Ambient Findability

norburym writes "Peter Morville is an information architect, an advocate of expanding the boundaries of librarianship in an Internet age and the voice of ambient findability. In this new book from O'Reilly, Morville expands on a theme he's been discussing for several years: we live in an age where computers and the Internet are changing how we access information. Digital networks are available everywhere. As users, we have computers, PDAs, GPS units, smartphones, software and other network technologies that enable constant and mobile connectivity. As Morville writes, ambient findability is "a realm in which we can find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime" and his book is a thought provoking chronicle of the advent of that goal." Read the rest of Mary's review.

Ambient Findability
author	Peter Morville
pages	204
publisher	O'Reilly Media
rating	9
reviewer	Mary Norbury-Glaser
ISBN	0596007655
summary	Information retrieval in an age of ubiquitous computing.

Ambient Findability is divided into seven sections that track the journey from simply defining what the author means by findability through a history of man's search for location awareness in both the physical environment and in the cyber world; how we interact with information through documents, language, and systems of retrieval; intertwingularity and findable objects; the balance between push (advertising) and pull (information retrieval); being a Web designer and a user advocate; metadata and physical data in the context of findability; and the ability to make informed decisions based on open source and emerging technology.

A core definition offered by the author in Chapter 1 is for findability: "the quality of being locatable or navigable; the degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate; the degree to which a system or environment supports navigation and retrieval." Morville discusses how well various websites perform in providing information desired by the user and how successful sites cater to mass customization. Businesses and non-profits that aim to reduce search time and improve findability of their site contents will gain marketplace advantage.

Chapter 2 is an interesting and informative introduction to the history of wayfinding through lessons learned from various animal species (exocentric and egocentric navigation, echolocation, etc.) to how humans have adapted landmarks or created tools to aid in navigation and exploration (lighthouses, compasses, sextants, maps, etc.) and further how architects and urban planners can effectively design built environments. The logical extension of this discussion is how the wayfinding techniques developed in the physical world have translated to the digital realm. In this discussion, we see how we have translated our spatial metaphors to the web.

This leads directly to the next chapter, on how people interact with information. Morville tackles the difficult task of defining information and considers the concept of relevance in relationship to the information we seek to retrieve from the Internet and how the inherent ambiguity of language negatively impacts any system of information retrieval. To top this off, the author reminds us that users themselves introduce added complexity and complication to how people seek information. He cites several research studies and literature on the subject and suggests that there is value in integrating both push and pull in how we interact with information systems.

Chapter 4 deals with the topic of intertwingularity (a combination of "intertwined" and "mingled") or the idea that things are connected together in a complex and nonlinear way. In terms of the Internet and ubiquitous computing, this translates into our ability to connect to disparate bits of data not only from computers but also from mobile devices and other ambient devices (GPS, EZPass, pagers, RFIDs) that are truly pervasive throughout society. Morville takes us through part two of wayfinding with descriptions of GPS technology, interactive mapping and photographic confluence sites, tracking using GPS and cellular communication, RFID, webcams, and of course the convergence of technology as wearable computing (sunglasses that can be used with cell phones and MP3 devices, Bluetooth enabled garments, cameras embedded in glasses, etc.) becomes more common and affordable.

Morville then leads us neatly back to the idea of push and pull. In chapter 5, he discusses the necessary flow toward balance and uses the example of Google, which successfully intertwingles unobtrusive targeted ads with search results. Design and marketing, as the author notes, are not enemies. Yet finding the balance is tricky and not a simple task. Morville describes his "user experience honeycomb" model which combines the key issues that designers should consider when creating a website that optimizes findability and therefore enhances user experience: useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, credible, and valuable. He concludes the chapter with hacks that improve web findability: adopting search engine optimization techniques (avoid drop down menus, image maps, frames, etc.; use RSS feeds with backlinks; embrace web standards; determine and include keywords and phrases in visible body text, links, headers, tags, etc.), and personalization (examples include Yahoo! using individual profiles to customize sports scores and stock information, the Weather Channel using zip codes for local weather, and Google Alerts letting users track keywords in news and web sites).

In chapter 6, "The Sociosemantic Web," Morville outlines the controversy surrounding an article, "The Semantic Web," that appeared in May 2001 in the Scientific American. The authors of the article propose an ambitious "road map for future Web design" that subsequently fueled a debate between W3C Semantic Web members and social software supporters. The debate leads to a discussion about how well metadata can be normalized in an environment such as the Web. Morville uses this debate as an introduction to a history and structural description of metadata. He describes the formulation of taxonomies and the use of controlled vocabularies to enable findability. Of course, web sites are not simply hierarchical; they are complexly grouped which brings us to the idea of folksonomies where users tag objects with one or more keywords that become shared. Folksonomies are obviously not great for findability since they fail at semantic relationships and hierarchy. However, all forms of structure (folksonomies, ontologies, and taxonomies) can co-exist on the Web to describe metadata and the differences between data and metadata are becoming less distinct. Amazon is a perfect example of this: traditional publication and topic details and concordance are documented along with customer reviews and rankings. Amazon also has the option to "search inside this book" which makes the pages and even the text itself become metadata.

