The truth is out there on the net

READING COMPREHENSION. B2+ READING COMPREHENSION YOU ARE GOING TO READ THREE EXTRACTS WHICH ARE ALL CONCERNED IN SOME WAY WITH COMPUTERS. For each of the questions, choose the best option.

PART ONE THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE ON THE NET

Far from encouraging mass deceit, the web promotes honesty because we fear getting caught, writes CliveThompson.

Everyone tells a little white lie now and then, but Cornell University professor, Jeffrey Hancock, recently claimed to have established the truth of a curious proposition: we fib less frequently when we’re online than when talking in person. He asked thirty undergraduates to record all their communications, and all their lies for a week. When he tallied the results, he found the students had mishandled the truth in about one-quarter of all face-to-face conversations, and in a whopping 37 per cent of phone calls. But when they went into cyberspace, only 1 in 5 instant-messaging chats contained a lie, and barely 14 per cent of email messages were dishonest. Obviously you can’t make generalisations about society solely on the basis of college students’ behaviour, and there’s also something odd about asking people to be honest about how often they lie. But still, Professor Hancock’s results were intriguing, not least because they upend some of our primary expectations about life on the net.

Wasn’t cyberspace supposed to be the scary zone where you couldn’t trust anyone? Back when the Internet first went mainstream, those pundits in the government, media and academia worried that the digital age would open the floodgates of deception. Since anyone could hide behind an anonymous hotmail address or chat-room nickname, net users, we were warned, would be free to lie with impunity. Parents panicked and frantically supervised their children’s use of cyberspace, under the assumption that anyone lurking out there in the unknown was a threat until proved otherwise. And to a certain extent, you can see their reasoning: if we go along with the basic introduction to any psychology course, we’re more likely to lie to people when there’s distance between us. Eventually, though, many suspicions turned out to be unfounded.

What is it, then, about online life that makes us more truthful? It’s simple: we’re worried about being exposed. In ‘real’ life, after all, it’s pretty easy to get away with deception. If you lie to someone at a party, you can always claim you said no such thing. On the Internet, your words often come back to haunt you. The digital age is tough on liars, as an endless parade of executives are finding out. This isn’t a problem for only corporate barons. We read the headlines; we know in cyberspace our words never die, because machines don’t forget. ‘It’s a cut-and-paste culture’, as Professor Hancock put it, though he said that on the phone, so who knows if he really meant it? And consider that many email programmes automatically ‘quote’ your words when someone replies to your message. Every time I finish an email message, I pause for a few seconds to reread it just to ensure I haven’t said something I’ll later regret.

Maybe this helps explain why television programmes like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation have become so popular. They’re all about revealing the sneaking things people do. We

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READING COMPREHENSION. B2+ watch with fascination and unease as scientists inspect the tiniest of clues – a stray hair on a car seat, a latent fingerprint on a CD-ROM. After you’ve seen high-tech cops rake over evidence from a crime scene with ultra-violet light and luminal and genetic sequencers enough times, you get the message: watch out – we’ve got files on you. Forensic science has become the central drama of pop culture, and our fascination with it may well add to our anxieties about technology. So no wonder we’re so careful to restrict our lying to lowtechnology environments. We have begun to be keenly suspicious of places that might be bugged, conducting all of our subterfuge in loud restaurants and lonely parks.

Still, it’s not only the fear of electronic exposure that drives us to tell the truth. There’s something about the Internet that encourages us to ‘tell all’, often in rather outrageous ways. Psychologists have noticed for years that going online seems to have a catalytic effect on people’s personalities. The most quiet and reserved people may become deranged loudmouths when they sit behind the keyboard. Others stay up until dawn and conduct angry debates on discussion boards with total strangers. You can usually spot the newcomers in any discussion group because they’re the ones WRITING IN CAPITALS – they’re overwhelmed by the Internet’s heavy combination of geographic distance and pseudo-invisibility.

Our impulse to confess via cyberspace inverts much of what we think about honesty. It used to be if you wanted to really trust someone, you arranged a face-to-face meeting.

Our culture still obsesses over physical contact, the shaking of hands, that lubricating chitchat. Executives and politicians spend hours flying across the country merely for a five-minute meeting, on the assumption that even a few seconds of face time can cut through the prevarications of letters and legal contracts. But perhaps the growing tendency towards online communication is gratifying news. We could find ourselves living in an increasingly honest world. It will at least, inevitably, be one in which there are increasingly severe penalties for deception. With its unforgiving machine memory, the Internet might turn out to be the unlikely conscience of the world.

1 . What does the writer suggest about Professor Hancock’s findings? a) they prove a higher than average level of dishonesty among students. b) they are unreliable as students are not likely to have kept accurate records. c) they only demonstrate what was already common knowledge to most people. d) students are less likely to lie while chatting online than on the telephone.

