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  3. 2050 and Immortality Is Within Our Grasp Aeroplanes will be too afraid to crash, yoghurts will wish you good morning before

2050 and Immortality Is Within Our Grasp Aeroplanes will be too afraid to crash, yoghurts will wish you good morning before

admin2013-07-11  30
问题                 2050 and Immortality Is Within Our Grasp
    Aeroplanes will be too afraid to crash, yoghurts will wish you good morning before being eaten and human consciousness will be stored on supercomputers, promising immortality for all. These fantastic claims are not made by a science fiction writer or a crystal ball gazing madman. They are the deadly earnest predictions of Ian Pearson, head of the futurology unit at BT.
    "If you draw the timelines, realistically by 2050 we would expect to be able to download your mind into a machine, so when you die it’s not a major career problem," Pearson told The Observer. "If you’re rich enough then by 2050 it’s feasible. If you’re poor you’ll probably have to wait until 2075 or 2080 when it’s routine. We are very serious about it. That’s how fast this technology is moving: 45 years is a hell of a long time in IT."
    The world’s fastest computer, IBM’s Blue Gene, can perform 70. 72 trillion calculations per second and is accelerating all the time. But anyone who believes in the uniqueness of consciousness or the soul will find Pearson’s next suggestion hard to swallow. "We’re already looking at how you might structure a computer that could possibly become conscious. There are quite a lot of us now who believe it’s entirely feasible."
    In the shorter term, Pearson identifies the next phase of progress as " ambient intelligence": chips with everything. He explained: "For example, if you have a pollen count sensor in your car you take some antihistamine before you get out. Chips will come small enough that you can start impregnating them into the skin. We’re talking about video tattoos as very, very thin sheets of polymer that you just literally stick on to the skin and they stay there for several days. You could even build in cellphones and connect it to the network, use it as a video phone and download videos or receive emails."
    The next age, he predicts, will be that of "simplicity" in around 2013-2015. This is where the IT has actually become mature enough that people will be able to drive it without having to go on a training course. "Forget this notion that you have to have one single chip in the computer which does everything. Why not just get a stack of little self-organizing chips in a box and they’ll hook up and do it themselves. It won’t be able to get any viruses because most of the operating system will be stored in hardware which the hackers can’t write to. If your machine starts going wrong, you just push a button and it’s reset to the factory setting."
    Pearson’s third age is "virtual worlds" in around 2020. "We will spend a lot of time in virtual space, using high quality, 3D, immersive, computer generated environments to socialise and do business in. When technology gives you a life-size 3D image and the links to your nervous system allow you to shake hands, it’s like being in the other person’s office. It’s impossible to believe that won’t be the normal way of communicating."
In the opening paragraph, the author introduces his topic by______.
选项 A、refuting a claim
B、quoting a statement
C、proposing an assumption
D、predicting a phenomenon
答案B
解析 本题考查写作方法。第一段开始部分作者间接引用皮尔逊对未来电脑智能化发展的描述，引入全文主题。因此[B]正确。作者只是客观地提到皮尔逊的这种说法，没有对它进行驳斥，排除[A]。[C]和[D]具有干扰性，但考生应注意题目问的是作者的写作方法，而[C]和[D]都只能算是文中人物皮尔逊所为。
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