The final chapter of the book delves into how we are ultimately capable of making informed decisions through the power of the Internet: the sheer volume and variety of sources available to us and the ease of access enable us to take charge of decisions we would normally trust to those professionals outside of our narrow realm of expertise. We decide which information to believe in. Morville considers information literacy and digital librarianship and proffers the idea that libraries and the Internet have common principles of maintaining free expression, privacy, free and equal access, and intellectual freedom.

Tim O'Reilly is well known for expanding the boundaries of technology in print and through conferences like the Emerging Technology Conference, the Web 2.0 Conference, and the Open Source Convention held in both the US and in Europe. His agenda has never been to fill convention halls with attendees who fit a lowest common denominator; his aim has been to bring together people who not only think smart but who also have the ability to think outside the normal boundaries of their particular field of interest (Robert J. Lang, Freeman Dyson, James Gosling, among others) and who therefore inspire innovation. With the publication of Ambient Findability, O'Reilly Media continues this tradition of giving readers an opportunity to experience the visionary writing of people like Peter Morville.

Read Ambient Findability if: you are interested in expanding your business or nonprofit through its presence on the Internet; you are a librarian and want to grow into the nontraditional environment of the Web; you are a Web designer and want to optimize the findability of your sites on the Internet; you are a user and want to enhance your searching experience. Read this book if you are a teacher, a student, a writer, a parent...in short, if you use a computer or a handheld or a GPS or a smartphone or any type of technology that connects you to the world, then you should read this book. Peter Morville's Ambient Findability will amaze and delight you. It will give you new insight into how ubiquitous computing is affecting how we find and use information and how we, as users, can and will shape the future of how data is stored and retrieved.

Mary Norbury-Glaser is IT Director at the Barbara Davis Center, an affiliate center at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver."

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You can purchase Ambient Findability from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Which market is most important to us?

This book and the review uses way too many catch phrases: findability, intertwingularity, Folksonomies, metadata, smartphone, backlinks. Talk about overload.

Nonetheless, as the Internet becomes more available in even the lives of the poorest (in the US at least), will the need for libraries and physical stores of information even be needed? I've been "connected" wirelessly to the web now for over 3 years, and last month I upgraded my wireless connection to T-Mobile's EDGE network (150kbps downloads practically everywhere I go).

With Google's ability to aggregate not just information but opinions, reviews and similar items/services into one easy-to-access page, there are many services we won't really need around. This weekend I saw the demo of the GPS+XM traffic-nav solution in helping me avoid traffic jams ahead and find quicker ways for me to get to my destination. WIth that device I won't need news radio at all (I already receive weather updates to my wireless PDA). A few weeks ago I met with a company that is working on RFID check-out lanes for a grocery store (fill up your cart, walk out) and it seems that they're less than 6 months away from being "ready" -- they're just waiting for manufacturers to include the RFID tags needed to get the system working.

I'm ordering this book -- I had thought about writing something similar a few years ago. In one of my jobs as an IT consultant, I find myself providing more services regarding these new technologies, especially to CEOs and top level managers. It is an easy sell especially when you look at the time saved for people making the top tier incomes. The great part about the movement for cheaper goods is that we see all these products trickle down to even the lower class worker.

The last few paragraphs of the review are enlightening: TIm O'Reilly doesn't try to fill convention halls with the lowest common denominator. This is intriguing to me because I've always had a difficulty in figuring out which market I should attack the hardest: The rare (and wealthy) CEO wannabe-geek who wants to have all the toys first, even if it doesn't help him become more productive? The common CEO who sees that technology can help him become more productive, but he can't pay as much as the guy with the desire to have everything the earliest? The common user, who will eventually come to use technology when it is either forced on them, or when they finally get around to see the value that the technology brings to every-man? I'm not jealous of O'Reilly's ability to pack conventions with the top level geeks, but it is interesting that he even has a market. How many of his readers actually understand what he's saying though, and how correct has he been in previous years?

Lastly, how many geeks here have an intense amount of new technology knowledge, but find themselves unable to sell that knowledge for an income? Is the super-geek becoming more common, or less common? I find a lot of geeks just out of college aren't truly information whores, they're just ex-jocks with a tiny bit of tech know how.

Animals in color

Interestingly, although admittedly a small point, the book seems to be the first O'Reilly animal book to be colored in [ora.com]. I really like the new look, and I hope it continues.

Cant find me

I shut off my mobile, email, IM and unplug my land line when I feel like being incommunicado, takes all of 10 secs.

