Extensive listening: The future we're building — and boring

Elon Musk discusses his new project digging tunnels under LA, the latest from Tesla and SpaceX and his motivation for building a future on Mars in conversation with TED's Head Curator, Chris Anderson.

Elon Musk is the CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors and the CEO/CTO of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX).

At SpaceX, Musk oversees the development of rockets and spacecraft for missions to Earth orbit and ultimately to other planets. In 2008, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft won the NASA contract to provide cargo transport to space. In 2012, SpaceX became the first commercial company to dock with the International Space Station and return cargo to Earth with the Dragon.

At Tesla, Musk has overseen product development and design from the beginning, including the all-electric Tesla Roadster, Model S and Model X, and the rollout of Supercharger stations to keep the cars juiced up. (Some of the charging stations use solar energy systems from SolarCity, of which Musk is the non-executive chair.) Transitioning to a sustainable energy economy, in which electric vehicles play a pivotal role, has been one of his central interests for almost two decades. He co-founded PayPal and served as the company's chair and CEO.

You can read a full transcript here.

Hugging robots and electric cars

Hugging companion robots, long-lasting fuel cell phone batteries and virtual reality headsets - the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is once again showcasing some of the most advanced developments in technology. Vehicle manufacturers have also been keen to show off their sleek concept designs.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.



1. How many people have already ordered Pepper in Japan?
2. How is Pepper different from other digital devices in the way people can interact with it?
3. How can Buddy help when the owner of the house is out?
4. What is the reporter's battery level?
5. How long will the fuel cells developed by Intelligent Energy keep mobile phones charged?

Is this the year you get a robot for your home? In Japan, 7,000 people have already ordered Pepper, a robot which is a companion offering a hug or a high five, rather than a purely practical device.
For us, the robot is very different from the other digital devices, because the way you interact with it is very natural, there is no keyboard, there is no screen that you touch on.
And here is Buddy, another robot interacting with humans in Las Vegas. As well as following you around and looking cute, this robot, due to go on sale later this year, does have some practical uses.
When you're out of the house, Buddy can act as a sort of night watchman, watching out for strangers like me turning up.
Virtual reality is another big theme here with all sorts of VR headsets on show. This one combines the real and virtual worlds so you can see your fingers and use them to spin the Earth around.
Of course, it is all very well having these wonderful new gadgets but they all need power. My phone’s down at 7% right now and anyone with a smartphone knows it is very hard to get through the day without a charge but one British firm thinks it’s got the answer.
Intelligent Energy is developing fuel cells to power all sorts of devices. This prototype is for a smartphone and keeps it charged for a week. It’s bulky now but could be built into the phone one day, and the firm says visitors to the show could see a big change for the better.
Well, they will never have to plug into the wall once. They will have a device that will be charged and powered for the whole week while they are here at CES.
And you… you're saying that’s a realistic prospect within the next five years?
Yeah. most definitely, it is an inevitability.
This electric concept car, developed by a Californian firm with Chinese money, is one product that will never go on sale, but at this show, motoring is yet another industry that the technology firms think they can transform.
Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC News, Las Vegas.

Key:
1 seven thousand people
2 there is no keyboard or screen 
3 by acting as a night watchman
4 7%
5 for one week

Are smart homes at risk from hackers?

Smart household technology is increasingly being installed into millions of homes across the world and it promises to change the way we live forever.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and complete the blanks in the transcript with the missing words.



