While western governments worry over the threat of Ebola, a more pervasive but far less harmful【C1】________ is spreading through their populations like a winter sniffle: mobile personal technology.

The similarity between disease organisms and personal devices is【C2】_____. Viruses and other parasites control larger organisms,【C3】__resources in order to multiply and spread. Smartphones and other gadgets do the same thing,【C4】__ever-increasing amounts of human attention and electricity supplied【C5】_____wire umbilici.

It is tempting to【C6】_____a “strategy” to both phages and phablets, neither of which is sentient.【C7】__, the process is evolutionary, consisting of many random evolutions,【C8】_____experimented with by many product designers. This makes it all the more powerful.

Tech【C9】_____occurs through actively-learnt responses, or “operant conditioning” as animal behaviourists call it. The scientific parallel here also involves a rodent, typically a rat, which occupies a【C10】__cage called a Skinner Box. The animal is【C11】_____with a food pellet for solving puzzles and punished with an electric shock when it fails.

“Are we getting a positive boost of hormones when we【C12】_____look at our phone, seeking rewards?” asks David Shuker, an animal behaviourist at St Andrews university, sounding a little like a man withholding serious scientific endorsement【C13】_____an idea that a journalist had in the shower. Research is needed, he says.

Tech tycoons would meanwhile【C14】_____that the popularity of mobile devices is attributed to the brilliance of their designs. This is precisely what people whose thought processes have been【C15】_____by an invasive pseudo-organism would believe.

【C16】_____, mobile technology causes symptoms less severe than physiological diseases. There are even benefits to【C17】__sufferers for shortened attention spans and the caffeine overload triggered by visits to Starbucks for the free Wi-Fi. Most importantly, you can【C18】__the Financial Times in places as remote as Alaska or Sidcup. In this【C19】__, a mobile device is closer to a symbiotic organism than a parasite. This would make it【C20】_____to an intestinal bacterium that helps a person to stay alive, rather than a virus that may kill you.

【C13】