I think I get it, but...

...am I the only one who had to get out the dictionary to wayfind the intertwingularity of some of these sociosemantic words? A few of the folksonomies seem to have only ambient findability.

WTF...

is "Ambient Findablility?"

"Ambient Findability is divided into seven sections that track the journey from simply defining what the author means by findability through a history of man's search for location awareness in both the physical environment and in the cyber world"

Again- "Huh?" So, I have to read the stupid book just to find out generally what it's about? Is it just me, or does that sound retarded?

And while we're at it- let's stop making up meaningless words and phrases. If it's truly a new concept, that's one thing. Otherwise, unless it's in a dictionary, I just wish peoplw would use words and phrases that *are*

Hiding information is more important than sharing

One of the paradoxes of information and language sciences is that any means of communication is valued by humans as much for its ability to hide or withold infromation as to share and navigate it. This is how we form social cliques, and otherwise identify those who are "us" vs. those who are "them". Witness the use of 1337 speak, the near religious fervor with which certain file formats are espoused, debates over programming langauges, etc. If there were a truly comprehensive way to share information without any ambiguity in a searchable, locatable way, you can expect that within a year there would be a dozen variants of it aimed at introducing ambiguity and uncertainty. Moreover that ambiguity would be cherished by devoted sets of users who felt that it was more important than the rest of the medium.

Library science?

What's the difference between these buzzwords and what librarians have been doing for the last 100 years?

Another Review...

Here is another review [digital-web.com] from Digital Web Magazine [digital-web.com]

All of the People All of the Time

First, as has been noted, the catchphrases are as ambiently findable, whatever that means.

Second being able to find everything about everything isn't a good thing. Bertrand Russell [wikipedia.org] pointed out that one is better served becoming intimately knowledgeable of a handfull of books on any given subject than to have a passing familiarity with all available material on the subject at hand.To know a subject one has to have a foundation from which to work. The hallmark of a journey workperson is a fundamental understanding of the principles that inform the work.

Ambient Findability seems to me to be yet another guide for the social gadfly, catchphrases abound, and, the ever aspiring social/corporate climber can jump on or off board any bandwagon by instanteously accessing the prevalent catchphrases served up in a pablum formula that allows for quick regurgitation.

The best thing that can be said for such approaches is that they draw off the pop culture adulators and papprazzi, allowing easier navigation for those who know their stuff and where they're going.

serendipity

Good review, I'm going to find this book someday, perhaps. A findable book means a book that can be found, and I can find lots by serendipity, i.e. just random walks through the physical stacks, and picking books off the shelf without looking at the title, author, or call number first. Sometimes, I have visions of which stack and shelf to visit just before I arrive at the library, in which case the randomness can be questioned. No matter what, I always find a book, sometimes one I might never find by more rational methods, sometimes books that later prove very meaningful in some way. What part of the mind is helping me find these books? I recommend everyone try it, let your whole psyche guide you to new found freedom.

The Irony

The irony here is that while it is becoming easier and easier to find stuff, every year there is less and less stuff worth finding.

Re:The Irony

The irony here is that while it is becoming easier and easier to find stuff, every year there is less and less stuff worth finding

The irony is that it is becoming harder and harder to get your content found in a sea of content. Electronic academic journals are finding this phenomenon a bit hard to overcome. Content overload is as much a problem for the future as content obscurity was in the past.

The benefits go to free and open societies

The benefits of ambient findability will be exploited most successfully by societies who do not attempt to restrict the ability of the average citizens to use the ambient findability. The societies that allow free and open access will improve the lives of all of their citizens at a faster rate than those that do not. A government like the one currently running the show in Iran will continue to have a hard time controlling the hearts and minds of their citizens. Citizens of open societies in Europe and the United States will have to remain vigilant against new ham handed restrictions that are intended to keep us safe.

Overdefining the obvious

A core definition offered by the author in Chapter 1 is for findability: "the quality of being locatable or navigable; the degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate; the degree to which a system or environment supports navigation and retrieval."

Or written clearly, "Findability: how easy or hard it is to locate what you need."

Judging by the review, this book is filled with overqualified obfuscated definitions of simple concepts that have never needed names before and don't now. I doubt I'll ever need to read this blinding glimpse of the obvious.

I loved the book

Judging by the review, this book is filled with overqualified obfuscated definitions of simple concepts that have never needed names before and don't now. I doubt I'll ever need to read this blinding glimpse of the obvious.

I finished the book a few days ago. For me it was a difficult book to put down - I powered through it quickly because I was so absorbed by it. The review didn't really get to the heart of why the book is so good. In my opinion, Morville excels at explaining complex interactions and bringing important questions to light. He does this by starting out with clear definitions of the terms he is investigating. For example, the term *findability* is about more than finding what you're looking for; it's also about discovering information objects which you were not explicitly looking for, but that provide the information you need. Some of the concepts may not need names, but having terms to define concepts makes it easier to discuss them.

