1 . Margie wrote about it that night in her diary, “Today Tommy found a real book!”

It was a very old book. Margie’s grandfather once said that when he was a little boy his grandfather told him that there was a time when all stories were printed on paper. They turned the pages, which were yellow and crinkly (皱巴巴的), and it was awfully funny to read words that stood still instead of moving the way they were supposed to-on a screen.

“What’s it about?”

“School.”

Margie was scornful. “School? What’s there to write about school?” Margie was always fed up with school. The mechanical teacher had been giving her test after test in geography. So she said to Tommy, “ Why would anyone write about school?” Tommy looked at her with very superior eyes, “Because it’s not our kind of school, stupid. This is the old kind of school that they had centuries ago.”

She read the book over his shoulder for a while, and then said, “Anyway, they had a teacher.”

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

“A man isn’t smart enough.”   She added, “I wouldn’t want a strange man in my house to teach me.”

Tommy screamed with laughter. “You don’t know much, Margie. They had a special building and all the kids of the same age went there, learning the same thing from 8 a. m. to 5 p. m. on weekdays.”

They weren’t even half-finished when Margie’s mother called, “Margie! School!” Margie looked up. “Not yet, Mamma.” “Now!” said Mrs. Jones.

Actually the mechanical teacher was on and waiting for her. It was always on at the same time every day except Saturday and Sunday, because her mother said little girls learned better if they learned at regular time.

The large screen was lit up. “Today’s math lesson is on the addition of proper fractions (分数). Please insert yesterday’s homework in the proper slot (插槽).” Margie did so with a sigh. She was thinking about how the kids must have loved it in the old days. All the kids from the whole neighborhood came, sitting together in the schoolroom, going home together at the end of the day. And the teachers were people. She was thinking about the fun they had.

3 . It’s 2035. You have a job, a family and you’re about 40 years old! Welcome to your future life.

Getting ready for work, you pause in front of the mirror. “Turn red,” you say. Your shirt changes from sky blue to deep red. Tiny preprogrammed electronics (电子器件) are rearranged in your shirt to change its color. Looking into the mirror, you find it hard to believe you’re 40. You look much younger. With amazing advances in medicine, people in your generation may live to be 150 years old. You’re not even middle­aged!

As you go into the kitchen and prepare to pour your breakfast cereal into a bowl, you hear, “To lose weight, you shouldn’t eat that,” from your shoes. They read the tiny electronic code (电子源码) on the cereal box to find out the nutrition details. You decide to listen to your shoes. “Kitchen, what can I have for breakfast?” A list of possible foods appears on the counter as the kitchen checks its food supplies.

“Ready for your trip to space?” you ask your son and daughter. In 2005 only specially trained astronauts went into space—and very few of them. Today anyone can go to space for day trips or longer vacations. Your best friend even works in space. Handing your children three strawberries each, you add, “The doctor said you need these for space travel.” Thanks to medical advances, vaccination shots (防疫针) are a thing of the past. Ordinary foods contain specific vaccines. With the berries in their mouths, the kids head for the front door.

It’s time for you to go to work. Your car checks your fingerprints and unlocks the doors. “My office. Autopilot,” you command. Your car drives itself down the road and moves smoothly into traffic on the highway. You sit back and unroll your e­newspaper. The latest news downloads and fills the viewer. Looking through the pages, you watch the news as video film rather than read it.

4 . It’s 2035. You have a job, a family and you’re about 40 years old! Welcome to your future life.

Getting ready for work, you pause in front of the   mirror. “Turn red,” you say. Your shirt changes from   sky blue to deep red.Tiny preprogrammed electronics   (智能电子元件) are rearranged in your shirt to change its color. Looking into the mirror, you find it hard to believe you’re 40. You look much younger. With amazing advances in medicine, people in your generation may live   to be 150 years old. You’re not even middle­aged!

As you go into the kitchen and prepare to pour your breakfast cereal into a bowl, you hear, “To lose weight, you shouldn’t eat that!” from your shoes. They read the tiny electronic code(电子源码) on the cereal box to find out the nutrition details. You decide to listen to your shoes. “Kitchen, what can I have for breakfast?”A list of possible foods appears on the counter as the kitchen checks its food supplies.

“Ready for your trip to space?” you ask your son and daughter. In 2015 only specially trained astronauts went into space—and very few of them. Today anyone can go to space for day trips or longer vacations. Your best friend even works in space. Handing your children three strawberries each, you add, “The doctor says you need   these   for   space   travel.” Thanks to medical advances, vaccination shots (防疫针) are a thing of the past. Ordinary foods contain special vaccines. With the strawberries in their mouths, the kids head for the front door.

