Looking to the Future
When a magazine forhigh-school students asked its readers what life would be like in twenty years, they said: Machines would be run by solar power. Buildings would rotate1 so they could follow the sun to take maximum advantage of its light and heat. Walls would radiate2 light and change colorwith the push of a button. Food would be replaced by pills. School would be taught by electrical impulse3 while we sleep. Cars would have radar4. Does this sound like the year 2000? Actually, ________ and the question was, what will life be like in 1978?
The future is much too important to simply guess about, the way the high school students did, so experts are regularly asked to predict accurately5. By carefully studying the present, skilled businessmen, scientists, and politicians are supposedly able to figure out in advance what will happen. But can they? One expert on cities wrote: _______, but would have space forfarms and fields. People would travel to work in airbuses, large all-weather helicopters carrying up to 200 passengers. When a person left the airbus station he could drive a coin-operated car equipped with radar. The radar equipment of cars would make traffic accidents almost unheard of. Does that sound familiar? If the expert had been accurate it would, because he was writing in 1957. His subject was The city of 1982.
If the professionals sometimes sound like high-school students, its probably because _________. But economic forecasting, orpredicting what the economy will do, had been around fora long time. It should be accurate, and generally it is. But there have been some big mistakes in this field, too. In early 1929, most forecasters saw an excellent future forthe stock market. In October of that year, _______, ruining thousands of investors6 who had put their faith in financial foreseers.
One forecaster knew that predictions about the future would always be subject to significant errors. In 1957, H.J. Rand of the Rand Corporation was asked about the year 2000, only one thing is certain, he answered. Children born today _______.
A. the stock market had its worst losses ever
B. will have reached the age of 43
C. the article was written in 1958
D. Cities of the future would not be crowded
E. the prediction of the future is generally accurate
F. future study is still a new field
Key:CDFAB
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