Some pessimistic experts feel that the automobile (机动车) is bound to fall into disuse. They see a day in the not-too-distant future when all autos will be abandoned (放弃) and allowed to rust. Other authorities, however, think the auto is here to stay. They hold that the car will remain a leading means of urban travel in the foreseeable future.

The car will undoubtedly change significantly over the next 30 years. It should become smaller, safer, and more economical, and should not be powered by the gasoline engine. The car of the future should be far more pollution-free than present types.

Regardless of its power source, the auto in the future will still be the main problem in urban traffic jams. One proposed solution to this problem is the automated (自动化的) highway system. When the auto enters the highway system, a retractable (可伸缩的) arm will drop from the auto and make contact with a rail, which is similar to those powering subway trains electrically.

Once attached to the rail, the car will become electrically powered from the system, and control of the vehicle will pass to a central computer. The computer will then monitor all of the car’s movements.

The driver will use a telephone to dial instructions about his destination (目的地) into the system. The computer will calculate the best route, and reserve space for the car all the way to the correct exit from the highway. The driver will then be free to relax and wait for the buzzer that will warn him of his coming exit. It is estimated (估计) that an automated highway will be able to handle 10,000 vehicles per hour, compared with the 1,500 to 2,000 vehicles that can be carried by a present-day highway.

The Haleakalā Movement, which has affected the Hawaiian people, involved many Hawaiian activists peacefully protesting(抗议) against the construction of the Daniel K. Solar Telescope atop Haleakalā. The top of Haleakalā is a very sacred piece of land to Hawaiians. The problem is the leveling out of Haleakalā to structurally support the base of the telescope. Hawaiians could not watch their sacred land atop their mountain destroyed.

The goal of the protesters was to stop the movement of the trucks hauling(拖拽)telescope parts to the top of Haleakalā. At each event, protesters would march on the crosswalk in front of the base yard entrance holding signs that read “Aloha „Āina” and “Kūʻē,” meaning Love the Land and Resist respectively. When the trucks started their engines, several protesters lay down in the driveway, with their arms linked together with PVC pipes. Twenty of them were arrested.

I, as a youth of this generation, am a part of those Hawaiians who stood against the construction of the telescope and the destruction of our sacred mountain. I experienced first-hand and through social media what happened at each protest. Each of the protests that I attended took place at the Maui Base yard, however, there were others that took place atop Haleakalā. Most of the protesters marching were of Maui roots, but there were other protesters that came from different islands to show their support for the natives‟ stand against the destruction of our sacred mountain.

Following all that I had experienced these days, I left with the understanding that the youth of our generation have a very important role. Our role is to learn from the mistakes of the present and guide the world down the right path allowing it to grow and prosper. We, as the seeds of the present, must grow to protect the history of the human race, but at the same time prevent ourselves from repeating the actions and decisions that may have once destroyed us in the past. We, the youth, are the key to the prosperity of the future.

It’s possible that interstellar space explorers could come across problems communicating with previous and subsequent arrivals, as their spoken language has changed in isolation along the way.

Regarding the issue, two American scholars, Andrew McKenzie and Jeffrey Punske, co-authored the article “Language Development During Interstellar Travel”. What has been discussed in the article is the concept of language change over time. They wrote that given more time, new grammatical forms can completely replace current ones.

In a recent interview, McKenzie gamed it out.

“If you’re on a spaceship for 10 generations, new concepts will emerge, new social issues will come up, and people will create ways of talking about them,” McKenzie said, “and these will become the vocabulary particular to the spaceship. People on Earth might never know about these words, unless there’s a reason to tell them. And the further away you get, the less you’re going to talk to people back home.”

So if we have Earth English and spaceship English, and they become different over the years, you will have to learn a little Earth English to send messages back, or to read the instruction manuals and information that come with the spaceship.

Also, keep in mind that the language back on Earth is going to change, too, during that time. So they may well be communicating like we’d be using Latin—communicating with this version of the language nobody uses.

The authors concluded that if a study of the linguistic changes aboard a spaceship could be performed, it would “add to its scientific value”.