[Sigia-l] History of "Information Architecture"

[Gent, Andrew]

I refrained from responding to the original post (but not without a
struggle) thinking, perhaps, there was some private joke I was not aware
of. But I find this thread so disturbing I cannot sit by without
commenting. 

peter said:

> In my post, the humor was subtle.  In the preface, it was 
> overt.  In fact, I referred to my own account as "horribly biased and 
> tragically flawed."

Unfortunately, the title -- "A brief history of information
architecture" -- is even more overt, in large bold letters, and will be
remembered by the average reader long after any minor sef-deprecation in
the text. Along with the assertion that IA started with the Polar Bear
book. Quite frankly, I am amazed the editors of this new book let you
get away with it.

No insults to Peter and Louis' book; it is a tremendous piece of work,
seminal to the development of this specific community, and has acted as
a lightning rod for many disparate activities that were "underground" up
until the point of its publication. 

But to claim it as the beginning of "time" from an IA perspective is
pretentious, myopic, and self-delusional. I am really just astonished
that you would suggest it, even in jest.

Andrew Gent