Unit 6 people and progress

People from time immemorial have said that ‘know­ledge is worth more than wealth’. At present the value of knowledge is rapidly increasing. Therefore the problem of training young scientific workers is of great impor­tance. A novice (a beginner) in science is like a bud—­either he will blossom into a beautiful rose or he will fade without blooming. If a novice proves to be really talen­ted, then he is given every possible assistance. What scientist's personal traits are the most important? Many scholars put diligence before all else. The time of scien­tific discoveries "by intuition" is over - you know this business of a scientist sitting down, pondering and exclaiming ‘Eureka’. Nor are new laws of physics disco­vered just by seeing an apple fall. Today it takes hun­dreds of costly experiments to discover something new. There is no doubt that it is a scientist's social and moral obligation to investigate and discover. Morally, the scien­tist should push his talent, which nature has given him, to the utmost.

Text 1

Pre-reading task

How often do you think about the advantages of the 20-th century?

Reading

Read the text and .rate the inventions mentioned. Prove your choice and answer the questions.

Is the idea clearly stated?

Are details effectively supported? Explain or defend the ideas in each text.

Our Century … and the Next One

As centuries go, this has been one of the most amazing: inspiring, at times horrifying, always fascinating. Sure, the 15th was pretty wild, with the Renaissance and Spanish Inquisition in full flower, Gutenberg building his printing press, Copernicus beginning to contemplate the solar system and Columbus spreading the culture of Europe to the Americas. And of course there was the 1st century, which if only for the life arid death of Jesus may have had the most impact of any. Socrates and Plato made the 5th century B.C. also rather remarkable. But we who live in the 20th can probably get away with the claim that ours has been one of the top four or five of recorded history.

Let's take stock for a moment. To name just a few random things we did in a hundred years: we split the atom, invented jazz and rock, launched airplanes and landed on the moon, concocted a general theory of relativity, devised the transistor and figured out how to fetch millions of them on tiny microchips, discovered penicillin and the structure of DNA, fought down fascism and communism, developed cinema and television, built highways and wired the world. Not to mention the peripherals these produced. Initials spread like graffiti: NATO, IBM, UN, NBA, CIA, IMF. And against all odds, we avoided blowing ourselves up.

All this produced some memorable players. Look around. There's Lenin arriving at the Finland Station and Gandhi marching to the sea to make salt. Winston Churchill with his cigar, Louis Armstrong with his horn, Charlie Chaplin with his cane. Einstein is in his study, and the Beatles are on The Ed Sullivan Shoow.

In our special issues we'll pick and profile the most influ­ential players of this century: leaders, politicians and revolu­tionaries, artists and entertainers, business titans, scientists and thinkers, heroes and inspirations. It's not a simple task, but it helps to start by looking at what the great themes of this century have been.

Rarely does a century dawn so clearly and cleanly. In 1900 Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, ending the Victorian era. Her Majesty died the following January, after a 63-year reign. The Boer War in South Africa was signaling the end of the colonial era. In America, cars were replacing horses, 42% of workers were in farming (today it's 2%), and the average life-span was about 50 (today it's around 75).

The tape recorder was unveiled in 1900 at the Paris Ex­position and Kodak introduced the Brownie camera, and apt symbol of a century in which technology would at first seem magical, then become simple, cheap and personal. Lenin, 30, published his first newspaper calling for revolution in Russia. Churchill, 25, was elected to the House of Commons. And the German physicist Max Planck made one of the discoveries that would shape the century: that atoms emit radiations of energy in bursts he called quanta.

From these seeds was born a century that can be summed up and labeled in a handful of ways.

The century of freedom

If you had to pick a two-word summation, it would be: freedom won. It beat back the two totalitarian alternatives that arose to challenge it, fascism and communism. By the 1990s, the ideals developed by centuries of philosophers — individual rights, civil liberties, personal freedoms and dem­ocratic participation in the choice of leaders — finally held sway over more than half the world's population.

The century of capitalism

Democracy can exist without capitalism, and capitalism without democracy, but probably not for very long. Political and economic freedom tend to go together. Early in the century, Theodore Roosevelt laid the foundation for a govern­ment-guided free market, one that encouraged individual initiative while protecting people against cartels and the colder faces of capitalism. His cousin Franklin confronted capitalisms greatest challenge, the Great Depression, by following these principles. Half a world away, Lenin laid the groundwork for a command economy, and his successor, Stalin, showed how brutal it could be. They ended up on the ash heap of history. Although capitalism will continue to face challenges, internally and externally, it is now the economic structure for most societies around the world.

The electronic century

A defining event actually occurred three years before the century began: the discovery of the electron by British physicist J.J.Thomson. Along with Planck's 1900 theory of quantum physics, this discovery led to the first weapon of mass: destruction, which helped hasten the end of the Second Work War and became the defining reality of the cold war. Alar turing harnessed electronics to devise the first digital computers.

The transistor and the microchip have cut the cost of transmitting information by a factor of more than a million.

The global century

In this century, everything became global. Now not only are military issues global, so are economic and even cultural ones. People everywhere are threatened by weapons anywhere, they produce and consume in a single

The mass-market century

Yet another defining event of the century came in 1913, when Henry Ford opened his assembly line. Ordinary people could now afford a Model T. Products were mass-produced and mass-marketed. Television sets and toothpaste, magazines and movies, shows and shoes: they were distributed or broadcast to millions of people. In reaction, a modern­ist mix of anarchy, existential despair and rebellion against conformity motivated art, music, literature, fashion and even behavior for much of the century.

