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Nanotechnology will enable the development of smaller and faster computers and devices at the molecular scale, including nanobots that can be injected into the body to diagnose and treat diseases, and nanocomputers as powerful as workstations but the size of a grain of sand. There will be two main types of molecular computers: quantum computers that can examine all possible answers simultaneously using quantum bits and are millions of times faster than current computers, and DNA computers that use DNA biochips to perform functions faster than silicon chips. Computers will be embedded in everyday objects and mobile devices will provide multimedia and internet access. User interfaces will resemble human communication using gestures, and computers may be injected under the skin using RFID tags to store personal information, though

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365 views2 pages

32professional English in Use

Nanotechnology will enable the development of smaller and faster computers and devices at the molecular scale, including nanobots that can be injected into the body to diagnose and treat diseases, and nanocomputers as powerful as workstations but the size of a grain of sand. There will be two main types of molecular computers: quantum computers that can examine all possible answers simultaneously using quantum bits and are millions of times faster than current computers, and DNA computers that use DNA biochips to perform functions faster than silicon chips. Computers will be embedded in everyday objects and mobile devices will provide multimedia and internet access. User interfaces will resemble human communication using gestures, and computers may be injected under the skin using RFID tags to store personal information, though

Uploaded by

AnaJovanovic
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Future trends

A)

Smaller and faster


Nanotechnology, the science of creating and using materials or devices at molecular
and atomic sizes, is going to represent a new technological revolution.
These devices will fall in the range of 1 nanometre, which is equal to one billionth of
a metre, to 100 nanometres (nm).

Nanobots, robots formed from molecules or molecular components, will be used in


medicine to control and diagnose diseases.
For example, they will be injected and will move through blood vessels destroying
cholesterol molecules or cancer.

Nanocomputers, molecule-sized computers, may have the power of 100 workstation


but only be the size of a grain of sand.
There will be two main types of molecular computers:
Quantum computers, based on quantum mechanics, may be millions of times faster
than current computers. They will be so fast because they will be able to examine all
possible answers to a query at the same time. This capability is made possible by qbits,
quantum bits, which can be 0 or 1, or something in between, simultaneously.
DNA computers will use DNA biochips to perform the same function as silicon
microchips do today but at a much faster speed.

B)

Computers everywhere: human-centred technologies


The relationship between people and computers will be closer

Computers will be embedded or hidden, in a variety of items. For example, weʼll


have wearable computers that will be embedded in a belt or a piece of jewellery etc.

ICT devices will be mobile and multimedia: weʼll watch mobile TV programmes on
our phones, which will also access the internet and work as a mobile office.

User interfaces, the systems that facilitate communiciation between people and
computers, will resemble human communication. There will be gesture interfaces based on
facial-hand recognition systems.

Computer chips can be injected under the skin: RFID, radio-frequency identification
tags, might be used to track or identify people or to store information, such as medical
data, although there are concerns about privacy and personal safety.

In the near future weʼll be able to swim in the immersive internet, a technology that
will change the two-dimensional world of the Internet into a 3-D experience with three-
dimensional sound and images and even the sense of touch.

By the year 204O there might be intelligent robots, machines that will be able to
think creatively. The processing power of computers may have reached 1 000 000 000 MIPS
(millions of instructions per second), the estimated speed of human thought.
1
Read these extracts and replace the words in italics with words in A opposite.
1. A computer of this type is a molecular computer that works biochemically. It
‘computes’ using enzymes that cause chain reactions.
DNA computer

2. In a computer of this type, data is processed by exploiting the strange qualities


of quantum physics; the building blocks of computation are not transistors but caged atoms
or qbits.
Quantum computer

3. It has the potential to revolutionize the way we live, from creating miniaturized
‘Star Trek’-like electronic gadgets to delivering medicines to specific places within the
human body.
Nanotechnology

4. The government plans to fund a study examining the feasibility of molecule-sized


robotic devices that would position atoms to build complex substances and products.
nanobots

5. Scientists at an Israeli institute have developed a very small one - so small that a
trillion of its kind fit into a test tube.
nanocomputer

2
Write a caption under each picture illustrating the future trends from B opposite.

1. Immersive internet
2. Mobile TV
3. Wearable computer
4. Intelligent robot
5. RFID – radio frequency identification tags
6. Gesture interface

3
Match the terms with their definitions.

1. quantum bits d. subatomic particles used in quantum computers

2. DNA biochip a. a microchip made with organic materials

3. embedded e. fixed, integrated

4. user interface c. the device or program used to interact with a computer

5. MIPS b. the speed at which the CPU processes instructions

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