1 . 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.

2 . We don’t know how different our life will be in the future. We can only try to imagine it.

At first we think about human relationships. In the year 2050, we will use computers almost every day. We will be making new friends through the Internet even our husbands or wives will be met in this way. It will be much faster and easier for us. On the other hand, our relationships with people won’t be as important as they are today -- we will feel a little lonely.

Computers will also help us in many other activities in 2050. For example, they will be used by the children at school to make their learning easier. In addition, there will be much more other machines which will play a similar role as computers, like robots which will do the housework for us.

Spending holidays will also be completely different. Travelling to other planets or to the moon will be available for everyone. Means of transport will, of course, change, too. We will be using solar-powered cars, which will be much more environmentally friendly.

We could expect that the faster technological progress would lead to a more polluted environment. But it isn’t true. We will pay more attention to the environment protection. Scientists will probably find cures for many dangerous diseases, like cancer or AIDS. Therefore, our surroundings as well as our health will be in better condition.

Although we can’t predict the exact changes which will be made in the world, we often think about them. We worry about our and our children’s future; we have expectations, hopes as well as fears. But I think we should be rather sanguine about our future. We should be happy and believe good things will happen.

3 . Have you ever run out of coffee or tea and found no eggs in the fridge? No bread for the sandwich and the nearest shop is too far away? Well, all that can change in the future.

If all goes well, the intelligent future kitchen will soon help solve all your problems. In the future, all kitchen units will be connected to the Internet. The intelligent future kitchen will give wise advice on planning your menu for the day. Worried about your weight?It will tell you the right diet and what is good for your health. It will even keep in mind your likes and dislikes!

Designed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this smart kitchen promises to pay attention to all your needs. The computer system will help keep an“ eye”on the fridge. If the fridge is empty, the kitchen will automatically call and place an order at the local supermarket. So you don’t have to worry about it at all.

You get home late, and don’t know what to make from the collection of ingredients in your fridge. A while back you might have ordered a takeout but now, instead of worrying about eating a collection of this and that, you’re excited. You can pull out each vegetable, and pass each one in front of a web camera next to your fridge. A few moments later, a screen on your fridge would display a tasty recipe.

After dinner, you take your plates to a box next to the sink. You don’t have to clean them, your machine does. It produces new plates every time you need to eat. Later in the evening, you phone your other half, who is on a business trip halfway around the world. As you drink your cup of hot coffee, it makes your other half’s cup change colour on the other side of the world, another special way to keep in touch.

4 . 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.

5 . 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.

Get ready and you will enjoy a space travel. The sky outside your spacecraft is     1    (most)black. The planet you’re looking for is 4.65 billion miles away. Almost no light     2     (reach) it. Suddenly you see a glow (暗光) in the     3     (distant). As you approach, it becomes bigger and stranger. The light     4       (shine) ahead of you is bright pink. Getting closer, you realize     5     is giving off this glow. It’s a magenta (紫红色的) planet!

    6     (name) GJ 504b, the planet is made of pink gas. It’s similar to Jupiter, a giant gas planet in our own solar system. But GJ 504b is four times more massive. At 460°F, it’s the temperature of a hot oven, and it’s the planet’s intense heat that causes it     7     (glow).

You stop your spacecraft to take     8     close look. The sky turns pink as you enter GJ 504b’s atmosphere. Since GJ 504b is made of gas, it has no solid surface. So you can fly right inside the planet, in which the gas envelops you like a thick fog. As you go     9     (deep), the gas begins to get darker. If you keep going down, your spacecraft could melt from the heat. You get away from this pink world and back     10    the darkness of outer space.

9 . Recently, the magazine Big Think asked top minds from a variety of fields to comment on what the future holds 40 years from now. The result is as follows.

It’s likely that by 2050 the majority of the people in the world will live in urban (城市的) areas, and will have a much higher average age than people today. Cities theorist Richard Florida thinks urbanization will reinvent the education system of the United States, making our economy less real estate (房地产) driven and erasing(消除) the divisions between home and work.

And rapidly advancing technology will continue ever more rapidly. Cities of the future won’t look like “some sort of science-fiction fantasy”, but it’s likely that technological advances and information overlays (VR and AR) will greatly change how we live. Self-driving cars will make the roads safer and provide faster transports. A larger version of driverless cars－driverless trucks － may make long-distance drivers out of date.

Some long view predictions are completely dire. Environmentalist Bill McKibben says that if we don’t make great progress in fighting global warming, it’s likely we could see out-of-control rises in sea levels, huge crop shortfalls, and wars over limited freshwater resources.

In terms of how we will eat, green markets founder and “real food” supporter Nina Planck believes that there will be more small milk processing plants, and more regional food operations and we’ll be healthier as a result. New York Times feature writer Mark Bittman thinks that people will eat fewer processed foods, and eat foods grown closer to where they live. And Anson Mills farmer Glenn Roberts thinks that more people will be aware of the “ethical(道德的) responsibility” to grow and preserve land-raised farm systems.

10 . For those who make journeys across the world, the speed of travel today has turned the countries into a series of villages. Distances between them appear no greater to a modern traveler than those which once faced men as they walked from village to village. Jet plane fly people from one end of the earth to the other, allowing them a freedom of movement undreamt of a hundred years ago.

Yet some people wonder if the revolution in travel has gone too far. A price has been paid, they say, for the conquest (征服) of time and distance. Travel is something to be enjoyed, not endured (忍受). The boat offers leisure and time enough to appreciate the ever-changing sights and sounds of a journey. A journey by train also has a special charm about it. Lakes and forests and wild, open plains sweeping past your carriage window create a grand view in which time and distance mean nothing. On board a plane, however, there is just the blank blue of the sky flying the narrow window of the airplane. The soft lighting, in-flight films and gentle music make up the only world you know, and the hours progress slowly.

Then there is the time that is spent being “processed” at a modern airport. People are conveyed (运输) like robots along walkways; baggage is weighed, tickets produced, examined and produced yet again before the passenger move again to another waiting area. Journeys by rail and sea take longer, yes, but the hours that are devoted to being “processed” at departure and arrival in airports are luckily absent. No wonder, then, that the modern high-speed trains are winning back passengers from the airlines.

Man, however, is now a world traveler and cannot turn his back on the airplane. The working lives of too many people depend upon it; whole new industries have been built around its design and operation. The holiday maker, too, with limited time to spend, patiently endures the busy airports and limited space of the flight to gain those extra hours and even days, relaxing in the sun. Speed controls people’s lives; time saved, in work or play, is the important thing—or so we are told. Perhaps those first horsemen, riding free across the wild, open plains, were enjoying a better world than the one we know today. They could travel at will, and the clock was not their master.