The genocidal century

Then there was the dark side. Amid the glories of the cen­tury lurked some of history's worst horrors: Stalin's collectivi­zation, Hitler's Holocaust, Mao's Cultural Revolution, etc.

We try to personalize the blame, as if it were the fault of just a few madmen, but in fact it was whole societies, includ­ing advanced ones like Germany, that embraced or tolerated madness. What they had in common was that they sought totalitarian solutions rather than freedom. Theologians have to answer the question of why God allows evil. Rationalists have one almost as difficult: Why doesn't progress make civ­ilizations more civilized?

The American century

Some countries base their foreign policy on realism: a cold and careful calculation of strategic interests. America is unique in that it is equally motivated by idealism. Whether it is the fight against fascism or communism, or even interventions like Vietnam, America's mission is to further not only its in­terests but also its values. And that idealist streak is a source of its global influence, even more than its battleships. As became clear when the Iron Curtain collapsed in 1989, America's clout in the world comes not just from its military might but from the power of its values. Which is why it did, indeed, turn out to be an American Century.

So what will the next century be? Let's take that risk, peer into the haze and slap a few labels on the postmillennial period.

In the digital realm, the Next Big Advance will be voice recognition. The rudiments are already here but in primitive form. In a decade microchips will be truly embedded in our lives when we can talk to them. Not only to our computers; we'll also be able to chat with our automobile navigation systems, VCRS, microwaves and any other devices we want to boss around.

Task 1

Identify common technical terms used in the text.

Task 2

Use the various parts of the text (index, table of contents, glossary) to locate specific information.

Task 3

Find in the text the synonyms to the following:

to watch, to examine, influence, to consider, to think over, to invent, very small, to expose, apt, hasten, amid.

Task 4

Where are the facts and opinion or a combination of facts and opinion?

Task 5

Render the texts into English.

1. Будущее у нас – одно на всех. Ближайшие 20-30 лет мы будем жить в постиндустриальную эру: это может быть меньше касается повседневного быта, но информационные технологии будут активно развиваться в медицине, образовании и т.д. Хотя предсказания в области бытовых приборов и удобств делать очень трудно: ведь 30 лет назад никто не мог предсказать такого распространения персональных компьютеров, мобильных телефонов, которые полностью изменили нашу жизнь. Что касается социально экономической плоскости, за это время Россия сможет выйти на путь развития нормальной демократической страны, просто потому, что иначе она не сможет выжить. Постиндустриальная эпоха опирается на творческий потенциал свободных людей: какие бы то ни было виды тоталитаризма или авторитаризма, если они и сохраняются, неминуемо приводят к отсталости. В России в эти годы будет сокращаться население (возможно к концу этого периода сократится в два раза), поэтому мы будем страной менее населённой, чем остальные, и, стало быть, возможность развития будет теперь связана ни с тем, что «баба нарожает», а с тем, что кого нарожают, должны быть очень образованными и развитыми людьми, без этого мы не сможем выдерживать мировую конкуренцию.

2. Через 30 лет многое изменится, в первую очередь в технике. Если не говорить об электронике, где сложно сделать точный прогноз даже на 5 лет, наглядным показателем является развитие транспортных средств. Уже сейчас стали появляться автомобили, работающие на экологически чистом топливе и, скорее всего, в будущем они будут превалировать. Не знаю, будут ли эти машины на природном газе, водороде или солнечных батареях, но то, что не бензин – скорее всего. По идее должно изменяться и управление. Современные автомобильные компьютеры уже могут самостоятельно парковать машины. Вероятно, появятся системы автоматического управления и на дорогах. Но это лишь с условием качественного дорожного покрытия и, возможно, с установлением в нём вспомогательных систем позиционирования. В целом же внешний облик автомобилей принципиально вряд ли изменится. Те же четыре колеса, кресло водителя и места пассажиров. И даже скорость останется в прежних пределах. Не успеет за это время измениться сильно и авиация. Упор в её развитии будет сделан на экономичность и экологичность. Увеличение пассажировместимости летательных аппаратов, скорее всего, будет определяться фактором развития авиаперевозок на ближайшие десятилетия. Однако мне кажется, широкое распространение получат набольшие бизнес самолёты, обладающие гиперзвуковой скоростью. А в это время будут вестись разработки суборбитальных летательных аппаратов большой вместимости. Многие люди к тридцатым годам этого столетия побывают в космосе. Космический туризм обещает стать очень прибыльным бизнесом. И, скорее всего, совершить хотя бы суборбитальный полёт сможет позволить себе довольно широкий круг людей.

Helpful vocabulary

Post-industrial area (постиндустриальный), inevitably (неминуемо), backwardness (отсталость), prediction (предсказание), to be under way for (выйти на путь), to dominate (превалировать), road surfacing (дорожное покрытие), capacity (вместимость), spreading (распространение), profitable (прибыльный).

Text 2

Pre–reading task

What is “virtual reality”?

What different things is VR being used for at the moment?

Reading

Choose the most suitable heading below for each numbered paragraph.

1. How “real” can you get? Who invented VR?

2. The problems of simulated flying. The early days of VR.

3. The Japanese VR revolution. Some practical applications.

4. The long-term effects. VR and drug abuse.

5. Enthusiastic response from psychologists. Losing touch with reality?