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  3. "Mirrorworlds" is only one of David Gelernter’s big ideas. Another is "lifest

"Mirrorworlds" is only one of David Gelernter’s big ideas. Another is "lifest

游客2024-09-07  31
问题    "Mirrorworlds" is only one of David Gelernter’s big ideas. Another is "lifestreams"—in essence, vast electronic diaries. "Every document you create and every document other people send to you is stored in your lifestream," he wrote in the mid-1990s together with Eric Freeman, who produced a doctoral thesis on the topic. Putting electronic documents in chronological order, they said, would make it easier for people to manage all their digital output and experiences.
   Lifestreams have not yet replaced the desktop on personal computers, as Mr. Gelernter had hoped. Indeed, a software start-up to implement the idea folded in 2004. But today something quite similar can be found all over the web in many different forms. Blogs are essentially electronic diaries. Personal newsfeeds are at the heart of Facebook and other social networks. A torrent of short text messages appears on Twitter.
   Certain individuals are going even further than Mr. Gelernter expected. Some are digitising their entire office, including pictures, bills and correspondence. Others record their whole life. Gordon Bell, a researcher at Microsoft, puts everything he has accumulated, written, photographed and presented in his "local cyberspace". Yet others "log" every aspect of their lives with wearable cameras.
   The latest trend is "life-tracking". Practitioners keep meticulous digital records of things they do: how much coffee they drink, how much work they do each day, what books they are reading, and so on. Much of this is done manually by putting the data into a PC or, increasingly, a smartphone. But people are also using sensors, mainly to keep track of their vital signs, for instance to see how well they sleep or how fast they run.
   The first self-trackers were mostly ueber-geeks fascinated by numbers. But the more recent converts simply want to learn more about themselves, says Gary Wolf, a technology writer and co-founder of a blog called "The Quantified Self. They want to use technology to help them identify factors that make them depressed, and keep them from sleeping or affect their cognitive performance. One self-tracker learned, for instance, that eating a lot of butter allowed him to solve arithmetic problems faster.
   A market for self-tracking devices is already emerging. Fitbit and Greengoose, two start-ups, are selling wireless accelerometers that can track a user’s physical activity. Zeo, another start-up, has developed an alarm clock that comes with a headband to measure people’s brainwave activity at night and chart their sleep on the web.
   As people create more such self-tracking data, firms will start to mine them and offer services based on the result. Xobni, for example, analyses people’s inboxes ("xobni" spelled backwards) to help them manage their e-mail and contacts. It lists them according to the intensity of the electronic relationship rather than in alphabetical order. Users are sometimes surprised by the results, says Jeff Bonforte, the firm’s boss: "They think it’s creepy when we list other people before their girlfriend or wife."  [br] What kind of function is popular with believers of self-trackers?
选项 A、Managing e-mail and contacts.
B、Knowing more about themselves.
C、Tracking a user’s physical activity.
D、Keeping digital records of things they do.
答案 D
解析 本题考查对具体细节的理解。要答对该题，需要找到题干中“believers of self-trackers”对应的单词，即位于第五段的“converts”(狂热的追随者)。换言之，对于生词的理解决定着该题的是否能够答对。
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