Tomorrow

Tomorrow

 

   Every time someone talks about the future, it is common to see insane predictions being made. In the 2000s, or maybe earlier, everybody believed there will be existing flying cars, nowadays, 20 years later, we are absolutely far from this achievement. However, it doesn’t mean that we didn’t get other ones: a big example of that is the smartphones, which have completely changed our lives.

   Likewise, it is habitual, mainly on New Year’s holiday, to make resolutions. Those are related to the future but are different than predictions. They are more about personal goals, aims, that we hope and have the chance to achieve.

   There are a lot of topics which evolution and development can be discussed, and almost all of them are certainly connected with technology. In each Industrial Revolution, there were new important inventions, but it is obvious that the internet´s advanced revolutionized all the World in terms of communication, education, labor market, and many other topics.

    On the contrary to decades ago, when people used to write letters to communicate with acquaintances, relatives and friends, and the news came days, or even weeks and months, later, present-day it only takes a few seconds to a message arrive on the other side of the Earth. Technology has definitely shortened distances and nobody can imagine the limit that it can reach.

    As one of the communication progress’ results, education has advanced in many aspects. It is not necessary to go to the library to do a school project, you can search and find millions of information on your laptop faster and effective. There has been also an increasing the number of people who speak more than one language, which is related to growth in international education and, consequently, positive effects on foreign relations.

    In the past, have a college degree was a luxury, but today it is a necessity. As the labor market is getting more and more competitive, the applicants need to be as much specialized as possible. Speak other languages and have abroad experiences count a lot in employment qualification. The companies and employers are gradually including new devices and methods in your activities, so the job seekers will have to follow them if they want to be selected.

     In according to that pattern of evolution, it is possible that in the future many professions might not exist anymore. Probably, due to the automation advance, they will be substituted by machines and robots. In this case, only people who own the information and the process of its development are going to be in a good job position.

    Behind every innovation and invention of the past, there was a person, or a group, who spent days, months, years studying and hardworking to accomplish it.  Set goals and make New Year’s resolutions do not work if you are not determined to do that. Sometimes, you don’t need motivation, you need discipline, because not every day will be an inspirational day. You have to keep your focus and give the maximum effort you can.  So, independent of outside factors, you can write your own Tomorrow.

 

by Isabela Fogaça

 

Thought

“Thought” is one of the greatest mysteries that is instilling humanity’s present in each one, which makes it more and more curious.

 

By the deed we have a capacity, until then dated as unlimited, we can create several theories that imply our thinking when there are positive aspects and negative ones. There are several problems that our mind can imply with us, a milder example is: The difficulty of focusing on some activity. This problem is not very rare, thanks to technological advances, but if we go deeper, we will discover more overwhelming cases.Memory loss can cause several harms, but how to avoid it? Is there anything that can be done? Yes! Memory loss is something that recurs to the advancing age of people, each being has a pre-created amount of neurons, which are lost over time, however, there is the possibility of delaying this process. Activities that involve mental use, stimulates the use of neurons, and when stimulated they last longer.Thinking about this case, something very controversial is the intervention of the internet in human memory

.

When we think about the internet, we cannot relate this to our memory capacity, we cannot think that the memory of the internet is the same as ours, since, with the ease of searching the internet, we are not stimulating our thinking to seek an answer to a particular subject, resulting in memorial fragility and weakening of information.

 

Basing on that, surge an experiment called Transactive memory, is a psychological hypothesis first proposed by Daniel Wegner in 1985 as a response to earlier theories of "group mind" such as groupthink. A transactive memory system is a mechanism through which groups collectively encode, store, and retrieve knowledge. Transactive memory was initially studied in couples and families where individuals had close relationships but was later extended to teams, larger groups, and organizations to explain how they develop a "group mind", a memory system that is more complex and potentially more effective than that of any of its individual constituents. A transactive memory system includes memory stored in each individual, the interactions between memory within the individuals, as well as the processes that update this memory.

 

Another yet mysterious ability is the human being's ability to perform several tasks at the same time, this is called: Human multitasking, is an apparent human ability to perform more than one task, or activity, at the same time. An example of multitasking is taking a phone call while driving a car. Multitasking can result in time wasted due to human context switching and apparently causing more errors due to insufficient attention. If one becomes proficient at two tasks, it is possible to rapidly shift attention between the tasks and perform the tasks well/proficiently.

 

In view of this, the gradual and arduous effort of thought can cause harm, because the brain cannot fully focus when multitasking, people take longer to complete tasks and are predisposed to error. When people attempt to complete many tasks at one time, “or [alternate] rapidly between them, errors go way up, and it takes far longer often double the time or more to get the jobs done than if they were done sequentially,” states Meyer. This is largely because “the brain is compelled to restart and refocus”. A study by Meyer and David Kieras found that in the interim between each exchange, the brain makes no progress whatsoever. Therefore, multitasking people not only perform each task less suitably, but lose time in the process.

