James Gleick's "The Information

James Gleick’s The Information follows the development and use of information. The book covers thousands of years of history in a narrative style, telling the story of information and its impact on us. Gleick focuses on modes of transmission, code languages, information in nature, and the post sixties information revolutions. He also invokes what it means for us to engage with information and how it in turn shapes who we are.

This book is appropriate for an audience of advanced professional/technical writers and practitioners who wish to advance their knowledge of the history of information. To understand where a field is heading it is helpful to ground one’s perspective in what has past. Understanding the continued proliferation of information helps orient the response in information design in architecture to an economy of attention scarcity.

The graphic represents the arch of information’s development. With the rise of technology (specifically, the personal computer), information can be transmitted and created in more and more different ways. The gradient arch shows the ‘density’ of information creation and transmission. The quick darkening of the gradient arch coincides with the rise of the personal computer. The x-axis shows the amount of information transmitted and the y-axis shows the time scale.

For full review of The Information follow this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oTBhhlz9b5iwTL-Bo64UMFgYeZNgkwbKr5fpUTnXYlM/edit?pli=1&hl=en_US

Information Design by Robert Jacobson

In Information Design, Robert Jacobson compiles the ideas of numerous professionals involved in the field of information design in order to create a very broad definition of the subject. This review focuses on what a prospective reader could learn from the book as well as recommendations for a variety of potential readers. As a visual aid, there is an accompanying PowerPoint which explains both textually and visually some of the major concepts in the book such as wayfinding, perception differences, and how data takes on new meaning. Overall, this book is useful for those hoping to broaden their views of information design but definitely not for narrowing them down or those searching for concrete and absolute ideals.

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Visual Review of How to Design and Write Web Pages Today

In what is called a post-industrial era, a time period where technology is advancing, information is flowing, and workers are becoming multi-skilled, the ability to be able to write for the Web but also be able to design a website is an essential proponent to advancing a person’s personal, academic and even professional lives. It is this topic I review in my powerpoint presentation, discussing and demonstrating the ways that Karl Stolley’s book How to Design and Write Web Pages Today provides assistance, offering an approach for building websites that will let readers reach their intended audience in an effective way with methods that never get old.

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TC Server Issues?

I am trying to access the TC server to do a review and keeps telling me either that Information-Design articles do not exist or does not load period. I am using the address http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Information-Design

Anybody else having issues?

Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia

http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm

RATING

Usefulness: 2/5

Interesting: 4/5

In “Metacrap,” Cory Doctorow goes on to discuss why he believes that a “meta-utopia” is not achievable, and it’s “nerd hubris” to believe it is. A meta-utopia would require reliable metadata, which he states is impossible for at least seven reasons: “people lie, people are lazy, people are stupid, people are lousy observers of their own behavior, schemas aren’t neutral, and metrics influence results.”

In other words, people are trying to compete with others in order to get their information, opinion, or product out there. The large amount of knowledge out in the world causes people to have short attention spans. In order to get views on information or sites, people lie. Others sometimes don’t put in the effort to properly label data. Either the information is incomplete, or they fail to spell correctly, etc. Also, people fail to accurately describe data, because there’s no correct way to categorize things. There are many ways to do so. Not everyone will agree on one given form of categorization. Furthermore, everyone has different ways of describing things. If everyone were to agree, there would be “homogeneity in ideas” that could create a road block for fresh and innovative ideas.

The author argues that metadata is still valuable, as it helps to organize and retrieve data. However, a meta-utopia will never come about, nor is it something we should really strive for and I think I agree. It’s a double edged sword. On one hand, if I’m looking for the official Marvel’s Avengers trailer, I want to see the official trailer. I don’t want to click on a link for ‘Avengers 2012 Official Trailer’ and find myself watching a fan-made video. On the other hand, if it wasn’t for deceptively categorized data, I wouldn’t have found that ‘obscure yet totally cool’ article I was never looking for.

While this article was interesting, it serves little purpose in informing people about how to properly label and create metadata. It is a discussion about what is wrong with metadata, not about what we can do to improve it.

TC Server Works

It seems the website address changed. Here's the new one.

http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Information-Design

TCServer troubles

The TCServer continues to hiccough and otherwise make access difficult. Rather than waste time scrambling, let me shift focus a little and ask everyone to take a look at chapters 1 and 6 of Shirky's Cognitive Surplus. These chapters are all about information design, the information age, and empirical research, but in fun ways (really!). Read "Milkshake Mistakes" and you'll see what I mean.

While you are doing that, I will shift to a more standard reading schedule--you know, where everyone knows what it is we're supposed to be reading before class. What can I say. We tried something and, because of technology challenges, it didn't work. We'll spend Tuesday talking about the readings in general, the assignments, and getting the discussion back on track while you start reading Shirky. My assignments are the reading minimum: feel free to explore more in Cognitive Surplus. I enjoyed the book very much when I first read it, and Shirky has an uncanny ability to articulate things we're all seeing every day but don't have the words to describe.

So let the eServer reviews wait for now. I'll see if I can't figure out what's up with the TCServer.