From Leonard Wolf's Annotated Frankenstein

In Computer Power and Human Reason(p.116) Joseph Weizenbaum describes compulsive computer programmers: "Wherever computer centers have become established, bright young men of disheveled appearance, often with sunken glowing eyes, can be seen sitting at computer consoles, their arms tensed and waiting to strike, at the buttons and keys on which their attention seems to be as riveted as a gambler's on the rolling dice. When not so transfixed, they often sit at tables strewn with computer printouts over which they pore like possessed students of a cabalistic text. They work until they nearly drop, twenty, thirty hours at a time. Their food, if they arrange it, is brought to them ... If possible, they sleep on cots near the computer. But only for a few hours - then back to the console or the printouts. Their rumpled clothes, their unwashed and unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all testify they are oblivious to their bodies and the world in which they move. They exist ... only through and for the computers. These are computer bums, compulsive programmers. They are an international phenomenon."