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    Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become
    Unavailable
    Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become
    Unavailable
    Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become
    Ebook206 pages3 hours

    Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become

    By Peter Morville

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    How do you find your way in an age of information overload? How can you filter streams of complex information to pull out only what you want? Why does it matter how information is structured when Google seems to magically bring up the right answer to your questions? What does it mean to be "findable" in this day and age? This eye-opening new book examines the convergence of information and connectivity. Written by Peter Morville, author of the groundbreaking Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, the book defines our current age as a state of unlimited findability. In other words, anyone can find anything at any time. Complete navigability.

    Morville discusses the Internet, GIS, and other network technologies that are coming together to make unlimited findability possible. He explores how the melding of these innovations impacts society, since Web access is now a standard requirement for successful people and businesses. But before he does that, Morville looks back at the history of wayfinding and human evolution, suggesting that our fear of being lost has driven us to create maps, charts, and now, the mobile Internet.

    The book's central thesis is that information literacy, information architecture, and usability are all critical components of this new world order. Hand in hand with that is the contention that only by planning and designing the best possible software, devices, and Internet, will we be able to maintain this connectivity in the future. Morville's book is highlighted with full color illustrations and rich examples that bring his prose to life.

    Ambient Findability doesn't preach or pretend to know all the answers. Instead, it presents research, stories, and examples in support of its novel ideas. Are we truly at a critical point in our evolution where the quality of our digital networks will dictate how we behave as a species? Is findability indeed the primary key to a successful global marketplace in the 21st century and beyond. Peter Morville takes you on a thought-provoking tour of these memes and more -- ideas that will not only fascinate but will stir your creativity in practical ways that you can apply to your work immediately.

    "A lively, enjoyable and informative tour of a topic that's only going to become more important."
    --David Weinberger, Author, Small Pieces Loosely Joined and The Cluetrain Manifesto

    "I envy the young scholar who finds this inventive book, by whatever strange means are necessary. The future isn't just unwritten--it's unsearched."
    --Bruce Sterling, Writer, Futurist, and Co-Founder, The Electronic Frontier Foundation

    "Search engine marketing is the hottest thing in Internet business, and deservedly so. Ambient Findability puts SEM into a broader context and provides deeper insights into human behavior. This book will help you grow your online business in a world where being found is not at all certain."
    --Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., Author, Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity

    "Information that's hard to find will remain information that's hardly found--from one of the fathers of the discipline of information architecture, and one of its most experienced practitioners, come penetrating observations on why findability is elusive and how the act of seeking changes us."
    --Steve Papa, Founder and Chairman, Endeca

    "Whether it's a fact or a figure, a person or a place, Peter Morville knows how to make it findable. Morville explores the possibilities of a world where everything can always be found--and the challenges in getting there--in this wide-ranging, thought-provoking book."
    --Jesse James Garrett, Author, The Elements of User Experience

    "It is easy to assume that current searching of the World Wide Web is the last word in finding and using information. Peter Morville shows us that search engines are just the be

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherO'Reilly Media, Inc.
    Release dateSep 26, 2005
    ISBN9780596152802
    Unavailable
    Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become

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    Reviews for Ambient Findability

