Coral Gables Magazine January 2024 Issue

January 2024 Editor’s Note

One of the sad lessons in the history of technology is how new devices sometimes rob our personal powers. Take cell phones. Those of us who were alive before the invention of cell phones could remember dozens of telephone numbers as a matter of course. Now that our portable communication devices remember all those numbers for us, we’ve forgotten them. This is a syndrome that goes back millennia; before there were books, the Greeks could remember epic narratives, like the Odyssey. Today? We can’t recite a poem past four stanzas.

All the more reason, then, to fear the coming onslaught of AI. Not so much because superhuman robots might replicate themselves and hunt us all down — it’s more the simple fact that, as we give up the effort needed to do things like organize or compose or draw or even write for ourselves, we lose our abilities to do so. We end up like the tubby humans in “Wall-E” or the feckless Eloi in “The Time Machine.”

The good news is that, regardless of our age, we are all capable of neurogenesis. Which means that we all have the ability to grow new neural connections and continue to learn — new skills, new habits, new knowledge. All it takes is effort. Just like with muscles, exercising your brain makes it stronger.

To aid in your effort to become smarter by engaging in something new, something outside of your comfort zone, our “New Year, New You” feature by Managing Editor Kylie Wang offers a panoply of choices here in the Gables. From learning a new instrument to taking dance lessons for the first time to learning a foreign language, there surely is something here that will stretch you just a bit — and enhance your cranium.

Have a Happy New Year, full of new learning.

RELATED: Check out last year’s “New Year, New You” feature, where we’ve provided a range of gym choices for you to peruse, from traditional workouts to completely unique experiences.  So, staring January 2024, pull on those yoga pants, strap on your Fitbit, and join the vaunted club of Americans who successfully keep their New Year’s resolutions!