- From: Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 10:57:46 -0400
- To: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>
- Cc: "'Tim Berners-Lee'" <timbl@w3.org>, "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@apache.org>, "Ian B. Jacobs" <ij@w3.org>, www-tag@w3.org
> "Information space" still has a mystical incantation
> kind of feel.
+1
Google does not suggest it's a well-understood term. For instance, we
have Clay Shirky saying, in a class syllabus for "Thinking about
Networks":
Week 4. Visualizing Networks I
What is "information space"? How can you visualize an
N-dimensional network in 2D space? 3D space? What visual tools
and techniques are there for representing networks?
-- http://stage.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/~cs97/tan/#classes
I don't know what Dr. Shirky thinks "information space" is, but the
fact that he puts scare quotes around it, and covers it under
visualization, suggests he's using it differently from the TAG.
When last I visitted this topic, I came up with an informal
definition...
The idea of an information space is that information can be
collected into units, and these units can be arranged to
somehow be navigable.
-- http://www.w3.org/2002/11/webarch4/v3.html
... but without such a definition, I think using the term does more
harm than good.
-- sandro
Received on Wednesday, 24 September 2003 10:57:34 UTC