Most Americans are worried about new technology. They are concerned that machines, including robots, will take over work now done by humans. These findings come from a new report by the Pew Research Center of Washington D. C.

    About 75 percent of Americans questioned by Pew said automation will increase income inequality between the rich and the middle class and poor. And 64 percent of people expect automation to be so common in America that people will face difficulty finding things to do with their lives.

    Some of the concerns about technology come from a distrust about whether machines will always make the right decision. Many Americans believe humans have better judgement in dealing with. complex matters. One example is selecting a person for a job. Three-quarters of Americans said they would not want to apply for a job that uses a computer program to choose the most qualified person.

    “Most Americans want the government to limit automation. For example, 87 percent support a requirement that all driverless vehicles have a human in the driver's seat who can take control when an emergency occurs. And 85 percent want to limit machines to mostly doing jobs that are dangerous or unhealthy for humans. And only 25 percent expect more jobs to come from automation,” Pew said.

    Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, spoke last May to graduating seniors from Harvard University in Massachusetts. His talk centered on the uncertain future facing young people. “Our generation will have to deal with tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks.” Zuckerherg told the graduates.

    Zuckerberg said young people had better launch(发起)projects that will bring both jobs and direct benefits to the people of the world. He said in his speech that 30000 people worked to put a man on the moon, and millions of people built the Hoover Dam as well as other great projects over the last 100 years.

    When you see someone you know, the easiest way to recognize them is by their face—but not everyone can do this. Many people have prosopagnosia, or face blindness, which is a neurological（神经病学的）condition where the part of the brain that recognizes faces fails to develop. It can stop people recognizing partners, family members, friends or even their own reflection. It was once thought to be caused by brain injury (acquired prosopagnosia) but now a genetic link has been proved (development prosopagnosia).

    Acquired prosopagnosia is a very rare but as many as one in 50 people may have developmental prosopagnosia. There's no specific treatment, but training programmes are being developed to help improve facial recognition.

    For many, the situation can be dangerous. I've heard stories of people being robbed by strangers claiming to be family members, or of children wandering off strange men.

    It was only is this century that researchers began to realize exactly how many people in this world were quietly living with the condition.

    Like a blind person who can recognize family members by their footsteps, prosopagnosics are forced to develop unusual ways of discovering who it is they're meeting or talking to. From the obvious markers like hair and voice, to the way one sits, stands or walks, they rely on dozens of means to get through ordinary life.

    Faces are an important part of identity. Not to be recognized feels terrible—it's as if you've been overlooked, like someone's saying you don't matter. But it's nothing to the pain of knowing that you're hurting people's feelings constantly, and yet being completely unaware that you're doing it in the moment. To be alienated（隔离的）from the world of faces is a strange position to be in, but I'm comforted by the thought that articles like this will do a little to help people forgive me and others like me.

    There has long been a notion （观念） that money buys happiness. However, although "we really, really tried that for a couple of generations, it didn't work," said Francine Jay, author of The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide: How to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify Your Life.

    Thanks to a travel inspired revelation （启发）, Jay has been happily living a simpler life for 12 years. "I always packed as lightly as possible, and found it exciting to get by with just a small carry on bag," she told CNN. "I thought if it feels this great to travel lightly, how amazing would it be to live this way？ I wanted to have that same feeling of freedom in my everyday life."

Jay decided to get rid of all her excess （额外的） possessions and live with just the essentials （必需品）. "I wanted to spend my time and energy on experiences, rather than things."

    Jay is a follower of a movement called "minimalism （极简主义）". Growing numbers of people have been attracted to this lifestyle all over the world. They share the same feeling of disappointment with modern life and a desire to live more simply. Minimalists are typically progressive and concerned about the environment, Leah Watkins, a lead researcher at Ota go University in New Zealand, told Stuff magazine in March.

    But many simply experienced unhappiness caused by owning too many possessions. Depression with the materialism of our world isn't new. English romantic poet William Wordsworth summed up how dispiriting （令人消沉的） this was back in 1802, at the beginning of the industrial age, when he wrote: "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers". His preference was to go back to nature. Closer to our own times, the hippies （嬉皮士） of the 1960s also sought to "drop out" of modern life.

    And for many minimalists, their key is to unload. Without objects, they "believe people are forced more and more into the present moment and that's where life happens," wrote Stuff.

But does simplicity ever feel like a sacrifice （牺牲）？

    "It's eliminating the excess﹣unused items, unnecessary purchases﹣from your life. Well, I may have fewer possessions, but I have more space …Minimalism is making room for what matters most," said Jay.

    And "the real questions", according to Duane Elgin, US social scientist, are "what do you care about？" and "What do you value?"

    He told CNN: "It's important for people to realize minimalism isn't simply the amount of stuff we consume. It's about our families, our work, our connection with the larger world, our spiritual dimension. It's about how we touch the whole world. It's a way of life."

