Look through the first and the last paragraphs and find the sentences supporting the idea of the title

READING (IC)

Try to guess the meaning of the words given in italics in the text.

3 Think and say a few words about:

a) the rate of growth of scientific journals and periodicals;

b) the length of scientific papers and letters.

4 Think of nouns corresponding to the following adjectives and translate them into Russian:

original, directional, universal, regional, centrifugal, conversational, gravitational, accidental, natural.

TOMORROW IS NOW

The Julian calendar recorded the year 2001 – the beginning of the 21st century. It was far more than a chronological event, for the meaning and importance of chronological time is less vital now than ever before in history. Time began for man more than a million years ago and until today it has been the mover and shaker of man's destiny. However, the slow pace of nature has been augmented by the incredible speed of the developing technology since the last third of the 20th century. The technological innovations are revolutionizing our lives more than anything else. Events, inventions, moralities – all slide and change so swiftly that we seem to be rushing at tomorrow and our future has already arrived. In that sense the 21st century is already here, for the responsibility for the events and technology that will be produced is being formed today.

It is possible to extrapolate from certain seemingly well-rooted trends and technologies and thus gain a glimpse at the very least of the possible tomorrows that await us. The increasing sophistication of the rocketry, for example, prognosticates a continued assault on space. At the same time, we have virtually run out of frontiers on land and will probably turn at long last to the sea that blankets seven tenths of the earth's surface. We shall ask more questions – at the beginnings of things, and where they are headed. We shall have far more and better tools with which to pry loose the answers from a reluctant (unwilling) universe. "How did it all begin?" is certain to be a major intellectual question at which the cosmologists of the 21st century will launch themselves with all the exotica that a space-oriented society can offer. X-ray astronomy, gamma-ray astronomy, orbiting astronomical observatories, and the stable, atmosphere-free far side of the moon, as the finest of all observatories will be the disciplines and the platforms we shall use to peer out into space and back into time to the origin of all things.

And what might man find there? No one today has answers. We can safely say only that the questions will be raised and countless voyages in search of answers will be undertaken. In truth, the 21st century will probably be a new age of exploration, as men ask the questions they have always asked, but to which they have never before had the means of seeking the answers.

The 21st century will surely provide those means. Already, the laser, the computer, and atomic energy have found their ways into our lives and are already being used for the tasks of today. These same tools will be applied to new tasks of the 21st century, tasks we cannot even conceive of today.

In every area of human endeavour the future offers dazzling capabilities for exploring and understanding ourselves and the world about us. The question is in fact not so much what we will learn, but rather what shall we do with the incredible mountains of knowledge we are at this very moment heaping together. Shall we explore the other planets of the solar system or the depths of our oceans? Shall we control the weather or the human mind?

In all probability, we shall accept every challenge the human mind can find, in deepest space or inside its own cortex (кора головного мозга). These are simply broad areas of probability, yet it is to these only that we can look in the hope of seeing where we are headed. For the technological avalanche threatens to inundate (затоплять) us by generating an ever more elaborate technology and in the process creating problems that could not have been foreseen. Moreover, the solution to these problems lies in creating a still more sophisticated technology, which creates still more problems not by failing in its designed goals but by succeeding brilliantly. With every new technological development there comes a new set of unforeseen problems, and we have reached a point where we cannot afford unforeseen problems, lest they outstrip (обго­нять, опережать, превосходить) our intellectual capacity to deal with them. We will soon learn to plumb the depths of the human gene and so present to nature on a molecular level our demands for the future of man. Shall we eliminate diabetes from the human race by substituting one gene for another? But what effect might that have on the other genes within the constellation of chromosomes that make up the blueprint of man? Can we determine the effect of changes we will make in the heart of a molecule or in the atomic nucleus of a star?

The 21st century will demand extreme caution and scientific discipline. For the targets of exploration are almost within our grasp, and the tools that will extend our reach are also close at hand. We shall pursue (run after) knowledge; it will be the preoccupation of the 21st-century man. The only questions remaining concern the uses to which such knowledge will be put and the price we must pay for it.

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