Intentionally Intensional Information Architecture — Dorian Taylor
Channel: dorian taylor
Date: 18/11/2017

Up until the computer came along, the only viable way to manage information was in document-sized chunks, arranged in hierarchical categories. Now that the computer is here—and has been for a while—we can afford much richer forms of organizing information, but don't seem to be using them nearly as much as we could. This, I suspect, is because we lack a simple concept, the thing that makes a category a category. That concept is intension.

Slides and bibliography are here: https://doriantaylor.com/ia-summit-2017


Recorded on March 24, 2017 at the Information Architecture Summit in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. This is a retouched version of the original recording, which can be found here: https://blueprintdigital.com/ia-summit-2017/dorian-taylor/

00:00 - this was peak land acknowledgement era but i meant it
00:40 - too much hierarchy, not enough overlap
01:14 - we make computers simulate pre-computer media
02:46 - where is my hypertext utopia?
03:00 - definitions: extension vs intension
04:16 - LATCH is for organizing documents
06:49 - constraints common to pre-computer media
07:31 - orientability
07:57 - planarity
08:49 - containment/mereology
09:02 - packing/tiling → relative geometry
09:41 - invertible (isomorphic) transformations → absolute geometry
10:50 - analogue transformations are expensive
11:38 - leading to big chunky basic units
13:15 - LATCH all the way up
14:02 - Dewey decimal is the precursor to RAM
15:30 - RAM represents the tape of a Turing machine
17:09 - except RAM is addressable down to the byte
17:48 - the units of computers are radically different
19:30 - where does data architecture stop and information architecture begin?
21:43 - the only verb a computer knows is "dereference"
23:52 - communication/comprehension as parsing/serialization
26:08 - inspiration: notes on the synthesis of form
28:10 - even a tea kettle is too complex for a prescriptive taxonomy
29:30 - if that problem exists with a kettle it could certainly exist on a website
30:35 - partitioning sets is what artificial intelligence is doing, although…
31:05 - if a computer can only dereference, the question is dereference WHAT?
32:32 - segue to early IBIS tool prototype demo
35:18 - end card / questions
38:24 - A/V company screws up and cuts off recording