Part Ⅰ Writing                 (30 minutes)

　　注意：此部分试题在答题卡 1上，请在答题卡1上作答。

　　Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning)    (15 minutes)

　　Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1.For questions 1-7,choose the best answer from the four choices marked A)，B)，C)and D). For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage。

　　The Internet

　　Internet was born 40 years ago, in a lab at the University of California, Los Angeles. Today it wraps the entire planet and features in the daily routine of more than 1.5 billion people. But do you know hte following facts and information about the computer?

　　Could the Net Become Self-aware?

　　In engineering terms, it is easy to see qualitative similarities between the human brain and the Internet's complex network of nodes (节点)， as they both hold, process, recall and transmit information. "The Internet behaves a fair bit like a mind, "says Ben Goertzel, chair of the Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute. " It might ready have a degree of consciousness"。

　　Not that it will necessarily have the same kind of consciousness as humans; it is unlikely to be wondering who it is, for instance. To Francis Heylighen, who studies consciousness and artificial intelligence at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium, consciousness is merely a system of mechanisms for making information processing more efficient by adding a level of control over which of the brain's processes get the most resources. Adding consciousness is more a matter of fine-tuning and increasing control than a jump to a wholly different level," Heylighen says。

　　How-might this manifest itself? Heylighen speculates that it might turn the Internet into a self-aware network that constantly strives to become better at what it does, reorganizing itself and filling gaps in its own knowledge and abilities。

　　If it is not already semiconscious, we could do various things to help wake it up, such as requiring the net to monitor its own knowledge gaps and do something about them. It shouldn’t be something to fear, says Goertzel;" The outlook for humanity is probably better in the case that an emergent, coherent and purposeful Internet mind develops. "

　　Heylighen agrees, but warns that we might find it a little disappointing. " We probably would not notice a whole lot of a difference, initially, "he says。

　　And when might this begin? According to Heylighen, it all depends on Internet fashion trends. If the effort that has gone into developing social networking sites goes into developing Internet consciousness, it could happen within a decade, he says。

　　How Big Is the Net?

　　Recent estimates suggest that well over1 billion people rely on computers to access the Internet. Yet there are also a billion or so other people who use cellphones to visit cyberspace, making them as much a part of the online community as someone surfing from a PC。

　　That the Internet is vast is undoubted. In July 2008, web surfers were introduced

　　Cuil. com, billed by its designers as "the world's biggest search engine". It indexed an impressive 120 billion pages, but shortly before its launch Google announced that its systems had registered a trillion unique pages。

　　Even this might represent a fraction of what is out there. Some estimates suggest that there could be hundreds of times more information stored on the Internet than Google or Cuil have so far indexed。

　　One thing's for sure: the Internet and its contents will continue to grow rapidly. According to Google, several billion web pages are added each day. And in the minute it has taken you to read this, the total has leapt by about 700,000.Index that!

　　Where Are the Net's Dark Corners?

　　If your emails mysteriously disappear, or your favorite website is suddenly unobtainable, you might have run into one "black hole". Though nowhere near as destructive as their cosmological(宇宙论的) cousins, information black holes can create all kinds of problems for surfers. Essentially they are points on the network at which data packets simply disappear due to broken connections, say, or misconfigured routers---devices that maintain lists of addresses and which help direct Internet traffic. A team including computer scientist Ethan Katz-Bassett at the University of Washington in Seattle has detected almost 1. 5 million black holes since it began looking in 2007. The majority persist for over 2 hours, he says. Unfortunately it is tough to predict where they will appear next, so it's hard for the average surfer to avoid them。

　　Far easier to avoid are a kind of online chat-room called Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels. Though the majority are legitimate, a few IRC channels have a very dark reputation, and are run as open markets for stolen goods. One 2007 survey found $37 million worth of illegal stuff in IRC channels, including 80,000 credit card numbers and bank account details. And if that is not bad enough, some of these chat-rooms are also used by hackers to send commands to their networks of evil software bots, or botnets. When a PC is infected by a virus or evil software it may be hijacked and used as part of a botnet to launch spam or cyber-attacks elsewhere。

　　Then there are significant pockets of cyberspace ----some 5 per cent of all Internet addresses----that are not fully connected to the rest of the net. Dubbed the" dark Internet" ,they are often the result of faulty routers or networks with strict security policies that block traffic。

　　Amongst these dark regions are blocks of seemingly unused Internet addresses that may suddenly and briefly flare into activity. Although this behavior might have an innocent explanation ,it can also hint at dubious activities。

　　A three-year study by online security consultants Arbor Networks revealed that dark Internet addresses can be a source of cyber-attacks and junk email. The study suggests that hackers or spammers hijack routers and use them to create false addresses which are left dormant until the hackers bring them to life to facilitate their nefarious(恶毒的)ends. These dark addresses seem to be multiplying in proportion to the growth of the net, says Arbor Networks' Craig Labovitz。

　　Is the Net Hurting the Environment?

