Siri, Alexa may have made your lives easier, but can they also educate you?

Convenience is atop the list of benefits Siri and Alexa have brought to millions. But is it possible that they’re promoting literacy, too?

Certainly, it’s not a benefit that immediately comes to mind. After all, we speak and Siri writes. We ask a question and Alexa enters the search terms for us. Load your iPhone up with podcasts, or ask Siri or Alexa to find you the bestseller you’ve been wanting from Audible.com, and you might never need to read a book again. With each voice-to-text improvement, we seem to be moving backward — toward a culture that relies less and less on letters or the ability to read and write.


History tells a different story. As the scope for oral communication expands, we can take comfort, and some instruction, from the variety of forms literacy has taken since its beginning in the West.

Rise of violent Buddhist rhetoric in Asia defies common stereotypes

Buddhism may be touted in the West as an inherently peaceful philosophy, but a surge in violent rhetoric from small but increasingly influential groups of hardline monks in parts of Asia is upending the religion's tolerant image.

Buddhist mobs in Sri Lanka last week led anti-Muslim riots that left at least three dead and more than 200 Muslim-owned establishments in ruins, just the latest bout of communal violence there stoked by Buddhist nationalists.

In Myanmar, ultra-nationalist monks led by firebrand preacher Wirathu have poured vitriol on the country's small Muslim population, cheering a military crackdown forcing nearly 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh.

And in neighbouring Thailand, a prominent monk found himself in hot water for calling on followers to burn down mosques.

In a polarised Spain, what does it mean to be Spanish?

“Fracture” is the word of the day in Spain, where the Catalonia region's bid for independence and the Spanish government's response are not only pushing the country into uncharted political territory but also sowing the seeds of hate.

Many are warning that the crisis is giving rise to an “us versus them” mentality that is dangerously inaccurate in its simplism and uncomfortably familiar for a country that only four decades ago was under a fascist dictatorship.

If you don't support the October 1 independence referendum, which was suspended by Spain's Constitutional Court and deemed illegal by the central government, you must be anti-Catalan. If you don't applaud the actions of the central government, including the police violence against Catalan voters, you must be anti-Spain. Spanish is the only acceptable language, or Catalan is. There is only one Spanish identity and one Catalan identity. All or nothing.

Messages like these abound. But is the situation truly so binary, and Spain so uniform? Judging by the popularity of one woman's Facebook post about what it means to be Spanish, the answer is no.

In a viral missive, Laura Moreno de Lara describes a Spain that not only celebrates the many distinct cultures, customs and languages contained within, but defines itself by that diversity. A country not of disdain and violence, but of solidarity and love.
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