総合型選抜・特待生選考入試 英文要約
次の英文を読み、180 字から 220 字の日本語で要約しなさい。

Societal Evolution
Our physical, social, work, and financial lifestyles are highly automated and weinteract daily with unmanned or unstaffed retail and clerkless service providers. Manymight think of this automation as a recent development, yet vending machines called‘automats’ which provide hot meals in waiterless restaurants have existed now for over acentury. Parking meters, laundromats, electronic train ticket gates, ATMs, self-checkouts
at supermarkets, and self-service gasoline stations are all very commonplace.
Many modernized countries are now aiming to become cashless societies bypromoting the use of electronic money. Credit cards, and more recently debit cards andIC smart cards, are common means of cashless payment that eliminate the need to handle
cash. Cashless brings us to the next step in our societal evolution: contactless or touchless.
It is common for a cashless payment to also be contactless. Commuter passes with IC
chips and smartphones/smartwatches with ‘digital wallets’ make train and bus travelmuch smoother without the need to touch buttons, screens, or surfaces.
Contactless technologies are quick and convenient, and during the COVID-19
pandemic they became popular as a means of reducing the spread of infection. With
‘contactless dining’ or ‘smart dining’, orders in a restaurant can be made via a touchscreen
or smartphone, minimizing the need to interact with staff and line up. A ‘smartstore’ likethe futuristic convenience store in Takanawa Gateway Station in Tokyo is unstaffed andthere is no scanning of product barcodes. The cost is calculated automatically andinstantly by AI-controlled video cameras and a contactless payment can be made at theself-checkout, an almost interactionless process.
Education and work are another two aspects of our lives that digital technology has
transformed. Online learning allows students to study and interact with teachers
regardless of their location, and teleworking or telecommuting has also become much
more common since the outbreak of COVID-19. Web-based technologies eliminate theneed for direct face-to-face contact, a wonderful tool when connecting with someone ina rural location, someone cut off by a natural disaster, or when used to minimize thespread of a disease, but where is this virtual world leading us?

Modern conveniences raise the question: are we coming full circle to another stage ofevolution; inactive and noncommunicative? What evolutionary step comes next? Will
touchless and contactless become thought-controlled? Could virtual completely replacesocial and physical? Will remote and online cause us to become relationless? Couldconnected actually be disconnected? Will depersonalized make us thoughtless orcompassionless?
Is our global society destined for dehumanization by technology? Let us hope thatour progress does not become a regression for the human species and that our evolution
is not de-evolution in disguise.
Notes:societal (adj.)
laundromat (n.)
COVID-19 pandemic (n.)
barcode (n.)
interactionless (adj.)depersonalized (adj.)
destine (v.)
regression (n.)

relating to society or social relations
coin-operated washing machineoutbreak of coronavirus disease 2019
machine-readable code on a productlack of communication or involvement withsomeone or somethinglack of human characteristics
intended for a special purpose or fatea return to an earlier state or a less developed stage