Category Archives for Information Architecture

Progress and Innovation – Fact or Fiction?

When I started writing this post, we were in the middle of the Australian summer storm season.

Floods were ravaging the east coast of this great nation and from Queensland, south, everyday Australians like me, were sitting by candlelight with family and friends, as the wind whipped trees to the ground and the driving horizontal rain pounded the dehydrated earth.

Chaos reigned, yet I remained safe and dry inside my country digs, despite being trapped by overflowing causeways we could do nothing about. We were in a waiting game. Until Mother Nature released us from her grasp, we had to make do with what we had.

Times like these can bring out the best and worst in people.

At the turn of the 20th century electricity was a lab based novelty enjoyed by a rare and privileged few. Kerosene lamps, where available, ruled supreme and the idea of boiling the kettle, involved an open fire and iron grill of sorts.

Yet, in one moment, over 15,000 residents housed within and around the fertile hills bordering the far eastern coast of this amazing country, stepped back in time to a simplier time, when the electricity source was cut due to Mother Nature’s seasonal fury.

For three days, there was no electricity. No phone, no internet, no cell coverage. Not surprisingly, this got me thinking: Connectivity.

How connected are we really when our connectivity is dependent upon local and global infrastructure?

Is success measured by potential ability or reliability? In theory or in practice?

I’m a marketer by trade and increasingly, I see brands and businesses operating wholly online. Not a piece of paper in sight. This is great for the environment, but crippling for a business in the event of a simple power crisis…so what is an appropriate back-up plan?

In this web-based world is it possible to have a back-up plan that enables business to function with the same level of efficiency and effectivity off-line as on…?

With access to phone and power lines severed, the power to communicate rests in the hands of the technicians (in this instance, the service providers) and highlights the fallacy of success in ‘progress’.

During my country hiatus, I cooked a savoury mince with fresh herbs and garlic (straight from the garden), boiled eggs, potatoes and cooked sweet kumera crinkle cut fries and fresh mint peas atop (and in) the pot belly. Fire, not stove. Such is the joys of country cooking for extended family sans power!

Not surprisingly, our familial adventure raised discussions of the everyday practices of our ancestors both here and abroad. What’s better? Is there still value in old, or is what’s shinier better, because it’s new?

This year, the stupendously well resourced Super Bowl shut down for 20 minutes while technicians resolved the power failures.

How would your business fare if you lost power? Would you also lose the power to communicate or have you evolved your commercial risk management strategies both on and offline, so you are reliant on neither?

Some would call this double-handling, others astute planning; but is it progress…?

Cutting the Trees of Knowledge

Last month I did a presentation on the production of knowledge as a social process. I thought I’d post it here, in the event you found it useful (and I ever needed to access it in a hurry), but I simply don’t have the technological capability available at present to proceed as per my original intent.

So that in itself got me thinking… Access.

Access to ICT is assumed by priviliedged westerners such as myself. At home, at the office, at university. Access to information is ubiquitous. Even in Australia, where broadband capability is slow and charged by the ruling telecommunications network providers per downloadable byte. It is still relatively cheap enough for the majority to afford.

But what happens when you step outside of the ICT, global networked society? Even in Australia. How do you access information when it’s not readily available to you anymore at the click of a button or the press of ‘enter’ on your iPhone 4?

You jump in your Delorian and head back to 1994.

In producing a visualisation of the article: Cutting the trees of knowledge:  Social Software, Information Architecture and their epistemic consequences by Michael Schlitz, Frederick Truyen and Hans Coppens (2007), that is exactly what I did. I took a trip back to my undergraduate days at the University of Sydney and walked through the process of information gathering in the pre-internet days.

Most of my audience had only just been born when I was at university, so the idea of Sydney University having a card catalogue for its extensive collections was beyond mind-boggling for the majority.

Thinking back, it really is quite amazing how quickly we as a global human race adopt technology into our communities and yet, as communities persist with towers like babel where convenient, to maintain divides based on the tried and tested: language, colour and creed.

Required know-how now acquired… enjoy.
Week Nine – T Junee Presentation-2 http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=39942669&access_key=key-3c8xgankj3vgj4vc0el&page=1&viewMode=list