英语四级阅读200篇:Unit 50 passage 1

　　It was pointed out by a computer wag that a computerized system consists of three subsystems; hardware, software, and jelly-ware.

　　Hardware is the computer itself the collection of slightly impure chunks of silicon dioxide and other metal oxides that sometimes conduct electricity and sometimes dont, but never conduct it very well. Basically, hardware is mostly sand with some metal and some organic plastic material to hold it together.

　　Software consists of the instructions necessary in order for the hardware to do things. The instructions are nothing more than signals indicating that certain pieces of hardware are to turn themselves on or off in specific sequences at specific times in specific areas of the hardware. The basic instructions are written or given in binary terms on or off and other software elements translate this to and from the more complex language used by the next element in the system.

　　Jelly-ware is the human being who tells the hardware what to do, who gives the hardware its data, who utilizes the output of the hardware, who writes the software, and who uses the output of the software. Jelly-ware itself is a computer consisting of hardware and software. Jelly-ware is mostly water with specific and small amounts of impurities in certain locations. The jelly-wares software is mostly preprogrammed with some RAM that is inputted as a result of experience.

　　Hardware and jelly-ware differ only in the fact that hardware is made up of crystalline structures while jelly-ware consists of colloidal structures. The jelly-wares operating systems appear to function in the parallel mode while those of the hardware operate in a series mode. However, the output of jelly-ware is one-channel sequential and series in form. Like hardware, jelly-ware can do only one thing at a time.

　　So much for the background. Now you know far more about computers than the majority of the population of the United States.

　　This is because the majority of the people in the United States are computer illiterate. Its not only true that hardware cannot understand jelly-ware without

　　software hardware is illiterate but jelly-ware cant understand hardware at all because jelly-ware must deliberately program itself. And most jelly-ware cant do this or wont do it.

　　As an author, I am naturally concerned that a surprisingly large percentage of the population of the United States is functionally illiterate; if they cant read or cannot understand what they read, they wont buy books, or this magazine. But as a citizen and a technological visionary , Im really bothered over the fact that people are computer illiterate. They are either afraid of computers or cannot operate them.

　　Too bad, because our culture and our economy are becoming computerized with alarming speed as rapidly as economic factors will permit.

　　Far too many people will never be able to operate a computer via a keyboard because they do not know the English language which the computer has been programmed to recognize and they cannot operate the keypad. Think out? A surprising number of people cannot operate a simple adding machine . Fewer yet can operate a manual or an electric typewriter. Therefore, a lot of people cannot operate the QWERT keypad of a modern computer.

　　In short, the jelly-ware doesnt know how to talk to the hardware.

　　When the hardware talks to the jelly-ware, it is necessary for the jelly-ware to be able to read what the hardware and software have so laboriously translated out of the machine language into the written word. Many people cant read. Its also necessary for the jelly-ware to be able to understand what they read. Another alarming statistic.

　　On a recent airline trip, the young lady sitting next to me spent the whole three-hour flight studying a text and workbook on retail business practices. The book was telling her how to fill out a sales slip. She was laboriously doing this in the workbook. She would have been better prepared for a retail business job if shed been learning how to add a column of four-digit numbers rapidly in her head.

　　All of this bodes ill for our culture in the future.

　　Although Arthur Clarke has written that we are processing pell-mell into a computerized service culture, I dont think Arthur has realized that were faced with an enormous problem at the human/machine interface.

　　Thats the crucial point of the problem. And the computer designers and engineers had better get on the stick and do something about it, or the market for computers is slowly going to become saturated because of the large number of people who are computer illiterate.

　　What to do? If the interface is the problem, the thing to do is to transfer some of the creative energy of the hardware/software designers away from making the hardware bigger and faster and into the area of making the interface easier for people. Human beings are basically members of a visual and verbal species. We have to learn how to operate machines through the eye-brain-hand system, and some people never catch on.

　　But, do we talk to one another? And sometimes we even listen.

　　We seem to be a verbal species. Long before we became literate, we were verbal storytellers. The ability to communicate verbally beyond simple commands and warnings is a distinctly human attribute. In fact, it may have been one of the first factors used to discriminate between animals and human i. e. if the baby could learn to talk, it was accepted into the early human clan, and if it couldnt it was eaten.

　　1. Scientists are paying more attention to developing even more advanced computers than to popularizing them.

　　2. The young lady studying the textbook on the airline trip was doing a retail business job well.

　　3. Arthur Clarke is one of those who idealize the problem of computerized service culture.

　　4. Computers sometimes make mistake because people input wrong data.

　　5. The American society will adapt to the computer as quickly as its economic factors permit.

　　6. People should adjust their way of life to the computerized culture.

　　7. It is rewarding to have a certain kind of certificate in computer science.

　　8. If a large number of people are computer illiterate, the market for computers will become______.

　　9. The sentence jelly-ware must deliberately program itself most probably means that people must master the skill of______computers.

　　10. The higher the degree of freedom of a system is, ______people can learn to operate it.

　　I. Y 2. N 3. Y 4. Y 5. N 6. N 7. NG 8. saturated 9. operating 10. the fewer