Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[nawee]

Hello,

Which tense should I use?

"Many scientists believe the area that will have the biggest impact on people's lives this century [is not/will not be] the development of computers, ..."

To me both the Present Simple and the Future Simple sound ok.

Present Simple = fact (what the scientists believe)
Future Simple = future reference (the area that will have an impact will not be ... in the future)

Am I right?

Thank you,

Nawee

[Anuradha Chepur]

Your sentence is thought provoking. To me using future here sounds clumsy.

If you want to use future tense, you'd rather modify your sentence a bit:

Many scientists beleive the development of computers will not have much impact on peoples' lives this century.

Another way out is:

Many scientists beleive it is not the development of computers that will have the biggest impact on peoples' lives this century.