Where does the outside world stop and private space begin? What details of your life are you willing to share with strangers? Take this house. Every morning, lights come on. Coffee (1) … automatically.   Technology just like this is increasingly being installed into millions of homes across the world and it promises to change the way we live forever.
So there are sensors of all kinds, there’s lights and (2) ... and thermostats and once they’re connected then our platform can make them do whatever you want them to do. So as an example, if I wake up in the morning, the house knows that I’m waking up. It can wake up with me. When we walk in the kitchen, it will play the local news and sort of greet us into the day, tell us the (3) ... ... so we know how to dress for the day and so on.
This technology is known as the internet of things, where the objects in our houses - (4) ... ..., anything electronic - can be connected to the internet.  But for it to be useful, we’re going to have to share intimate details of our private life.
So this is my things app. It can run on your mobile phone or on a tablet or something like that. I can do things like look at the (5) ... ... ... of family members. It can automatically detect when we come and go based on our mobile phones or you can have it detect your presence with a little sensor, you can put it in your car or something like that. So when we leave the house, and there’s no one home, that’s when it’ll lock up and (6) ... ... all the electricity used and so on.
For most of us, this is deeply private information. Yet once we hand it over, we have to (7) ... a company to keep it confidential.
The consumer really owns 100% of their own data so they’re opting in. It’s not something where that data would ever be shared without their giving their permission.
This house represents a new normal, where even the movements within our own home are documented and (8) ... . It’s a new frontier. The internet is asking us to redefine what we consider private.

Key:
1 brews
2 locks 
3 weather forecast 
4 kitchen appliances
5 comings and goings
6 shut down
7 trust 
8 stored

Extensive listening: Is Earth overpopulated

Using state-of-the-art 3D graphics and the timing of a stand-up comedian, world-famous statistician Professor Hans Rosling presents a spectacular portrait of our rapidly changing world.

With seven billion people already on our planet, we often look to the future with dread, but Rosling's message is surprisingly upbeat. Almost unnoticed, we have actually begun to conquer the problems of rapid population growth and extreme poverty.

Across the world, even in countries like Bangladesh, families of just two children are now the norm - meaning that within a few generations, the population explosion will be over. A smaller proportion of people now live in extreme poverty than ever before in human history and the United Nations has set a target of eradicating it altogether within a few decades.

In this as-live studio event, Rosling presents a statistical tour-de-force, including his 'ignorance survey', which demonstrates how British university graduates would be outperformed by chimpanzees in a test of knowledge about developing countries.

Talking point: Smart cities

This week's talking point is smart cities. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group, go over the questions below so that ideas come to mind more easily the day you get together with your friends and you can work out vocabulary problems beforehand.

How have people’s lifestyles changed in your country during your lifetime?
How has your city/town changed in your lifetime?
What are the good and bad points of living in your city/town these days?
How do you think your city/town will be like in 50 years’ time?
What do the pictures below show about city life?
How do you feel in situations like this?
What other pictures of city life stress would you add?

What do you understand by the term ‘smart city’?
Do you agree with these ideas to make a city more liveable?

• Cars have to pay to enter the city centre
• A single card is needed for the whole public transport system
• Solar panels provide all the energy the city needs
• There is a large park with lakes in the city centre

Smart cities
Look at this list of ideas for making cities ‘smarter’ or better to live in. Do any of them already exist in the city you live in or one you know?
If so, how useful are they?
If not, would you use the app or facility if it were available?

1 an app giving information about new projects and impending legislation in the city
2 parking apps to show drivers the nearest available parking space and how much it costs
3 apps to let users ‘adopt’ city property, such as litter bins, trees, flower beds, and volunteer to maintain them
4 digital parking payment systems, allowing you to pay for parking by smartphone, without using coins or tickets
5 free wi-fi everywhere in the city, including on trains, buses and the underground
6 screens in public places which display traffic information, weather and local news
7 an app letting residents communicate with the city maintenance services to let the city know where there's a problem - something's broken or out of service
8 an app giving information about all the trains, buses and underground and when they are due, delays, alternative routes
9 solar-powered artificial trees that enable residents to charge their mobiles, laptops and other devices

Extensive listening: Could a robot do my job

Britain is on the brink of a technological revolution. Machines and artificial intelligence are beginning to replace jobs like never before.

In this BBC Panorama episode reporter Rohan Silva looks at the workplaces already using this new technology and asks whether we should feel threatened by it, or whether it will benefit all of us.

Are we ready for one of the biggest changes the world of work has ever seen?

A smarter future car

Around the world, cities are beginning to choke on their own traffic. In Boston, scientists at the famous Media Lab at MIT are working on a prototype of a different electric car.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and now down the revolutionary features of this electric car.




