I förordet listar han kapitlen, vad de handlar om och listar dessutom lämpliga sökord/nyckelord för kapitlen:

Chapter 1, Lost and found

Explains findability and findable objects with definitions, examples, and stories. Explores the value and values of ambient findability. Keywords: Treo, GPS, RFID, Long Tail.

Chapter 2, A Brief History of Wayfinding

Connects animal and human navigation in natural and built environments to transmedia wayfinding in the 21st century. Keywords: Turtles, Labyrinths, Maps, Myst, Metaphor.

Chapter 3, Information Interaction

Exposes the long now of information-seeking behavior through the hard lens of evolutionary psychology. Keywords: Power Laws, Relevance, False Drops, Gossip.

Chapter 4, Intertwingled

Explores findability, findable objects, and wayfinding at the wavefront of ubiquitous computing and corporal convergence. Keywords: Ingestibles, Everyware, Privacy.

Chapter 5, Push and Pull

Describes how findability and the Web are transforming the marketplace and reshaping the rules of marketing. Keywords: Bananas, Spam, Search Costs, Personalization.

Chapter 6, The Sociosemantic Web

Bridges the gap between social software and the Semantic Web by placing ontologies, taxonomies, and folksonomies into context. Keywords: Tags, Popularity, Authority.

Chapter 7, Inspired Decisions

Concludes with a safari through the tangled hierarchies of artificial intelligence, irrational decision making, and human behavior. Keywords: Mazes, Memory, Neocortex, Colour.

Safari Bookshelf Ambient Findability: Organization of This Book (2005)

Ett centralt tema är Mooer’s Law som säger:

An information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it.

Peter Morville Ambient Findability, s 44

Morville förklarar också att Mooer inte bara, om alls, pratar om användbarhet. Istället citerar han honom mer (citatet är kortare i boken):

In the building and planning of our informtation handling and retrievig systems, we have tended to believe implicitly, and to assume throughout our writings, that having information easily available was always a good thing, and that all people with access to an information system would want to use the system to get the information. It is now my suggestion that many people may not want information, and they will avoid using a system precisely because it gives them information.
Having information is painful and troublesome. We all have experienced this. If you have information, you must first read it, which is not always easy. You must then try to understand it. To do this, you may have to think about it. The information may require that you make decisions about it or other informtation. The decisions require may require actions in the way of a troublesome program of work, or trips, or painful interviews. Understanding information may show that your work was wrong, or that your boss was wrong, or may show that your work was needless. Having informtation, you must be careful not to lose it. If nothing else, information piles up on your desk–unread. It is a nuisance to have it come to you. It is unformfortable to have to do anything about it. Finally, if you do try to use the information properly, you may be accused of puttering instead of working. Then in the end, the incorporation of the information into the work you do often may not be noticed or appreciated. Work saved is seldom recognized. Work done–even in duplicate–is well paid and rewarded.

Thus not having and not using information can often lead to less trouble and pain than having and using it.

Fundamentals of information science Mooer’s Law

Det mest intressanta kapitlet är The Sociosemantic Web. Det handlar mycket om metadata och ontologier, taxonomier, folksonomier och när jag läste det tyckte jag det här var extra smart (nu glömmer jag varför eller vad jag tänkte apropå det, kanske kommer fram så småningom):

Despite this revolution at the document core, we should not focus solely on the center, for as one might expect of a boundary object, there’s serious action at the edges. We’re talking about the blurring at the borders between data and metadata, a phenomenon with great relevance to findability. As usual, Mr. Weinberger is on top of this trend. He writes:

There used to be a difference between data and metadata. Data was the suitcase and metadata was the name tag on it….Data was the contents of the book and metadata was the Dewey Decimal number on its spine….[Now], all data is metadata….Data is all surface and no insides. It’s all handles and no suitcase. It’s a folder whose content is just another label. It’s all sticker and no bumber.

David Weinberger The End of Data? (2004-10-15)

Ambient Findability s 149

Sen är jag inte helt nöjd med boken. Jag tycker han beskriver mycket utan att komma särskilt mycket framåt. Jag läser för mycket bloggar helt enkelt. Mångt och mycket känns som skåpmat.

Fast med det sagt så är det också intressant. De här frågorna kommer bara bli mer viktiga, inte mindre.