    4/5

    319 ratings12 reviews

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    • 2/5
      A basic, non-technical introduction to location-based computing. Essentially, it's a list of examples. O'Reilly is known for much more thorough, detailed treatments of technical subjects. I expected a lot more. Plus, it could have used an editor. Morville's writing is tedious, and he wanders WAY off-topic, at times venturing into the land of his family problems. Things got weird.
    • 4/5
      I found Ambient Findability a free-wheeling discussion around "information". What it means to for it to be accessible, how limitations of search lead to the balkanization of memes, and how network culture is changing the idea of an authority (and not necessarily for the better).
    • 4/5
      I serendipitously read this book at just the right time. The discussion of information organisation, metadata and cataloguing is great. Very readable, but a bit repetitive.
    • 5/5
      This is the book that has most influenced my thinking about my profession. Probably ever. I've sort of been coming to see books as boundary objects - as objects that connect people or concepts (like on this site) - for a while now and think that libraries need to make much more of the social networking power of books. This book gave me some vocabulary for these concepts but (although it's written by a librarian and I read it as a librarian) this is much more than a library book. It basically explains a number of concepts that are all converging to create a situation where objects (like books), people, anything, will be ambiently findable. The findability will be built in. A number of concepts are explained. Ubiquitous computing (the techie side of things); the long-tail (the economic forces that will drive these developments); spimes (objects that have precise history, that can be precisely tracked in time and space); and boundary objects (objects that sit on the boundary between two concepts). I'll be following up on some of the books referenced in this later to try and get a better understanding but I think this is the one that really pulls everything together. The author has a really good view of where these concepts are coming together and what the implications are. Brilliant.
    • 5/5
      A book of many small pieces loosely joined, which covers a history of wayfinding from pre-history to the web; the birth and importance of Human Information Interaction,;mashups online and the emergence of online--real-life mashups; marketing, information overload, and IA; the potentials and problems of the semantic web; and the difficulties of decision making. Each piece feels strangely juxtaposed with the others, but the book comes together coherently and explains many of the problems of information overload and our modern information age, as well as proposing theoretical and practical solutions.
    • 3/5
      I really wanted to like this book, but I couldn't get any real meaning out of it. While there were some good parts (his analysis of Taxonomy vs. Folksonomy was interesting), for the most part this book fell flat.It might be because I had already read alot of what the author cited (Freakonomics, Gladwell, Wisdom of Crowds) and had processed it myself.
    • 5/5
      A very exciting book. It didn't so much revel new ideas to me as it made sense (and a lot of it) out of all the web 2.0 buzz and hype. I bought it for my Dad as a gift, and then borrowed it from him. Once I gave it back, I bought my own and read it again. Hopefully it will have a second edition when the time comes.
    • 2/5
      A disappointing attempt at defining search and findability. If you're interested in SEO, or building your own search engine, this book has little value.Most of it is pure fluff, with little in the way of either original thought or actionable information. Instead, it strings together hackneyed web 2.0 truisms, irrelevant tidbits, and famous names/brands of the internet.
    • 2/5
      This book provides a lot of interesting factoids and probably fodder for some though-provoking conversation. However, I'm not entirely sure what the point of this book is and who its intended audience really is. It doesn't seem to have a goal in mind, more just information for information's sake.
    • 5/5
      Ambient Findability by Peter Morville is often used as a textbook in the reference course I took. The professor I took it from didn't include the book but the title and the fact that it was published by O'Reilly Media piqued my interest enough to want to read it as the class was starting up.Although the description mentions information overload, the book isn't really about that. It's about how information and people hook up. There is the information that one seeks and that which falls into one's lap.Morville begins his book by wondering how the reader has come across his book. He goes on to wonder if anyone will find his book.Much of the book is a discussion on techniques of cataloguing information so it can be found again. It isn't though an SEO recipe book. Instead it is a call for professionalism, consistency and intelligence behind how information is gathered, sorted and marked for retrieval.I read a library book via interlibrary loan. Someday I would like my own copy.
    • 4/5
      Morville covers a lot of ground for such a slim book, and he fails to integrate the material in a coherent way. His treatment of many subjects is superficial, and sometimes it's unclear whether that's because he lacks a deep understanding or because he just doesn't have the room to be more comprehensive; indeed, sometimes he seems to be name-checking for the hell of it. (Korzybski is relevant, I'll grant you, but we really needed those Escher pictures?) Nor does he get around to saying anything that's truly new: when he isn't summarizing someone else's research, he drifts into pie-eyed generalities that rival the worst of Wired magazine's excesses.Having said that, Morville seems to be the kind of interesting guy who's interested in a lot of interesting things, and his passion for his subject does come through. As an annotated bibliography, Ambient Findability could keep someone new to this subject busy for a long, long time. I've read about half the books and papers he cites, but I suspect I'll be buying a few more books as a direct result of reading this one.In short, Morville gets props for being out front in putting some of these ideas together in dead tree form. But the classic in this field has yet to be written.[2005-12-03]
    • 4/5
      I used this book before for my course on information architecture but I also found it now relevant for my research on categorisation of information objects. I think this can be used in combination with his first book, ÂInformation Architecture for the WWWÂ. In this book, Morville (2005, p. 139) argues that Âontologies, taxonomies, and folksonomies are not mutually exclusiveÂ. However a closer examination of this book shows that Morville is rather a staunchest critic of user-generated metadata approaches. He likes to call it mob indexing, a term which shows a certain intended bias against socially-generated metadata approaches. Plus, he tries to delineate that such metadata has its appropriate place in the blogosphere and social media environments and not entirely in portals and digital libraries. Overall, this is an interesting read and it touches a host of topics, very good illustrations, not the least the lemur on its cover.