Around the world, cities are beginning to choke on their own traffic. Yet, existing public transport has some frustrating flaws. Well, today, I came by train to avoid the rush hour, freeway, car park. Unfortunately, it's dropped me about 3km from where I want to go and it's about to rain. Wouldn't it be great if I could just pick up a little car here and drop it when I get there?
Think this is just a dream? Well, I'm off to Boston to the place where dreams are engineered into reality. [After you.] This is the famous Media Lab at MIT. Carry on! And here are the guys who are building the world's first fold-up electric car.
This is the car.
Not full size, I gather.
No, one half size.
One half size.
So it does tricks? Let's hope this works. I'm now going to (1) make this car fold.Oh, excellent!
Yep. When it's folded, it fits in the width of a regular parking space.
You're kidding!
That's right.
That's fantastic.
(2) So you can park the car perpendicular to the sidewalk. (3) Then the door will actually come open through the front and you step out onto the sidewalk.
It's a mind-bogglingly different kind of electric car which is exactly what its conceptual creator was hoping for.
I'd been talking for years to some of my colleagues in urban design and we kept on whining about the condition of cities and sort of recognising that the automobile is a key problem. It got to the point where it's time to stop whining, we needed to fundamentally reinvent the automobile. The secret is a revolutionary new form of drive. This car, this is a model of the chassis, (4) doesn't have a motor. It has four and each of them is inside a wheel. Each of these wheels is an autonomous wheel robot. So this here, that's the steering, that's the motor and this is the suspension. Apart from this mechanical connection, the only thing that connects to the body of the car is information... and electric power. With the engine effectively in the wheels, the body of the car is freed up to do cool things, like folding which halves precious parking space. And it allows a few more tricks.
(5) So we're about to perform what we call an O turn. The vehicle can spin in very small spaces because each wheel can turn a full 120 degrees.
Oh, excellent! So you can do this in traffic?
Yes!
That'd cause chaos!
You can also imagine getting in and out of parking spots much easier.
If you have this capability, you don't have to go in reverse anymore.
You don't have to reverse out of a parking spot?
Ever.
No more banging your car into those damned high-rise car park pillars!
Just turn the vehicle to the direction and then head out head first.
(6) The car is also lighter, stronger and way more energy efficient than a petrol car. And with an expected price of around $12,000, the revolutionary thinking doesn't stop there. (7) You see, you don't have to own one. They could just be stacked around the city for use on demand.
You just swipe a credit card, pick up the automobile, drive it a drop-off point near where you want to go and just leave it - so it's a one-way rental kind of system.
A full scale driveable prototype will be built next year and they assure me a demo on demand system will be running within five. But if that seems like a long wait, there's an exciting spin-off that's ready now. Now, this looks like an ordinary bike.
It's not.
It's not?
No.
Look at the back wheel. It's another one of these in-wheel robots. Apparently, you can easily replace the back wheel of any existing bike and turn it into an electric bike. What do I do?
So, you have a throttle here, which provides power. The more you push, the more throttle you get.
Here goes! Right, I press it. Ooh! This is fun!
Don't forget to pedal too.
I have to pedal as well?
Yes, at the same time.
Oh, I get pedal assistance! Wahoo, watch out!
Slow down!
We're really excited about our little Green Wheel, our little electric bike. It's a very low cost, low risk way of introducing the concept of electric vehicles into cities. So you can move up from the lightweight bikes to things like scooters and then to enclosed climate controlled automobiles. I suspect that's going to be the transition pathway.
I'd go faster but it's slippery in here. The first commercial Green Wheels will be rolling off the production line this year. I will watch out for the marble floor. Just one word of advice. Try not to test drive it on a marble floor. Just because the technology's smart, doesn't mean the driver is.

Talking point: Hopes and dreams for the future

This week's talking point is hopes and dreams for the future. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group, go over the questions below so that ideas flow more easily when you meet up with your friends and you can work out vocabulary problems beforehand:

• What do you think you will have achieved in five years’ time?
• What do you think you will be doing this time next year?
• What do you think you will be doing in ten years time?
• In the future, in what ways do you hope to be developing your career?
• Is there anything about the future that doesn’t bother you in the slightest?
• What were your dreams and ambitions for the future when you were a child?
• Have you achieved your childhood dreams?
• What kinds of ambitions and dreams do young people have in your country?
• ‘Anything is possible if you’re prepared to chase your dreams.’ Do you agree?
• Rank the factors to make your dreams come true in order of importance. Give your reasons.

hard work
family support
determination
self-confidence
money
talent
luck

To illustrate the topic you can watch the Speakout video age, where people answer the questions
What are you looking forward to in the future?
Is there anything you aren’t looking forward to?
People say that your school days are the best days of your life. Do you think that’s true?



