Wednesday, May 28, 2003

Information Architects Serving Institutions

Here's an industrial-strength link to start things off: The Sociobiology of Information Architecture. I have to admit that this kind of stratospheric view of IA seems a bit useless, but I couldn't stop reading. This guy really knows how to write, skipping around effortlessly in evolutionary biology, while trying to pull together some kind of theory of collective learning and social networks.
Today's information architects are the heirs of yesterday's scribes, clerks, and clerics: laboring to acquire, store, and disseminate knowledge for the sake of humanity, but ultimately in the service of institutions.
I love the variety on Boxes and Arrows -- one week you get something like this dense philosophizing, and the next week you might get into the nitty-gritty of design documentation.

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