760: on mazur

If I'd read Mazur first this week, I probably wouldn't be left with this feeling that she's casting around in a shallow pool of definitions, trying desperately to latch information design (ID) onto anything that floats by.

As a bibliographical history, the essay is insightful, primarily because it strings together the historical narratives that appear in Carliner and Albers (below).

One exceptionally useful nugget in the essay is the STC ID SIG's definition of information design: "ID applies traditional and evolving design principles to the process of translating complex, unorganized, or unstructured data into valuable, meaningful information"(23). Then, when you think you can't read any more "what is information design blah blah blah," there's this from Jef Raskin: "Information design is a misnomer. Information cannot be designed; what can be designed are the modes of transfer and the presentations of information" (23-4). Mazur goes on to quote Raskin's emphasis on drawing a distinction between information and meaning.

I'm going to try and keep that distinction in the foreground as we work through the final essay and move into our class discussion next week. I think it's going to be necessary to create that demarcation (between information and meaning) if we're to find ways to apply ID to our practices as teachers of composition and rhetoric.