Across the gardens of Britain, in cities and suburbs, people are building sheds (工棚). “We have never seen such an increase in orders,” says Paul Deary of the Garden Shed Company, whose family has been in the business for 35 years. “People have gone shed crazy.” The Timber Trade Federation reports that in October, the last month for which statistics are available, imports of softwood were 34% higher than a year earlier. With stocks (存货) running low, what wood is available is quickly sold out.

A garden shed used to be mostly a place to store tools, or a place to discuss how to grow flowers, and enjoy tea and snacks while the rain falls outside, according to Michael Rand, an expert gardener. But the creative brainworker has long put it to more productive use. Roald Dahl and Dylan Thomas wrote in sheds. George Bernard Shaw had one in his Hertfordshire garden that faced the sun.

The structures now being built are also often intended for work, although they are grander than the ones those pioneer shed-writers used. Green Retreats, which mostly builds garden offices but also garden gyms and the like, says that overall sales grew by 113% between 2019 and 2020. Larger, prettier structures with things like white walls are especially popular.

This has an important effect on cities. Urban scholars like Richard Florida and Edward Glaeser are busy trying to work out whether the rise in home-working that has occurred during COVID-19 will continue when the virus ebbs. If it does, many service jobs in cities, from waiters to taxi drivers, will disappear. Public-transport systems will struggle. The value of city-centre property will drop.

The shed craze makes that outcome more likely. A white-collar worker who has tried to work from the kitchen table for the past nine months might be keen (渴望的) to return to the office. A worker who has a beautiful garden shed with Wi-Fi will be less so. Joel Bird, who builds personalized sheds, is certain that his customers foresee a long-term change in their working habits. “They don’t consider it to be temporary,” he says. “They’re spending too much money.”

NASA (美国航空航天局) is looking for a new way to get its precious Mars samples back to the earth. Those samples are being collected by the Perseverance rover in Mars’Jezero Crater, which hosted a lake and a river delta billions of years ago. Getting the samples is one of NASA’s top science goals. Studying unspoiled Red Planet material in well-equipped labs around the world could reveal key insights into Mars, including whether it has ever hosted life.

The agency has had a Mars sample return (MSR) structure in place for some time now, but repeated delays and cost overruns seem to have made the original plan hard to realize. “The bottom line is that $ 11 billion is too much, and not returning samples until 2040 is unacceptably too long,” NASA chief Bill Nelson said during a call with reporters. That price tag is the upper-end estimate calculated by an independent review board. A team from within NASA analyzed those September results, determining that the agency won’t be able to get Perseverance’s samples back to Earth until 2040 with the established structure.

NASA is now seeking a new way forward in an attempt to cut costs and get the samples here sooner. Saving money will aid other agency science projects, and speeding up the timeline could help the agency plan out manned Mars trips.

The wheels on the new plan are already turning. NASA is asking the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California — its lead facility for robotic planetary exploration — and other agency research centers for innovative MSR ideas. NASA will hold an industry day and accept proposals. The goal is to have enough information on hand by late fall or early winter to begin charting a new path forward on MSR. MSR remains a top priority for NASA, despite the difficulty of the task. After all, no country has ever launched a rocket from the surface of another planet, though three countries have launched   from the moon.

“I think it’s fair to say that we are committed to bring back the samples, for this is an important national objective.” Nelson said.

When it comes to work, workers, and jobs, much of the concern of the modern age boils down to the fear that we’re witnessing the final stage of the game, and that there will be nowhere for humans to withdraw as machines take over the last few tasks. The most recent example comes from the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Is there no area of human experience that can’t be replaced by AI? And if not, what is left for humans to do except the tasks involved in taking care of the machines?

At the heart of this concern is our desire for good jobs — jobs that make the most of workers’ natural abilities and where the work provides the worker with motivation and work-life balance. More importantly, good jobs support workers in learning by doing — and, in so doing, deliver benefits on three levels: to the worker, who gains in personal development and job satisfaction; to the organization, which reforms as staff find new problems to solve and opportunities to pursue; and to the community as a whole, which harvests the economic benefits of hosting positive organizations and workers. This is what makes good jobs productive for the organization, as well as engaging and fulfilling for the worker.

Does the ongoing advance of AI threaten to get rid of all the learning, creativity, and meaning that make a job a good job? Certainly, some have blamed technology for just such an outcome. Headlines today often express concern over technological innovation(革新) resulting in bad jobs for humans, or even the complete disappearance of certain professions. Some fear that further technology advancement in the workplace will result in jobs where employees are being asked to work in split times or for longer periods over more days.

The problem here isn’t the technology; rather, it’s the way the technology is used — and, more than that, the way people think about using it.