ZDIĘCIA0055

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Give reasons. Technology is making the world a better place.

2    Read the text. Which paragraphs contain the information to complete the sentences? Complete them in your own words.

1    Nanobots could make the world a much better place because scientists might be able to...

2    Nanobots could make the world a much worse place because they might ...

3    Match the highlighted words in the text with the definitions

1    very smali

2    a bad dream

3    an imaginary situation

4    a vehicle that can travel underwater

5    the world around us

6    a person who goes to see a doctor

7    whole, complete

8    to make a person who is ill better

9    very frightening

Wskazówka maturalna

Odpowiadając na pytania typu prawda / fałsz, przeczytaj każde zdanie i odszukaj w tekście informację, której potrzebujesz. Podkreśl w tekście wyrazy, które stanowią odpowiedź, i porównaj je dokładnie ze zdaniami z ćwiczenia.

What’s the big idea?

W hen people try to make predictions about th futurę, they usually get them complctely wron like the prcdiction madę by T.J. Warson, the head of IBM, in 1943: ‘I think there may be a m s for fivc computcrs in total in the world.’ Today, about 45 million PCs arc sold every ycar in the USA alone. ;

Nanotechnology is the science of building tiny machin so smali that you cannot see them. Most scientists agj that nanotechnology will changc our lives in the futut io but how? It’s difficult to predict whether this ncw techno) will be like a wonderful dream, or a terrifying nightmaj

The dream

In the 1966 science fiction film h inventor develops an amazing net He makes a group of scientists and their submarine 15 incredibly smali and injects them all into a patiem. Thq then travel around the body of the patient, visiting the different parts and repairing them. Of course, this is a fantasy - but the reality of nanotechnology is notv different. Scientists are already making nanobots, tiny to robots that are smallcr than a virus. In the futurę, doctoi might be able to inject these into a patient, and the nanobots will travel around the body and repair any ¹ damage. They’ll be able to curc almost every discase.

The nightmare

Some people arc worried that nanotechnology could I 2s difficult to control. Nanobots might escape into the environmcnt and damage people, plants and animals. Others have even morę serious worries. Erie Drexler isj futurist, a scientist who makes predictions about the fu In his book, Engines of Crealion, he predicted the io invcntion of nanobots. He also described a special kii of nanobot that can make a copy of itself using the materials around it- and this is where the nightmare begins. In Michael Crichton’s book Prey, nanobots mak copics of themselves so quickly that they use all the 35 materials around and then look for morę ... and morę,i and morę, eventually ‘eating’ the world. Some people are worried that this might really happen. The most extreme predictions (which very fcw scientists bclieve) say that nanobots could destroy the entire planet in at *o three hours!