What was information architecture

Attention is a sparse resource, in particular in the blogsphere, so I guess when Joshua Porter declared that information architecture is dying, he was partly angling for attention, provoking, and making a statement. And he sure got attention.

I’m not the one to bring IA to its grave, but I think the topic is relevant in some respect. In the IA community related discussions have been going on. E.g. at the Euro IA summit this year, where a major topic in the corridors were, whether IAs were dividing into two groups strategists and “?? IAs”. A spin-off of Joshua Porter’s post has (yet again) opened a discussion about the relevance of the title of information architect (see David Armano’s blog). The most interesting debate on this topic can be found on Adam Greenfield’s blog (be sure to read the comments, where many of the nobilities of the community express their view).

Summing up I’m surprised how relatively many people who seem to have a problem with the title of information architect, express frustration with the way the trade is evolving, and seemingly find it difficult to identify with the IA community. Check out the vivid debates for yourself.

I, for my part, believe the IA trade is falling apart or dividing into multiple disciplines, as I have here in previous posts and over at Armano’s blog. It will be exciting to see if the third edition of the polar bear book will appear as the bible collecting the crowd of all IAs, or it will be a cry from the grave. 

Comments

[Peter Morville]

Nice work with the book cover, Stig ;-)

Here are my thoughts:

http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000149.php

Cheers!