#englishlearner

During the school closure, this family managed to find a way to stay comfortable together at home. They know they are lucky and not all families can be like them.

So what? I don’t understand why the author has chosen this title. Reading this title, I imagine something like “Children need their friends. Talking in person is very important for them.” or “School closure may be safer for children against COVID-19. But how can we  reassure them about their lost opportunities to learn?” would be written. But it isn’t.

If you asked me, I would put a title like “We are still struggling. No parents can be confident amid this pandemic.” or something like that.

The number of childless people has been increasing. When they get old and need support to live, they don’t have hands to help them sincerely and continuously. Under the current circumstances, practically, who they can rely on is children only. The governments should take steps to establish a new care system taking our demography into account.

Actually, I sometimes wonder why we want to have children? What for?

I heard some people say they need children because they want them to take care of them after retirement. What? It scares me. Do they raise children, educate them, and encourage them for their glorious life after retirement?

Such people often say they are betrayed when their children leave them. I don’t understand why they can’t hope their children’s happiness instead of their own happiness.

What I want to say is even if you have children, you can’t or shouldn’t rely on them as much as possible.

However, it is inevitable that everyone will have time to need someone’s support eventually. If we can’t rely on our children, then who we can rely on?

In my opinion, the answer would be AI, or robots.

A few years ago, my sister and I were watching a TV program showing us there was a robot for the elderly who can’t handle a spoon properly, which made them unable to eat by themselves. The robot had a sensor to catch a person’s line of sight and move its spoon from the dish to the person’s mouth. By using this machine, an old man was eating something by himself contentedly. 

Some years ago, solar panels looked like a gate of a rosy future. However, when those mixture of metals and chemicals end their lives, they will become a burden for the environment. Since the panels normally last 25 years and most of them were set after 2000, we have yet to face problems they could cause. We need to take action to prevent a new environmental issue due to solar panels before it gets serious. Some countries are trying to build efficient recycling systems, which don’t seem to be working enough.

I think solar panels are similar to plastic products. 

At first, people were amazed by their convenience and were fond of using them. Gradually, everyone got used to be those products and started to think they are indispensable to live a civilized life. 

However, at some point, the convenience turns to defects. As for plastic products, their strength that they won’t rot turned their fault. Solar panels are relatively cheap and easy to be installed. That’s why now we are surrounded by them.

Now both are /can be a threat to the environment.

Phew. Very long! 

What I understand is: Although there has already been a trend companies replace human workers with AI, COVID-19 is accelerating it. companies prefer AI not only for cheaper cost but for employees’ and customers’ safety. And, even after the pandemic, they wouldn’t look back to humans as their employees. If you want to follow the change of the society, you need to keep learning, being retrained.

I think no one can stop the trend. I sometimes wonder how I can keep working. As Yuval Noah Harari, a professor and an author of “Sapiens”, predicted, am I going to become one of “useless people”? Probably. 

I happened to see some translators’ complaints on the Internet this morning. They claimed their wage should be much higher because their work is very tough.

Yes, I understand they work hard. But ...is their wage paid for how much they suffered? Or for how good their products are? It would definitely be the latter. When someone else can offer better products at better price, everyone would choose them. In the past, only few people could translate and translation was a very special skill. However, nowadays, thanks to the global connection, many people learn several languages and those who don’t can use machine translation more easily. No wonder a translator become less valuable.

I think some jobs can go in the opposite direction. For example, a nanny used to be a very cheap job.  It’s because people used to think that taking care of a baby or a child was easy. But nowadays, fewer people know how to raise babies or how to handle children very well even if you were a mother of two. Some parents even don’t want to learn it because they want to use their time for their work or pleasure, not for their children. So, nanny’s importance is increasing.