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Section C
Lifestyles
of the 21st Century
Americans in the future will probably not live as Americans do today. Fusion（核聚变）power will be capable of producing energy without limits while saving natural resources. People may live well past a hundred years, be equipped with plastic body parts, and eat man-made foods. Space travelers will walk on the planets. These factors of life were science fiction images a few decades ago. Today such events are already discussed as if real.
How do people image life in the United States in the future? Below are some predictions made by Richard N. Farmer, who gave his light-hearted opinion of the "World of 2084."
Since no one wants to do the dirty, uninteresting factory-line work any more, we decide not to. So we take some chimpanzees（黑猩猩）, or if we really want some strength, some great apes（猿）, do a bit of scientific engineering here and there, and we create some animals, which are made for the factory line. They work their eight hours a day, and don't mind the repetition a bit. ...
Jack Baxter, a common American of 2084, glanced at his stop-watch. He was slowing down; he could only run the kilometer in four minutes flat now, and when he was 80, he could do it in three-fifty. But, being 140 years old made a difference, regardless of what his doctor said. Jack had received his first cancer shot in 1981; he had received his man-made heart in 2014, before they really got those human ones perfected, so he wasn't a very good example of a complete human. But he felt pretty good; he had been one of the lucky ones, who had received his shots to make him young again before he turned 40, so he was still a young-looking fellow. Of course, he looked old in his world, since no one got much beyond 30-looking any more. And, of course, he would die; right now, fellows pushing 200 were in poor shape and kicking off. ...
Death used to be a pretty simple thing. Body processes stopped, and you left us. But nowadays even, it is not uncommon for a person to be brought back with heart massage（按摩）perhaps a full hour or more after he's "dead." By 2084, if we can store a dead body in a cold refrigerator room soon enough, lots of people who now would die may not. Now we all die, sooner or later; maybe by 2084, we won't die until we are good and ready. And that would be a new freedom indeed.
Johnny, who's almost 10, can't read, but no one is worried. Indeed, Johnny has been going to school since he was 3, but it hasn't been the kind of school that we are familiar with. The kids learn all sorts of things about living together and getting along with each other, but nothing about school subjects. You see, we have figured out that age ten is about the time that a child can really put reading and mathematical skills to use. So, on his tenth birthday, Johnny goes to the brain-control center. He sits for an hour or so under a machine that looks something like a hair-dryer, with him attached to it. When he finishes, the entire reading, writing, and math patterns he needs to know are impressed right on his brain. Why fool around for years drilling kids, when all education really is made up of is a set of very mixed brain patterns? Just add them straight onto the brain, and you save lots of time and money. And if you want to teach any other kind of skills, like electrical theory for electricity workers, well, there's a pattern for that too.
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