Blog

A word to the wise: as of Jan 2010, the posts you see over here are just quick outlines we noted down before we forgot about them. Most of the stuff is still buried in our personal files or written in some horribly overused moleskine. Hence, they may read a little on the esoteric side. Just wait. Let us post some more thoughtful stuff. Then you'll see what esoteric means.

The Vertigo of Lists

The Vertigo of Lists: Reflecting on this enormous trove of human achievements, in his lyrical intellectual style Eco has embarked on an investigation of the phenomenon of cataloging and collecting. From Homer to Joyce to Borges, Eco explores the crucial issue of the coherence / consistency of a classification system at the crossroads of epistemology, semiology and information science. For our book purposes, this essay gives an important contribution to the topic / heuristic of consistency (see Table of contents).

Posted: December 18th, 2009 | Author: Luca | | Tags: case studies, classification, consistency, lists | Comments

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Salience and Taxonomy Change

Salience and Taxonomy Change: Every now and then the principles on which a taxonomy is organised will change fundamentally, because there is a new way of working. This is happening at the moment with solid cancers, which are currently classified by the parts of the body in which they originate. The salient organising principle is no longer location, but mechanism. It’s not that a classification by location is wrong, it’s just not especially useful any more.

Posted: December 8th, 2009 | Author: Luca | | Tags: consistency, healthcare, taxonomy change | Comments

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The removal of the Broad Street pump handle

A few interesting notes on our friend John Snow and the removal of the Broad Street pump handle

Posted: December 5th, 2009 | Author: Andrea | | Tags: broadstreet, cholera, correlation, london, network, pump, storytelling | Comments

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“I had an interview with the Board of Guardians …”

“I had an interview with the Board of Guardians of St. James’s parish, on the evening of Thursday, 7th September, and represented the above circumstances to them. In consequence of what I said, the handle of the pump was removed on the following day.” - John Snow and the removal of the Broad Street pump handle

Posted: December 5th, 2009 | Author: Andrea | | Tags: cholera, correlation, london, network, pump, snow | Comments

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The Broad Street Pump Outbreak

“There were many other factors that led Snow to isolate the cause of the cholera to the Broad Street pump. For instance, of the 530 inmates of the Poland Street workhouse, which was only round the corner, only five people had contracted cholera; but no one from the workhouse drank the pump water, for the building had its own well. Among the 70 workers in a Broad Street brewery, where the men were given an allowance of free beer every day and so never drank water at all, there were no fatalities at all. And an army officer living in St John’s Wood had died after dining in Wardour Street, where he too had drunk a glass of water from the Broad Street well.” - Broad Street Pump Outbreak

Posted: December 5th, 2009 | Author: Andrea | | Tags: broadstreet, cholera, correlation, london, network, outbreak, pump | Comments

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Setting up the whole she-bang

Well, it seems we are finally there, book’s wheels rolling (metaphorically speaking), and we settled on Tumblr as our tool of choice for collecting sources, resources, and loose snippets while we go. So, that’s it: we hereby declare this blog/repository/thing the official companion web site for the Pervasive Information Architecture book. And welcome. More posts and more details to come.

Posted: December 2nd, 2009 | Author: Andrea | | Comments

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