What may well be the oldest metal coins in the world have been identified at an ancient abandoned city known as Guanzhuang in China. Like many Bronze Age (青铜时代) coins from the region, they were cast in the shape of spades with finely carved handles. These ancient coins existed during an in-between period between barter (以物易物) and money, when coins were a novel concept, but everybody knew that agricultural tools were valuable.

Reading about this incredible discovery, I kept thinking about the way modern people represent computer networks by describing machines as having “addresses”, like a house. We also talk about one computer using a “port” to send information to another computer, as if the data were a floating boat with destination. It’s as if we are in the Bronze Age of information technology, grasping desperately for real-world reference to transform our civilization.

Now consider what happened to spade coins. Over centuries, metalworkers made these coins into more abstract shapes. Some became almost human figures. Others’ handles were reduced to small half-circles. As spade coins grew more abstract, people carved them with number values and the locations where they were made. They became more like modern coins, flat and covered in writing. Looking at one of these later pieces, you would have no idea that they were once intended to look like a spade.

This makes me wonder if we will develop an entirely new set of symbols that allow us to interact with our digital information more smoothly.

Taking spade coins as our guide, we can guess that far-future computer networks will no longer contain any recognizable references to houses. But they still might bring some of the ideas we associate with home to our mind. In fact, computer networks — if they still exist at all — are likely to be almost the indispensable part of our houses and cities, their sensors inset with walls and roads. Our network addresses might actually be the same as our street addresses. If climate change leads to floods, our mobile devices might look more like boats than phones, assisting us to land.

My point is that the metaphors of the information age aren’t random. Mobile devices do offer us comfort after a long day at work. In some sense, our desire to settle on the shores of data lakes could change the way we understand home, as well as how we build computers. So as we cast our minds forward, we have to think about what new abstractions will go along with our information technology. Perhaps the one thing we count on is that humans will still appreciate the comforts of home.

Welcome to my speech “My Favorite Movie”.

Thank you for listening!

6 . We’ve dug deep to find 4 of the most exciting documentary films coming to a screen near you in 2022.

Last Exit: Space

Last Exit: Space, narrated by Werner Herzog, explores the human potential for settling in space and sending people where they’ve never been before. Since planet Earth is possibly going to hell (地狱) in a handbasket, the film promises to ask the question: where else might we call home? Directed by his son Rudolph Herzog, Last Exit: Space will be available from March 10 on Discovery.

Gorbachev. Heaven

As leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev was once one of the most powerful people on the planet who governed a landmass so big that it covered 11 time zones. Gorbachev’s legacy is a complex one — he oversaw the end of the Cold War but many Russians blame him for the Soviet Union’s collapse. The BBC says this potentially fascinating look at one of the most significant figures from inside his own home will be airing in the very near future.

We Met In Virtual Reality

This film from director Joe Hunting beats fresh ground in that it is filmed entirely in virtual reality. Less about the technology itself, it is more an exploration of human connections and how these can develop in the 3D virtual world. Early reviews have been positive following its showing at Sundance. Expect a streaming release in late May this year.

2nd Chance

Hold your popcorn tightly when watching this. If the trailer (预告片) is anything to go by, there are going to be lots of near-death moments. 2nd Chance from Oscar-nominated director Ramin Bahrani tells the story of Richard Davis, the wild and odd inventor of the modern bullet-proof vest. “All will be revealed as soon as a release date is confirmed.” Ramin Bahrani promised on April 5^th.

8 . Adults are often embarrassed about asking for help. Its an act that can make people feel sensitive. The moment you ask for directions, after all, you reveal (泄露) that you may be lost. Seeking someone’s assistance can make you feel like you are broadcasting your incompetence. New research suggests young children don’t seek help in school, even when they need it, for the same reason.

To learn more about how children think about seeking help, we asked 576 children, ages four to nine, to predict the behavior of two kids in a story. One of the characters genuinely wanted to be smart, and the other merely wanted to seem smart to others.

Children thought that the kid who wanted to seem smart would be less likely to ask for assistance. They could still conceive of (想象) situations in which the kid who wanted to seem smart would seek help: when assistance could be sought privately (on a computer rather than in person), children thought both characters were equally likely to ask for it.

We also found that they recognize several more behaviors that might make a child appear less smart in front of fellow kids, such as admitting to failure or modestly downplaying successes. Children are therefore acutely aware of several ways in which a person’s actions might make them appear less clever in the eyes of others.

However, a number of solutions can be found to help children. Our Gist instinct may be to motivate seeking help by emphasizing its educational benefits. But reputational barriers likely require reputation-based solutions. For example, instructors could create activities in which each student becomes an “expert” on a different topic, and then children must ask one another for help to master all of die material. If seeking help is understood as a commonplace classroom activity, kids may be less likely to think of it as indicative (表明) of one’s ability.

Seeking help could even be framed as socially desirable. After all, asking for help often benefits not just die help seeker but also others listening in who have similar questions or struggles.

9 . DNA from fossils (化石) has transformed the study of human and animal evolution, revealing unknown relationships, tracing early migrations, and exposing ancient inter-species mating. Yet for humans, the entire field depends on just 23 ancient genomes (基因组), 18 of them from Neanderthals. Recently, scientists unlocked a much larger trove (宝库) of ancient DNA: from the soil of cave floors. This year, for the first time, cave dirt yielded DNA once housed in the nucleus of human cells, and researchers used such “dirt DNA” to reconstruct the identity of cave dwellers around the world.

The new work borrows from the study of environmental DNA from living species. To find out which organisms inhabit lakes, forests, and other places, scientists collect the free-floating DNA they shed into air, water, and soil. By 2003, evolutionary geneticists showed discarded (丢弃的) DNA could exist for thousands of years. It was used by researchers in 2015 to help reconstruct entire ancient ecosystems, even in the absence of fossils. But much of that DNA comes from mitochondria (线粒体), the cell’s power plants, which store tiny pieces of information of genetic material. Thanks to new techniques, scientists can now comb ancient soils for nuclear DNA, which carries the fall instructions for life.

This year, scientists successfully used nuclear DNA to chart the human and animal occupation of three caves. In Spain’s Estatuas Cave, nuclear DNA revealed the genetic identity and sex of humans who lived there 80,000 to 113,000 years ago, and suggested one line age of Neanderthals replaced several others after a glacial period that ended 100,000 years ago. In 25,000-year-old soil from Georgia’s Satsurblia Cave, scientists found a female human genome from a previously unknown line of Neanderthals, along with the genetic traces of a bison and a now-extinct wolf. And by comparing 12,000-year-old black bear DNA from Mexico’s Chiquihuite Cave with that of modern bears, scientists discovered that after the last ice age, the cave bears’ descendants (后代) migrated as far north as Alaska.

Techniques for extracting and sequencing nuclear DNA from ancient soils are still improving. As they do, researchers hope to answer even more questions about the rise and fall of ancient species.