Directions: em>Write a 250-word composition about your point of view on Online Sharing Culture

The development of the English language falls into three reasonably ______ periods: Old English, Middle English, and Modern English.

As children get older

Heat exhaustion is a condition caused by______to sunlight or another heat source which often results in dehydration and salt depletion.

Retail sales volume in local urban and rural areas rose 57.8 percent ______ and 46.8 percent over March 2005.

She must have been pretty ______ to fall for such an old trick.

His sprained ankle ______ his chances of winning the tournament.

Forget what Virginia Woolf said about what a writer needs—a room of one's own. The writer she has in mind wasn't at work on a novel in cyberspace, one with multiple hypertexts, animated graphics and downloads of trance, charming music. For that you also need graphic interfaces, Real Player and maybe even a computer laboratory at Brown University. That was where Mark Amerika—his legally adopted name; don't ask him about his birth name—composed much of his novel em>Grammatron/em>. But em>Grammatron/em> isn't just a story. It's an online narrative (grammatron.com) that uses the capabilities of cyberspace to tie the conventional story line into complicated knots. In the four years it took to produce—it was completed in 1997—each new advance in computer software became another potential story device. "I became sort of dependent on the industry," jokes Amerika, who is also the author of two novels printed on paper. "That's unusual for a writer, because if you just write on paper the 'technology' is pretty stable." Nothing about em>Grammatron/em> is stable. At its center, if there is one, is Abe Golam, the inventor of nanograph a quasi-mystical computer code that some unmystical corporations are itching to acquire. For much of the story, Abe wanders through Prague-23, a virtual "city" in cyberspace where visitors indulge in fantasy encounters and virtual sex, which can get fairly graphic. The reader wanders too, because most of em>Gramrnatron/em>'s 1,000-plus text screens contain several passages in hypertext. To reach the next screen just double-click. But each of those hypertexts is a trapdoor that can plunge you down a different pathway of the story. Choose one and you drop into a corporate-strategy memo. Choose another and there's a XXX-rated sexual rant. The story you read is in some sense file story you make. Amerika teaches digital art at the University of Colorado, where his students develop works that straddle the lines between art, film and literature. "I tell them not to get caught up in mere plot," he says. Some avant-garde writers—Julio Cortazar, Italo Calvino—have also experimented with novels that wander out of their author's control. "But what makes the Net so exciting," says Amerika, "is that you can add sound, randomly generated links, 3-D modeling, animation." That room of one's own is turning into a fun house. The passage is mainly to tell ______.

The three men tried many times to sneak across the border into the neighboring country, ______ by the police each time.

With over 1

Mr

The day was breaking and people began to go to work so the murderer was unable to______of the body.

What will man be like in the future—in 5

Shoes of this kind are ______ to slip on wet ground.

Unless all staff members agree to ______ to the plan, there may be further changes in the course of action.

This is the ______ piano on which the composer created some of his greatest works.

The idea of humanoid robots is not new

Most Chinese people went to work by bike within living ______.

Publication of this survey had originally been intended to coincide with the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, scheduled for September 29th—30th in Washington, D. C. Those meetings, and the big anti-globalization protests that had been planned to accompany them, were among the least significant casualties of the terrorist atrocities of September 11th. You might have thought that the anti-capitalist protesters, after contemplating those horrors and their aftermath, would be regretting more than just the loss of a venue for their marches. Many are, no doubt. But judging by the response of some of their leaders and many of the activists (if Internet chat rooms are any guide), grief is not always the prevailing mood. Some anti-globalists have found a kind of consolation even a cause of satisfaction, in these terrible events—that of having been as they see it, proved right. To its fiercest critics, globalization, the march of international capitalism, is a force for oppression, exploitation and injustice. The rage that drove the terrorists to commit their obscene crime was in part, it is argued, a response to that. At the very least, it is suggested, terrorism thrives on poverty and international capitalism, the protesters say, thrives on poverty too. These may be extreme positions, but the minority that holds them is not tiny, by any means. Far more important, the anti-globalists have lately drawn tacit support if nothing else, reluctance to condemn—from a broad range of public opinion. As a result, they have been, and are likely to remain, politically influential. At a time such as this, sorting through issues of political economy may seem very far removed from what matters. In one sense, it is. But when many in the West are contemplating their future with new foreboding, it is important to understand why the skeptics are wrong; why economic integration is a force for good; and why globalization, far from being the greatest cause of poverty, is its only feasible cure. Undeniably, popular support for that view is lacking. In the developed economies, support for further trade liberalization is uncertain; in some countries, voters are downright hostile to it. Starting a new round of global trade talks this year will be struggle, and seeing it through to a useful conclusion will be. The institutions that in most people's eyes represent the global economy—the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization are reviled far more widely than they are admired; the best they can expect from opinion at large is grudging acceptance. Governments, meanwhile, are accused of bowing down to business: globalization leaves them no choice. Private capital moves across the planet unchecked. Wherever it goes, it bleeds democracy of content and puts "profits before people". In your opinion, what may be the main topic of this passage?