IELTS Academic Reading full test 2

The return of the night train

For several decades, overnight passenger trains in Europe were in decline. Cheap flights and high-speed rail made long journeys faster, and many operators cancelled sleeper services that were expensive to run. By the 2010s, a number of well-known routes had disappeared altogether.

In recent years, however, night trains have made a surprising comeback. Several operators have launched new services connecting major cities, and some governments have offered financial support. Part of the reason is environmental: a train journey generally produces far lower carbon emissions per passenger than the equivalent flight. Travellers have also rediscovered the convenience of boarding in the evening and arriving in a city centre the next morning, saving the cost of a hotel night.

Running night trains is not simple. Sleeper carriages carry fewer passengers than seated carriages, so ticket prices must be relatively high to cover costs. Trains often cross several countries, each with different rules, track charges and technical systems. Some operators also struggle to find enough modern carriages, and new rolling stock can take years to build.

Despite these challenges, demand appears strong, with some routes regularly selling out during holiday periods. Supporters argue that, with fair pricing for flights and better international cooperation, night trains could become a normal part of travel once again.

The box that changed the world

A For most of history, loading and unloading ships was slow, expensive work. Goods arrived at the dock in sacks, barrels and crates of every shape and size, and teams of workers carried them on board one by one. A large cargo ship could spend a week or more in port, and the cost of handling goods at each end of a voyage was often higher than the cost of the voyage itself.

B In the 1950s, an American trucking company owner, Malcolm McLean, became frustrated by the hours his drivers spent waiting at ports. He reasoned that it would be far quicker to lift the entire back of a truck onto a ship than to unload its contents. In 1956, a converted oil tanker carried fifty-eight metal boxes from New Jersey to Texas. Loading cost a fraction of the usual price per tonne.

C The idea was not welcomed by everyone. Dock workers' unions feared, correctly, that containers would eliminate thousands of jobs, and there were long disputes in many ports. Shipping companies that had invested heavily in traditional vessels were also reluctant to change, and some governments were slow to approve the new practices.

D An early difficulty was that different companies built containers of different sizes, so a box from one firm would not fit another firm's ship, crane or truck. During the 1960s, after lengthy negotiations, international standards were agreed. The 'twenty-foot equivalent unit', or TEU, became the standard measure of shipping capacity, and the corner fittings that lock containers together were made identical worldwide.

E Standardisation allowed ships to grow dramatically. The largest container ships today can carry more than 24,000 TEU. Because such vessels need deep water and enormous cranes, they call at a relatively small number of major ports, and many older harbours have lost most of their trade.

F The effects reached far beyond the sea. As shipping costs fell, it became economical for companies to manufacture goods in one country, assemble them in another and sell them on a third continent. In many cities, busy docks close to the centre fell silent and were later redeveloped as apartments, offices and parks, while new container terminals were built on cheaper land far from town.

Can a machine be creative?

Computer programs can now write poems, compose music and produce pictures in seconds. Some of this work is good enough to win competitions or sell at auction, and it has prompted a familiar question: can a machine be creative? The answer depends largely on what we mean by creativity, and I would argue that the debate has been confused by two very different definitions.

The first definition focuses on the product. If something is new, surprising and valuable, it is creative, regardless of how it was made. By this standard, there is little doubt that machines can produce creative work. A melody generated by software can be original and moving, and listeners who do not know its source often cannot tell it apart from music written by people.

The second definition focuses on the process. Creativity, on this view, requires intention: the creator must be trying to express or achieve something, and must be able to judge whether they have succeeded. Current systems do not appear to do this. They generate output by finding patterns in enormous collections of existing work, and they have no goals of their own. In my view, this is the more useful definition, because it explains why we value a child's first drawing more than a technically perfect copy.

Critics of machine creativity often claim that programs merely recombine what already exists. This argument is weaker than it seems. Human artists also learn by studying the work of others, and almost every new style grows out of earlier ones. The real difference lies not in the use of existing material but in the reasons for the choices that are made.

None of this means that the technology is unimportant to the arts. Many musicians and designers already use these programs to generate rough ideas, which they then select, reject and refine. Used in this way, the software resembles a new kind of instrument rather than a rival artist. Whether this will increase or reduce the number of people who can earn a living from creative work is, at present, impossible to say.

What does seem clear is that the arrival of such systems will force us to think more carefully about why we value art at all. If a painting moves us, should it matter who or what made it? I suspect that, for most people, it will continue to matter a great deal.