Is your TV connected to the Internet? What about your chair, or your fridge? Probably they are not. But in the future, most things in your home may be connected, thanks to the so-called “Internet of things”.

    The Internet of things may be coming sooner than you think. Earlier this year, Samsung CEO spent a lot of time talking about the Internet things. He said that four years from now, every Samsung product will be part of the Internet of things, no matter whether it's a remote control or a washing machine.

    So, how do household objects that are part of the Internet of things work? Well, think of a common chair. When connected to the Internet, the chair warms up when it knows the user has just walked into the room and is feeling cold.

    An Internet-connected camera could help people feel safer in their homes. It can know people's faces and has an infrared sensor（红外传感器), so even if it's dark it can see when someone passes by and send you a message on your smartphone to let you know who's there. If the person is someone you don't know, it can tell you that, too.

    But according to MIT Technology Review, whether companies are connecting dog food bowls or security（安全）systems to the Internet, there may be some problems. For example, many early connected-home objects don't have much built-in security, which means they could be hacked. Moreover, it could be difficult to get these new machines to work together especially when they are made by different companies. To fight this, many companies have joined the Open Interconnect Consortium, which had 45 members by late 2015.

    So, picture this: you enter your home.The temperature changes to make you feel comfortable. Your favorite music starts playing for you. Do you think that this would be a good thing? It may happen sooner than you think.

Life in 2060

    Let us suppose the life in A. D. 2060. It is fifty years later. Of course, things have changed and life is very different. Voyages to the moon are being made every day. It is as easy to take a holiday on the moon today as it was for the people in 1960 to take a holiday in Europe. At a number of scenic spots on the moon, many hotels have been built. The hotels are air- conditioned, naturally. In order that everyone can enjoy the beautiful scenery on the moon, every room has at least one picture window. Everything imaginable is provided for entertainment of the young and old. What are people eating now? People are still eating food. They haven't yet started to take on heir(继承) supply of energy directly like electrical current or nuclear power.

    But many foods now come in pill forms, and the food that goes into the pill continues to come mainly from green plants. Since there are several times as many people in the world today as there were a hundred years ago, most of our planet's surface has to be filled. The deserts irrigated with water and crops are no longer destroyed by pests. The harvest is always good. Farming, of course, is very highly developed. Very few people have to work on the farm. It is possible to run the farm by just pushing a few buttons now and then. Such would be our life in 2060.

Notice

There will be a lecture on

Classic American Literature (文学)

By Visiting Professor (教授) Cornell

from Stanford University

In The Fifth Building,

Classroom No. 102

On Sep. 4th. 2019. at 2 pm

All are warmly welcome!

The Office of the Foreign Language Department (系)

Sep. 2nd. 2019

Have you ever watched the program Everlasting Classics 《经典咏流传》on CCTV? This program {#blank#}1{#/blank#} us more interested in reading books, especially classics. It can not only {#blank#}2{#/blank#} our minds, but also make us cleverer and {#blank#}3{#/blank#}. We can improve our study {#blank#}4{#/blank#} we read more good books. The more we read, the more we will learn, and the {#blank#}5{#/blank#} our future will become. I like reading. I once read a {#blank#}6{#/blank#} named Journey to the West. I like this book because the clever Monkey King keeps fighting to {#blank#}7{#/blank#} the weak and never give up. 

However, some {#blank#}8{#/blank#} spend much time listening to music, watching TV or {#blank#}9{#/blank#} computer games. It takes much of their free time. So I think everyone should read more books, especially classics so that we can spread (传播) our {#blank#}10{#/blank#} culture to the world.

A kind of little cars may take the place of today's big ones many years later. If everyone drives such cars in the future, there will be less pollution in the air. There will also be more space for parking in cities, and the streets will be less crowded.

The little cars of the future will cost less. Driving will be safer, too, since these little cars can go only 65 kilometers an hour. The cars of the future will be fine for going around a city, but they will not be useful for a long way. Little cars will go 450 kilometers before they need to stop for more gasoline (汽油). If big cars are still used with the small ones, two kinds of roads will be needed in the future. Some roads will be needed for the big, faster cars and other roads will be needed for the small, slower ones.

When you are reading something in English, you may often see a new word. If you want to get its meaning (意思), you can just guess and you can also ask your teacher or friends for help. But, what's the best way to know it?

A dictionary is your best friend when learning English. You need an English-Chinese dictionary. It will tell you a lot about the word you don't know. For example (例如), it tells you how to read this word, what it means in Chinese and how to use this word. But there are so many English words in the dictionary and how can you know where the word is? There is a way to look for it. 

In the dictionary, you can first see the words beginning with the letter A, then B, C, D, E… That means, if there are two words, "desk" and "hour", " desk" will be before "hour"; "story" before "Sunday", "tomato" before "tomorrow" etc (等等). 

The English-Chinese dictionary will be your good friend. I hope you will often use it in your English learning.