1) The document discusses how language shapes our environment and is a medium for making the world.
2) It explores how language creates maps and contexts that become the territories we inhabit together, with examples of how organizational diagrams, labels, and conventions create shared understanding over time.
3) The key point is that language introduces complexity into our world but the role of information architecture is to bring clarity to complexity through composition, not just simplify but make complex systems understandable.
22. LANGUAGE MAKES MAPS THAT ARE TERRITORIES
ENVIRONMENTS WE INHABIT TOGETHER
22
Organizational diagram of the New York and Erie Railroad, 1855
23. LANGUAGE IS ENVIRONMENT
23
Language is “a form of mind-
transforming cognitive scaffolding...”
... “Simple labeling adds a new realm
of perceptible objects.”
- Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CantileverScaffold.jpg
35. APPROXIMATE INCREASE IN ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLEXITY OVER TIME*
Complexity added
to human
environment
No big whoop.
OMG PLEASE
MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!
What’s complexity?
We’re so modern!
Learn a new app? Uh. Ok.
I have no idea what my
phone is doing.
I have no idea what my
house is doing.
Time
Olden times Fin de siècle
* according to Andrew Hinton’s feelings on the subject.
Industrial
Revolution
“Information Age” 21st Century
43. APPROXIMATE INCREASE IN ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLEXITY OVER TIME*
Complexity added
to human
environment
No big whoop.
OMG PLEASE
MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!
What’s complexity?
We’re so modern!
Learn a new app? Uh. Ok.
I have no idea what my
phone is doing.
I have no idea what my
house is doing.
Time
Olden times Fin de siècle
* according to Andrew Hinton’s feelings on the subject.
Industrial
Revolution
“Information Age” 21st Century
46. 46
Interviewer: What do good information
architects do?
R.S. Wurman: They make the complex
clear; they make the information
understandable to other human beings.
If they succeed in doing that, they're good
information architects. If they fail, they're not.
http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=334428
47. The answer to COMPLEXITY
is CLARITY…
not mere “Simplicity.”