 

With technological advances, they brought tools to use in this process, we can quote that: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, is a specific technique for the use of magnetic resonance imaging capable of detecting variations in blood flow in response to neural activity. FMRI has been widely used in research projects and much less in clinical applications, even we can mention its use in police interrogatories, in which case the FMRI will be used to see the neural activity and the patient's tension, generally used to differentiate if it is saying true and false facts.

 

Talking about being non-humans, there are issues about Animal cognition, which encompasses the mental capacities of non-human animals. The study of animal conditioning and learning used in this field was developed from comparative psychology. The mind and behavior of non-human animals has captivated human imagination for centuries. Many writers, such as Descartes, have speculated about the presence or absence of the animal mind. These speculations led to many observations of animal behavior before modern science and testing were available. This ultimately resulted in the creation of multiple hypotheses about animal intelligence. One of Aesop's Fables was ‘’The Crow and the Pitcher’’, in which a crow drops pebbles into a vessel of water until he is able to drink. This was a relatively accurate reflection of the capability of corvids to understand water displacement. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder was the earliest to attest that said story reflects the behavior of real-life corvids.

 

 

 by Pedro Augusto Pereira de Góes 

Survival

Survival

 

Our lives have converted and now is not comfortable to maintain the same principles, as we know survival is a difficult part, that needs improvement all the time, using a variety of skills, behaviors and reciprocity.

As people grow, the habits, abilities and sense follow its process too. According to the book Skillful 3 Listening & Speaking unit 03 Survival, the reciprocity is an important kindness, because it helps everyone be in a mutual relation, where appears a sense of community to helping who needs.

This kindness is related to the human instinct, and it can arise directly or indirectly, it is more visible in restaurants, cafes, etc. In this places people donates money for others that do not have anything. Devising a good integrity in our society.

However, the survival ideas can be notice in the buildings, like the “Green Buildings” that are wisely planned to use resources. This type of building represents five critical points: use the energy efficient, fits the construction in the nature, resource conservation, integrity with people and renovation old buildings consciously.

Nevertheless, the capitalism is a treacherous way in the survival, because we need to have  control our money, without losses and prevent compulsory spends, so it is pretty hard for the low society, mainly in our country that the crisis comes every time.

In contrast, many cultures are insulated of it: the natives` population. Esteem that there are 370 million natives in the entire planet. Realizing that, many cultures help each other, it show us how the selfish is present in the urban society, where many beggars are isolated and having a bad treatment.

Therefore, if the researchers are correct, the humans will have a high sustainable technology present in their lives soon. Living in  pandemic times is possible to conclude that, a half of the world will be in jeopardy, and the others countries will have to aid in somehow.

 

                                                                                           by Marcos Vinicius.

Fire

No one can doubt that the discovery of the fire is probably the most important incident of the entire history, and without it, we wouldn’t be who we are, pretty much all the future discovers could not exist, it was the most significant turning point for humanity, but how is that possible?

         The discovery of the fire was probably accidental, it was fundamental for future discovers,for example: our ancestors learned how to cook their food and scare bigger and more dangerous creatures. Thousands of years later, we learned that after certain procedures like heating up certain substances such as metal, we would create more efficient gear, such as weapons and armors, or routine tools, like forks and spoons.

         When the elder great civilizations emerged, in some of them, the fire had a surprisingly importance, like the zoroastrianism, with rituals fully dedicated to fire. even though it is not always directly, the Egyptians and mayans for example, their greatest gods(Rá and Kinich Ahau) where based on the sun.

         However, as we know, fire isn’t just a symbol of peace and prosperity, but also war and destruction, the best example is the discover of gunpowder in China, that was(and is) used on fire weapons that they used to destroy their enemies and protect themselves, preserving the empire.

         And of course, making a link with man using fire, we have the "natural" disasters, in this case, forest burns, that is a foe most of the times and when is intentional, it is usually created for profit(territorial expansion), causing a great environmental impact by destroying entire forests, and for that, we have the firefighters, people that risk their life for the others safety and protection during life-threatening, that is something surprisingly brave.

         But there are also those who are obsessed with it, those called pyromaniacs, people who have a weird obsession on incineration things and other people, this disease is a new discover and there isn’t too much information about it, luckily there are just a few cases of it.

         Nowadays the fire has a huge variety of uses, daily we use it normally for cooking, but it’s also used in many ways in factories or smaller companies, like home forging. But most of the time we don't think about it.

         It is a matter of fact that the fire is for sure something that we can be grateful for, but as it has already mentioned, it can be a huge problem, and it is easy to mention the most recent incidents involving fire: the burning in Australia and in the Amazonia rainforest.

         We for sure should be very grateful for all the events that happened in our history, even the bad ones, because they were exceptional for everything in the present, and the fire is for sure the greatest thing that happened for us.

by Eduardo Quevedo