1 . Newspapers, advertisements, and labels surround us everywhere, turning our environment into a mass of texts to be read or ignored. As the quantity of information we receive continually increases and as information spreading is shifting from page to screen, it may be time to ask how changes in our way of reading may affect our mental life. For how we receive information bears vitally on the ways we experience and interpret reality.

What is most obvious in the evolution of reading is the gradual displacement of the vertical (垂直的) by the horizontal—a shift from intensive to extensive reading. In our culture, access is not a problem, but proliferation (激增) is. And the reading act is necessarily different than it was in its earliest days. Awed by the availability of texts, the reader tends to move across surfaces without allowing the words to resonate (共鸣) inwardly.

Interestingly, this shift from vertical to horizontal parallels the overall societal shift from bounded lifetimes spent in single locales to lives lived in wider geographical areas amid streams of data. This larger access was once regarded as worldliness—one traveled, knew the life of cities, the ways of diverse people…. It has now become the birthright of anyone who owns a television set.

How do we square the advantages and disadvantages of horizontal and vertical awareness? The villagers, who know everything about their surroundings, are blessedly unaware of events in distant lands. The media-obsessed urbanites, by contrast, never lose their awareness of what happens in different parts of the world.

We may ask, which people are happier? The villagers may have found more sense in things owing both to the limited range of their concern and the depth on their information. But restricted conditions and habit also suggest boredom and limitation. The lack of a larger perspective (视角) leads to suspiciousness and cautious conservatism, but for the same reason, the constant availability of data and macro-perspectives has its own decreasing returns. When everything is happening everywhere, it gets harder to care about anything.

How do we assign value? Where do we find the fixed context that allows us to create a narrative of sense about our lives? Ideally, I suppose, one would have the best of both worlds—the purposeful fixity of the local, as well as the availability of enhancing views: a natural ecology of information and context.

3 . With climate change continuing to worsen, our situation is beginning to feel increasingly serious.     1     Is it right? Maybe not.

Techno-optimism is one of the greatest misconceptions when it comes to solutions to ensure our future. It can be defined as a belief that future technologies will solve all of our current problems. This definition reinforces (强化) the idea that there’s no reason to panic or change our current energy-intensive lifestyle. All society needs to do is look to green technology to work its magic.     2    

One of the best examples of this optimistic misconception is the electric car. Despite being highly regarded as an eco-friendly way to get around, electric cars are not the end for the future of transport. Batteries in electric cars use chemical elements which we could be seeing a shortage of by the midcentury.     3     Techno-optimism has led many to believe that if everyone just switched to driving electric vehicles, we would be making incredible steps towards sustainability. However, the reality is that the amount of resources and energy needed to produce enough electric vehicles for everyone is not even remotely sustainable.

    4     Investing in public transportation and moving away from individually owned vehicles. Producing fewer cars. Improving recycling practices of old batteries. The solutions we seek should not be rooted in new technology, but be about changing the way our society functions.

Techno-optimism puts too much emphasis on technology and not enough on what we can do right this minute. Unfortunately, people seem to like the picture that techno-optimism paints.     5     It is important to understand that the problem begins when we see those technologies as a way to make our current lifestyles eco-friendly. Until we are ready to face the need for a less complex life, we cannot make true progress towards sustainability.

4 . Many people have participated into lots of virtual meetings these years. Some research shows this adjustment might not impact workplace productivity to any great degree. A new study, though, suggests otherwise.

In the study, 602 participants were randomly paired and asked to come up with creative uses for a product. They were also randomly selected to work together either in person or virtually. The pairs were then ranked by assessing their total number of ideas, as well as those concepts’ degree of novelty, and asked to submit their best idea. Among the groups, virtual pairs came up with significantly fewer ideas, suggesting that something about face-to-face interaction generates more creative ideas. The findings could stiffen employers’ resolve to urge or require their employees to come back to the office.