P: Hi. I’m really excited about the next few months. I’m DJing on the banks of the River Thames in the heart of London and I’m playing some beach parties. Today I’ve come to Covent Garden to find out how people feel about their lives. What are you looking forward to in the future?C: I’m looking forward to having a family: I don’t have a family right now. I’m looking forward to buying a house – I actually live in the United States right now and I haven’t bought a house there, so I’m looking forward to that. And I guess I’m looking forward to more travel.
T: Finding a job that I’m really passionate about.
L: Near future, I’m looking forward to a holiday next year. I’m going to Vegas a family that I haven’t been away with for about five or six years now.
D: Getting a good job. Finishing university.
Do: Nothing really. I’ve kind of enjoy my life at the moment. I live in Australia now and I’ve got things the way we like them at home and life’s good.
R: Starting a new job next summer.
P: Is there anything you aren’t looking forward to?
T: No, no there’s nothing I can think about that I’m not looking forward to in the future.
L: The one thing that I’d have thought most people say is dying. Quite serious, but, other than that, no – I kind of embrace life to the full; look forward to most things.
Ch: I have to say, the premise of getting older and with getting older you have more responsibilities, so that’s one thing I’m not looking forward to.
C: Well, I’m not looking forward to retiring: I like my job and I like working and I think I’ll be a little bored when I retire.
D: It’s quite stressful looking for jobs and going to job interviews, so I do get nervous about that.
Do: Getting older. Your body starting to fall to bits. Not looking forward to that, but it’ll happen.
P: People say that your school days are the best days of your life. Do you think that’s true?
T: Absolutely. I do, yes, because you’re, the world is your oyster. You have so much hope, so many dreams and you believe you can achieve anything. So yeah, definitely, I think so, yeah.
Do: No. School days were hell on Earth for me. It was the worst days of my life.
D: They’re quite stressful because you have exams, but I do think they’re fun: being able to be with your friends every day. So I do think that school days are good days in your life.
C: Looking back on it, I had a great time at school. I’m sure at the time it seemed a little difficult, you know, trying to fit in, but now when I look back on it, they were fun days and, you know, I look at them very fondly.
R: For me, personally, my school days were my favourite because I’ve still got friends from, going back twenty-odd years.
Ch: That’s when I’ve created the most valuable relationships I have in my life.
L: For most people, yes, but when I left school at sixteen I was a fulltime footballer at Ipswich Town football club for two years. So, living away from home with friends and doing, kind of, the best thing I could do in my life, were the best two years of my life.

Bristol gets European Green Capital Award

This year Bristol won the European Green Capital Award for 2015.

So, what does a green city look like?
How do you integrate urban living with environmental responsibility?
How does a city become an ecosystem?
How can locals engage with biodiversity?
How can a deprived area become sustainable?
How can locals be persuaded about getting involved in the new projects?

Watch this six-minute video, which is a compendium of the five films Bristol presented to the European Green Capital Award jury, and find out the answers to the questions above.

Watch the video again and answer the questions below. You may already be able to answer some of them.

The activity is suitable for Intermedio 2 students.



1 Which four words summarise the vision for Bristol and for Bristol Futures?
2  What will Bristol achieve next year in terms of waste?
3 How do Bristol inhabitants get familiar on how to save energy?
4 What was celebrated on 23 May 2012?
5 How many languages are spoken in Bristol?
6 What is North West?
7 What is the city's policy about persuading people?
8 How many universities are there in Bristol? What are they working together on?

To check your answers you can read the transcript below.

