Information is like iron filings: elemental, common, and formless.That
is, until a magnet passes by and all of a sudden patterns emerge that
reveal the formerly invisible magnetic force...and suddenly the iron
filings have a coherence, a pattern, even a beauty.
We have a creative and evolutionary need to make order out of chaos, or knowledge out of information.
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Traditionally, we have created lists and hierarchies to organize and create meaning out of raw information. With the invention of the computer our capacity to collect information has expanded a zillion-fold, and computer-stored information is basically unreadable to most of us. Welcome the database interface designers who create ways for the average person to be able to access or "read" computer data.
What is fascinating is that database entry ways are looking increasingly like the Contents and Index pages of books.
- Instead of a table of contents, there are Topic or Subject Trees
- Instead of indexes, there are Keyword Searches.
This should not come as a surprise as, we are used to book organizers and our brains are much the same as they were before the invention of the computer. But more than that, their underlying organizational patterns are not unique to us, but flow throughout the natural world.
