Unit 3.

Technology – Exam practice – Listening Part 3

Speaker 1: Well, to be perfectly honest I’m not sure there’s much more to
invent. I mean, two hundred years ago we didn’t have the car or the plane
or the phone or the TV or the computer – we didn’t even have electricity,
for goodness sake. We’ve done so much; I don’t think there’s really going
to be anything revolutionary coming along sometime soon. It’s all going to
be development rather anything groundbreaking. Mobiles’ll get smaller,
cars’ll get safer and more efficient, medicines’ll improve, but nobody’s
going to discover a way to travel through time or around the world in a
couple of seconds. It’s just not going to happen.
Speaker 2: I only got a computer last year and frankly I haven’t really learnt
how to use it yet. I don’t know – I was perfectly happy with my old electric
typewriter. I suppose CDs and DVDs are better quality, but half the time I
wonder whether they don’t just bring out new products just to get us to
buy them – not ‘cause they’re better. Do you know what I mean? Everyone
tells me my mobile’s really old-fashioned, but it still works fine. I really
don’t need one with a colour screen and I don’t see why anyone needs to
send a photo with their mobile. No, I’m not the kind of person who rushes
out to get the latest things.
Speaker 3: Bob and I get this catalogue once a month called “Innovative
Products”. It’s great! The people who come up with these things have got
such an incredible imagination. I think I’ve become addicted to gadgets!
Let me see – we always order something. There are the typical things like
smoke alarms and electronic air fresheners, but there’s also things like a
digital thermometer and this great clock which actually tells you the time
– I mean it says it – when you say “What’s the time?”. It’s brilliant. Oh, and
we’ve just got this device which automatically changes colour when the
air becomes too dry. Very handy. We give them to people for presents,
too. Everyone loves them.
Speaker 4: What gets me is that, if you say to someone “What do we mean
by technology?” they automatically think of modern technology. You
know, computers and television and so on. Most people forget that the
greatest technological developments took place thousands of years ago.
The wheel, for example. A fantastic advance. Using tools for agriculture.
Cooking! We think we’re so clever ‘cause of our fast cars and internet and
stuff, but we wouldn’t have any of it if some very bright people ages and
ages ago hadn’t experimented and tried to make their lives a little bit
better.
Speaker 5: You know the phrase “you ain’t seen nothing yet”? I think that’s
as true for technology as it is for anything else. Think of all the advances
we’ve made over the last hundred years, times them by ten and you still
won’t be close to what we’re going to achieve over the next century. I
reckon, in my lifetime, we’ll regularly be travelling to other planets, we’ll
all be living to a hundred or a hundred and fifty, the car will become
completely obsolete, computers’ll start thinking for themselves and we
won’t be able to tell the difference between reality and virtual reality.
That’s what I think.