Have you ever wondered what life is like in a smart city? Well, when you go to a certain shopping mall now, you can enjoy
The idea of a smart city
In 2009, Dubuque became the first smart city in the US.
Santander in Spain also gives us
There is no doubt that humankind dreams of making Mars our second home. However, sending people there will require all the skills, courage and
As early as the 1980s, scientists were building Biosphere 2 in the Arizona desert. It consisted of a closed space
For now, human settlement of Mars is still
3 . Forecasting the technological future is difficult at best. 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 1990was 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 away to make purchases. Oh, 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 combining our 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 а 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. It’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.
1. What will future phones be like according to the author?| A．Texting may disappear. |
| B．NFC chips can be used for purchasing. |
| C．Phones may be built into other products. |
| D．Phones will combine our lives with our work. |
| A．telepathy between people may come true |
| B．we may send messages just through thought |
| C．clothing may be used as the screen of phones |
| D．phones can be connected directly to your brain |
| A．people started surfing the Internet in the 1980s |
| B．we will be carrying around the iPhone 47 in 2050 |
| C．the author’ s prediction about phones is based on phone customer behavior |
| D．the author is positive about the development of brain-computer interfaces |
4 . Life in the future will be different from life today.Between then and now many changes will happen. But what will the changes be?
The population is growing fast. There will be many people in the world and most of them will live longer than people live 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.Traveling 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 fruit 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 problem.
1. In the future there will be ________.| A．much more fruit | B．more people | C．less vegetables | D．less people |
| A．work long hours | B．work fast | C．walk on foot | D．eat meat |
| A．fruit | B．fish | C．meat | D．rice |
| A．many people don't have to work | B．many people will not be able to find work |
| C．people have to work fast | D．all the work will be done by robots |
5 . Each of Apple’s products such as the iPhone and the iPad sounds cool and has become a fashion. Apple has cleverly taken advantage of the power of the letter “i”, and many other brands are following suit. The BBC iPlayer, which allows Web users to watch TV programs on the Internet, used the title in 2008. A lovely bear — popular in the US and the UK — that plays music and video is called iTeddy. A simplified version of The Independent was launched in 2010 under the name i.
In general, single-letter prefixes(前缀) have been popular since the 1990s, when terms such as e-mail and e-commerce first came into use.
Most “i” products are aimed at young people and considering the major readers of The Independent’s sister paper I, it’s no surprise that they’ve selected this fashionable name.
But it’s hard to see what’s so special about the letter “i”. Why not use “a” , “b”, or “c” instead? According to Tony Thorne, former Director of the Language Centre at King’s College London, “i” works because its meaning has become unclear. “When Apple uses ‘I’, no one knows whether it means the Internet, information, individual or interactive,” Thorne told BBC Magazines. “Even when Apple created the iPad, it seems it didn’t have one clear definition,” he said.
“However, thanks to Apple, the term is now connected with portability (轻便),” added Thorne.
Clearly the letter “i” also agrees with the idea that the Western world is centered on the individual. Each person believes they have their own needs, and they love personalized products for this reason.
Along with “Google” and “blog”, readers of BBC Magazines voted “i” as one of the top 20 words that have come to define the last decade.
But as history shows, people grow tired of fashion. From the 1900s to the 1990s, products with “2000” in their names became fashionable as the year was connected with all things advanced and modern.
However, as we entered the new century, the trend unavoidably disappeared.
1. Why do people use iPlayer?| A．To listen to music. |
| B．To make a call. |
| C．To watch TV programs online. |
| D．To read newspapers. |
| A．Engineers. |
| B．Young readers. |
| C．Fashionable women. |
| D．Old readers. |
| A．easy to carry |
| B．environmentally friendly |
| C．advanced |
| D．personalized |
| A．“i” products are often of high quality. |
| B．Actually nobody likes products with “2000”. |
| C．Fashion is closely connected with time. |
| D．The popularity of “i” products may not last long. |
注意：
1. 词数80左右；
2. 可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
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7 . You’ve heard the predictions from some of the brightest minds about AI’s influence. Tesla and SpaceX’s chief Elon Musk worries that AI is far more dangerous than nuclear weapons. The late scientist Stephen Hawking warned that AI could serve as the “worst event in the history of our civilization” unless humanity is prepared for its possible risks.
But many experts, even those who are aware of such risks, have a more positive attitude, especially in health-care and possibly in education. That is one of the results from a new AI study released Monday by the Pew Research Centre.
Pew canvassed the opinions of 979 experts over the summer, a group that included famous technologists, developers, innovators, business and policy leaders. The interviewed experts, some of whom chose to remain anonymous, were asked to join in the discussion of a serious and important question: “By 2030, do you think it is most likely that advancing AI and related technology systems will improve human capacities and control them?”
