Technology and Science

1. Complete the abstract using these words: environment, energy, disease, applied, resources, pure, industry, poverty, computers, risks, communication, scale, geographic, human race.

Man's way of life has depended on technology since the begin of civilization - the flint stone, the control of fire, the wheel, the printing press. In the earliest times significant advances were rare and they were separated by long periods of time - but their benefits, and disadvantages, were easily understood.About two hundred years ago, however, the pace quickened and in recent decades a cascade of truly disruptive advances has revolutionised the way we live. The technologies behind the advances have become increasingly complex and few people understand how they work and fewer still where they are going. The social implications of the advances have also ceased to be obvious and it has become essential that we study their social consequences.
Modern technology tends to be thought of in terms of the advances brought about by computers and electronic communication but it is in transport, medicine, energy and weaponry that we have seen the greatest impact upon our lives. It is these areas that distinguish the first world from the second and third worlds.If poverty and disease are to be alleviated and the environment sustained, then technology must be harnessed on a vast and all inclusive scale . Large scale risks must be involved. Significant technology is not created by lone workers but by tens and hundreds of individuals working together across social and geografic boundaries. We must wake up to the fact that it is technologists that is determining the future of the human race Advances require vast industry and companies that are prepared to take resources, and if Britain is to continue to play a crucial role in technology then our establishment must realise that pure science is rivaling applied science both in importance and in intellectual interest.

2. Listening to the lecture

Complete the presentation to the lecture Presentation (00:00 – 01:38)

Venue: Waterloo Chamber of Winser Castle
In the honorable presence of : Royal highness duke of Edinburg, the senior fellow of the royal academy of engineering
Lecturer: The president of the royal academy of engineering
From: the last lecture of the series of the president of the royal academy, entitled “the triumph of technology”, the Drowning of the new age.
Invention chosen by ther public as #1 in the last 200 years: The bicycle

Brings solution to: Traffic congestion, air pollution, diseases, poverty, global warming.
Lecturer´s message today: Nothing will be possible unless all of us, are prepared to engage and require the political will to bring about the change.

Complete the first part of the lecture Part 1 (01:48 to 04:09)

Almost exactly 93 years ago tonight, on 15 April 1912 , over 2000 terrified and bewildered people found themselves with little warning drifting or drowning in the ice-cold north Atlantic. Only 712 of them survived that night. They were, of course, the passengers, officers, and crew of the White Star steamship Titanic, and they were in a sense victims of 'failures' of technology.
The Titanic disaster was in the main a result of over-reach, of a gap between the achievements of some technologies and the shortcomings of others; and of man natural failures on the part of those who used the available technology. Although Titanic had a radio communication system - and it was an important factor in directing rescue vessels to her - it was a system still in its Infancy. Although the technology of shipbuilding already embraced double skins and water-tight bulkheads, these fell far short of the completeness that we now expect. Those navigating this huge vessel were in some important respects no further advanced than the Vikings who had sailed these same seas 10 centuries before: they could locate themselves only by means of stellar observation and dead reckoning, and they had only their eyes to see what lay ahead - and this was less than 100 years ago.

The managerial failures were perhaps worse. The ship’s officers were warned of ice by radio messages, which they ignored. They hadn't carried out safety drills or trained the ship's company. The ship was speeding blindly into a known danger area in order to meet her scheduled arrival time in New York. Accidents, by definition, happen. But more diligent officers, properly-trained crew, and a sufficiency of lifeboats, could have saved the majority of those lost to the depths on that dreadful April night.