Imagine you enter a car with no steering wheel, no brake or accelerator pedals (踏板). Under a voice-activated command, you say an address. “The fastest route will take us 15.3 minutes. Should I take it?” You say “yes” and you are on your way. The car responds and starts moving all by itself. All you have to do is sit back and relax.

How weird would it be if, one day in the future, everyone had such a car? No crazy driving, no insults, no cutting in; traffic laws would be respected and driving much safer. On the other hand, imagine the cost savings for local police enforcement and town budgets without all those speeding and parking tickets.

A new technology has the potential to change modern society in radical ways. There’s no question that self-driving vehicles could be an enormous benefit. The potential for safer cars means accident statistics would drop: some 94% of road accidents in the U.S involve human error. Older drivers and visually- or physically-impaired people would gain a new level of freedom. Maintaining safe speeds and being electric, self-driving cars would drastically reduce pollution levels and dependency on non-renewable fuels. Roads would be quieter, people safer.

But we must also consider the impact of the new technology on those who now depend on driving for their livelihoods. According to the U.S. Department of Labor. In May 2015 there were 505,560 registered school bus drivers. The American Trucking association lists approximately 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the U.S.

The companies developing self-driving vehicles should be partnering with state and federal authorities to offer retraining for this massive workforce, many of whom will be displaced by the new technology. This is similar to what’s happening in the coal and oil industries, a situation that fuels much of the current political discontent in this country.

New technologies will, and should, be developed. This is how society moves forward. However, progress can’t be one-sided. It is necessary for the companies and state agencies involved to consider the ethical consequences of these potential changes to build a better future for all.

Forget smart phones and smart glasses. One day, we might have smart tattoos (纹身）. The company NewDealDesign came up with an idea for a product called UnderSkin. The device would look like a pair of tattoos on your palm and the side of your thumb, but it would actually be a very thin computer implanted just below your skin. It would draw power from your body's energy, and you could use it to unlock doors, monitor your health, exchange and store information, or even express your personality. UnderSkin is just an idea -you can't go out and get one -but the technology exists to make it work. “We assume it is about five years from being real,” says designer Gadi Amit.

Writer and technology entrepreneurs Amal Graffstra already has a chip called a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag (标签） implanted in his hand. “I use it to log into my computer. I also use it to share contact details with people,” he says. The chip is about the size of a grain of rice and responds to radio signals with a unique identification number.

If a computerized tattoo or embedded tag isn't crazy enough for you, what about a brain chip? The company Intel is working on technology that would let you control your devices with your mind. Dean Pomerleau, one of the researchers, explains, “We're trying to prove you can do interesting things with brain waves. . . Imagine beingx k w able to surf the Web with the power of your thoughts. ”

Do you think embedded chips sound cool or creepy? Some doctors are concerned about people hurting themselves while getting devices implanted. They argue that medical procedures are meant to heal sick People and not to give healthy people special powers. Others worry about hacking and privacy -could someone hack in and steal your identity, or even control your mind? On a more philosophical level if you e a computer inside your body, are your still human? Or are you a cyborg (半机械人）

What do you think-would you want a computer under your skin?

Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano had a terrifying experience during a spacewalk. While working on the International Space Station(ISS), his helmet began filling with water.

At first, Parmitano wasn’t sure what it was. “My head is really wet,” he told NASA flight controllers back on the earth. As the water began to accumulate, Parmitano realized there was a problem. “It’s too much...Now it’s in my eyes,” he recalled. Concerned that he might choke on the water, ground control stopped the spacewalk. Back inside the ISS, Parmitano took off his helmet and discovered that it contained almost half a liter(two cups)of water. Where had this water come from?

NASA found out that a malfunction in the suit’s liquid cooling system had caused water to leak. Some of the water got into Parmitano’s helmet. Though NASA has taken steps to correct the problem, the experience underscores the dangers that astronauts face each time they venture outside a spacecraft.

Spacewalks are safer now than they were fifty years ago, when — in 1965 — Russian Alexei Leonov carried out the first one. However, as Parmitano’s experience illustrates, there are still risks involved. To ensure that missions are successful, astronauts train for hundreds of hours on the earth. They learn to deal with the lack of gravity in space, for example, by floating in a large tank of water, where they experience a feeling very close to the weightlessness of space.

For every hour they will walk in space, astronauts practice for ten hours in the water. They also familiarize themselves with the exact route they will take once they leave a spacecraft. They repeatedly go over this path so they know exactly what to do on a spacewalk.

Astronauts also train for emergencies that may come about during a walk. One of the most common is losing consciousness. Although spacesuits have an internal heating and cooling system, they can still get very hot, especially when astronauts are doing physically demanding work outside the spacecraft for hours. Astronauts are trained to monitor their breathing and to make sure their bodies aren’t getting overheated, which could cause them to pass out. Another potential challenge that astronauts are trained to deal with is being separated from a spacecraft. During a walk, astronauts work in pairs and are attached to the ISS for safety reasons. Every NASA spacesuit has a mini jet pack, and astronauts are trained to use it to float back to the station if they somehow become detached from the craft.