ending. Every year motor cars are produced which go even faster and each new computer boasts(吹嘘) of ________ precious seconds in handling tasks.

All these save time, but at a cost. When we lose or ________ half a day in speeding across the world in an airplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling known as jet-lag(时差). Our bodies feel that they have been ________ behind in another time zone. Again, spending too long at ________ results in painful wrists(手腕) and fingers. Mobile phones also have their dangers: too much use may transmit harmful ________ into our brains.

However, how do we ________ the time we have saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We are so used to constant activity that we find it ________ to sit down and do nothing or even just one thing at a   ________ . Perhaps the days are long gone when we might listen ________ to a story on the radio, letting imagination take us into another world.

There was a time when some people’s lives were devoted simply to the cultivation(耕作) of the ________ or the care of cattle. No multi-tasking there; their lives went on at a much gentler pace. There is much that we might envy about a ________ of life like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestors ________ . Modern machines have ________ people from that primitive(原始的) existence.

7 . What will the future be like? Good or bad? A lot of science fiction writing imagines a dark and _______ world. Planet of the Apes shows a miserable future for humankind.

There's a word to _______ the kind of future world which often appears in science fiction: dystopia (非理想化的地方), a(n) _______ unpleasant or bad place. The _______ is utopia. But does tomorrow's world have to be so disappointing?

No. A new project wants to use the power of science fiction to _______ a better future. The _______ of Project Hieroglyph is to bring together writers, scientists, engineers and artists to create optimistic stories about a _______ society in the next 50 years,

It's _______ to create a dystopia than write a feel - good story. There's more conflict in a world full of problems, and stories are interesting when there are a lot of problems to solve. No _______, no story! But the project produced a book with some ________ plots. One of them is about environmentalists who fight to ________ people from building the first hotel in the polar areas.

But will these stories actually change anything or merely keep us entertained? A good science fiction story can be ________. It is plain to see that stories can inspire hundreds thousands millions of people to ________ something that they want to do. The influence of science fiction has already been well ________ in modern research.

Time will tell how far we can go. Let's dream big and think ________ the box.

9 . A parent’s hopes for 2030

When 2010 arrived, my son was only a year old—tiny and _________, the master of a few basic words, but still mostly the baby we’d welcomed into the world. Now my baby has grown into an _________—tall, strong, and smart, a lover of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai movies.

A _________ from now, in 2030, he will be an adult. I expect the next 10 years to fly by, and be filled with _________. As 2020 begins, I am thinking about the kind of world my son will face and experience. I _________ about him, and about all the young people of his age. So I have several hopes for the world my son and his generation will live in.

I hope we finally get _________ about climate change. Polar ice is melting. The oceans are rising. The question is _________ whether we can stop climate change, but whether we’re willing and able to do anything to _________ it.

I’m not sure what a warming planet will _________ to my son’s life. I suspect it means he will live in a world where nations and groups __________ limited resources like clean water and food, which means that the danger of climate change won’t come just from rising oceans, but from humans’ competing for control over what’s __________.

The world is always going to be full of __________ about how to solve the challenges we face. I hope, too, that my son’s generation learns to __________ justice—but to do so with a big heart and humility, recognizing our common humanity even with people who __________ us.

The world of 2030 won’t __________ itself. We are creating it now, so my final wish is that we build the kind of world we actually want our children to live in.

10 . I arrive at the doctor’s office and then wait until a computer voice calls me into the examination room. A robotic nurse _________ me and some time later, in _______ the doctor, who is also a robot. He notes down my _________and gives me a prescription (处方). I then_______for my visit using a credit card and return home without having met another human being. This is my nightmarish (噩梦般的) vision of the_______, which hasn’t happened yet.

I should say I really do like many aspects of _________. I am a big _______ of air conditioning in summer and heaters in winter. But I am writing this because I don’t want machines to _________.

When I call my dentist’s office and actually get a human being on the line, I am _________. And when I see the introduction of yet more self-service checkout stations at the grocery store, I feel like ______________, “When it comes to cashiers, make mine a(n) ______________, please!”

After all, human cashiers sometimes give you money-off coupons to ______________ you money. Moreover, ____________ cashiers often take an interest in cute children, which can ______________ young mothers’ day. A cashier may also show pity for an elderly person ______________ to get that last penny out of his purse.

Machines can be ______________ and cost-effective and they often get the job done just fine. ____________, they lack an element so important to everyday life.

Call it the____________, the soul or the heart. It is ______________ no machine will ever have. It is human being that encourages us to ____________ at others, which may be what they need at that moment.