2 . What does the writer state about the early days of Internet use? a) there was no discernible change in the general level of honest behaviour. b) the Internet provided people with new ways to commit crime. c) children were frequently not permitted any kind of access to the Internet. d) there was some over-reaction to the perceived dangers of the Internet.

3 . What point is illustrated by the references to email record? a) the corporate world has been forced to reassess its systems of communication. b) people have developed a less trusting attitude towards others they deal with. c) People are becoming more cautious with regard to the content of email. d) email and similar documentation has sometimes been used to manipulate the truth.

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READING COMPREHENSION. B2+ 4 . According to the writer, television programmes on forensic science have a) led to people becoming more frightened of being exposed. b) encouraged people to adopt more sophisticated methods of deception. c) overtaken other types of television drama in terms of popularity. d) given people a false impression on what science can currently achieve.

5 . In the fifth paragraph, what are we told about the effect of Internet chat rooms on people? a) they have had a beneficial influence on some naturally shy people. b) they have allowed certain people to express themselves more concisely. c) they have led to a transformation in some people’s usual behaviour. d) they have improved relations between people from different cultures.

6 . What does the writer state about the future impact of online communication? a) people will ensure that emails are strictly accurate and honest. b) instances of dishonesty will have more serious consequences. c) people will feel the need for legal advice when preparing certain documents. d) it will remove the need for face-to-face contact.

PART TWO WRITING BY HAND AND ON SCREEN Dr Johnson maintained that ‘what is written without effort is in general read without pleasure’. The converse is that good writing comes hard. Looking back through my handwritten school essays I was surprised at how few crossings-out they contained. .today I would have rewritten them five times over. I am sure the reason was that they were physically hard to write. The slowness of the hand disciplined the brain. What would be difficult to alter or erase was written with care. The casual facility of the computer leads to sloppiness. Most writers using word processors find the time spent correcting early drafts more or less equates with the time originally spent on handwritten text.

Equally, the e-mail, unlike the handwritten letter, is emotionally ponderous. This electronic Eros is said to have revived the art of the love letter. Millions of these missives now flow down the lines, where previously there was only idle chatter. Hurrah for that. At least these e-mails are written, in a sort of English and a sort of grammar. But words printed on a screen pack a monotonous punch. Their writers are often unaccustomed to the power of the written word and tend, in computer jargon, to ‘flare’. Their meaning becomes exaggerated and distorted in transmission. And printed words written in haste lack the care and character of handwriting.

7 . What point does the writer feel is illustrated by his school essays? a) It is a mistake to change what you have written too many times. b) The standard of what you write is better if it cannot easily be changed. c) Word processors give writers a false impression of the quality of what they have written. d) Computers make writers change their view concerning what constitutes good writing.

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READING COMPREHENSION. B2+ 8 . Which of the following does the writer imply about e-mails? a) It is unlikely that they will remain a common way of sending love letters. b) They are sometimes entertaining rather than informative. c) They bear some relation to handwritten letters. d) It is common for people to include computer terminology in them.

PART THREE I put down my cup and went to inspect the CD. The case was disappointing but the rainbow-silver disc inside looked interesting.

‘Wonderful little things, aren’t they?’ Mr Warriston said, coming back into the room. I agreed, gingerly handing the disc to him. ‘Amazing they manage to squeeze seventy minutes of music onto them’, he continued, bending to the hi-fi device. He switched it on and all sorts of lights came on. He pressed a button and a little drawer slid out of the machine.

He put the disc inside, pressed the button again and the tray glided back in again. ‘Of course, some people say they sound sterile, but I think they…’

‘Do you have to turn them over, like records?’ I asked.

‘What? No’, Mr Warriston said, straightening. ‘No, you only play one side’.

‘Why?’ I asked him.

He looked nonplussed, and then thoughtful. ‘You know’, he said, ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t see why you couldn’t make both sides playable and double the capacity…’ He stared down at the machine. ‘You could have two lasers, or just turn it over by hand…hmm.’ He smiled at me.

‘Yes, good point.’ He nodded over at my wooden chair. ‘Anyway, come on, let’s get you sitting in the best place for the stereo effect, eh?’

I smiled, pleased to have thought of a technical question Mr Warriston could not answer.

9 . What do we learn about the narrator from the extract? a) He was keen to prove that Mr Warriston could be wrong about some things. b) He was not very good at understanding technical matters. c) He already had a low opinion of CDs. d) He had never operated a CD player himself.

10. What do we learn about Mr Warriston from the extract? a) He liked to be knowledgeable about how machines worked. b) He found the narrator’s questions annoying. c) He was more impressed by the way CDs worked than the sound they made. d) He was pretending to know a great deal about CDs.

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