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Information Anxiety
Information Anxiety offers a cure for the uneasiness most people feel daily as they're overwhelmed with facts and data pretending to be useful information. With simple, creative guidance, this book teaches readers how to learn what they want to learn from the media and other communication sources.
356 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 25, 2007
When this book came out in the 1980's it was a revelation. Wurman's groundbreaking ideas of information architecture became the gold standard of design and laid the groundwork for the massive onslaught of data and user interfaces we experience every day. We don't necessarily realize it, but every time we insert a DVD, visit a website, or walk up to an information kiosk we are experiencing good or bad user interface which relies on information architecture. The irony of this book is that to read it today is to experience the time gap between the eighties and the aughties. It's laid out as if you should flip through and find what you need - but you can't. The sidebars aren't very helpful, the humor is pretty corny, and the ideas have been expanded into all four dimensions as the web and computers have introduced depth and time-based navigation to user interface design. Still, Wurman exists as the Godfather of information architecture and his TED conferences are the vanguard of futurism. His groundbreaking book, however, now appears quaintly outdated.
August 16, 2014
A must read for every designer, a should read for everybody.
August 26, 2013
How on earth was this book written in the 1980s. So much groundbreaking information. A must read to all who struggle with information in the 21st century.
November 16, 2022
To me, this book lead to a humble acknowledgement that we are still vulnerable to this kind of anxiety (different but the same) and we can also continue to improve our relationships with information (it is encouraging).
“Learning is remembering what you are interested in.”
The 20+ page table of contents by John Naisbitt is an invitation to jump around the book following one’s own interests.
It kind of felt like a paper version of Wikipedia.
There were about a dozen topics that I found myself most compelled to read. In a way, it was reassuring to realize that people needed to hear these kinds of messages even back then. The struggle is real.
“One of the most anxiety-inducing side effects of the information era is the feeling that you have to know it all. Realizing your own limitations becomes essential to surviving an information avalanche; you cannot or should not absorb or even pay attention to everything. …. If you lack the resources or staff to sort for you, establish your own criteria.”
“Learning is remembering what you are interested in.”
The 20+ page table of contents by John Naisbitt is an invitation to jump around the book following one’s own interests.
It kind of felt like a paper version of Wikipedia.
There were about a dozen topics that I found myself most compelled to read. In a way, it was reassuring to realize that people needed to hear these kinds of messages even back then. The struggle is real.
“One of the most anxiety-inducing side effects of the information era is the feeling that you have to know it all. Realizing your own limitations becomes essential to surviving an information avalanche; you cannot or should not absorb or even pay attention to everything. …. If you lack the resources or staff to sort for you, establish your own criteria.”
June 22, 2009
It's difficult to read this now and imagine just how groundbreaking it was when it came out. To be certain, it's much better and more interesting than Information Anxiety 2, but I can't consider it a really great book reading it now.
What I found most interesting was that while I thought it would be more applicable to my current career as an information architect, I wished I would have read it while I was in the journalism world. Wurman includes some things on the news industry that made me wish he had made an attempt to actually interview more people in the news industry, particularly newspapers. But, he has some very interesting takes on being a news consumer that mostly outweighed his ignorance.
One final annoyance -- in a book titled "Information Anxiety," I found that the quotes and other bits strewn all over the margins made it difficult for me to decide whether to follow the main linear text or break off and read the quotes. Reading this book actually made me more anxious than most others I've read. At least, I suppose, I had the tools to recognize it.
What I found most interesting was that while I thought it would be more applicable to my current career as an information architect, I wished I would have read it while I was in the journalism world. Wurman includes some things on the news industry that made me wish he had made an attempt to actually interview more people in the news industry, particularly newspapers. But, he has some very interesting takes on being a news consumer that mostly outweighed his ignorance.
One final annoyance -- in a book titled "Information Anxiety," I found that the quotes and other bits strewn all over the margins made it difficult for me to decide whether to follow the main linear text or break off and read the quotes. Reading this book actually made me more anxious than most others I've read. At least, I suppose, I had the tools to recognize it.
March 23, 2008
a great idea - there is TOO MUCH information to deal with in our lives. this has only become more true with the development of the internet and the 24 hour cable news stations. the question is: what does (or can) one do?
if an answer is in this book, i have not found it...
if an answer is in this book, i have not found it...
May 10, 2008
The author discusses the feelings of anxiety and stress that can present themselves when we are constantly bombarded by information at a speed to fast to process it all. At the time it was written, the format of this book was really fresh.
March 28, 2010
This book makes some thought-provoking points, but I found it really hard to read straight through. Apparently that's intentional, and you're supposed to skip around. Some of it also seems really dated now, although quite a bit is still relevant.
July 1, 2012
An interesting and influential book written in 1989 about data and information and the challenges about what we now call "big data."
