The year 2000 will bring big changes in communication Cell phones will be small enough to

carry in your pocket. Videophones will let you see the person you are talking to on the phone. Tiny hand size computers will know your favorite subjects. The Internet and email will be everywhere.

Technologists believe 2000 will be the year of video messaging. You will be able to see whom you're talking to.

Also in the near future small wireless boxes will pick up information from satellites. In 5 years, computers won't need to be connected through wires.

All of this will be good for rural areas and countries that don't have cattle or telephone now.

In 20 years you may only need to think about something and the computer will do it.

Constance Hale is the author of Sin and Syntax, "I believe that email has been an incredible boon to communication. People are writing today where they would have been telephoning yesterday. So people are engaging with words more than they have for the last couple generations."

If people use email and the Internet more, it could make people better readers and writers. Some people think the most important part of communication is to make people understand each other better. Will technology make that easier？

The translator also comes in handy in medical emergencies. Tam Dinh says, "Where people are injured it's always important to get as much information as quickly as possible."

Bob Parks is an Associate Editor of Wired Magazine, "Bob's morning begins at about 6:45 a.m. and Bob is kind of mad, because Bob usually gets up at around 7:15 and likes to cut it close with his morning commute, but I look at my radio and it says that there's a traffic jam on 101 South and I'm gonna need an extra 1/2 hour. And so my radio has got a net connection, wireless net connection as well as a good old power cord to the wall and it has received notice that there's a traffic jam and it has calculated an extra 1/2 hour commute time."

Some day everything may be connected to the Internet. Your refrigerator will add milk to your Internet grocery list when the date on the carton has passed. Light bulbs will be ordered before they bum out.

It's fun to try to guess the future. Usually the predictions are wrong. The one thing we know for sure is that we can't imagine how technology will change.

How will wireless computers and Internet services help rural areas？

A．One of the biggest barriers to Internet use is getting wires into rural areas.

B．The wireless computers will be cheaper.

C．People in rural areas don't have anything else to do.

D．People in rural areas already have wireless boxes on their roofs.