    We have encountered a crisis around the corner. You mean global warming? The world economy? No, the decline of reading. People are just not doing it anymore, especially the young. Who's responsible?

Actually, it's more like, what is responsible? The Internet, of course, and everything that comes with it – Facebook, Twitter. You can write your own list.

    There's been a warning about the imminent death of literate civilization for a long time. In the 20th century, first it was the movies, then radio, then television that seemed to spell doom for the written world. None did. Reading survived; in fact it not only survived, it has flourished. The world is more literate than ever before – there are more and more readers, and more and more books.

    The fact that we often get our reading material online today is not something we should worry over. The electronic and digital revolution of the last two decades has arguably shown the way forward for reading and for writing. Take the arrival of e-book readers as an example.

    Devices like Kindle make reading more convenient and are a lot more environmentally friendly than the traditional paper book.

    As technology makes new ways of writing possible, new ways of reading are possible. Interconnectivity allows for the possibility of a reading experience that was barely imaginable before. Where traditional books had to make do with photographs and illustrations, an e-book can provide readers with an unlimited number of links: to texts, pictures, and videos. In the future, the way people write novels, history, and philosophy will resemble nothing seen in the past.

    On the other hand, there is the danger of trivialization. One Twitter group is offering its followers single-sentence-long "digests" of the great novels. War and Peace in a sentence? You must be joking. We should fear the fragmentation of reading. There is the danger that the high-speed connectivity of the Internet will reduce our attention span—that we will be incapable of reading anything of length or which requires deep concentration.

    In such a fast-changing world, in which reality seems to be remade each day, we need the ability to focus and understand what is happening to us. This has always been the function of literature and we should be careful not to let it disappear. Our society needs to be able to imagine the possibility of someone utterly in tune with modern technology but able to make sense of a dynamic, confusing world.

    In the 15th century, Johannes Guttenberg's invention of the printing press in Europe had a huge impact on civilization. Once upon a time the physical book was a challenging thing. We should remember this before we assume that technology is out to destroy traditional culture.

    You've heard of the fat suit and the pregnancy suit; now meet AGNES—the old person suit.

    AGNES stands for "Age Gain Now Empathy(换位体验)System" and was designed by researchers at MIT's AgeLab to let you know what it feels like—physically—to be 75 years old. "The business of old age demands new tools," said Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab. "While focus groups and observations and surveys can help you understand what the older consumer needs and wants, young marketers never get that ‘Ah ha!' moment of having difficulty opening a jar, or getting in and out of a car. That's what AGNES provides. "

    Coughlin and his team carefully adjusted the suit to make the wearer just as uncomfortable as an old person who has spent a lifetime eating poorly and not doing much exercise. Special shoes provide a feeling of imbalance, while braces on the knees and elbows limit joint mobility. Gloves give the feeling of decreased strength and mobility in the hands and wrists, and earplugs make it difficult to hear high-pitched sounds and soft tones. A helmet with straps(带)attached to it presses the spine(脊柱).

    VAGNES has been used most recently by a group of students working on a design of an updated walker. By wearing the suit they could see for themselves what design and materials would make the most sense for a physically limited older person. Coughlin said the suit has also been used by clothing companies, car companies and retail goods companies to help them understand the limitations of an older consumer. An unexpected benefit they've found with AGNES is that it has become a powerful tool to get younger people to invest in their long-term health.

Bullying on campus is increasingly becoming a problem, but the move by the Sherrard School in California, to set equipment inside toilets to catch bullying incidents is getting a lot of attention.

The school has put up a campus alarm system in sensitive places such as toilets that employs voice recognition and sensitive word activation, so that if someone is being bullied, the system can alert members of staff by sending specific signals. The system uses artificial intelligence for voice recognition, but its effectiveness doesn't depend only on these technologies. More important than the technology are the members of the school staff that are arranged to respond quickly and effectively to the warning calls.

Basically, technology serves as a way of reporting instances of bullying to the school authorities. What is truly noteworthy is the authorities' realization that timely intervention is required to stop bullying. In most cases of bullying in schools, educators and the administrators have overlooked early warning signs. And this can, at times, prove fatal. For instance, in a recent tragic case in Indiana, three junior school students plotted and took the life of their 10-year-old classmate. If the school had paid closer attention to the bullying, the tragedy could perhaps have been prevented. 

Returning to the system in California, should it prove effective, relevant government bodies can consider applying similar mechanisms in other schools to hold back bullying on campus. However, it is significant for them to bear in mind that it is human action, not just technology, that can help address this universal issue. Technology can definitely serve as a vital tool, but it is the human element — attentiveness, care, and timely intervention — that ultimately holds the key to creating a safer environment for all students.