20010923: Marginalia from class notes

Contact:cdent@burningchrome.com

Found in the margin of my notebook from 597 class, written 20010918,
seemed worth saving:

  Transcend the information architect to the information artist, who is
  a vorticist standing in the vortex of history, where information is in
  flow and flux. The artist selects, digests, rejects, creates a beam of
  new info.

Looking back on this from about a week later, I'm not sure what I was
getting at. In a William Carlos Williams seminar my final project was
an effort to relate WCW to the Vorticist movement from the early 20th
century. In that movement the artist was a monumental figure standing
at the crossroads of the past and the future, taking a view into the
past, selecting what was good and creating the future. The past was
visualized as a swirling vortex of art and ideas or, simply,
information.

The idea of the information architect, with its concentration on
stakeholders, content management, goals, and _easy_ acquisition leaves
out some of the aggressive magic that can be seen in the artist.
Information has the power to change. The genius artist can see the
relationship between divergent paths and draw them together
synthesizing new connections.


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