“We ran this experiment based on feedback from companies that it was harder to innovate with remote workers,” said lead researcher Melanie Brucks. “Unlike other forms of virtual communication, like phone calls or e-mail, videoconferencing copies the in-person experience quite well, so I was surprised when we found meaningful differences between in-person and video interaction for idea generation. ”

When random objects were placed in both the virtual and physical rooms, the virtual pairs of participants spent more time looking directly at each other rather than letting their look wander about the room and taking in the entire scene. Eyeing one’s whole environment and noticing the random objects were associated with increased idea generation. On platforms, the screen occupies our interactions. Our look wavers less. “Looking away might come across as rude, ” said Brucks,“so we have to look at the screen because that is the defined context of the interaction, the same way we wouldn’t walk to another room while talking to someone in person. ”

Like most educators, Brucks has primarily taught virtually in the past three years, and she did notice some benefits of the approach as well. Her students were more likely to take turns speaking and her shyer students spoke up more often, rid of the anxiety that comes from addressing a large classroom. Brucks found that one solution to improving virtual idea generation might be to simply turn off the camera, for her students felt “freer” and more creative when asked to do so. And this may be sound advice for the workplace.

Virtual teamwork can’t replace face-to-face teamwork. Idea selection proficiency (能力) is only valuable if you have strong options to select from, and face-to-face teams are the best means to generate winning options. Perhaps the workplace will find a compromise—a sweet spot in the middle that balances working from both home and office.

6 . Technology seems to discourage slow, immersive reading. Reading on a screen, particularly a phone screen, tires your eyes and makes it harder for you to keep your place. So online writing tends to be more skimmable and list-like than print. The cognitive neuroscientist Mary Walt argued recently that this “new norm” of skim reading is producing “an invisible, game-changing transformation” in how readers process words. The neuronal circuit that sustains the brain’s capacity to read now favors the rapid absorption of information, rather than skills developed by deeper reading, like critical analysis.

We shouldn’t overplay this danger. All readers skim. Skimming is the skill we acquire as children as we learn to read more skillfully. From about the age of nine, our eyes start to bounce around the page, reading only about a quarter of the words properly, and filling in the gaps by inference. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans. So far, the anxieties have proved to be false alarms. “Quite a few critics have been worried about attention span lately and see very short stories as signs of cultural decline,” the American author Selvin Brown wrote. “No one ever said that poems were evidence of short attention spans.”

And yet the Internet has certainly changed the way we read. For a start, it means that there is more to read, because more people than ever are writing. If you time travelled just a few decades into the past, you would wonder at how little writing was happening outside a classroom. And digital writing is meant for rapid release and response. An online article starts forming a comment string underneath as soon as it is published. This mode of writing and reading can be interactive and fun. But often it treats other people’s words as something to be quickly harvested as fodder to say something else. Everyone talks over the top of everyone else, desperate to be heard.

Perhaps we should slow down. Reading is constantly promoted as a social good and source of personal achievement. But this advocacy often emphasizes “enthusiastic”, “passionate” or “eager” reading, none of which adjectives suggest slow, quiet absorption.

To a slow reader, a piece of writing can only be fully understood by immersing oneself in the words and their slow comprehension of a line of thought. The slow reader is like a swimmer who stops counting the number of pool laps he has done and just enjoys how his body feels and moves in water.

The human need for this kind of deep reading is too tenacious for any new technology to destroy. We often assume that technological change can’t be stopped and happens in one direction, so that older media like “dead-tree” books are kicked out by newer, more virtual forms. In practice, older technologies can coexist with new ones. The Kindle has not killed off the printed book any more than the car killed off the bicycle. We still want to enjoy slowly-formed ideas and carefully-chosen words. Even in a fast-moving age, there is time for slow reading.

If you’ve spent any time on social media sites, you’ve probably noticed it: parents share news, photos, and other information about their children. This phenomenon is called “sharenting”, a combination of the words “sharing” and

Much of the research on sharenting focuses on why parents choose to share online. Studies found that for parents of infants (婴儿), sharenting can help ease the social isolation that comes with this period in their children’s lives. Parents of teenagers also share information about their kids on social media. Research has shown their motivations include communicating their pride in their children’s accomplishments and informing friends and family about their kids’ lives.

However, when parents post about their children on social media with high frequency, the phenomenon of “oversharenting” occurs, which can be a great cause for concern. For example, if parents share too much information that their children don’t want disclosed, it may lead them to withhold information about their lives from their parents so they can better control what can and can’t be posted about them.

Additionally, the cute photos or funny observations parents share online about their children could become a problem when their kids get older. In particular, colleges and employers are increasingly checking applicants’ online activity, and as a result, information posted by parents could become a source of embarrassment or affect a potential college’s or employer’s assessment of their child.

