LESSON 1

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

MATCHING ENDING
BESTCOM—CONSIDERATE COMPUTING
‘Your battery is now fully charged,' announced the laptop to its owner Donald A. Norman in a
synthetic voice, with great enthusiasm and maybe even a hint of pride. For the record, humans
are not at all unfamiliar with distractions and multitasking. ‘We are used to a complex life that
gets constantly interrupted by the computer’s attention-seeking requests, as much as we are
familiar with procreation,’ laughs Ted Selker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) Media Lab.
Humanity has been connected to approximately three billion networked telephones, computers,
traffic lights and even fridges and picture frames since these things can facilitate our daily lives.
That is why we do not typically turn off the phones, shut down the e-mail system, or close the
office door even when we have a meeting coming or a stretch of concentrated work. We merely
endure the consequences.
Countless research reports have confirmed that if people are unexpectedly interrupted, they may
suffer a drop in work efficiency, and they are more likely to make mistakes. According to Robert
G. Picard from the University of Missouri, it appears to build up the feeling of frustration
cumulatively, and that the stress response makes it difficult to focus again. It is not solely about
productivity and the pace of life. For some professionals like pilots, drivers, soldiers and doctors,
loss of focus can be downright disastrous. 'If we could find a way to make our computers and
phones realise the limits of human attention and memory, they may come off as more thoughtful
and courteous,’ says Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research. Horvitz, Selker and Picard are just a
few of a small but prospering group of researchers who are attempting to make computers,
phones, cars and other devices to function more like considerate colleagues instead of egocentric
oafs.
To do this, the machines need new skills of three kinds: sensing, reasoning and communicating.
First, a system must: sense or infer where its owner is and what he or she is doing. Next, it must
weigh the value of the messages it wants to convey against the cost of the disruption. Then it has
to. choose the best mode and time to interject: Each of these pushes the limits of computer
science and raises issues of privacy, complexity or reliability. Nevertheless, ‘Attentive’
Computing Systems, have started to make an appearance in the latest Volvos, and IBM has
designed and developed a communications software called WebSphere that comes with an
underlying sense of busyness. Microsoft has been conducting extensive in-house tests of a much
more sophisticated system since 2003. In a couple of years, companies might manage to provide
each office employee with a software version of the personal receptionist that is only available to
corner-suite executives today.
However, the truth is that most people are not as busy as they claim to be, which explains why
we can often stand interruptions from our inconsiderate electronic paraphernalia. To find out the
extent to which such disruption may claim people’s daily time, an IBM Research team led by
Jennifer Lai from Carnegie Mellon University studied ten managers, researchers and interns at
the workplace. They had the subjects on videotape, and within every period of a specific time,
they asked the subjects to evaluate their ‘interruptibility’. The time a worker spent in a leave-me-
alone state varied from individual to individual and day to day, and the percentage ranged from
10 to 51. Generally, the employees wished to work without interruption for roughly 1/3 of the
time. Similarly, by studying Microsoft workers, Horvitz also came to the discovery that they
ordinarily spend over 65 percent of their day in a low-attention mode.
Obviously, today’s phones and computers are probably correct about two-thirds of the time by
assuming that their users are always available to answer a call, check an email, or click the ‘OK’
button on an alert box. But for the considerate systems to be functional and useful, their accuracy
has to be above 65 in sending when their users are about to reach their cognitive limit.
Inspired by Horvitz’s work, Microsoft prototype Bestcom-Enhanced Telephony (Bestcom-ET)
digs a bit deeper into every user’s computer to find clues about what they are dealing with. As I
said earlier, Microsoft launched an internal beta test of the system in mid-2003. Horvitz points
out that by the end of last October, nearly 3,800 people had been relying on the system to field
their incoming calls.
Horvitz is, in fact, a tester himself, and as we have our conversation in his office, Bestcom
silently takes care of all the calls. Firstly, it checks if the caller is in his address book, the
company directory, or the ‘recent call’ list. After triangulating all these resources at the same
time, it attempts to figure out what their relationship is. The calls that get through are from
family, supervisors and people he called earlier that day. Other callers will get a message on their
screens that says he cannot answer now because he is in a meeting, and will not be available until
3pm. The system will scan both Horvitz’s and the caller’s calendars to check if it can reschedule
a callback at a time that works for both of them. Some callers will take that option, while others
will simply leave a voicemail. The same happens with e-mails. When Horvitz is not in his office,
Bestcom automatically offers to transfer selected callers to his cellphone, unless his calendar
implies that he is in a meeting.

Questions 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage ?
Inboxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

1 According to Ted Selker, human reproduction has been disturbed throughout history.
2 If people are interrupted by calls or e-mails, they usually put up with it.
3 Microsoft is now investigating a software, which is compatible with ordinary offices.
4 People usually have a misconception about whether they are busy or not.
5 Experts in Carnegie Mellon University conducted research observing all occupations of IBM.
6 Current phone and computer systems have shortcut keys for people to receive information
immediately.

Questions 7-13
Complete the flow-chart below.
Choose ONLY ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 7-13 on your answer sheet.
Bestcom Working Process
Bestcom system carries out further analysis in order to find 7 _____________ about what users are
doing.

in the office out of the office

If callers are not in directory,

Check the 8_____________ Bestcom will provide a
a(n) 9 _____________ will show up on
between the caller and the solution by transferring
their screen, saying the user is not available
user, whether the caller has your call to the user’s 12
at moment. The system
contact information of the user, _____________ if there
will 10 _____________ a suitable time for
such as their family, friends or is no 13 _____________
both, or callers can choose to leave
colleagues. in his or her schedule.
a(n) 11 _____________ to users.