On the table before me are two little robots, making pleasant robot beeps with their eyes being active. 【小题1】, one of them turns to deal with the noise with surprisingly quick speed. The other just watches my face, turning slowly to keep focus on me as I move around. These are prototypes for Vector, the latest robot from Anki, the company behind both the Cozmo and the OverdriveRC.

You can ask it questions, play games with it, and even pet it. But Anki doesn't want you to focus on Vector's functionality. 【小题2】. And because Vector is completely autonomous, you can do something completely surprising for a new piece of technology: Just ignore it, and let it do its own thing.

If you're familiar with the Anki Cozmo robot, you already have a sense of what Vector looks like.【小题3】, it's small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. It has a little lift arm that's only able to pick up a tiny plastic cube.

【小题4】. Using a combination of sensors, it builds a little map of its surroundings. If it detects a new object, it'll go check it out and see if it can be pushed around. It pays attention to sound and is able to recognize faces. It's more self-sufficient than the Anki Cozmo robot. 【小题5】

However, Vector is a long way from a "home robot". To achieve that goal, the engineers, animators and designers at Anki are trying their best.

Two American astronauts were greeted by more than a dozen private boats on Sunday as their SpaceX capsule landed safely in the Gulf of Mexico. A few boats went for a closer look at the capsule, which, aided by parachutes, gently hit the water off the coast of Florida. As the capsule bounced in the water, a recovery team instructed the boaters to stay away.

This raised concerns among NASA and SpaceX officials about security and safety procedures. The NASA administrator, Jim, acknowledged that the unprotected reception should not have happened. "If there is an emergency, the boats might have made recovery efforts, but there were poisonous smokes from the capsule. We need to do better next time," he said.

The Coast Guard waned boaters to stay clear of the area in a radio broadcast two hours before the splashdown, but many boaters ignored the requests and decided to enter the area, putting themselves in potential danger.

Robert L. Behnken and Douglas G. Hurley, the NASA astronauts, returned to Earth after nearly 64 days in orbit, most of them spent aboard the International Space Station. Their trip home was aboard the Crew Dragon, built by the private company SpaceX to transport NASA astronauts. The agency has relied on Russia for trips to space since the space shuttles were retired in 2011.

While the shuttles, like airplanes, landed on runways, SpaceX chose water landings, which NASA has not done since 1975, when the last of the Apollo modules went to space.

In 1917 Orville Wright predicted that“the aeroplane will help peace in many ways – in particular I think it will have a tendency to make war impossible.” Earlier in 1904, American journalist John Walker declared, “As a peace machine, the value of the aeroplane to the world will be beyond computation.” This wasn’t the first grand promise of technology. In that same year Jules Verne announced, “The submarine(潜艇)may be the cause of bringing battle to a stoppage.”

Alfred Nobel, sincerely believe his dynamite(火药) would be a war obstacle: “My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions(公约).” Similarly, when Hiran Maxim, inventor of the machine gun, was asked in 1893, “Will this gun not make war more terrible?” He answered, “No, it will make war impossible.” Gugliemo Mareconi, inventor of the radio, told the world in 1912. “The coming of the wireless time will make war impossible, because it will make war ridiculous.” General James Harbord, chairman of the board of RCA in 1925, believed, “Radio will serve to make the concept of Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men a reality.”

David Nye, a historian of technology, adds to the list of inventions imagined as abolishing war forever and leading to universal peace the hot-air balloon, poison gas, land mines and laser guns.

It is not that all these inventions are without benefits—even benefits toward democracy. Rather, it’s the case that each new technology creates more problems than it solves. “Problems are the answers to solutions,” says Brian Arthur.

Most of the new problems in the world are problems created by previous technology. These problems are nearly invisible to us. Every year 1.2 million people die in automobile accidents. The technological transportation system kills more people than cancer. Global warming, environmental poisons, nuclear terrorism, and species loss, are only a few of the many other serious problems troubling people.

If we embrace(拥抱) technology we need to face its costs.