Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything

Intertwingled is a good read by a thoughtful and successful info architect grappling with the meaning of the work he performs. As other reviewers have mentioned, it's a not an instruction manual and it doesn't provide many specific methods for the practice of info architecture. There's other resources for this. Rather it is a deeply personal consideration of the discipline of information architecture recontextualized within the broader sphere of systems thinking, and for that matter, life in general. The author makes many keen insights and illustrates them with personal anecdotes while slowly weaving them into a larger philosophical tapestry of interconnectedness. My only complaint is that some the examples in the last chapter about health, fitness, cycling, and diet--though I agree with his viewpoint on these issues--seemed a bit tangential and thus didn't drive home the points he was intending to illustrate as effectively as I would have hoped. All in all, a good read for all info architects and systems thinkers. Recommended.

Peter Morville takes the reader by the hand and brings them along this journey to see how information and systems connect and mix together. His writing is accessible and takes care to make complex ideas understandable. Anyone interested to tell better stories about information will be helped by reading and thinking about what Morville says. I especially think library and information school students, librarians, archivists, information architects should read this book. Many professions want to use data to tell better stories and this book is a tool guide to help think through important ideas to help do exactly that.

I've enjoyed Mr. Morville's perspectives on his field as a consultant, coming as he does does from a Library Science background. He admits off the bat that the concept he's trying to convey with this book may be biting off more than he can chew. It was a good read, but I think the universal points he was trying to make about the interconnectedness (OK, intertwingledness) of everything didn't readily follow from the corporate perspective of his consulting, and vice versa. I'd recommend it to those in the field, but I wouldn't say it's required reading.

The ground covered here forms a predicate, systemic-contextual funnel from which a more reasoned approach towards information management should be pursued. This is very rational and actionable even as it is thought-provoking, meta-conceptual stuff. No one should devise, develop, deploy, implement, oversee or maintain any information management system without being previously informed by this text. Beyond professional Information architects, this includes the implementation of any personal information management by any professional knowledge worker as all PIMs will be enriched by the notions shared here. I fully endorse this book.

Information isn't singular. Boundaries are artificial, and not particularly helpful. Understanding comes through withstanding inputs crashing from all directions. This is the premise that Morville beautifully illustrates in Intertwingled. The book rambles from personal memoir to philosophy to information management treatise. Chapter markers are artificial. Understanding comes through assimilating Morville's varied inputs. It's a worthy effort.

After wading through this quite confusing book, I arrived at the conclusion that the author must have gone through quite a few bottles of red while he wrote it. It's the only reason I can think of to explain the seemingly pointless lurching from one unrelated topic to the next. I guess an argument could be made that the author was in a brilliant yet subtle way trying to make the point that indeed, everything is connected to everything else if you look hard enough and that to try and impose your view of the world on other people is a big mistake. Especially if you are developing information structures to help people find what they want. While I would agree with this premise (assuming that was point), I really did find the book difficult to follow and found myself constantly asking the question 'What is he talking about and what has this go to do with anything?'

I couldn't make it through this book. I bought it based on a few reviews and previous works, but the reviews describing it as a collection of meandering anecdotes is where my thoughts fall as well. If you are looking for a philosophical book without hard evidence or solid examples, it might prove an interesting read, but for me it was just not what I thought it would be and only made it through 2 chapters before skimming the rest. Even from a philosophical read standpoint, it really lacked a narrative thread 2/5 of the way through.

Peter Morville verbalized the anxiety of the fussy world that we live, where no unique button, sign, text or even a chat is out of context.

This book is immensely enjoyable and quoteable, both on a personal level and a professional level.In an easy-to-read and effortless manner the book interweaves stories from Aristotle, Descartes, Hippocrates, Russell Ackoff, Donella Meadows, Christopher Alexander, Buddha, Paul Hiebert, Stewart Brand, Nassim Taleb, Edgar Schein, Geert Hofstede and many more.Along the way, we learn (bits) about ecosystems, communities, ecology, the 'cost of free,' the fallacy of reductionism, ontology and taxonomy, embodied cognition, semiotics, infoscenting, fuzzy sets, agile, lean, modelling, architecting, systems thinking, metrics, double-loop learning, ethnography, the importance of symbols, positive deviant behaviour, liminality, and much more.And all this while covering, albeit largely on a philosophical level, some UX/Information Architecture 101 like navigation, categorisation and search.My two favourite bits of the book were1) The statement that "change is not the only constant." Given that all 'management' books/presentations/blogs *ever* start with some tired variant of 'change is the only constant,' it was great to hear the opposite.2) The chapter on Culture. Professionally, culture is important. This chapter though answers "what can I do to better understand/leverage culture?" and has some great references for further learning. I found this 'practical' treatment of culture refreshing.The only gripe I have about this book is the slight hypocrisy regarding 'findability' of information. It emphasises the importance of findability of information and yet, in the Kindle version:1) The "Go To" function is disabled2) There is no index (only a very high level contents page)3) Some of the references are not references. E.g. we are referred to "Managing Emergence by Marc Rettig (2014)" ... but what is this? A book? A blog? A video? A song? You'll have to google to find that out. As you will with several of the other references.