Nearly two-thirds of experts predicted most of us will be mostly better off. But a third thought otherwise, and a majority of the experts expressed at least some concerns over the long-term impact of AI on the “essential elements of being human”. Among those concerns were data abuse, loss of jobs and loss of control brought by autonomous weapons and cybercrime. Above all, by taking data in and spitting answers out, those “black box” tools make decisions in digital systems. It is an erosion in our ability to think for ourselves.
1. Why is Stephen Hawking mentioned in the first paragraph?| A．To warn humans to give up AI as soon as possible. |
| B．To remind readers that a new AI age has come into view. |
| C．To prove great scientists care much about the future of AI. |
| D．To introduce the main idea of the text that AI benefits the future. |
| A．Most experts are certain that AI will be out of control. |
| B．Pew asked experts from different fields for opinions. |
| C．Pew concludes that humans will suffer from AI. |
| D．33% of experts think AI will have little impact on humans. |
| A．Because they make decisions in digital systems. |
| B．Because they can take data in and spit answers out. |
| C．Because they may weaken our ability to think independently. |
| D．Because they may decrease humans’ welfare in the long term. |
| A．Experts’ concern about AI. | B．Humans’ being controlled by AI. |
| C．Experts’ Expectation of AI. | D．AI’s influence on society. |
8 . Fancy a holiday to the moon? Sounds crazy? Not really. A Japanese company has been working on how to organize holidays to the moon for several years now.
Trying to make the holiday possible will not be an easy task, and the Japanese company plans to make it in stages.
The next stage is to build a big hotel orbiting 500 km above the earth. The hotel will orbit the earth once every four or five hours, which will offer visitors some fascinating views of the earth.
The final stage in the plan is the construction of a hotel on the surface of the moon itself. As solar energy would be used to provide power, it would be important to build the hotel near one of the poles of the moon in order to gather as much solar energy as possible.
So perhaps in a few years you might be enjoying yourselves on the moon.
| A．Next, the hotel will have a wide range of sporting activities. |
| B．Tourists who want to travel into space can stay at a big hotel. |
| C．The first thing to do is to organize trips around the earth for a few hours. |
| D．There would probably be holidays to a moon hotel within the next ten years. |
| E．There is plenty of sand, but the big problem will come with producing water. |
| F．This part of the development plan does not seem to be too difficult to carry out. |
| G．This is because a lunar day, which is 14 earth days long, is followed by 14 days of darkness. |
The Future Life on Mars
Compared with the life we
Firstly, without pollution on Mars, people will be able to drink cleaner water
10 . What do you plan to do when you retire? Keep working? Get more exercise? Or learn something new? You may put them on hold. There's a chance that, sooner or later, you might have to move further than you were thinking, as far as Mars.
On Thursday, National Geographic will show the first-ever Mars show home, giving earthlings (地球人)an idea of what their life could look like on the Red Planet. In the not-so-distant year of 2037, the igloo-shaped structure could be the home of your future.
It shows a house built using recycled spacecraft parts and Martian soil, called regolith, which has been microwaved into bricks. Some parts of the home are recognizable — a kitchen, a bedroom — but there are fundamental differences that are important to human survival.
As the Martian atmosphere is around one hundredth as thick as the Earth’s, people will need permanent (永久的) shelter from the sun；society will move largely indoors. Most buildings will be connected by underground passages and the houses won't have windows. The homes will have simulated solar lighting, or natural light that has been bent several times. Walls will need to be 10 to 12 feet thick, to protect people from dangerous rays (光线)that can pass through six feet of steel, and a double air-locked entrance to keep the home under proper pressure.
"We don’t think of our houses as things that keep us alive, but on Mars your house will be a survival centre, 99 says Stephen Petranek, author of How We’ll Live on Mars. This is not just the stuff of sci-fi. “10 to 20 years from now there will certainly be people on Mars,” Petranek says.
“We’ve had the technology for 30 years to land people on Mars, but we haven’t had the will, ”Petranek says. But two main factors have “completely swung public attitudes”.
The private companies’ participation has forced government agencies to speed up their game, and influential films such as Gravity and The Martian have caught society’s eye.
1. What do the underlined words "put them on hold" in paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Put them off. | B．Give them away. |
| C．Carry them through. | D．Take them seriously. |
| A．It has no windows or doors due to security concern. |
| B．Its design presents the idea of environmental protection. |
| C．It has thick walls keeping the home under propel pressure. |
| D．Its underground passages connect all the buildings together. |
| A．The development of related technology. |
| B．The competition from private companies. |
| C．The great influence of the Mars show home. |
| D．The popularity of influential books on Mars. |
| A．Living on Mars: Possible or Not | B．Sending People to Mars: Yes or No |
| C．First-Ever Show Home: How Is It Made | D．Future Home on Mars: What Will It Be like |
