1 . Life will probably be very different in 2050. First of all, it seems that TV channels will have vanished by 2050. Instead, people will choose a programme from a “menu” and a computer will send the programme directly to the television. By 2050, music, films, programmes, newspapers and books will come to us in the similar way.

In many places, agriculture is developing quickly and people are growing fruit and vegetables for export. This uses a lot of water. Therefore, there could be serious shortages of water. Some scientist predict that water could be the cause of wars if we don’t act now.

In the future, cars will run on new, clean fuels (燃料) and they will go very fast. Cars will have computers to control the speed and there won’t be any accidents. Today, many cars have computers that tell drivers exactly where they are. By 2050, the computer will control the car and drive it to your destination. Also, by 2050, space planes will fly people from Los Angeles to Tokyo in just two hours.

Some big companies now prefer to use robots that do not ask for pay rises or go on strike, and work 24 hours a day. They are also easy to control. And they never argue with people. They can be easily used in a variety of places — factories, schools, offices, hospitals, shops and homes.

Scientists will have discovered how to control genes (基因). Scientists have already produced clones (克隆) of animals. By 2050, scientists will be able to produce clones of people and decide how they look and how they behave. Scientists will be able to do these things, but should they?

4 . If you could travel in time, where would you go? Perhaps you would watch an original performance of a Shakespeare’s play in Elizabethan England? What about hanging out with Laozi in the Spring and Autumn Period? Or maybe you’d voyage far ahead of the present day to see what the future holds.

The possibility of time travel is indeed appealing. Stories exploring the subject have been around for hundreds of years. Perhaps the best known example is the science fiction novel The Time Machine, which was written by H. G. Wells and published in 1895 for the first time. It was adapted into at least two feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions, and a large number of comic book adaptations. It is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively. The term “time machine”, coined by Wells, is now universally used to refer to a vehicle transporting people into the far future.

But could time travel actually be possible? Some scientists say yes, in theory. They propose using cracks in time and space called “wormholes”, which could be used as shortcuts to other periods. Einstein’s theory of relativity allows time travel in extreme circumstances. And British physicist Stephen Hawking said you could travel into the future with a really fast spaceship—going at nearly the speed of light. Though building such a spaceship would of course be no simple task.

Even if you could travel into the past, there is something called the “grandfather paradox”. It asks what would happen if a time traveller were to go back in time and have his own grandfather killed for some reason, and therefore prevent himself from being born. If the time traveller wasn’t born, how would he travel back in time?

And would you really like to visit the future? In H. G. Wells’ book, the main character travels into distant time where he arrives at a beach and is attacked by giant crabs. He then voyages 30 million years into the future where the only living thing is a black object with tentacles (触角). If that’s what’s in store, maybe we are better just living in the present day after all.

5 . The future home is something that people have talked about for decades. Because the future home idea inspires our imagination, scientists and engineers have been working hard to develop different systems to make houses “smarter”.

The video camera at the entrance recognize visitors using facial recognition. The facial recognition software of the future home will not only recognize friends, but strangers as well. And the software in the future home will run the strangers faces against a database of criminals.

The future home will also have smart application appliances (家电) as well. There will be a vast networking system connecting them. Ovens, microwaves and refrigerators will be controlled automatically, so remote cooking will be a possibility and meals are prepared for your arrival.

There will also be a green systems in place such as saving and reusing washing water and bathwater. Plants and people may receive pure or mineralized (含矿的) drinking water.

If you think this future home idea is pie in the sky or science fiction, then think again. Most of the systems described here are either in development or already out in the market. Future homes may not be standard yet for the middle class but this is not as far ahead as many people would think.

6 . When I was a boy growing up in New Jersey in the 1960s, we had a milkman delivering milk to our doorstep. His name was Mr. Basille. He wore a white cap and drove a white truck. As a 5-year-old boy, I couldn’t take my eyes off the coin changer fixed to his belt. He noticed this one day during a delivery and gave me a quarter out of his coin changer.

Of course, he delivered more than milk. There was cheese, eggs and so on. If we needed to change our order, my mother would pen a note — “Please add a bottle of buttermilk next delivery” — and place it in the box along with the empty bottles. And then, the buttermilk would magically (魔术般) appear.