Bristol is an inspiring place: Creative, open connected and green. It's big enough to have challenges but small enough to be collaborative and inclusive. It's a great example of a city that is integrating urban living with environmental responsibility. Everyone can enjoy nature and green space within easy reach, even in the heart of the city. We are a knowledge-based city built on the foundations of two leading universities transferring and creating knowledge with businesses that are at the leading edge of change. We are competitive in the modern economy and creating the future economy of low-waste, low carbon, smarter work.
The local authority is central to leadership and to inspiring change in the city and a green strategy is at the heart of council planning.
Bristol Futures is our new grouping of different teams within Bristol City Council helping to achieve our climate change ambitions. In four words: creative, smart, green and connected, that's the vision for Bristol and for Bristol Futures.  It is about future proof in the city to make sure that it's a good place to do business and a good place to live.
The city is an ecosystem. The urban environment and its people and the key to change is getting them involved. We are progressing quickly. We've adopted a policy of reduce, reuse, recycle, and we don't incinerate to avoid landfill. We went from one bin to multiple bins, reducing the total amount of domestic
waste by a quarter. The language changed: ‘waste’ becomes a resource and next year we will achieve our vision of zero landfill. We have an open approach: demonstration projects in the city share their practical experience of eco-homes or installing solar energy. We support social enterprises sharing their knowledge, working with people by enabling them to show each other.
Everybody can identify with one of the homes. These are ordinary people doing good stuff to their house and these are eco-warriors. If we are all working together, we can, really, really make something happen here.
We get people engaged with biodiversity in a new way.
Its May 25th 2012, just a couple days after International Year of Biodiversity. We are here at Arnos Vale cemetery for our fourth annual Bio Blitz. We’ve got a couple of hundred kids on site, already out with scientists surveying the site. We’re hoping to find a thousand different species over the next thirty hours, and these kids are off and running just about to find and record our first species of the day.
And we are inclusive. We work with a huge range of people. There are eighty-nine languages in Bristol communities. We connect directly with people’s real lives.
North West is a test bed community, a municipal housing a state in a deprived area of the city. European funding enabled the creation of a highly sustainable community building that acted as a focus for engaging the people in the green agenda. North West is very eco-friendly. We care about the environment just as much, if not more, than the posh parts of Bristol. In North West it’s the young people who tell the stories using video and animation.
I’m off to see Dave. He's got solar panels on his roof.
Persuading people is not about telling, it's about showing. We are good at that: A factual broadcasting center of excellence, a knowledge hub, a creative industry city with a sustainable heart and global impact.
When we have exciting projects, we share their knowledge. We promote good community stories so people are inspired by people like them.
We've embedded green thinking at the center of our city, so we’ve embedded green technology and green business, and that means that we can engage with the business community, with people such as you can see behind me, but also we’ve embedded in our communities and that means we can get to the hard-to-reach people, deprived people in our city in a kind of a virtual circle working with business, working with them to ensure our green future. And that’s a message, we can win the green capital, we can send out around Europe because it's a very very sustainable model based on a sustainable technology, I think that's a very very exciting concept for Europe going into the future.
Here at Bristol we have two leading-edge universities working together on new research and innovation to support developments to protect the environment and to boost the economy of the southwest.
Hello, this is Nick Clarke, the leader of the Liberal Democrats and the Deputy Prime Minister in the UK government. I fully support Bristol’s excellent bid which I believe is a fitting tribute to the work that has been carried out in partnership by the council and others to promote a green and sustainable agenda across the city. The UK government recognizes the significance of the European green award and as the winning city in 2014 Bristol will engage widely with other cities, providing a catalyst for the sharing of best practice across the whole of Europe.
Bristol is the green capital of the UK. We want to be European green capital in 2014 and inspire change across Europe.

Speakout Advanced: Horizons

Today's the day. After sixty-two weeks publishing a weekly video podcast from the textbook Speakout, from Pearson Longman, we have come to the end of the series with the last episode, Horizons, where passers-by discuss their plans for the future by answering the questions below:

How do you feel about where you are in your life at the moment?
Are you the kind of person who makes plans, or do you ‘go with the flow’?
Do you have any long-term goals in your life?



Now it's over to you. Answer the questions about yourself, and try and use some of the expressions and vocabulary you heard on the video.

You can read the transcript here.