【推荐1】More than a billion people around the world have smart phones, almost all of which come with some kind of navigation app such as Apple Maps or Amap. This raises the age-old question we meet with any technology: What abilities is our brain losing to these apps? But also, importantly: What abilities are we gaining?

Talking with people who are good at finding their way around or good at using paper maps, I often hear a lot of annoyance with digital maps. North/south direction gets messed up, and you can see only a small section at a time. I can really understand that it may be quite disturbing for the already skilled to be limited to a small phone screen.

But consider what digital navigation aids have meant for someone like me. Although being a frequent traveler, I'm so terrible at finding my way that I still use Apple Maps almost every day in the small town where I have lived for many years.

In many developed nations, street names and house numbers can be meaningful, and instructions such as go north for three blocks and---then west make sense to those familiar with these rules. In Istanbul, however, where I grew up, none of those hold true. For one thing, the locals seldom use street names. Besides, the city is full of winding and ancient alleys(小巷) that cross with newer avenues at many angles. In such places, you'd better turn to the locals. In the countryside, however, there is often nobody outside to ask. In fact, along came Apple Maps, like a fairy grandmother whispering directions in my ear. Since then, I travel with a lot more confidence, and my world has opened up.

Which brings me back to my original question: While we often lose some skills after depending on new technology, this new equipment may also allow us to gain new abilities. Maybe when technology closes a door, we should also look for the doors it opens.

【推荐2】Social media can be defined (解释) as web-based and mobile media that are used for people to interact, connect and communicate with each other. It often involves the creation and sharing of content (writing, pictures, and video) that people make themselves, mostly through the Internet.

    1     The first type involve people getting together to work on a project, for example, Wikipedia. Blogs and micro-blogs (such as Twitter) are another type of social media. There are other websites like YouTube that allow people to share content such as pictures, articles or videos. Another type of social media are social networking sites.    2     Facebook is an example of this type. Many people like to play games on the Internet and, yes, there are social media games as well. These games allow gamers to interact with each other and play with or against other gamers. World of Warcraft is a good example. The final type of social media is websites like Second Life, where people can create avatars (化身) and use and create objects, as if they were in the real world.

    3     With social media, many individual people in different places create content. Another difference is that people who produce content in social media don’t need very special skills.     4    . It takes only a few minutes to write a twitter post, for example.

    5    . But whatever you might think, social media is here to stay.

【推荐3】Would you turn down the chance to become a smart cookie? We’ve been longing for quick fixes that could increase our intelligence (智力). Today, people’s hopes lie in brain training apps as a speedy “digital pill”. The more you play, the smarter you will get—or so some apps tell us. But is this digital-shortcut all that it seems to be?

The use of games for serious purposes has become widespread with the development of the Internet and smartphones. Brain training apps are typical, frequently featured by Apple and Google’s app stores. Many of such apps say that they are backed by “science”. Even if there were agreement around what makes general intelligence, the idea that increasing it would be as simple as practising a few mini-games every day goes against our current discovery about thinking and learning.

Several major studies, surveying users across a wide variety of apps, have found that they have little effect on users’ performance. A 2021 study by researchers discovered brain training has no significant effect on cognitive (认知的) functioning in the “real world”. The positive effects reported are limited to the very specific mini-games and tasks, such as memorizing lists of words or numbers, or performing mental calculation (心算). So, if your job or your calling in life needs summing quickly or remembering all your friends’ phone numbers, these apps will do. But if you are expecting them to improve your ability to write a novel or form a complex (复杂的) spreadsheet, you have to look elsewhere. Yet, despite the fact that they hardly work, brain training apps play a leading role, partly because they are regarded to be scientific and partly because users think they are fun.

As a co-creator of one of the most popular forms of gamification (游戏化) noted, what is especially disappointing about these apps is that they just aren’t that fun—at least, not compared with the various thoughtful board games and video games coming out every day. Puzzle video games, such as Baba Is You and detective games like Return of the Obra Dinn, see players apply their skill at reasoning, memory and concentration in a far more challenging and engaging (吸引人的) way.

If you aren’t into games, simply go for a walk or learn how to dance. They are likely to be more effective than a brain training app in sharpening your mind. These activities might not lead to an increased IQ, but they are sure to engage your brain deeply while having fun—something I can by no means say of brain training apps.

【推荐2】It is said that most people have not more than 30 friends at any given time, and 400 over the whole of their lives. However, on social networking sites, most users have about 150 friends. If these numbers are correct, then friendship means different things in different situations.

Also, there are no rules about friendship. There are no instructions about how to make friends, how to keep friendships going, and how to finish friendships if we want to move on. People have very different opinions about this: some people would die for their friends and they value them more than family. Others say that friends are temporary, only there to help each other until they are no longer needed. If people with such different views become friends, this can lead to problems.

Because of these different definitions of friendship, it is easy to be unhappy about our friendships. We may want them to be deeper or closer, or we may want to have more friends in our lives. Sometimes we simply do not have the time to develop our friendships, or we fear we have left it too late in life to start. If we move to another country or city, we have to find ways to make new friends again.

This dissatisfaction shows us how important friendships are for most of us. We should not think that it could be too late to build friendships. We also need to understand that the need to be around other people is one that is shared by many. Therefore, we should not be too frightened about starting to talk to people who in the future may become our friends: it is likely that they too would like to get closer to us. Remember what people say: strangers are friends we have not met yet.

【推荐3】Do American children still learn handwriting in school? In the age of the keyboard, some people seem to think handwriting lessons are on the way out. Ninety percent of teachers say they are required to teach handwriting. But studies have yet to answer the question of how well they are teaching it. One study published this year found that about three out of every four teachers say they are not prepared to teach handwriting. Some teachers are teaching handwriting by providing instruction for 10 ~15 minutes a day, and then other teachers basically teach it for 60 ~ 70 minutes a day — which really is pretty much for handwriting.

Many adults remember learning that way — by copying letters over and over again. Today’s thinking is that short periods of practice are better. Many experts also think handwriting should not be taught by itself. Instead, they say it should be used as a way to get students to express ideas. After all, that is why we write.

Handwriting involves two skills. One is legibility, which means forming the letters so they can be read. The other is fluency — writing without having to think about it. Fluency continues to develop until high school. But not everyone masters these skills. Teachers commonly report that about one fourth of their kids have poor handwriting. Some people might think handwriting is not important any more because of computers and voice recognition programs.

But Steve Graham at Vanderbilt University says word processing is rarely done in elementary school, especially in the early years. American children traditionally first learn to print, and then to write in cursive, which connects the letters. But guess what we have learned? More than 75 per cent of students choose to print their essays on the test rather than write in cursive.