so this article was written around 1996, so some of this stuff is a bit out-dated, but still completely relevant today. in fact, this very class that we had to do this reading for is the very answer that wurman was wanting.
The amount of information out there today is crazy-huge and it seems no one knows what to do with all of it. Us as a society were brought up to come across as smart, intelligible human beings to peers and colleagues. It's supposedly looked down upon if we say don't understand something, which makes absolutely no sense. I must say that I suffer from this occasionally, when I'm in class and everyone else seems to be understanding something and I don't quite get it, I just won't say anything and figure it out later. But how can you possibly grow and become smarter if you never ask questions or push yourself? This is exactly what Wurman is trying to get at with information architecture. There is all of this information out there that no one knows how to sort through it and figure out a logical order to it all. How can we give it order and structure if no one is willing to step forward and say that they are willing to push themselves to figure out something new. Wurman believed that there needs to be an entire degree focused on solely this, the architecture to knowledge, to information, to research. We will only be able to fully understand information to its fullest until it is organized. I personally loved his LATCH acronym. That all information can be organized in fives ways:
- Location
- Alphabet
- Time
- Category
- Hierarchy
This is definitely something to keep in the back of your mind from here on out when organizing information. It's quite a nice place to start organizing when you have no idea where to begin.
