Interview with Richard Saul Wurman - Part 1
Part one of my first interview with RSW. In this introductory segment I asked him about the 1976 AIA Conference (I posted a PDF of the advance program from this milestone in the history of Information Architecture a few weeks ago), about the job-title “information architect” and also about librarianship as it pertains (or not) to his concept of IA. Many more segments to follow!
I was passionate about understanding things that I didn’t understand. Making the complex clear. I haven’t wavered in that passion, but I’ve grown up with adding more and more to my repertoire as far as making it a definable field for myself and rules for how to do it.
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Great interview!
merci! it gets better as we go… especially the part where he advised “rewire your f***ing brain!”
Oooh, I love the bit about cartography being the mapping of all information. I wonder how I could spin that into my own pursuit of librarianship.
What was it that RSW said about doing something more than other people at about 00:57?
I can’t wait to hear the “rewire your f***ing brain” part!
He said that he understands his own ignorance and the things he *doesn’t know* mo-better than other people. The rest of us are obsessed with acquiring expertise and getting people to hire us as experts. RSW’s approach is quite the opposite. And takes alot more balls (or whatever gonads one has handy)…
In his Information Architecture 3.0 seminar at the IA Summit earlier this month, Peter Morville talked about IA and Findability in terms of equipping ourselves to know what we don’t know, and protect against the unknown-unknowns a-la Donald Rumsfeld. There are probably mappings to be made between what RSW is talking about with the advantage of working from a place of not knowing and what Rummy and Peter are talking about.
Dude. Post more now!
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Nice. Thanks! Links to put all 4 parts together