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March 31, 2003
Your Father's IA
Nuno Lopez wrote today on SIGIA:
"I've observed that the type of most discussions going on this list is basically a reiteration of discussions made over by scientists in the 70's-80's around data modeling."
Who knows whether this is really true or not, but I have been convinced for a very long time that IA as a field is quite ignorant of the history of user-centered information design. Either we say it began with Wurman a few years ago or else we casually acknowledge 17th century cartography. Very often, we simply dismiss anything pre-1995 or so as insufficiently user-centered, and therefore not helpful; it's a belief that lingers from the New Economy period when All Old Ideas Were Wrong. I've never seen anyone cite work from the 1950's (although Henry Dreyfuss' name gets evoked once in a while), and I couldn't name one important or accessible book or paper from the 1970's-80's about data modelling. I've got a university library down the street just brimming with dusty computer books from the last three decades. Can anyone make some reccommendations?
Posted by Andrew at March 31, 2003 12:11 PM
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If it adds any credence to Nuno's argument, Marc Rettig has an amazing grasp of data modeling, and he's pretty badass at the information architecture thing. He's been doing the data modeling stuff for quite a while now - I'd hit him up for some recommendations.
Posted by: chad at March 31, 2003 07:01 PM
Maybe this helps
http://www.datamodel.org/DataModelLibrary.html
PJB
Posted by: PJB at April 1, 2003 09:12 AM