1 . When it came to imaging the future, Arthur C. Clarke stubbornly refused to take credit for any predictions. The Internet, 3-D printers, email: he may have described them all long before they existed. As a science fiction writer, he came up with the idea of a “personal transceiver” that is small enough to be carried about, able to contact with anyone in the world and perform global positioning, making getting lost a thing of the past. Elsewhere, he predicted everything from online banking to reusable spacecraft. His best remembered fictional work of all is 2001: A Space Odyssey. It also happened to forecast the iPad, computer software that is able to read lips, and space stations.
Interestingly, his vision of the future has barely aged. For example, life in Sri Lanka inspired his 1979 novel, featuring a “space elevator”, a planet-to-space transportation system that would do away with the need for rocket travel. Those human settlements on Mars or Venus are decidedly behind schedule(we humans were expected to have set foot on both by 1980), and we’re still looking for the key that should have fully unlocked the languages of whales and dolphins by 1970.
It’s a way of thinking that was likely fuelled by his inability to be anything other than utterly absorbed in all that interested him. At the very start of his career, he shared a flat on London’s Gray’s Inn Road with fellow science fiction writers who nicknamed him “Ego” because of his talent for turning out (关掉) distraction. Once he’d become a big enough name to be interviewed, he’d send journalists home loaded with research papers.
He once said, “Trying to predict the future is a discouraging and risky occupation.” If a prediction sounds at all reasonable, technological progress is sure to leave it seeming “ridiculously conservative”. But if, by a miracle, a person were to be able to describe the future exactly as it will unfold, “His predictions will sound so absurd and far-fetched that everybody would laugh him to scorn (轻蔑).”
1. What can we infer from the first paragraph?| A．Clarke is an imaginative science fiction writer. | B．Clarke is crazy about the future devices. |
| C．Clarke is expert at telling one’s fortune. | D．Clarke is a rarely talented inventor. |
| A．there is no need for rocket travel in future |
| B．unlocking the languages of animals is ahead of time |
| C．humans were expecting to settle on Mars by 1980 |
| D．Clarke’s predictions still seem impossibly distant |
| A．He could focus all his mind on something. | B．He cared more about himself than others. |
| C．He was absorbed in what interested him. | D．He was proud of being a big name. |
| A．The rapid progress of technology. | B．The absurdness of some predictions. |
| C．The difficulty of predicting the future. | D．The miracle of dependable predictions. |
2 . “May 17, 2157
Dear diary,
Today, Tommy found a real book!...”
“What’s it about?” Margie asked.
“School.” replied Tommy, turning the yellow pages.
“Why would anyone write about school? I hope they can take my geography teacher away.”
“It’s not our school. This is the old sort that they had centuries ago.”
“Anyway, they had a teacher.” Margie said, reading the book over his shoulder.
“Sure, they had a teacher, but it wasn’t a regular teacher. It was a man.”
“A man? How could a man be a teacher?”
“Well, he just told the boys and girls things and gave them assignments and asked them questions.”
“A man isn’t smart enough.”
“Sure, he is. My father knows as much as my teacher.”
Margie wasn’t prepared to argue about that. She said, “I wouldn’t want a strange man in my house to teach me.”
Tommy laughed. “The teachers didn’t live in the house. They had a special building and all the kids went there.”
“And all the kids learned the same thing?”
“Sure, if they were the same age.”
“But my mother says a teacher has to be adjusted to fit the mind of each boy and girl it teaches and that each kid has to be taught differently.”
“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to read the book.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” Margie said quickly.
They weren’t even half-finished when Margie’s mother called, “Margie! School!”
“Not yet, Mamma.”
“Now!” said Mrs. Jones.
Margie said to Tommy, “Can I read the book some more with you after school?”
“Maybe,” Tommy said.
Margie went into the schoolroom, right next to her bedroom, and the mechanical teacher was on waiting for her.
The screen was lit up, and it said, “Please insert yesterday’s assignments in the proper slot.”
Margie was still thinking about the old schools they had when her grandfather’s grandfather was a little boy. All the kids from the whole neighborhood came, laughing and shouting in the schoolyard, sitting together in the schoolroom, going home together at the end of the day. They learned the same things, so they could help one another on the assignments and discussed them.
And the teachers were people…
1. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?| A．Margie doesn’t like her school. |
| B．It’s common to read paper books in 2157. |
| C．Online learning is what Margie wants. |
| D．Tommy feels his father is smarter than his teacher. |
| A．There are only female teachers at school. |
| B．Teachers give no assignments to students. |
| C．A special building is constructed for teachers. |
| D．Students learn different things at their own pace. |
| A．Envelope. | B．Opening. |
| C．Screen. | D．Schoolroom. |
| A．Longing. | B．Objection. |
| C．Suspicion. | D．Tolerance. |
3 . Since time immemorial, people have been searching for the fountain of youth. Surprisingly, the dream of human immortality is, according to some scientists, not so far out of reach.
Professor Brian Cox, Google's Ray Kurzweil, and Tesla head Elon Musk all agree on not only the possibility of human immortality but also that it is not too far away. The solution, they say, is something called the “technological singularity”.
The singularity is a combination of humankind with computers, namely uploading the contents of one's brain onto a hard drive. In that way, a person's consciousness can stay alive after a physical body gets worse. This is based on the idea that a human brain is simply a machine, and there is, according to Professor Cox, “no reason at all why we cannot simulate (模拟) human intelligence,” using a computer.
Although Professor Cox did not say when the singularity would occur, Google's Ray Kurzweil predicts that the singularity will happen as early as 2045. By 2100, he says, human body parts will be replaceable by machine parts. Further, by uploading our brains onto a computer, we will be able to toy with it, and become “able to expand the scope of our intelligence a billion fold. ”
Elon Musk agreed with the asessments of the other scientists, even going so far as saying that the chances that we are not in a computer simulation right now are “one in billions” .
Google is preparing for a future where you can download personalities onto robots. For example, you might be able to download onto your robot a celebrity personality, or of the personality of your deceased grandmother.
The search engine giant filed a patent for this download process recently. So they definitely believe that the singularity is just around the corner. All you have to do is hold on until 2045, and soon you can effectively live in the cloud.
1. What does the underlined word “immortality” in paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Living forever. | B．Rebirth after death. |
| C．Being perfect. | D．Continuous improvement. |
| A．By giving examples. | B．By presenting quotations. |
| C．By logically reasoning. | D．By making a description. |
| A．Computers are much smarter than humankind. |
| B．Computers can never surpass humankind at all. |
| C．Computers and humankind are quite different. |
| D．Computers can be another version of humankind. |
| A．Physically and intelligently. | B．Individually and corporately. |
| C．Psychologically and spiritually. | D．Emotionally and materially. |
