It is plain that in the year 2020 everyone will have at his elbow several times more mechanical energy than he has to-day.

There will be advances in biological knowledge as far-reaching as those that have been made in physics.

We are only beginning to learn that we can control ourbiological environment as well as our physical world population: by Malthus in about 1800’by Cripples in about 1900. it was and the second time by using the new fertilizers. In the year 2020, starvation will be headed off by the control of the dis-eases and the herdity(遗传) of plants and animals –by shaping our own biological environment.

Now I come back to the haunting theme of automation. The most common species in the factory today is the man who works or minds a simple in the factory today is the man who works or minds a simple machine—the operator. By the year 2020, the repedtitive tasks of industry will be taken over by the machines, as the heavy tasks were over long ago; and the mental tedium(乏味) will go the way of physi cal exhaustion. Thoday we still distinguish, even among repetitive jobs, between the skilled and the unskilled; but in the year 2020 all repetition will be unskilled. We simply waste our time if we oppose this change; it is as inevitable as the year 2020 itself.

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