[Sigia-l] Re: [aifia-members] IA research?

[Sarah Brodwall]

On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 23:32:18 +0100, Peter Van Dijck
<peter at poorbuthappy.com> wrote:
> I wrote a long rambling entry about (the lack of) IA research and
> innovation. Are we building a practice and a body of knowledge, or are
> we slowly dying out? Again, apologies for linking, but here goes:
> 
> http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2004/11/21/2167/

Peter wrote in his blog entry: "For example, consider basic level
categories. A fascinating concept. Surely, there is relevance to the
IA world there. Who will investigate that?"

I'm investigating that as we speak.  I'm a mere Master's student with
no professional experience in IA (although I have got 10 years'
experience in web design, in which I've been using IA principles). 
I'm not sure how much groundbreaking research I can do in a Master's
thesis, but if I decide I like the whole research thing, I'm planning
on going on to get a PhD, and my research for that will also be on how
prototype theory can be applied to IA practices.  I may also go to
work as an IA for a while before I come back to the research in order
to get a better perspective on the problem.  This seems to me to be
such an important issue--I cannot believe that more people aren't
looking into it.

The thing is, the stuff Lakoff proposes in "Women, Fire, and Dangerous
Things" is essentially a paradigm shift--a true paradigm shift--for
much of Western philosophy.  Classical categorization is built into so
many of our folk theories about the way the world works that it just
seems like common sense.  Then there's the fact that much of our
science and philosophy are based on classical categorization.  It's
going to take a lot of research and evangelization before people start
taking these new ideas about categorization and their reprecussions
seriously.  So, if any of you are considering taking time off from
making money to do some research, prototype theory and basic-level
categories as applied to IA is an area that really needs some
attention.

~Sarah