Life in the future（The First Period）

    but maybe the most wonderful surprise in the future will be weather control，cities may have giant plastic domes over them to keep out snow，rain，or storms.
    when you plan a picnic in a park。you won't have to worry about rain.it will rain only when the“ weatherman”thinks it is needed to freshen the air inside the city.all other days will be fair and warm.
    the future should be a wonderful time in which to live.but the time you are living in now was also“ a  wonderful  future”to the people who lived 100 years ago.
    2。three things that will change your life
    today our lives are changing faster than at any time in history.here we report on three important changes that will have a big impact on our everyday lives in the future.
  the cashless society cash and bank-notes wi1l disappear almost completely.they will be replaced by smart cards--plastic cards with microchip processors“loaded”
with some money.when we pay for goods.the re-tailer w1l insert our smart card into a pay-ment terminal and money w.1l be transferred from our card to the retailer's card.when all the money is used up，we will be able to“re-load”it by inserting it into a telephone，dia-ling our bank account and transferring money to the card from the account.1f we want to transfer money from our card to a bank ac-count.we will use the same method.smart cards will be able to hold several different currencies at the same time.so if we go aboard.we will use our smart cards in the same way.
    interactive telephones hhuman telephone operators will be sharply replaced by talking computers.these computers will recognize speech.ask us what information we need，ac-cess the information from a database，and convert  it to speech.if we want  to  book a flight or pay a bill by phone，we will interact with a talking computer to do so.of course，this won't happen until all the technology is
in place，but when it is we will soon get used to interacting with computers in this way.human telephone operators will be used only for more complex operations
such as dealing with  complaints  or  solving  concrete prob-lems.
intelligent cars traffic congestion in cities will be reduced because drivers will use electronic route maps to find the quickest route to their destination and avoid traffic jams.congestion will also decrease when e-lectronic systems start changing motorists for driving in cities.as soon as motorists have to pay to drive in  cities，they  will  stop  using their cars and use public transportinstead.