Sharing information has never been faster than in the digital age. While it can be very convenient to post milestones of their children, it’s important for parents to ensure they’re sharenting responsibly. After all it’s not just a picture, it’s the child and their digital footprint.

In today’s modern era, technology is expanding rapidly and it is being used by mankind for their benefit. The major benefit that developing technology has provided is allowing individuals to work from home.

Organizations can save a huge amount of capital by making employees work from home. Moreover, this reduces other expenses associated with the workspace and accommodates an increased number of employees at the same time. As stated above, employers have the benefits of reducing the expenses associated with the workplace, borrowing land for the workplace. Since, nowadays, expenses of buildings and owning lands are very high, this could save the organizations a large sum of money.

To quote an example, India observes an extremely low rate in the companies that used to provide remote work prior to the pandemic hitting the global nations. Post the pandemic, several companies understood the importance of working from home and the associated benefits of working remotely. Thus, most of organizations have started promoting remote work due to which they have saved a huge amount of money and increased their turnover and productivity approaches.

The second major benefit associated with remote work is the lack of the necessity to travel, which reduces the chances of being stuck in traffic. This has increased productivity and efficiency at work and saved a potential amount of time for them that they could invest in other productive activities.

To summarize, it cannot be denied that developing technologies have a number of benefits to society as it has allowed individuals to manage their time effectively. Moreover, it also helps with social life balance.

9 . Offload Thoughts

In our busy world, we rush from task to task, often leaving us feeling easily angered. We seek out technology or brain-enhancing products to help us optimize (最优化) our productivity, but end up running on a never-ending hamster(仓鼠) wheel.     1     It feels like our entire lives are engineered toward one question: How much can I get done in the least amount of time?

Research shows that spending too much time optimizing our thoughts for perfect outcomes not only leaves us feeling exhausted, but can also have harmful effects on our wellbeing and work output. Optimizing thoughts requires being highly focused. But it just goes against the way our minds work. That is to say, efficiency isn’t always productive when we pursue it.     2     And to some extent, it can even cause impulsive (鲁莽的) decision-making.

Our brain essentially has two main modes of operating: the “focus network” and the “default mode network.” When one network works, the other physically can’t turn on. The modern world often demands we live in the focus network and the default mode network is often less celebrated.     3     So in order to make more effective decisions and feel better in our daily lives, we have to spend less time in our brain’s “focus network.”

Cognitive (认知的) offloading is an accessible practice. It has the potential to not only release emotions, but enhance mental capabilities, too. Even just a few moments of creative flow — like offloading the feelings of anxiety by doodling (涂鸦) before a meeting — can have a strong impact on emotions.     4     We might try cognitive offloading as a transition from our action-oriented workday into a more relaxed evening routine.

    5     And we can see what takes shape. Some unproductive pathways often can help us feel more creative, refreshed, and alive.

10 . Reading doesn’t come naturally to people, but most of us have learned how. Eighty-six percent of the world’s population is literate(有读写能力的)，and this rate has been increasing for centuries. Literacy makes it possible to navigate a world filled with books, websites, text messages, road signs and more.

Could a growing number of people participate in today’s world without reading or writing at all? Technology makes it possible. Most of our devices now talk to us and take spoken commands. Smart cars ask for a destination and then give directions.Smart virtual assistants listen for requests to report the weather, play a song, set a timer, order groceries, and much more. Software can also read text aloud or turn speech into text. These interactions aren’t perfect-the software still makes silly mistakes. But it’s getting better and better. It’s possible to imagine a future world where all of our communication with our devices and each other is spoken.

But reading and writing are powerful tools.For one, most people read faster than they speak. A podcaster or audio book narrator speaks at around150to 160 words per minute, while a strong reader can cruise through a text at 300 to 400 words per minute. That’s twice as fast! Research has also found that people remember more information and stay more interested when they read as opposed to listen. Learning to read also creates new connections in the brain. In her book Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf writes that with the invention of reading, human beings “rearranged the very organization of our brain, which in turn expanded the ways we were able to think, which changed the intellectual evolution of our species.” Would we really choose to give up that progress?What do you think? Do you hope people keep on reading and writing, or will technology make literacy obsolete(淘汰的)?