When you are absorbed in something for a long time, even a phone call may shock you. That is what happens to me after I am on line for a whole day. My boyfriend’s foreign accent suddenly seems too hard to understand compared with his clear words on screen.
Now I am a telecommuter, editing articles and sending them by e-mail as well as communicating with colleagues on Internet mailing lists. My boyfriend lives in Scotland; so much of our relationship is computer-mediated.
Staying inside, I can order food, and manage my money, love and work, through which my needs are almost satisfied. But after a while, life itself begins to feel unreal. I start to feel as though I’ve become part of my machines, taking data in, spitting them back out. Others on line report the same symptoms. We start to strongly dislike the outside forms of socializing. It’s like attending the graduation ceremony with everyone bare to the waist. We have become the Net opponents’ worst nightmare.
What first seemed like a luxury, crawling from bed to computer, not worrying about hair, and clothes and face, has become an avoidance，a lack of self-control. And once you start replacing real human contact with online interaction, coming back out of the cave can be quite difficult.
At times, I turn on the television and just leave it to make a sound in the background, something that I’d never done previously. The voices of the programs relax me, but then the advertisement is a headache to me. I find myself sucked in by soap operas, or needing to keep up with the latest news and the weather. “Dateline”, “Frontline”, “Nightline,” CNN, every possible angle of every story over and over and over, even when they are of no possible use to me. Work moves from foreground to background.
24. What is the main reason why her boyfriend’s accent is hard to understand?
A. He is a foreigner. B. His words are clearer than his accent.
C. She is surfing the Internet. D. She is lost in the network and can’t come to herself instantly.
25. The underlined sentence in paragraph 3 probably means _____.
A. we don’t like to attend the graduation ceremony
B. we don’t like the way people deal with each other in real life
C. we want to attract others’ attention
D. it is a way to show our dislike for people outside
26. What does the last paragraph mean?
A. She watches TV a lot in order to keep up with the latest news and the weather.
B. Having worked on the computer for a long time, she became a bit strange.
C. She turns on TV now and then in order to get some valuable information.
D. Sometimes TV programs give her comfort and even makes her forget her work.
27. What is the author’s attitude to the computer?
A. She likes it because it is very convenient.
B. She likes it because it provides an imaginary world.
C. At first she likes it but later becomes tired of it.
D. She dislikes it because TV is more attractive.