All of this was about more than convenience. There existed a close relationship between families and their milkmen. Mr. Basille even had a key to our house, for those times when it was so cold outside that we put the box indoors, so that the milk wouldn’t freeze. And I remember Mr. Basille from time to time taking a break at our kitchen table, having a cup of tea and telling stories about his delivery.

There is sadly no home milk delivery today. Big companies allowed the production of cheaper milk, thus making it difficult for milkmen to compete. Besides, milk is for sale everywhere, and it may just not have been practical to have a delivery service.

Recently, an old milk box in the countryside I saw brought back my childhood memories. I took it home and planted it on the back porch (门廊) . Every so often my son’s friends will ask what it is. So I start telling stories of my boyhood, and of the milkman who brought us friendship along with his milk.

7 . It’s exciting to imagine how future humans will have solved the problems we have now, or what amazing new inventions will make our lives more convenient and interesting. We asked top scientists to share their predictions on what the world will be like in a century. If they’re right, the 2114 is going to be really cool.

1. Robots will do your chores and more.

Robots will be doing most of our jobs, from building homes to teaching math. There are already robots that clean floors and pump gas. In the future they will be more complicated and useful. Unfortunately, with robots taking all the jobs, unemployment will be high.

2. You will read minds.

Speaking of being social, we will communicate in an entirely different way. Forget texts and emails. Mind­reading technology will allow us to send thoughts to each other without speaking a word. We will also be able to send thoughts to objects around us. (Instead of pressing “start” on the microwave, you could just think “start”.) Meanwhile, chips implanted (植入) in our brains will improve memory and intelligence.

3. Your car will drive you.

Today, around 30,000 Americans die in car accidents each year. One hundred years from now, accidents will be a thing of the past. According to Mark Safford, consultant or the U.S. department of Transportation, future cars will drive themselves. These electric cars will communicate with other cars on the road to travel safely in close formation at high speeds.

4. You will eat fake meat.

Raising animals is not an efficient way to produce food, and it harms the environment. Cows, chickens, and pigs eat a lot, and then we have to deal with all that poop (粪便). What’s more, that poop can poison lakes, rivers, and streams. Today, scientists can “grow” meat in a lab from animal cells, but it’s expensive and not very delicious. In the future, they will have perfected the process. You’ll order hamburgers that come from factories, not cows. Scientists may even find ways to make lab grown meat tastier and healthier than the real thing.

8 . The plan: turn Mars into a blue world with streams and green fields,and then fill it with creatures from the Earth. This idea may sound like something from a science fiction, but it is actually being taken seriously by many researchers. This suggests the future for the “red planet” will be the main topic for discussion at an international conference hosted by NASA this Week. Leading researchers as well as science fiction writers will attend the event. It comes as NASA is preparing a multi-billion-dollar Mars research programme.

“Turning Mars into a little earth has long been a topic in science fiction,” said Dr Michael Mever NASAs senior scientist. “Now with scientists exploring the reality we can ask what the real possibilities of changing Mars.” Most scientists agree that Mars could be turned into a little earth, although much time and money would be needed to achieve this goal. But many experts are shocked by the idea. “We are destroying our own world at an unbelievable speed and now we are talking about ruining another planet,” said Paul Murdin from the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, UK.

Over the past months, scientists have become increasingly confident they will find Martian life forms. Europe and Americas robot explorers have found the proof that water, mixed with soil, exists in large amounts on the planet.

In addition, two different groups of scientists announced on March 28 that they had found signs of methane (甲烷) in the Martian atmosphere: the gas is a waste product of living creatures and could be produced by microbes (微生物) living in the red planets soil. But scientists such as Dr. Lisa Pratt, a biologist at Indiana University, say that these microbes will be put in danger by the little earth project.

“Before we have even discovered if there is life on Mars, we are talking about carrying out projects that would destroy all these native life forms, all the strange microbes that we hope to find buried in the soil,” said Dr.Pratt.

Monica Grady, a planetary scientist at the Natural History Museum, London, shares this view.“We cannot risk starting a global experiment that would wipe out the precious information we are looking for,” she said. “This is just wrong.”

When I am a little boy, I saw a science fiction film. It was about the future world, in that the way people lived was so astonished. What made I especially surprised was that they could drive cars in the sky! Since then, I have been curious the future world. Just about 100 year ago, flying in the sky seemed impossible, but now we can travel around a world by plane. With the latest achieve in technology, we can deal with most of our problems. Now we can even pays our bills online. I believe that the future world will become a much more nicer place than what it is.