[Sigia-l] IA system components - add to the list!

[Ziya Oz]

"Arno Reichenauer" wrote:

> We are expected to deliver certain things (whatsoever
> that is in each specific case), and we know how to do it.

You do? In business, as in life, things are far more complicated, I'm afraid
to report.

> That's it. Desired result, process to get there. Just like with the ice cream.
> (Simplistic, I know..

Well, you said it. :-) You are trying to divine dogma, however charitably
you think you are approaching it.

> some day there will be a settled understanding of IA, if only due to
> habituation.

That doesn't necessarily mean we'll all be better for it. (Then again, I
think you already said you don't care, didn't you?) To continue the previous
analogy, that'd be like saying, give it up, all journalists will be licensed
and regulated one day, so let's just cut to the chase now and get into
defining how they should be regulated. I'm not buying it.

In the practice of IA, you see the same phenomenon in a different disguise.
A monolithic CMS package tries to dictate onto an organization its own
limitations, architectural bent, workflow biases, etc., instead of providing
frameworks and components which the organizations could customize for their
own specific needs.

> And you might find yourself trapped in settled definitions you don't like,
> invented by somebody else without paying attention to your thoughts.

That wouldn't bother me, in the sense that I'd be fighting against it then,
as I'm doing now.

I wouldn't like IA to calcify into some skinny, plumb, enormous or grossly
obese IA demarcation, just because it's convenient for some people as they
happen to be doing a book/thesis/lecture/course/etc at the moment.

Ziya