Event: IA Salon
cut-down listing of the event and a recap; plus links to attendees' blogs
It was both baffling and obvious. Stewart Brand at the 2003 Information Architecture Summit? Well, why not? People interested in IA also tend to be fascinated by other wacky topics, like semiotics, applied anthropology, and building design and construction.
I don't expect to see any contributing editors from Fine Homebuilding Magazine at an IA conference, but when I heard Brand was going to be the keynote speaker this year I was able to say (once again) "Yes! I am in the right profession!"
Stewart Brand is famous for many things, including the Whole Earth Catalog
and the Long Now Foundation (with some spectacular ventures, including
the creation of the 10,000 Year Clock, and the Rosetta Project's compilation
of the world's largest collection of linguistic data).
But most people know Brand as the author of How Buildings Learn. This book is an empirical look at buildings as they change over time. It is also an insightful exploration into the kinds of things that create robust and adaptive systems (or obsolete and useless ones). It looks at these issues in a way that helps readers develop deep insights of their own into how all kinds of things might work. Java programmers, for instance, think the book is all about coding. Personally, I liked it for helping me understand my primal reactions to small vernacular houses. And for making me think about how orders of change might fit into the design of complex information systems like websites.