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The Libyan war, the Greek debt crisis and the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal have all been rich fodder this year for news junkies - but is today's information overload healthy?
A Swiss clinic has set out to help those who feel overwhelmed by such excess with an unusual exhibition that runs until July 15, 2012, at the Museum for Communication in Bern.
On arrival the visitor walks into a darkened room with 12,000 books lined up on shelves, in an illustration of the sheer amount of information individuals are bombarded with daily.
The exhibition explains that if all the inhabitants of the Earth came together to process all the data released worldwide, they would each have to read about 12,000 books like this a day.
"In principle, communication is important and can be something that gives pleasure, but nowadays there is a flood of information," said Jacqueline Strauss, the museum's director.
An average person can read a 350-page book in a day if he or she has nothing else to do, according to experts from Bern University who participated in the exhibition.
But the volume of information and communications broadcast and published round the world by Internet, e-mail, telephone, the press, radio and television is estimated in the exhibition to amount to the equivalent of billions of books.
Faced with this excess of information, "there are cases where people become ill and there are certain risks, like burnout", said Strauss. But if one takes charge of oneself, "overload" illness can be avoided.
The Communications Clinic, which she has set up in the exhibition, is meant primarily to "raise awareness".
On a television, installed at the entrance to the clinic, a woman warns visitors: "Advertisements pile up in our letter-boxes, spam chokes our e-mail boxes" and "cable companies offer us 200 channels".
"Are you stressed out, overwhelmed, exhausted?" she asks.
If the answer is "yes", the visitor is invited into a "check-up room" where he fills out a questionnaire that will enable the compilation of his or her Personal Communications Index and lead to the offer of suitable treatment.
The visitor is then told by coaches which door they need to go through.
For instance, the green door is for those with no problem. The yellow door is for those who are only mildly troubled by the excess of information and mail, and it opens on to a space where the visitor can get counseling on how to sort out his or her e-mails.
At the end of the tour, an automatic distributor delivers a supposed medicine called "Comucaine", an instruction leaflet which summarizes the advice given during the exhibition to help people to de-stress from the information overload.
Questions:
1. How many books feature in the exhibition?
2. What can an average person read a day if he or she has nothing else to do?
3. What is the ‘medicine’ at the end of the tour called?
Answers:
1. 12,000.
2. A 350-page book.
3. Comucaine.
（中國日報網(wǎng)英語點津 Helen 編輯）
About the broadcaster:
Emily Cheng is an editor at China Daily. She was born in Sydney, Australia and graduated from the University of Sydney with a degree in Media, English Literature and Politics. She has worked in the media industry since starting university and this is the third time she has settled abroad - she interned with a magazine in Hong Kong 2007 and studied at the University of Leeds in 2009.
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