American’s life has once again been greatly changed by the new age of science and technology since the Second World War. Everything has speeded up to a tremendous rate. Information is immediate, nobody has to wait to hear any news. There is a television set in every house. There is instant printing which has changed the way that offices and the universities run. But perhaps the biggest change is the telephone. People no longer write letters to one another. They pick up the telephone. Every house has at least two, sometimes three, four and five telephones. Every office bas many telephones. It speeds things up. And its cost is not much. Perhaps the biggest difference is in the growth of computers. Computers can think, can remember, can calculate faster than any human brain. A computer can hold more than a million facts in its memory. There are computers that are so big they would fill this entire auditorium with machinery. Businesses and banks are now managed by computers. Parts of the government are managed by computers. Students’ grades, their marks are all managed by computers. However, if a computer makes a mistake about one of you, it is terribly difficult to correct that mistake. And sometimes a computer does make mistake, never learned by another computer and the same mistake will go into other computers. So in many ways people have become the servants of computers who are bigger and cleverer than they are. Of course, computers speed up every operation because computers can immediately record, remember facts and produce new information that it combines with these facts. It makes science possible. Modem science would not be possible without the computers to do the calculations: Life is complicated. People need to know many technical skills to get money from a bank. You have to know how to work the automatic teller that will give you your money. You have to know how to use the new punch button telephones. Everything is very complicated. Many Americans find it so complicated, that they try to escape by drinking alcohol. Alcoholism is a major disease in America. Some people take drugs and some people belong to strange religion looking for some meaning in their life. I think perhaps you read about the terrible event in Guyana, when people who belong to a strange religion all committed suicide. This sort of thing would not have happened fifty years ago. It is a by-product of an age that has become too complicated for people to live in happily. There are many contradictions in American society. Because of the complex way of life people are no longer the optimistic, self- reliant free people that they were when they were pioneers, when they were conquering the new land. Now people are becoming more pessimistic. Very often they are lonely. The doctors who have the most work are psychiatrists trying to help people find ways that they can again be happy. Often efficiency replaces good quality. We still have two classes of people. Too much money is still in the hands of too few people. The rich capitalists no longer wear black hats and stripped trousers. They have faces that nobody knows because now they are called the 'multi - national corporations. 'They are the great faceless companies like General Motors, General Fords, United States Steel. There are no longer any faces like Mr. Rockefeller or Mr. Ford. They have become faceless forces, which control our government and control the money. The poorest class is still mostly made up of black people, minority people, Spanish speaking Americans. And the poorest people have not benefited from the new age of science and technology. So Americans are no longer the happy care-free people that they once were. According to the passage, the characteristic of a highly technological society is ______.