In 1917 Orville Wright predicted that “the aeroplane will help peace in many ways —in particular I think it will have a tendency to make war impossible.” Earlier in 1904, American journalist John Walker declared, “As a peace machine, the value of the aeroplane to the world will be beyond computation.” This wasn't the first grand promise of technology. In that same year Jules Verne announced, “The submarine(潜艇) may be the cause of bringing battle to a stoppage.”

    Alfred Nobel, sincerely believe his dynamite(火药) would be a war obstacle: “My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions(公约).” Similarly, when Hiran Maxim, inventor of the machine gun, was asked in 1893, “Will this gun not make war more terrible?” he answered, “No, it will make war impossible.” Gugliemo Mareconi, inventor of the radio, told the world in 1912. “The coming of the wireless time will make war impossible, because it will make war ridiculous.” General James Harbord, chairman of the board of RCA in 1925, believed, “Radio will serve to make the concept of Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men a reality.”

    David Nye, a historian of technology, adds to the list of inventions imagined as abolishing war forever and leading to universal peace the hot-air balloon, poison gas, land mines and laser guns.

    It is not that all these inventions are without benefits—even benefits toward democracy（民主）. Rather, it's the case that each new technology creates more problems than it solves. “Problems are the answers to solutions,” says Brian Arthur.

    Most of the new problems in the world are problems created by previous technology. These problems are nearly invisible to us. Every year 1.2 million people die in automobile accidents. The technological transportation system kills more people than cancer. Global warming, environmental poisons, nuclear terrorism, and species loss, are only a few of the many other serious problems troubling people.

    If we embrace(拥抱) technology we need to face its costs.

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    What will our future look like? People have always been wondering about this question. Go on reading this text and you will know what will happen in the next fifty years.

    How can we know what the future will look like? To be able to understand the future, you must know the past. What has taken us to where we are today and what has changed along the way? The world has changed a lot in the last 150 years, but we humans are driven by the same basic needs as we were 150 years ago. Will this change in the next 150 years? No.

    What inventions have really made a difference in the last 150 years? In the past years, the inventions that have affected most people around the world for everyday living are the telephone, electricity, radio, television, computer, the car and the ability to communicate through the Internet. Then we of course have a lot of inventions that have made life easier, like new medicine, faster transports etc. In general, human beings have been working hard in the last 150 years to make the inventions so that they will be able to get control of the time and the world. Since there is still much to do in this area, this will be the focus at least for the next 150 years.

    Why do we need to predict the future? Predicting the future is important for two reasons: first we need to start to think about what kind of what kind of future we would like for ourselves and to pass on to the next generation, and then we need to know what decisions we need to make today that will give the best result in the future.

    In my bag I always carry the same essential items: my keys, my purse, some loose change, my mobile phone and my little blue vocabulary notebook. This year I am living abroad in Germany and I am trying to learn as much German as possible. I always knew that living abroad would be a great way to learn a foreign language but one thing I didn't realize was how many new words and phrases I would come across every day! I see and hear new words everywhere; the announcements in the train station; menus in cafes; on social media; on the local newspaper and of course from my German-speaking friends.

    At first I was slightly upset by the large amounts of German I didn't understand. Speaking German in Germany is definitely very different from that in the classroom; I kept on looking up new words and by the end of the day I had forgotten most of them already. It was very frustrating. After a month of worrying that I would never be able to improve my language skills, I went to the stationery shop and bought a small notebook which easily fit into my handbag or even into my back pocket! I set myself the goal of writing five new words or phrases a day into my little blue book and soon enough it became one of my most valuable language-learning tools.

    I don't have any rules about which words I write down. Most days I write down words that I learn from my colleagues at work, words that I don't understand in reading or words that I have learned from seeing them in context. For example, I have learned the names of many fruits and vegetables from looking at their labels in the supermarket (a very unexpected source of vocabulary!) and I have learned many words that I have heard on TV or on the radio. It doesn't even matter if I know how to spell a new word straight away. If I hear a word but I don't know how to spell it, I write down how I think it sounds and look it up later.

    My little blue vocabulary book is now like my close friend. We go everywhere together. Setting this small daily goal has made me feel much more in control of my language teaming and I am already seeing an improvement. I will continue to use it for the rest of my stay in Germany and also when I return to university at home in September.

    “Most children,” Asher Svidensky says, “are a little afraid of golden eagles. However, Kazakh boys in western Mongolia start learning how to use the huge birds to hunt for foxes and hares at the age of 13.” Svidensky, a photographer and travel writer, shot five boys learning the skill as well as the girl, Ashol Pan. “To see her with the eagle was amazing,” he recalls. “She was a lot more comfortable with it, a lot more powerful with it and a lot more at ease with it.”

