The need to record With collecting comes the need to record. A specimen without a label is simply a (sometimes) pretty object. Without its associated data it is scientifically worthless. Roger Kitching, A Reflection of the Truth informationorganization
Political chains of influence In Chicago, formal chains of influence and authority are entirely overshadowed by the ad hoc lines of control which arise naturally as each new city problem presents itself. These ad hoc lines depend on who is interested in the matter, who has what at stake, who has what favors to trade to whom. This structure, which is informal, working within the framework of the first, is what really controls public action. It varies from week to week, even from hour to hour, as one problem replaces another. Nobody’s sphere of influence is entirely under the control of any one superior; each person is under different influences as the problems change. Although the organization chart in the Mayor’s office is a tree, the actual control and exercise of authority is semilattice-like. Christopher Alexander, A City Is Not a Tree politicsteamworkorganization
The pie has been made "In today's world, boundaries are fixed, and most significant facts have been generated. Gentleman, the heroic frontier now lies in the ordering and deployment of those facts. Classification, organization, presentation. To put it another way, the pie has been made—the contest is now in the slicing." David Foster Wallace, The Pale King informationorganization
Rewarding Curation An Article by Wesley Aptekar-Cassels notebook.wesleyac.com Something interesting about the design of Twitter is that it doesn’t have much of a way of rewarding curation, only authorship. ...I’m inclined to think that the mechanisms of distribution of information are very important, and I think figuring out ways to reward good curation is probably an important thing. ...I don’t really know what the solution is here, but I do think that finding and curating good links and bits of information is useful, and something that should be rewarded more than it currently is. organizationcollectionscontent
Two types of work An Article by Jorge Arango jarango.com There are two types of work: growth work and maintenance work. Growth work involves making new things. It can be something big or small. In either case, growth work often follows a loose process. Maintenance work is different. Maintenance work involves caring for the resources and instruments that make growth work possible. This includes tools, but also body and mind. Maintenance is ultimately in service to growth. But effective growth can’t happen without maintenance. As with so many things, the ideal is a healthy balance — and it doesn’t come without struggle. organizationinformationmakingwork
Collaborative Information Architecture at Scale An Article by Brandon Dorn www.viget.com Here I describe an approach for defining new information architectures for large organizational websites managed by many stakeholder groups. Broadly speaking, there are four general phases to the approach: Auditing. Begin by immersing yourself in existing content and encourage stakeholders to adopt a critical, audience-minded perspective of their content. Diagramming. Work with stakeholders to develop new conceptual categories that better serve audiences and organizational direction. Elaborating. Think through content in detail and test new categories against specific instances and edge cases. Producing. Prepare content teams for production using a shared database of new sitemap pages and editorial considerations that you’ve developed incrementally. Half of design is facilitation The Ladder of AbstractionA Pattern Language decisionsorganizationpatternsanalytics
Structure, Substructure, and Superstructure An Essay from A Search for Structure by Cyril Stanley Smith The monotonous perfectionOn beauty bareIn a mass of large bubblesThe role of history in structuresA kind of moiré pattern+1 More
The monotonous perfection The mathematical physicist must simplify in order to get a manageable model, and although his concepts are of great beauty, they are austere in the extreme, and the more complicated crystal patterns observed by the metallurgist or geologist, being based on partly imperfect reality, often have a richer aesthetic content. Those who are concerned with structure on a super atomic scale find that there is more significance and interest in the imperfections in crystals than in the monotonous perfection of the crystal lattice itself. imperfectionsaesthetics
In a mass of large bubbles The froth, therefore, though lacking long-range symmetry, nevertheless has very definite rules as to its composition. It is pleasing in appearance because the eye senses this interplay between regularity and irregularity. symmetry
The role of history in structures Although the ideal crystal lattice of a substance at equilibrium depends only on its composition and temperature, all other aspects of the structure of a given bit of polycrystalline matter depends upon history…the manner in which the crystals impinge to produce the grain boundary as a new element of structure which itself changes shape in accordance with its properties and the particular local geometry resulting from historical accidents. Far more complex, but in principle similar, things occur in biological and social organizations. evolutiongrowth
A kind of moiré pattern Everything that we can see, everything that we can understand, is related to structure, and, as the gestalt psychologists have so beautifully shown, perception itself is in patterns, not fragments. All awareness or mental activity seems to involve the comparison of a sense or thought pattern with a preexisting one, a pattern formed in the brain’s physical structure by biological inheritance and the imprint of experience. Could it be that aesthetic enjoyment is the formation of a kind of moiré pattern between a newly sensed experience and the old; between the different parts of a sensed pattern transposed in space and in orientation and with variations in scale and time by the marvelous properties of the brain? It is what is left over when what is expected has been canceled out. structureaestheticsperception
From a roving viewpoint There is a kind of indeterminacy, quite different in essence from the famous principle of Heisenberg but just as effective in limiting our knowledge of nature, which lies in the fact that we can neither consciously sense nor think of much at any one moment. Understanding can only come from a roving viewpoint and sequential changes of scale of attention. Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction attentionunderstanding