Category: ideas

“When students report having access to classroom computers and using these devices on an infrequent basis, they show better performance. But when students report using these devices every day, and for several hours during the school day, performance lowers dramatically.” – Pacific Standard

By depriving ourselves of face-to-face contact with others, we widen the sea of angst that no amount of “likes” can ever hope to bridge. This phenomenon is borne out by research into college-age students, who experienced a radical increase in anxiety-related disorders around 2011, the same year that smartphones became widely available to consumers and teenagers began owning their own phones. – Los Angeles Review of Books

Teaching autonomous cars to spot which objects are important and which aren’t, and then know what to do about it, is a difficult thing. – Aeon

Toss a file and you’ll hear the sound of crumpled paper hitting a wastebasket rim. Lock your iPhone and you’ll hear a padlock snap. As Apple sound designer Hugo Verweij explained at a recent developer conference, “it’s like using a universal language that is already understood by everyone.” – Wired

We didn’t used to worry or predict it, aside from religious prophets. Then came the idea of progress. “The Enlightenment gave humanity the idea that we might make things better, that perhaps there was some inevitability to this, that we would discover more, find better ways to live, treat one another with greater kindness, and eventually build a kind of heaven without the need of gods to hold it up.” – LitHub

One young woman who is at “the university of Mickey Mouse” – that is, working in communications for Disneyland Paris – says that fluency in idiomatic English is a must-have for business. If you aren’t fluent, she says, you’re ashamed – and “it makes you feel excluded.” And the laws that help French resist anglicization may be part of the problem. – Le Monde (France)

When mammals stalk, hunt, and escape, they find themselves in ever-new situations and environments. Marc Bekoff, a researcher at the University of Colorado and a lifelong student of animal behavior, argues that play broadens an animal’s behavioral repertoire, giving them the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances. – Nautilus

Meet someone you thought was ugly but then decided they were beautiful? Or someone you thought was gorgeous but then were mystified why you ever thought so? Our sense of physical beauty is a complicated dance with our notions of character and morality. – Aeon