The architect's mandate for the coming century doesn't involve girders, bricks, or mortar -- the most important constructions to be built in the forseeable future will be those that allow people to negotiate the ever-increasing flood of data disgorged daily from... [more]

The architect's mandate for the coming century doesn't involve girders, bricks, or mortar -- the most important constructions to be built in the forseeable future will be those that allow people to negotiate the ever-increasing flood of data disgorged daily from an ever-increasing number of outlets. According to Richard Saul Wurman, the crucial emerging profession of the twenty-first century is that of information architect. Having made the transition from drawing blueprints to creating information maps for various areas of knowledge, Wurman places great store in the science of information organization. He describes information as a tsunami crashing onto the beaches of contemporary civilization. Without a plan, without a guide with which to negotiate the onrushing stream of data, we will need more than the false confidence gleaned from mastering our laptops to avoid foundering. Thus far, the improvements in maps, graphs, charts, tables, directories, and the other visual guides we all regularly rely on have received little notice. As Edward Tufte, author of "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information," points out, there is no "Museum of Cognitive Art." Still, Tufte, Wurman, and other forward-thinking designers are bent on eliminating "chart-junk" from our visual landscape and reducing our collectively felt information anxiety. The subduing of seemingly unmanageable amounts of data and its presentation in a digestible form ultimately hinge on the innovations of information architects -- those who would show us, in Tufte's words, "how to put the right mark in the right place." [show less]