Contact:cdent@burningchrome.com
Wurman, R.S. (2001). Chapter 8: Finding things. In _Information
anxiety 2_ (p. 155-178). Indianapolis, IN: Que.
On Tue, 13 Nov 2001, Ryan Douglas Scott wrote:
> All this talk about concentric ring representations of information is
> puzzling to me. What is the value of this model? So there are different
> forms of information, and Wurman divided it into five levels. I could
> create a similar dilineation, but I'm not sure of the point. Like others
> I found this chapter lacking. It wandered around quite a bit.
I found it puzzling as well. You can categorize types of information,
but what does that get you? Seems to me it just gives useless
prioritization to arbitrary distinctions. Information Science does
itself a disserve by trying to limit information. Consider instead a
model of information where information is the byproduct of perception:
when something perceives, the thing that lands on the perceive is
information. This accounts for perturbation of the perception of that
which is perceived (as in I see a green sweater and someone else sees
a brown one (that happens to me a lot with a particular shade of
drab)) as well as the recursive looping that ought to be present in
the data->information->knowledge->wisdom model (my knowledge,
transmitted to you is information for you). What makes a particular
instance of information important is entirely context dependent, not
whether it is something we see, something we talk about or something
we get from the media.
The beginning of the article, prior to the rings, had some appeal.
There were several nice examples that demonstrate some valuable (to
me) general notions. Maps are artifacts or collections of artifacts
that show relationships amongst and between pieces of information.
Relationships help us make comparisons. Comparisons are how we
synthesize new knowledge.
It's refereshing that Wurman states: "To comprehend something
yourself, you have to have the impetus to make it understandable."
Understanding is not a passive act.
> The one
> thing that seemed interesting was the idea of the Hyperbolic Tree. I was
> wondering if anyone has had experience using the Inxight Tree Studio
> software that was used to create the illustration on page 169? I was also
> wondering if anyone has visited a website with a site map that uses this
> sort of representation?
I've not used that particular software but I have messed with some
java tools that will make hyperbolic trees that show relationships in
a thesaurus. While it is cool to play with, I'm not sure how much
value it is realy has. In the specific sense of the thesaurus the see
and go thing does provide context very nicely and that has definite
value.
The language in the "See & Go Manifesto" was a bit hyperbolic for my
tastes. The recommendations were mighty general and did not take
proper account of context of use
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