Morville's discussion of the marriage of the physical and virtual worlds through geocaching and tagging is particularly illuminating, as is his comparison of taxonomies, ontologies, and folksonomies. These are not just academic terms; they have great bearing on how information is organized and found. I also found the inquiry into what constitutes a document to be very thought-provoking.

Ambient Findability is not a book full of answers. It outlines how we find data, how technology is changing that process, and what opportunities and dangers await us in the future. The topics Morville raises affect much more than just commerce, and his plea for information literacy is an important warning. Technology is only half of the equation, and it can create new problems even as it solves old ones.

If you want a receipe book for SEO, this won't really help you very much. If you want to know how people find information and how human behavior affects information technology and vice-versa, you'll probably enjoy this book.

Bookwriting == Findability

The best way to increase the findability of something is to write a book about it:

• Amazon book reviews
• Slashdot threads
• $$$ for the author!

Morville the obvious

These kinds products are already appearing; the limits right now are cost, standardization, and battery life, not the imagination of designers.

Morville's book is another instance of people without an original idea trying to pass themselves off as innovators, complete with the obligatory buzzwords and neologisms.

intertwingularity.com

Hmm, now that sounds like a catchy domain name...

ahhhh

survival of the species is everybody's business.

Chapter One (PDF)

You can read Chapter One [oreilly.com] for free and decide for yourself. That is, if you're not afraid of learning some new words.

Interesting

But pretty empty from a technical point of view. I don't feel like I have any more knowledge after reading it.

Ambient Findability

The title is obviously spam. No need to read it, just delete.

give me a fucking break

this was discussed, in detail, in 1995... Look for the transcripts of the Internet Society conference in Prague, the Czech Republic.

I'll say what we're all thinking...

I'll say what we're all thinking...

I'm all for it... as long as I'm not the "anyone" being found anywhere, anytime.

Personally, I'm too damn wired as it is, and this bozo wants to make my life worse by enabling anyone to interupt me at anywhere, anytime. No thank you.

-- Terry

I liked it

I liked the book, although it is mostly a conceptual exercise, it more sort of peters out at the end rather than coming to any grand conclusions or giving many solid prescriptions.

Plus which, having read it gives me a great excuse to work "ambient findability" into conversations. Nothing livens up a meeting like interjecting "hmm, but do we need to consider the principles of ambient findability here?"

Horse & Buggy makers, move over

...is an information architect, an advocate of expanding the boundaries of librarianship in an Internet age...

Perhaps it's just me, but I find the attempts by librarians to stay 'relevant', while understandable, to be just a little bit pathetic.

Like the "crusade" by the librarians against the Patriot act (which, if you think about it sounded more like the result of some wierd Illuminati internal fight) a few years ago, librarians (like newspapers, and mass-media conglomerates) seem to think that they had some sort of a role as a gatekeeper to information. Guardianship & responsibility seems to have morphed into a sense of ownership. They had the meta-information, so to speak, about where information could be found. Now whether it's out of simple self-interest or some more elevated emotion, librarians seem to see themselves as some sort of special secular 'priestly' class - which is patently absurd in so many, many ways. The point of the internet is that for a reasonably intelligent person the internet doesn't NEED a gatekeeper, it doesn't NEED interpretation. Yes, there is a wealth of information out there. But thanks to search engines and human ingenuity the requirement to have an 'information specialist' just seems more and more of an anachronism.

While their role hasn't disappeared entirely, I find it less and less relevant. When's the last time you asked a librarian a question? Not to say that they're not busy: there are many people for whom it's simpler and more comfortable to ask a librarian than to type a question into Google. So perhaps the horse- and buggy maker analogy is imprecise, are librarians going to be relegated to the role of Leader Dogs for the internet-incapable?

"a realm in which we can find anyone or anything "

Except - information created a long time ago, which no one sees profit or value in digitizing. Ever tried looking up WW II or earlier service or military medical records? How about historical research - there's an incredible daily diary of a person living in Providence (Rhode Island, US) in the 1600s or 1700s; there are books written pre-Civil War that have a more accurate representation of people's thoughts and opinions than histories written in the twentieth century (notice I don't say the facts are necessarily more accurate, that's a different topic)... none of these sources, which can be valuable to individuals and which are care for by librarians, is easily searchable, and in many cases they are on deteriorating media. I hope projects like Gutenberg and Google Print manage to get to a lot of these before they're lost.

I know, we're all looking toward the future here, but we need to bring the past along with us (and for interesting takes on this I refer you to "A Canticle For Liebowitz" in the science fiction genre or "How The Irish Saved Civilization" for those more interested in history).