On August 29^th，Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla, an electric-car maker, announced that some of his customers would find that their cars had suddenly developed the ability to drive farther on a single battery charge. Like many modern vehicles, Mr.Musk's products are best thought of as Internet-connected computers on wheels. The cheaper models in Tesla' line-up have parts of their batteries disabled by the car’s software in order to limit their range. At the tap of a keyboard in Palo Alto, the firm was able to remove those restrictions and give drivers temporary access to the full power of their batteries.

Mr. Musk's computerized cars are just one example of a much broader trend. As computers and connectivity become cheaper, it makes sense to bake them into more and more things that are not, in themselves, computers creating an “Internet of things”, or IoT. It is a slow revolution that has been gathering pace for years, as computers have found their way into cars, telephones and televisions. But the transformation is about to speed up. One forecast is that by 2035 the world will have a trillion connected computers, built into everything from food packaging to bridges and clothes.

Such a world will bring many benefits.Consumers will get convenience. Amazon's Ring smart doorbells, for instance, come equipped with motion sensors(运动传感器) and video cameras. Working together, they can also form what is, in effect, a private CCTV(closed circuit television) network, allowing the firm to offer its customers a“digital neighborhood-watch”scheme and pass any interesting video along to the police.

Business will get efficiency, as information about the physical world that used to be temporary and uncertain becomes concrete and analyzable. Connected cows can have their eating habits and vital signs tracked in real time, which means they produce more milk and require less medicine when they fall ill. Such gains are individually small but, mixed again and again across an economy, they are the raw material of growth potentially a great deal of it.

In the long term, though, the most noticeable effects of the IoT will be on how the world works. One way to think of it is to regard it as the second phase of the Internet. Ever, more companies will become tech companies; the Internet will become widespread. As a result, a series of unsolved arguments about ownership, data, competition and security will spill over from the virtual world into the real one.

Children spend more time messaging each other on phones and websites than talking in Person, a survey has revealed. Text messages and social networking sites have become the common mode of youngsters aged 8 to 14.

A survey of modern childhood found that many youngsters are conscious that they are spending too much time on their computers and enjoy themselves the most when playing outside. But the lure of electronic products proves too strong for a quarter, while a fifth say their parents don’t like them playing outside because they are worried about strangers and injuries.

The “iGeneration report” suggested that youngsters are increasingly health-conscious and skeptical (特怀疑态度的) of commercialization, including gender-based labelling on toys and pop videos released by singers. More than half of those questioned care about eating healthily and one in 10 lectures their own parents about the food they are eating or buying, 42 percent of those questioned own a smart phone, with 36 percent admitting spending more time communicating with friends via instant messaging, such as texts or networking websites, than talking in person. Only one child in 100 said that being happy, having a loving family and being clever were taken as the most crucial (决定性的) elements in their lives.

Cary Cooper, the professor of organizational psychology and health at Lancaster University, said social media were contributing to youngsters becoming more independent. They had a sense of individuality due to exposure to a range of media.

The survey follows major state backed research which found that youngsters are turning their back on drink, drugs and smoking. It found a dramatic drop in the number of secondary school students trying and regularly using drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Some analysts said that thanks to the rise of social media, millions of teenagers are spending their time at home in their rooms rather than out on the streets.

The Chinese version of TikTok, called Douyin (抖音), has amassed (积累)400 million daily active users, parent company ByteDance revealed in its annual report this week. This is an impressive growth for the addictive(上瘾的) video app, which had 250 million daily active users in January last year.

The report, which describes the user behavior and trends, illustrates (表明) the cultural difference between China and the U. S. , said Katherine Wu, an investor at New York-based firm Notation Capital. “Things that trend in these two countries are quite different. For example: knowledge-based content is extremely popular in China, and less so in the U. S. Also, this was wild to me: those creators that did the most dance videos in China are users born in the 60s , while in the US, it seems that it’s mostly teenagers who are creating the dances,” she wrote.

ByteDance claimed (宣称) that Douyin has established itself as the largest knowledge, culture and art platform in China. (Douyin is only available in mainland China.) Indeed, 14. 89 million “know ledge-based content videos” were shared on the app last year, it claimed.