ingilizce 12 unit 4 / 46
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Listen to the reading passage

Predicting the future has always been one of the top issues for human beings but it is getting even more difficult because today’s changes are exponential, which makes them almost impossible to follow. In other words, if we are at 4 today, the next step is normally 5 but changes occur so fast that it is not 5 but 8. Therefore, if you predict something about the future depending on today’s data, you are most likely to be mistaken. Only 20 years ago many people opened CD/DVD rental centers as they believed this would earn them a lot. But it took this business about 15 years to become extinct. “In the car industry, it used to take 5 years for the next car and it cut down to 2 years and now it’s 17 months for the next edition of the car to come out. Everything is getting shorter and shorter.” says futurist Gerd Leanhard and adds “The world is speeding up like an express train.” Therefore, the future is, to an extent, predictable but more of an imaginary world. Here are some predictions by some futurists. They agree on some points while there are points where they disagree.

●● A majority of your income will come from products and services that do not even exist today.

●● I believe, our children will do the jobs that do not exist today.

●● I guess, people will completely turn to smart technologies and this will help cope with global warming.

●● I imagine that factories without human workers will produce much more.

●● Apparently, cars of the future will have less harmful emissions and they will all be eco-friendly.

●● Jobs that are related to information technologies will be more popular.

●● The role of the teacher will change.

●● Robot teachers will be more active.

●● Cloud technologies will be in the center of life.

●● People will have more time to spend together as robots will do most of the work.

●● There won’t be any environmental problems in the future.

●● Self-driven cars will help us a lot in everyday life.

●● Organic farmers will make a fortune.

As the saying goes ”future is female”, we can hardly come up with correct predictions for most of the

time. However, there are those making plans, at least, for the predictable part of the imaginary world.

●● Luxembourg is going to introduce automatic money transfer as a safety measure.

●● Some EU countries are going to focus on teaching 21st century skills rather than knowledge based

content.

●● Some municipalities are going to invest more in new forms of transportation.

●● Some governments are going to ban GMO (genetically modified organism) foods.

Do you have your personal plans for the imaginary future?