I use maps. Not the tiny, annoyingly limited ones on smartphones. I use real paper maps that you open from a rectangle and rarely refold properly. Maps you can take out to rapidly scan on the road in unfamiliar places. Paper maps are there for you every time you need them and need no recharging. They simply and dependably orient(指方向) and inform.

I’ve traveled in and out of the state with my grandson Connor often enough to have long since introduced him to this way of getting from place to place. His first response as an 8-year-old was “Grandma, just use the GPS.” But that was no help since the one in my old Honda Fit was hopelessly out of date. As for a smartphone, I didn’t own one. And so Connor is learning to use paper maps too. Opening one myself is akin to texting while driving, perhaps even more distracting(分散注意力的)for me. I’ve done it, but I’ve reformed.

Our next trip will be to visit friends in Connecticut, and I’ve just picked up new copies of the state’s road maps. I’ve yellow-highlighted our route from Providence, Rhode Island, to Old Saybrook and Durham in Connecticut, then back to Providence. It is a pretty familiar route for me, as I’ve spent multiple summers doing geologic fieldwork in the forests and the Connecticut River Valley. Still, I wouldn’t think of driving without paper maps. It would be too out of character. It would be like traveling without a good book or a moral compass.

Going over the route with now 13-year-old Connor so that he can follow along and occasionally answer a routing question while I’m driving may take some perseverance(毅力) on my part. He looks at road maps the same way he looks at my old college typewriter or my mom’s Nokia phone. However, his next tutorial on navigating(导航)with paper is around the corner, and I’m determined that he should learn the ropes. By the time he’s driving himself, I’ll put new maps of India surrounding states in his car. Who knows when a cellphone might quit or a GPS system might stop working?

I could really annoy Connor by informing him of directional signs from the sun, moon, and stars. But enough is enough for a teenager. For this next trip at least, we’ll stay grounded in maps.

Precision（精确）agriculture is a method of growing crops. Farmers use technology to collect very precise or exact measurements about their land. It tells farmers how they planted seeds, used fertilizers and chemical pesticides, and so on. Farm equipment can plant different amounts of seeds and leave different amounts of fertilizer in different parts of a field. Water measuring equipment can tell farmers how much water their plants are getting.

But some of this technology is too costly for small farmers, especially in developing countries.Ranveer Chandra, the Microsoft researcher from India, is working to develop low-cost, high-tech tools for farmers.He developed a system that connects soil sensors to other sensing equipment through unused television (TV) channels.These unused TV signals, known as "white space" frequencies(频率), can provide Internet connection over long distances.Some hospitals and schools in rural areas are already online with white-space connections, Chandra noted.

Each soil sensor provides information about conditions on the farm.To connect all the areas into a big picture, a drone aircraft takes photographs from high in the air.Artificial intelligence (AI) compares these photos to the sensor data.AI then can create maps of where the soil is too acidic or needs more water.Similar technology can also help farmers watch their animals.Video cameras connected to computers and linked to the Internet can help farmers recognize sick cattle, for example.

However, the level and speed at which new farming skills and technologies will spread remains unclear. Bruce Erickson is a precision farming expert at Purdue University in Indiana.He told the CSA the one problem faced by any new farming technology is getting people to use it with their existing methods.Different countries have different farming methods and different ways of doing business.“It takes people to carry out new farming practices,” Erickson said.