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No direction home
You may have read that a new class of state troopers graduated from the academy recently. A half dozen rookies have been assigned to the barracks where our son is a lieutenant. Included in the first-days training is the directive that each trooper should have map book of the area. A paper book of maps.
A paper  map gives you context that you can't get from your GPS device or app. With GPS, you can get from here to there, but don't know where that dirt road on the right will take you. In addition, in the rural towns of western Massachusetts, there are plenty of places without cell phone coverage or where the trees and hills block the view of the satellite whence their guidance comes.
We learn by making mistakes, by getting lost and recovering our way. Learning is a matter of getting lost creatively. GPS devices, however, don't let us get lost.(Of course, we all have stories about a misbehaving or confused app that sent us in the decidedly wrong direction. That happens, but rarely.) A recent Boston Globe article noted that people who'd relied on a GPS-directed path drew less accurate maps of where they'd been.
Mark Twain understood this. The pilot had to know the river, its quirks and surprises, if he or his cargo or the people entrusted to his care ever hoped to travel safely.
A time would come when the man's faculties could not help noticing landmarks and soundings, and his memory could not help holding on to them with the grip of a vice; but if you asked that same man at noon what he had had for breakfast, it would be ten chances to one that he could not tell you. Astonishing things can be done with the human memory if you will devote it faithfully to one particular line of business.
-- A Pilot's Memory, Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain
The old memory scheme, showcased by Plato and other classical orators, instructed the speaker to make a mental model of a room and associate parts of your narrative to objects in the room. Because GPS doesn't reward the development of that kind of spatial modeling, one more mnemonic device falls out of our backpack.
Make no mistake. I won't be giving up my Google Maps app anytime soon. But I also won't mind taking a wrong turn on purpose once in a while, just to see where it leads me.
 A footnote to the troopers training: paper books of maps for western Massachusetts are no longer in print. The edition shown here was published in 2008. Bookstores might have a few left, as do Amazon and eBay. When those are gone, however, they're gone.
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How many ways can you use an emoji incorrectly?
We live in a multilingual world. As a result, the opportunities for miscommunication increase exponentially.
Emojis, as we may remember, are those little symbols that can be a cute way to represent emotions in online messages. They started out as characters stuck together, using :-) to represent a sideways smiley face. It was the best that old-style computers could handle.
 Well, emojis are, for the most part, the language of youth. We can see all those cute symbols on our phones or in our chat window and think that we might have some fun. In most cases, it'll come out as well as if we try to use another's slang.
It's like getting a tattoo in a language that you don't speak. It can go ridiculously, horribly bad if you're not lucky.
But, wait, it gets worse. An article in Improbable Research shows us that the character that you type may not be the character that your recipient sees. Each device or service, be it a smartphone, tablet, online chat service, or web browser can represent the character differently.
For example, the researchers discovered that "What this figure tells us is that if an iPhone user sends to a Windows Phone, Samsung, LG, or Nexus user, the iPhone user is sending a mildly negative emoji to someone who will receive it as a relatively positive one."
I use emojis very carefully and opt for good old American words most of the time.
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Toward bionic learning
OK, we've just turned the Amazing and Creepy dials up a notch.
A report on Kurzweil.net shows how DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, hopes to make smarter soldiers by stimulating the peripheral nerves to enhance learning beyond normal levels (emphasis theirs).
We've seen encouraging research into the use of electric and/or magnetic stimulation of the brain, leading to immediate and long-lasting relief from symptoms of depression, Parkinson's Disease, PTSD, and other disorders. We've also seen ways in which neural engineering can restore use of paralyzed limbs.
DARPA's plan, however, is something new. The agency wants to cut down on the time needed to train military specialists and proposes to enhance neuroplasticity (the brain's ability to form new neural connections) and fulfill that Prairie Home Companion prophecy that all children are above average.
It's a bit like putting a Porsche engine in a Volkswagen.
In a word, Yikes.
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App of the month
In the coming months, many of us will be giving gifts to the high school and college graduates. We'll then be waiting for those thank-you notes. As you might expect, most young people don't keep a collection of cards or a roll of stamps. In some apartments, a clean piece of paper and a working pen is too much to expect.
 Apps to the rescue. For a few bucks, those young'uns can use their smartphones to send your a handwritten card. The Felt app creates a card from some preset designs, using photos already on the phone, and even lets the sender add a personal signature.
 PunkPost goes the next step, outsourcing the handwriting. In the case that your handwriting isn't to your liking, a cadre of unemployed artists will use their art school education to write your note for you.
Whichever app you suggest, you can be assured of receiving the most heartfelt card that technology can provide.
Hat tip to TechCrunch.
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One more thing
We have some exciting new online services on the way for WISE members. We'll be using a product from a company called Wild Apricot to help us manage our course and events registration, communications, and course materials.
We'll have more to say about these new services next month. If you're curious, send a note and we can talk more.
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Note: Often, we provide links to external web pages. The advertisements and other content shown on those pages do not necessarily represent the views of yours truly or the WISE Communications Committee.
Further, the product reviews and commentary reflect the opinion of yours truly and not necessarily of WISE, the Communications Committee, or others. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. No purchase necessary. e=mc2. Semper ubi sub ubi.
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