    The Kazakhs in western Mongolia are the only people that hunt with golden eagles, and today there are around 400 practising eagle hunters. Ashol Pan, the daughter of a famous hunter, may well be the country's only girl hunter.

    They hunt in winter, when the temperatures can drop to -40℃. A hunt begins with days of traveling on horseback through a snow mountain or ridge (山脉) giving an excellent view of prey for miles around. Hunters generally work in teams. After a fox is discovered, riders rush to frighten it into the open, and an eagle is released (释放). If the eagle fails to make a kill, another is released.

     “The skill of hunting with eagles,” Svidensky says, “lies in bringing an unexpected force of nature under control. You don't really control the eagle. You can try and make her hunt an animal, and then it's a matter of nature. What will the eagle do? Will she make it? How will you get her back afterwards?”

    Svidensky describes Ashol Pan as a smiling, sweet and shy girl. “Ashol Pan stands for something about Mongolia in the 21^st century,” says Svidensky. “Everything there is going to change and is going to be redefined (重新定义), and the possibility is amazing.”

    It's 2035. You have a job, a family and you're about 40 years old! Welcome to your future life.

    Getting ready for work, you pause in front of the mirror.

    “Turn red,” you say. Your shirt changes from sky blue to deep red. Tiny preprogrammed electronics(智能电子元件) are re-arranged in your shirt to change its color. Looking into the mirror, you find it hard to believe you're 40. You look much younger.

    With amazing advances in medicine, people in your generation may live to be 150 years old. You're not even middle-aged! As you go into the kitchen and prepare to pour your breakfast cereal into a bowl, you hear, “To lose weight, you shouldn't eat that.” from your shoes. They read the tiny electronic code on the cereal box to find out the nutrition details. You decide to listen to your shoes. “Kitchen, what can I have for breakfast?” A list of possible foods appears on the counter as the kitchen checks its food supplies.

    “Ready for your trip to space?” you ask your son and daughter. In 2005 only specially trained astronauts went into space and very few of them. Today anyone can go to space for day trips or longer vacations. Your best friend even works in space. Handing your children three strawberries each, you add, “The doctor said you need these for space travel.” Thanks to medical advances, vaccination shots(防疫针) are a thing of the past. Ordinary foods contain specific vaccines. With the strawberries in their mouths, the kids head for the front door.

    It's time for you to go to work. Your car checks your fingerprints and unlocks the doors. “My office, Autopilot,” you command. Your car drives itself down the road and moves smoothly into traffic on the highway. You sit back and unroll your e-newspaper. The latest news downloads and fills the viewer. Looking through the pages, you watch the news as video film rather than read it.

    It is a psychological strategy that all parents will be familiar with: instead of scolding an misbehaving child, focus instead in rewarding them for good behaviour.

    Now the idea is well received outside the nursery, with implications for everything from recycling clothes to policing.

    Consumers end up with piles of unwanted clothes. Every year in the UK, 300,000 tonnes ends up in landfill — 235 million individual items.

    Now however, apps such as ReGain, Regive and Stuffstr are making it simpler — and more worthwhile — for people to return their unwanted clobber.

    The ReGain app can be used to find one of 20,000 drop-off points. In return, the diligent consumer earns rewards such as discount coupons for high street retailers. Stuffstr works in partnership with John Lewis to help people get cash in return for unwanted items from the chain.

    “Possibly the one prediction that we economists get right is that if you incentivise (激励) a behaviour, you will get more of it,” says Dr Matthew Levy, a lecturer in economics at the London School of Economics.

    He cites research, including his own, showing that financial incentives encouraging regular exercise, stopping smoking and losing weight effectively promote healthy behaviours and that there is no backlash when the incentives are removed.“If anything, the incentives can be used to jump-start a healthy habit that keeps going,”he says.

    In the four months after its launch, the ReGain scheme received almost 17,000 parcels containing 47 tonnes of used clothes and shoes, of which 95% could potentially be reused, according to its founder Jack Ostrowski.

    “We need to find a way to influence behaviour, and discount coupons help,” he says. The platform is also working with brands and retailers to find ways to divert used clothes from landfills and into the production of new clothes, he adds.

    Other reward schemes have had success in encouraging behavioural change.

    When police in Canada issued “positive tickets”— coupons for free food or movie tickets — to reward good behaviour among young people, they reported an almost 50% drop in youth-related service calls.

    “My officers would say' In the old days we'd drive up in the police car and the kids would run away from us, now they run to us'.”

    In a similar venture, Hull city council have announced plans to launch a digital reward token — the HullCoin — that can be earned by volunteering and spent at local retailers.

    Elsewhere, a study on the recruitment of health workers in Zambia found that highlighting economic incentives during the recruitment process caused future employees to be more motivated and task-focused.

    “Obviously different groups are motivated by different factors,” says Ostrowski. “For some, the feel good factor is enough, and for others, that reward stimulus is required.”