Information Anxiety 2

Richard WurmanQue2001ISBN 0-7897-2410-3£21.99

Richard Wurman's first book on information was published some ten years ago when the problems of an abundance of information were just beginning to tell. The anxiety of those days has not decreased, quite the contrary, it has increased to mega proportions. In the early days of computers users could line their offices with their mammoth lineprinter print-outs - it was, we are told the equivalent of producing rolls of wallpaper. This, of course, was a time when computers were almost entirely used for "number crunching" and the novelty of producing vast quantities of numerical data was a temptation that could not be easily resisted. It soon became apparent to users, however, that vast arrays of computer generated data needed analysing and the computing machine was the device to do it. Succeeding generations of computer users are slowly learning this lesson but without careful planning of the information stored and processed in computer systems anxiety will be on the increase and a third volume of Richard Wurman's book - Information Anxiety 3 will need to be published around 2005.

Wurman said that "we are inundated with facts but starved of understanding"in his earlier book before the information networks of today became the means of global communication and interaction. He was at pains to suggest ways in which the resulting anxiety could be combatted. In Information 2 he follows a similar path which exhibits his fascination with the "information explosion" and indicates the design methodology that can contain it.

In many ways the book is an update that simply recognises that now we have a global information explosion because of the developments of the Internet and other information networks. His first chapters again give an updated overview of the current state with the internet much in view. The remaining chapters have then been rewritten to flesh out the new concepts and facilities for communication and information he has introduced. Apart from the very necessary references to the internet and its effect on information storage and interaction he refers specifically to the effects of current developments on managerial activities. He also mentions information and communication in relation to education, which deserves several volumes at least to even cover the current impacts of networking.

As an information text itself we should apply the author's own criteria to its usefulness. Has he learnt his own lessons after a decade of interest in the subject? The answer is fuzzy and most cyberneticians and systemists who read the text will have mixed feelings about its worth.

The author uses the words "guide" and "handbook" as descriptions of his work so perhaps we should treat the resulting product accordingly. The subject he has choosen is an enormous one and it is obvious that no one book could hope to cover such a subject.

Wurman has given his own view of information and the anxiety of dealing with it in an interesting and imaginative way and, bearing in mind the reservations listed here, deserves a good readership.

C.J. Harwood