Information Overload

Information Overload 1

By Robert S. Boyd

© Knight 2 Ridder Newspapers.

Distributed by Tribune Media

Services International.

Are you overwhelmed by the amount of information these days?

1

Ever feel overwhelmed by the deluge 3 of information flooding the world today? It’s no wonder. Researchers say that the amount of new words, sounds, pictures and numbers produced and stored on paper, film or computer disks has almost doubled in three years.

According to a study by Peter Lyman and Hal Varian, political scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, the supply of new material saved in 2002 alone would fill half a million libraries the size of the U.S. Library of Congress—the world’s largest collection of books and papers—if it were all converted to print.

“Our intent was to quantify people’s feeling of being overwhelmed by information and to look at trends,” Lyman said. “People had no sense of why this was happening or where the growth was.”

The recent explosion of recorded data, after centuries of steady but much slower growth, can be traced, in large part, to two factors:

① The computer revolution, which has made it possible to capture and save vast quantities of information in ones and zeroes, the binary 4 alphabet of the digital age.

② The growth of research in astronomy, nuclear physics and biology, such as the Human Genome Project. Experts figure that in recent decades the number of scientific papers published has been doubling every three years.

The information glut 5 may be making it harder to find useful, dependable material among the tidal wave of data bombarding people’s senses, Lyman fears. In addition, more sensitive personal data—medical and financial—are being captured and stored by the government and private companies.

“The problem is not so much the mass of information as the possible misuse 6 of it,” Lyman said. “There’s no more privacy.”

Vocabulary Focus

vast (adj) [vB:st] extremely big in size or amount

glut (n) [^lQt] a supply of something that is much greater than is needed or wanted

bombard (v) [5bCmbB:d] to attack or hit something or someone with a continuous amount of something

Specialized 7 Terms

binary (adj) 二进制 consisting of two parts; relating to a system that uses only two symbols, 0 and 1

nuclear physics (n phr) 核物理 the study of the internal structure, forces and behavior of an atom’s nucleus 8 and how it interacts with other nuclei 9

资讯超载

张梦 译

你觉得如今资讯太多，几乎招架不住吗？

1

你是否曾经感觉快要被当今泛滥的资讯淹没？这也难怪。研究显示当今所产生并储存于纸张、影片或电脑磁碟中的新字、语音、图片及数字，过去3年内，几乎成长了一倍。

彼得·李曼与赫尔·法瑞安是加州大学柏克莱分校的政治科学家。根据他们所做的一项研究显示，2002年1年内所储存的所有新资料，若全部印出来，将可塞满50万间类似美国国会图书馆的图书馆。美国国会图书馆拥有全球最大的书籍与文件收藏量。

李曼说：“我们的目的是将人们被资讯淹没的感觉加以量化，并寻求其中趋势。人们并不知道为何会如此，以及资讯到底在哪些领域成长。”

经过数世纪稳定但慢得多的成长，最近记录资料暴增，主要原因有二：

1．电脑革命使得大量资料可借“l”与“O”的方式收集并储存。“1”与“O”已经成为数码时代的二进制符号系统。

2．天文学、核物理学与生物学（如人类基因组计划）的研究发展。专家认为，科学论文的发表，近数十年每三年便成长一倍。

李曼担心，资讯大量充斥，已使得在此波资讯爆炸中找寻可用可靠的资料更为困难。此外，政府及私人企业也不断收集并储存较敏感的个人医疗与财务资料。

李曼说：“问题不在于资讯的“量”，而在于资讯可能遭盗用。隐私权已经荡然无存。”