Christina Wodtke
Vegas, MySpace, and the Tyranny of Taste
Editorial
The joy of the city is its diversity. A great city has styles of buildings from many eras. It has architectural successes and failures. It sports buildings that have been adapted over the years, learning from each new tenant. And in the city’s corners are magnificent follies, built to please some visionary individual with the capital to make dreams real. The citizens move from distaste to begrudging acceptance to rabid protectiveness of their many unique buildings
Pp. 1–10 — doi:10.55135/1015060901/132.008/1.031
Katalin Feher
Consumption of Metapatterns
A CDT Model for the Understanding of Patterns in New Media
This paper focuses on digitally mediatizated patterns and on the impact their representations might make on users. Hypothesis: new media merge communication technology with users’ networking and social conduct and, consequently, they constitute metapatterns framing society and social networks. Platforms and contents are vehicles for messages and data for the purpose of identification via interfaces; and platforms with uploaded/formed universal or personal contents might as well generate user-experience. Consequently, we need to find the main directions among new media phenomena in order to interpret digital mediatization and its impact on contents and user experience. This paper illustrates the new media metapatterns of convergence, divergence and transvergence and frames them through a CDT model that can be used to map both the dynamics and the consumption patterns of new media development
Pp. 11–22 — doi:10.55135/1015060901/132.008/2.032
Simon Krogh
Cloud Computing
A Social Relations Perspective
The second half of the 20th century has been characterized by an explosive development in information technology. Processing power, storage capacity and network bandwidth have increased exponentially, resulting in new possibilities and shifting IT paradigms. In step with technological changes, the paradigmatic pendulum has swung between increased centralization on one side and a focus on distributed computing that pushes IT power out to end users on the other. With the introduction of outsourcing and cloud computing, centralization in large data centers is again dominating the IT scene
Pp. 23–32 — doi:10.55135/1015060901/132.008/3.033
Sally Burford & Lisa M. Given
The Practitioners of Web Information Architecture in Small and Medium Enterprises
This paper reports an investigation of the practice of web information architecture in small and medium enterprises. As information delivery via the web becomes a mainstream activity in all organisations, research and practical attention to Web IA remains focused on larger organisations and a new profession of information architect. The practice of web IA in SMEs has not been widely considered. This research collects the narratives of those who practice Web IA in the smaller enterprise and reveals that the dominant voice is that of a communication and marketing practitioner, rather than information professional. The outcomes of practice in this context suffer from a lack of knowledge and expertise
Pp. 33–52 — doi:10.55135/1015060901/132.008/4.034
Thomas Wendt
Information Cartilage
On the Role of Information Architecture in Context-Aware Intelligent Systems Design
This paper is an attempt to understand expanding information spaces from a phenomenological perspective. As technology continues to challenge the online/offline distinction, phenomenology provides a useful framework for thinking about context, the role of situated being, and the need for order. Artificial intelligence and context-aware computing are used as examples of information environments that specifically call out the benefits of understanding information as a bodily entity—as in a “body of information” or “body of knowledge”. Concentrating on a Heideggerian approach to technology, which in part characterizes technology as a call for order and structure, the essay will examine the idea of ‘structured flexibility’ needed for systems that not only process information but also predict needs, shape information contexts, and actively engage in the user-system interaction. Finally, it will provide new ways for information architects to think about the expanding space of information
Pp. 53–67 — doi:10.55135/1015060901/132.008/5.035
