Title:
Looking to Robots and Other Technology to Improve
Health Care
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Technology Report.
See text below
Text:
An organization called the World Future Society
publishes a yearly report about how technology, the
economy and society are influencing the world. Tim
Mack heads the World Future Society. He says
medicine is one area of growth. Mr. Mack says the
fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology and
information technology are working together to
create new ways to help patients. These include
better ways to provide medicine and identify disease
without invasive operations. Mr. Mack also says
developments in artificial intelligence could lead
to a future where disabled patients could be cared
for by a voice-activated robot.The World Future
Society also publishes The Futurist magazine. Every
year it examines developments in technology and
other areas to predict the future. The magazine
released the top ten predictions from the Outlook
2011 report. Several of the predictions dealt with
technology. The report said Internet search engines
will soon include both text and spoken results. It
said television broadcasts and other recordings
could be gathered using programs developed by the
Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent
Analysis.Outlook 2011 also examined refuse
collection. It said industrial nations will send
much more waste to developing countries. This will
cause protests in those countries. In about fifteen
years, developing countries will stop accepting
foreign waste. This will force industrial nations to
develop better waste-to-energy programs and
recycling technologies.The report also had a
prediction about education. It said young people use
technologies for socializing as well as working and
learning. So they solve problems more as teams
instead of competing. In this way, social networking
is supporting different kinds of learning outside
the classroom. The World Future Society also
predicts that robots will be able to carry out
mental commands from human beings. Scientists have
shown that individuals can type by using their
brains without physically touching computer
keyboards. In the near future, experts say brain
e-mailing and "tweeting" will become more common.
For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. You
can find scripts and audio of our programs at
voaspecialenglish.com. We are also on Facebook and
Twitter at VOA Learning English.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