　　Sending an email across the Atlantic Ocean does not burn any jet fuel, but the Internet is not without its own, huge carbon footprint. One estimate suggests it takes a huge 152 billion kilowatt-hours per year just to power the data centers that keep the net running. Add to that the energy used by all the computers and peripherals linked to it and the whole thing could be responsible for as much as 2 per cent of all human-made CO2 emissions, putting it on a par with the aviation industry。

　　The way we use our computers also has an impact. According to Google, the production of the electricity needed for a single Internet search generates 200 milligrams of CO2. This may not sound much, but it adds up:1000 searches produce the same CO2 emissions as an average European car travelling 1 kilometre. Worse, Internet traffic is currently growing at around 50 percent each year. According to the international environmental coalition The Climate Group, total emissions from computers will increase by 380 percent, to the equivalent of 1.4 gigatonnes(十亿吨)of CO2, by 2020.

　　If the IT industry continues with business as usual, there is no question that the Internet's energy consumption will skyrocket, says Bill Weihl, Google's green-energy tsar. As a result, many organizations are turning to so-called green data centers which are far more efficient at cooling computers. At the same time, new computers are becoming more efficient. This has led to the energy needed to send each megabyte of data across the net to fall by about 30 per cent annually, says Jonathan Koomey, an energy expert at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Oakland, California。

　　IBM says it is developing carbon-neutral data centres, using a novel form of water cooling which channels the heat given off by chips to provide warmth for nearby homes and offices. In a similar vein, Google has patented the idea of sea-based floating data centres which use wave motion as a power source, while cold water sucked up from the deep ocean could cool the computer chips。

　　The Internet itself could help us to reduce our energy consumption. Video conferencing is just one example, says Koomey. " Moving electrons is always better than moving atoms," he says. What no one knows, however, is whether the technology has led to any significant reduction in travel, or whether uptake in video conferencing has actually increased our CO2 emissions。

　　注意：此部分试题在答题卡1上作答；8－10题在答题卡1上。

　　1. Human brain and the net are similar in that both of them                        。

　　A) have the same kind of consciousness

　　B) can be tested by engineering techniques

　　C) have the ability to handle information

　　D) can be described in qualitative terms

　　2. How does Francis Heylighen understand the consciousness of the net?

　　A) It will one day replace that of humans and try to find its own identity。

　　B) It makes information processed in an organized and productive way。

　　C) It is creating a step-by-step revolution in the development in the network。

　　D) It is a completely different technique in the field of artificial intelligence。

　　3. Heylighen predicts that a self-aware network will                       。

　　A) improve automatically its own knowledge and abilities

　　B) try to do better than its human counterparts

　　C) organize itself again in a totally different way

　　D) track down accurately the latest knowledge and information

　　4. What service can Cuil. com deliver to its users?

　　A) It provides information which can be found at Google。

　　B) It works on building the largest data base around the world。

　　C) It designs search engines for its users when asked.--。

　　D) It helps the users to search for the information they want。

　　5. Information black holes can be annoying because                         。

　　A) it's not easy to foretell their visits on the net

　　B) it usually dominates the net page as long as over two hours

　　C) it steals the users' account number for email box

　　D) it prevents the users from visiting the websites they like

　　6. In what aspect can an IRC channel be taken advantage of?

　　A) All kinds of goods are traded through the channel。

　　B) It is used as a place for hackers to send commands。

　　C) It becomes a factory to develop and produce virus。

　　D) Its chatrooms are in fact the birthplace of junk emails。

　　7. According to Arbor Networks, dark Internet addresses                         。

　　A) can be inactivated so as to avoid being used by ill-intentioned networks

　　B) are the result of strict policies that block traffic on the net

　　C) are probably the ideal hidden place for hackers and junk emails

　　D) seem to increase in accordance with the development of the net

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