2024年3月30日发(作者：)

全大学英语综合教程第二册

UNIT4

UNIT 4 The Virtual World

Part I Pre-Reading Task

Listen to the recording two or three times and then

think over the following questions: 1. Is the hero a

student or an employee? 2. What was he doing when the

boss came in? 3. How did he act in front of his boss?

4. Can you guess what the texts in this unit are going

to be about?

The following words in the recording may be new to you:

surf vt. （在网上）漫游

log onto 进入（计算机系统）

unpredictable a. 不可预测的

Part II Text A

Maia Szalavitz, formerly a television producer, now

spends her time as a writer. In this essay she

explores digital reality and its consequences. Along

the way, she pares the digital world to the "real"

world, acknowledging the attractions of the electronic

dimension.

A VIRTUAL LIFE Maia Szalavitz

After too long on the Net, even a phone call can be a

shock. My boyfriend's Liverpool accent suddenly bees

impossible to interpret after his easily understood

words on screen; a secretary's clipped tone seems more

rejecting than I'd imagined it would be. Time itself

bees fluid — hours bee minutes, or seconds stretch

into days. Weekends, once a highlight of my week, are

now just two ordinary days. For the last three years,

since I stopped working as a television producer, I

have done much of my work as a telemuter. I submit

articles and edit them via email and municate with

colleagues on Internet mailing lists. My boyfriend

lives in England, so much of our relationship is also

puter-assisted. If I desired, I could stay inside for

weeks without wanting anything. I can order food, and

manage my money, love and work. In fact, at times I

have spent as long as three weeks alone at home, going

out only to get mail and buy newspapers and groceries.

I watched most of the endless snowstorm of'96 on TV.

But after a while, life itself begins to feel unreal.

I start to feel as though I've bee one with my

machines, taking data in, spitting them back out, just

another link in the Net. Others on line report the

same symptoms. We start to feel an aversion to outside

forms of socializing. We have bee the Net critics'

worst nightmare. What first seemed like a luxury,

crawling from bed to puter, not worrying about hair,

and clothes and face, has bee a form of escape, a lack

of discipline. And once you start replacing real human

contact with cyber-interaction, ing back out of the

cave can be quite difficult. I find myself shyer, more