Modern inventions have speeded up people's lives amazingly. Motor cars cover a hundred miles in light more than an hour, aircraft cross the world inside a day, while puters operate at lightning speed. Indeed, this love of speed seems never ending. Every year motor cars are produced which go even faster and each new puter boasts(吹嘘) of saving precious seconds in handling tasks.
All this saves time, but at a price.When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an airplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the unfortable feeling known as jet lag；our bodies feel that they have been left behind in another time zone. Again, spending too long at puters results in painful wrists and fingers. Mobile phones also , according to some scientists；too much use may put harmful radiation into our brains, a consequence we do not like to think about.
However, what do we do with the time we have saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We are so accustomed to constant activity that we find it difficult to sit and do nothing or even just one thing at a time. Perhaps the days are long gone when we might listen quietly to a story on the radio, letting imagination take us into another world.
There was a time when some people's lives were devoted simply to the cultivation(耕耘) of the land or the care of cattle. No multi tasking there；their lives went on at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. There is much that we might envy about a way of life like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestors faced: they farmed with bare hands, often lived close to hunger, and had to make tools from wood and stone. Modern machinery has freed people from that primitive existence.
【小题1】What's the passage mainly about?(within 10 words)
【小题2】List the difficulties our ancestors met according to the text.(within 15 words)
①
②
③
【小题3】Fill in the blank in the 2nd paragraph with proper words or phrases.
【小题4】Why do we make new products more and more time-saving according to Paragraph 1 of this passage?
【小题5】Translate the underlined sentence in the 3rd paragraph into Chinese.
Modern technology and its influence.
网友回答
(答案→)Modern technology and its influence.
解析：文章主要讲述了科技给人们的生活带来的改变。人们对速度的追求使科技不断得到更新，科技发展节约下来的时间并没有被用来进行放松。
【小题1】根据“Modern inventions have speeded up people's lives amazingly...All this saves time, but at a price.”可知，文章主要讲的是当代技术发明和它的影响。故填Modern technology and its influence.
【小题2】根据“they farmed with bare hands, often lived close to hunger, and had to make tools from wood and stone.”可知，祖先面临的困难有：徒手耕作、挨饿和用木头、石头制作工具。故填①farming with bare hands. ②living close to hunger. ③making tools from wood and stone.
【小题3】根据“too much use may put harmful radiation into our brains, a consequence we do not like to think about”可知，这里说的是手机不好的一面，故填have their danger/ have bad effects on us。
【小题4】根据“Indeed, this love of speed seems never ending.”可知，人们对速度的追求似乎没有终点，故填Because our love of speed seems never ending.
【小题5】the days are long gone when...是一个定语从句，letting imagination take us into another world是非谓语动词作伴随状语，故翻译为：那些我们可以聆听电台里的音乐, 让思绪飞扬的时代已经远去了。