A Phone That Knows You’re Busy
It’s a modern problem：you’re too busy to be disturbed by incessant(连续不断的)phone
calls so you turn your cellphone off .But if you don’t remember to turn it back on when you’re
less busy.you could miss some important calls if only the phone knew when it was wise to
interrupt you，you wouldn’t have to turn it off at all. Instead，it could let calls through when you
are not too busy
A bunch of behavior sensors(传感器)and a clever piece of software could do just that，by
analyzing your behavior to determine if it’s a good time to interrupt you.If built into a phone，the
system may decide you’re too busy and ask the caller to leave a message or ring back later.
James Fogarty and Scott Hudson at Camegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania based their
system oil tiny microphones，cameras and touch sensors that reveal body language and activity.
First they had to study different behaviors to find out which ones stongly predict whether your
mind is interrupted
The potential“busyness”signals they focused on included whether the office doors were left
open or closed，the time of day，if other people were with the person in question，how close they
were to each other, and whether or not the computer was in use.
The sensors monitored these and many other factors while four subjects were at work . At
random intervals，the subjects rated how interruptible they were on a scale ranging from“highly
interruptible’’to“highly not—interruptible” . Their ratings were then correlated with the various
behaviors . “It is a shotgun(随意的)approach：we used all the indicators we could think of and
then let statistics find out which were important，” says Hudson
The model showed that using the keyboard，and talking on a landline or to someone else in
the office correlated most strongly with how interruptible the subjects judged themselves to be.
Interestingly，the computer was actually better than people at predicting when someone was
too busy to be interrupted . The computer got it right 82 per cent of the time，humans 77 per cent.
Fogarty speculates that this might be because people doing the interrupting are inevitably biased
towards delivering their message，whereas computers don’t care.
The first application for Hudson and Fogarty’s system is likely to be in an instant messaging system，followed by office phones and cellphones.“There is no technological roadblock(障碍)
to it being deployed in a couple of years，” says Hudson
36 A big problem facing people today is that
A they must tolerate phone disturbances or miss important calls.
B they must turn off their phones to keep their homes quiet.
C they have to switch from a desktop phone to a cellphone.
D they are too busy to make phone calls.
37 The behavior sensor and software system built in a phone
A could help store messages.
B could send messages instantly
C could tell when it is wise to interrupt you.
D could identify important phone calls.
38 Scientists at Carnegie Menon University tried to find out
A why office doors were often 1eft open.
B when it was a good time to turn off the computer.
C what questions office workers were bothered with.
D which behaviors could tell whether a person was busy
39 During the experiment，the subjects were asked
A to control the sensors and the camera.
B to rate the degrees to which they could be interrupted.
C to compare their behaviors with others’.
D to analyze all the indicators of interruption.
40 The computer performed better than people in the study because
A the computer worked harder.
B the computer was not busy
C people tended to be biased.
D people were not good at statistics.