February 28, 2018
I read this originally as part of my doctoral program in instructional technology. It is a great book and well worth reading for anyone involved in education, technology or marketing.
July 26, 2020
(1)
• telltale signs of information anxiety: a checklist p 35
Perhaps the three principles closest to my heart - and the most radical - are : 1. Learning to accept your ignorance 2. Paying more attention to the question than the answer 3. Never being afraid to go in an opposite direction to find a solution. P 47
We need understanding businesses devoted to making information accessible and comprehensible; we need new ways of interpreting the data that increasingly directs our lives and new models for making it usable and unserstandable, for transforming it into information. We need to re-educate the people who generate information to improve it's performance, and we, as consumers, must become more adroit as receivers if we are ever to recover from information anxiety. P 50
(2)
But the most essential prerequisite to understanding is to be able to admit when you don't understand something. Being able to admit that you don't know is liberating. Giving yourself permission not to know everything will make you relax, which is the ideal frame of the mind to receive new information. You must be comfortable to really listen, to really hear new information.
When you can admit to ignorance, you will realize that is ignorance isn't exactly bliss, it is an ideal state from which to learn. The fewer preconceptions you have about not knowing, the more you will increase your ability to understand and learn.
...
When you admit that you don't know, you are more likely to ask the questions that will enable you to learn. When you don't have to filter your inquisitiveness through a smokescreen of intellectual posturing, you can genuinely receive or listen to new information. If you are always trying to disguise your ignorance of a subject, you will be distracted from understanding it.
By giving yourself permission not to know, you can overcome the fear that your ignorance will be discovered. The inquisitiveness essential to learning thrives on transcending fear.
Yes this essential prerequisite to learning is a radical concept in our society. As there are few rewards and abundant punishments for admitting ignorance on a personal or professional level in out culture, we go to great lengths to make a lack of understanding. P 54
The focus on bravado and competition in our society has helped breed into us the idea that it is impolitic, or at least impolite, to say "I don't understand" p 54
While numerous fields are involved with the storage and transmission of information, virtually none is devoted to translating it into understandable forms for the general public. As the only means we have of comprehending information are through words, numbers, and pictures, the two professions that primarily determine how we receive it are writing and graphic design. Yet the orientation and training in both fields are more preoccupied with stylistic and aesthetic concerns. P 55
Even if the needle is all that you need, it will behoove you to know how the hay is organized. P 59
The ways of organizing information are finite. It can only be organized by 1 category 2 time 3 location 4 alphabet 5 continuum. ... Your choice will be determined by the story you want to tell. Each way will permit a different understanding of the information. P 59
*** Charles Eames created and exhibit on Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin that was done as a timeline where the viewers could see who was doing what when . P 60
Each way I arrange these dogs tells you something different about them; each mode of organization provides additional information. The creative organization of information creates new information. P 70
I see things in terms of opposites. * I rather worship the space between things, the silence between good friends, the time between the notes of music, the break during a conference, the space between buildings, negative space. * I love the space on my desk better than the objects themselves. It makes me see clearer. That is the yin/yang. The opposites of things are just so much more fascinating than the things themselves. ... I look for a solution which has a valid oppositeness. Not a "different way" of looking at things, but an opposite way. P 72
...a way of finding solutions via the hegelian formula of thesis versus antithesis yelds synthesis. P 73
Originality is in the origins. P 81
There are many how's but only one what. What drives the how's. You must always ask the question "what is" before you ask the question "how to" ... Desert drinking water example. Hands cup spoon straw. P 81
(3)
The art of listening - allow a pause after the person has finished speaking before leaping with your response. Don't be afraid of silence; people often reveal the essence of what they're trying to say after a pause. P 86
The whole apprenticeship system of education, sadly nearing extinction today, us based in the beauty of conversation, of the wise and experience imparting wisdom to the young through the medium of an extended conversation that unfolds in the workplace. // I think we don't use conversation as a model because it is so obvious and so natural that we don't see it's perfection of form. It doesn't seem pure, or elegant, since it is always adjusting; it is changing it's emphasis, it's level of detail. It is not consistent, it is not the way you are taught to write, but it is exactly the way you think. P 93
(4)
[contn'd on physical copy]
• telltale signs of information anxiety: a checklist p 35
Perhaps the three principles closest to my heart - and the most radical - are : 1. Learning to accept your ignorance 2. Paying more attention to the question than the answer 3. Never being afraid to go in an opposite direction to find a solution. P 47
We need understanding businesses devoted to making information accessible and comprehensible; we need new ways of interpreting the data that increasingly directs our lives and new models for making it usable and unserstandable, for transforming it into information. We need to re-educate the people who generate information to improve it's performance, and we, as consumers, must become more adroit as receivers if we are ever to recover from information anxiety. P 50
(2)
But the most essential prerequisite to understanding is to be able to admit when you don't understand something. Being able to admit that you don't know is liberating. Giving yourself permission not to know everything will make you relax, which is the ideal frame of the mind to receive new information. You must be comfortable to really listen, to really hear new information.
