快速阅读练习及答案：computer.doc

Unit 7 Going Online Passage 1 Time: 4 mins Total words: 402 words It is 3A.M. Everything on the university campus seems ghostlike in the quiet, misty darkness --- everything except the computer center. Here, all the lights are on, which keep the center as bright as daytime. Twenty students rumpled and bleary-eyed, sit transfixed at their consoles, tapping away on the terminal keys. With eyes glued to the video screen, they tap on for hours. For the rest of the world, it might be the middle of the night, but here time does not exist. This is a world unto itself. These young computer hackers are pursuing a kind of compulsion, a drive so consuming it overshadows nearly every other part of their lives and forms the focal point of their existence. They are compulsive computer programmers. Some of these students have been at the console for thirty hours or more without a break for meals or sleep. Some have fallen asleep on sofas and lounge chairs in the computer center, trying to catch a few winks but loathe to get too far away from their beloved machines. They are not required to be so. Most of these students dont have to be at the computer center in the middle of the night. They arent working on assignments. Many of them are even not computer majors. They are there because they want to be --- they are irresistibly drawn there. And they are not alone. There are hackers at computer centers all across the country, and there are more all over the word. In their extreme form, they focus on nothing else. They flunk out of school and lose contact with friends; they might have difficulty finding jobs, choosing instead to wander from one computer center to another. They may even forgot personal hygiene. “I remember one hacker. We literally had to carry him off his chair to feed him and put him to sleep. We really feared for his health, and he is not the only example” says a computer science professor at MIT. Computer science teachers are now more aware of the implications of