It’s time for you to go to work. Your car checks your fingerprints and unlocks the doors. “My office. Autopilot,”you command. Your car drives itself down the road and moves smoothly into traffic on the highway. You sit back and unroll your e­newspaper. The latest news downloads and fills the viewer. Looking through the pages, you watch the news as video film rather than read it.

5 . Like many other small boys, I was fascinated by cars, especially because my oldest brother was a bit of a car guy and subscribed to cool magazines like Car and Driver and Motor Trend.

Every so often, one of those magazines would run an article on the “Cars of the Future”.     1     Yet, frankly, my car doesn’t do anything that my brother’s Studebaker didn’t do. It goes, it stops, it burns gasoline. I still have to steer it, and it still runs into things if I don’t steer it carefully.

But guess what?     2     It may not burn gasoline, I may not have to steer it, and it may be a lot better at not running into things.

    3     In fact, considering the recent news about people occasionally being killed by their airbags in low-speed crashes, they obviously still need some development. But they aren’t going away, and in fact, you can expect to see cars appearing with additional, side-impact airbags, something some European car manufacturers already offer.

Better than systems to minimize injury in the event of an accident, however, are systems that minimize the likelihood of an accident happening in the first place ? Future cars may be able to remove many of the major causes of accidents, including drunk-driving, and tailgating (与前车距离过近) . Cars could be equipped with sensors that can detect alcohol in a driver’s system and prevent the car from being started, for example. As early as next year, you’ll be able to buy cars with radar-equipped control systems. If the radar determines you’re closing too quickly with the car in front, it will ease up on the throttle (油门).

Scientists are now working on a system that can brake, accelerate and steer a vehicle down a highway on its own.     4    

6 . Forecasting the technological future is difficult. Back in the 1980s, the thought of carrying around a small, portable phone seemed to belong in the world of science fiction. Then in the 1990s, imagining a phone that would allow you to surf the Internet something that didn’t even exist until 1990 was unheard-of. Today, smartphones can surf the Web, run applications and play games,and those with a near field communication (NFC) chip can act as a way to make purchases. And they can still make phone calls, too.

So what will phones look like in 2050? Based upon phone customer behavior, I imagine the future phones will rely more on combiningour physical lives with our digital lives. They probably won’t be similar to the ones we’re reusing now. They’ll be built into other devices and products. Imagine a pair of glasses that can display a digital overlay on top of your physical surroundings.

I don’t think video chat is taking off despite services like Skype and FaceTime. Rather, the trend seems to be toward asynchronous (非同步的) communication. That means the two or more people in a conversation complete a discussion over time.

We might even see the phone part of phones disappear. Recent phone customer behavior suggests that texting is a more popular way to communicate than telephone calls. Future phones will need a way to display messages but don’t necessarily include voice communication.

Since we’re talking about 2050 here, there’s even the possibility that research into brain-computer interfaces (脑机接口) will have reached a point in which we won’t need a physical screen or microphone at all. Electronics could be built into clothing. You’d link the devices to an interface connected to your brain and post messages just through thought. I’d be a form of telepathy (心灵感应).

But what do you think? Will we be wearing devices that let us communicate easily? Or will we be carrying around the iPhone 47 and answering texts between games of Angry Birds? Let us know your predictions.

7 . Life in the future will be different from the life today. Between then and now many changes will happen. But what will the changes be?

The population is growing fast. And most of them will live longer than people now.

Computers will be much smaller and more useful, and there will be at least one in every room. And computer studies will be one of the important subjects in schools then. People will work fewer hours than they do now and they will have more free time for sports, watching TV and travel. Travelling will be much cheaper and easier. And many more people will go to other countries for holidays.

There will be changes in our food, too. More land will be used for building new towns and houses for all the people. Then there will be less room for cows and sheep, so meat will be more expensive. Maybe no one will eat it every day. Instead, they will eat more fruits and vegetables. Maybe people will be healthier. Work in the future will be different, too. Robots will do dangerous and hard work. Because of this, many people will not have enough work to do. This will be a big problem.

9 . 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.

10 . Futurologists are making a lot of predictions about our future life and they are predicting how we will travel, work and live in the future. By 2049, 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 future, 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 in Dubai, measures 829.8 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.

A London Spaceport is also likely to come into being by 2049 as the space industry develops very quickly. There is a huge cost advantage in going to space from a base as high as possible, so a spaceport is very likely to be over 10 km and even as much as 30 km, using carbon-based materials.