Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything
This is a book about everything. Or, to be precise, it explores how everything is connected from code to culture. We think we’re designing software, services, and experiences, but we’re not. We are intervening in ecosystems. Until we open our minds, we will forever repeat our mistakes. In this spirited tour of information architecture and systems thinking, Peter Morville connects the dots between authority, Buddhism, classification, synesthesia, quantum entanglement, and volleyball. In 1974 when Ted Nelson wrote “everything is deeply intertwingled,” he hoped we might realize the true potential of hypertext and cognition. This book follows naturally from that.
Reviews of the book at Goodreads
Here is one of the reviews
Here is one of the reviews from Goodreads: (I point out this review because I also read Ambient Findability and did not get much out of it)
I am an unabashed fan of “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web,” which Morville wrote with Lou Rosenfeld. A few years ago, I read “Ambient Findability” from Morville and was deeply disappointed — it was all elaborate and fluffy theory, with no practical relevance.
Almost unbelievably, this book is worse.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the hell Morville is talking about. The book is part IA, part philosophy. Morville talks about Bhuddism a lot, both explicitly and in reference to concepts. His main point seems to be that all information is…muddled together? Complicated? Messy? Imperfect? At least, I think that’s the point he was trying to make.
There’s only five chapters and it’s a quick read. The only reason I’m not giving this one star is because the chapter on “culture” seems to make a little sense. And it’s the only chapter where he seems to actually be talking about information science at all.
If there was a larger point to this book other than the obvious point that information is complicated and messy, then I completely missed it.