四级冲刺练习阅读（197）

　　Computer Illiteracy

　　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.