This wasn't what I was expecting. I have read all of Peter's previous books and was excited to see that he had used Ted Nelson's famous word "Intertwingled" as a title. I devoured the book in one reading and consider it to be nothing less than a reboot of the Information Architecture field.Peter has written with such openness and honesty that he is able to connect with the reader in a very human, personal and humble manner. He has managed to reflect on his experience of shaping and working in the field of Information Architecture in a way that makes you think without being too preachy.Some of my favourite quotes (so far):"In such a big organization, you can't change the system from within a silo. It was painful to see the problem so clearly but have no path to a solution."This is a very valuable lesson that anyone who works with large organisations needs to learn as soon as possible."Information architecture is an intervention. It disturbs an established system. To make change that lasts, we must look for the levers and find the right fit. If we fight culture, it will fight back and usually win. But if we look deeper, and if we're open to changing ourselves, we may see how culture can help."This might sound a bit touchy-feely for us stiff-upper-lip Brits (Peter was born in Manchester by the way), but I think that this is the key message from the book for me."Taxonomies are treacherous because the easier they are to use, the harder they are to see. We grab handles without scanning contents. We trust labels without knowing origin."Always understand the source of the information and keep asking questions."Like maps, words are traps. We must speak carefully since we think what we say. The order of operations makes a difference; that's why process is key."Information cannot be separated from the process and always surfaces in the context of its own story."I wallow in data of all sorts and talk to people from all walks.""We should use our categories and connections to reveal the hidden assumptions of culture; and sketch links and loops to explore the latent potential of systems; and realize mental models by drawing them outside our heads."I have taken the text from the book and counted all of the words to produce this 'map' of the top ten words that appear in the book. It's telling that people and culture appear in the top ten.194 system(s)180 information132 culture111 change110 people103 time 85 work 82 know 72 design 66 new

Very few people have attempted to explain why and how we create information, and how and why we use it. Alex Wright, James Gleick and Luciano Floridi have made important contributions and now they are joined by Peter Morville with Intertwingled. This book will not help you build a better enterprise social network or design a new information architecture for your website. The key to understanding why you should read Intertwingled is the tag line of “Information Changes Everything”. Peter seeks to explain why this is so and what the implications are for originators and users of information. He takes the reader on a journey that is only matched by a London taxi driver explaining the street architecture of London and getting you to a destination by a route you will certainly enjoy but would never have thought of using. Along the way you will see both familiar and unfamiliar buildings and spaces.So it is with this book. I’m not even going to list out the chapter headings. You won’t understand them out of context and you don’t need them to understand the book or justify its purchase. It is a intertwining of Peter’s personal and professional journeys. I know just why he wrote it and have great admiration for his generosity in doing so. This could not have been an easy book to write. It is written by someone with the gifts of a renaissance writer, able to bring together seemingly very disparate elements in creating an illuminating (though not illuminated!) manuscript. You should plan on reading this book several times at the outset of your ownership, and then again at intervals in the future. It will make you think time and time again about how you are using information to communicate and inform and whether there is a better way. Indirectly you may well end up with a better social network or information architecture.Peter draws on the work of many writers, thinkers and practitioners in his journey through a world of intertwingled facets of information. I strongly recommend you take the journey with him. So many of us live in the information silos we have created for ourselves, each a “sceptred isle”. This book will offer you a different perspective on everything that you do because information changes everything.

If you're interested in information architecture and science as well as the bigger picture beyond tech and the web for knowledge and understanding, this is the book you need to read. Very readable, very well researched with fantastic sources, highly recommended. Also recommend Ambient Findability by Peter Morville, (O Reilly Media, 2005).

This book made a number of interesting points that caused me to reflect on a personal and professional level. It was easy and enjoyable to read.The reason for four stars rather than five is that I didn't feel like the book ever got to a specific point. It convinced me that everything is interwingled, but didn't offer much in the way of direction to what I could do with that information.