When you can admit to ignorance, you will realize that is ignorance isn't exactly bliss, it is an ideal state from which to learn. The fewer preconceptions you have about not knowing, the more you will increase your ability to understand and learn.
...
When you admit that you don't know, you are more likely to ask the questions that will enable you to learn. When you don't have to filter your inquisitiveness through a smokescreen of intellectual posturing, you can genuinely receive or listen to new information. If you are always trying to disguise your ignorance of a subject, you will be distracted from understanding it.
By giving yourself permission not to know, you can overcome the fear that your ignorance will be discovered. The inquisitiveness essential to learning thrives on transcending fear.
Yes this essential prerequisite to learning is a radical concept in our society. As there are few rewards and abundant punishments for admitting ignorance on a personal or professional level in out culture, we go to great lengths to make a lack of understanding. P 54
The focus on bravado and competition in our society has helped breed into us the idea that it is impolitic, or at least impolite, to say "I don't understand" p 54
While numerous fields are involved with the storage and transmission of information, virtually none is devoted to translating it into understandable forms for the general public. As the only means we have of comprehending information are through words, numbers, and pictures, the two professions that primarily determine how we receive it are writing and graphic design. Yet the orientation and training in both fields are more preoccupied with stylistic and aesthetic concerns. P 55
Even if the needle is all that you need, it will behoove you to know how the hay is organized. P 59
The ways of organizing information are finite. It can only be organized by 1 category 2 time 3 location 4 alphabet 5 continuum. ... Your choice will be determined by the story you want to tell. Each way will permit a different understanding of the information. P 59
*** Charles Eames created and exhibit on Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin that was done as a timeline where the viewers could see who was doing what when . P 60
Each way I arrange these dogs tells you something different about them; each mode of organization provides additional information. The creative organization of information creates new information. P 70
I see things in terms of opposites. * I rather worship the space between things, the silence between good friends, the time between the notes of music, the break during a conference, the space between buildings, negative space. * I love the space on my desk better than the objects themselves. It makes me see clearer. That is the yin/yang. The opposites of things are just so much more fascinating than the things themselves. ... I look for a solution which has a valid oppositeness. Not a "different way" of looking at things, but an opposite way. P 72
...a way of finding solutions via the hegelian formula of thesis versus antithesis yelds synthesis. P 73
Originality is in the origins. P 81
There are many how's but only one what. What drives the how's. You must always ask the question "what is" before you ask the question "how to" ... Desert drinking water example. Hands cup spoon straw. P 81
(3)
The art of listening - allow a pause after the person has finished speaking before leaping with your response. Don't be afraid of silence; people often reveal the essence of what they're trying to say after a pause. P 86
The whole apprenticeship system of education, sadly nearing extinction today, us based in the beauty of conversation, of the wise and experience imparting wisdom to the young through the medium of an extended conversation that unfolds in the workplace. // I think we don't use conversation as a model because it is so obvious and so natural that we don't see it's perfection of form. It doesn't seem pure, or elegant, since it is always adjusting; it is changing it's emphasis, it's level of detail. It is not consistent, it is not the way you are taught to write, but it is exactly the way you think. P 93
(4)
[contn'd on physical copy]
April 10, 2020
This early essay by the founder of TED Talks is bold for its time in both layout and thesis: Information smothers more than serves us. It is a welcome reminder that most of the problems we encounter today predate a democratized internet, which only catalyzed them.
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February 28, 2023Information Anxiety by Richard Saul Wurman (1989)
January 6, 2015
Ahora entiendo por qué es un clásico para diseñadores, administradores y creativos. Tiene información que también resulta muy valiosa para cualquier ser humano que se sienta comprometido por tanta información que le rodea.
Wurman nos ofrece reflexiones sobre este tema y un modelo a seguir sobre el cual uno sería capaz de sacar el mayor provecho a la información, a enfocarse en datos relevantes hacia su vida y profesión, además de aligerar una gran carga de ansiedad que produce estar rodeado de tanta información.
Es una lectura obligada para 'diseñadores de información'.
Wurman nos ofrece reflexiones sobre este tema y un modelo a seguir sobre el cual uno sería capaz de sacar el mayor provecho a la información, a enfocarse en datos relevantes hacia su vida y profesión, además de aligerar una gran carga de ansiedad que produce estar rodeado de tanta información.
Es una lectura obligada para 'diseñadores de información'.
April 29, 2016
This book gave me information anxiety.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews