Yet in too many parts of the world, similar progress remains a distant dream.
By current global trends education for all will be a distant dream until at least 2064.
CNN: Millions of children face Malala's fight for an education
During the height of the scandal the thought of just breaking even seemed like a distant dream.
FORBES: For Embattled FIFA, Lessons from the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics Crisis
The blue power suit was the expected office attire and equality in the C-suites was a distant dream for business women.
True financial independence is a distant dream: in practice, the budget (which must balance each year) is financed by the EU's members.
ECONOMIST: Much stroppiness lies ahead in the EU budget negotiations
And while 14 countries and 12 U.S. states allow same-sex marriages, in South Korea that appears to be a distant dream for gay couples.
Meanwhile, online appointment booking is at least two years away and some of the most innovative ideas deployed in other countries are but a distant dream.
Even if the complete repair of a broken nervous system is a distant dream, researchers think that engineering better neural prosthetics will help treat different nervous system diseases.
Scooping up the whole deck, though, remains a distant dream.
Although robot butlers remain a distant dream, if people are ever to interact with robots in a comfortable way those robots will need to avoid making users' skins crawl.
"Without substantial and sustained investment in clean energy and other measures now, the reality of a global economy free of climate change impacts will remain a distant dream, " the report noted.
Such solutions are clearly some way off commercial development, but with Apple rumored to be designing its hotly-anticipated iWatch around a power source based on kinetic and solar power, a battery-free world isn't such a distant dream.
Which is why the president, in a speech on May 30th that was meant to be about European defence, brushed aside Mr Fischer's federal idea as a dream for the distant future.
That scenario may yet be a dream, but it will be possible in the not-too-distant future.
应用推荐