The Business of Understanding, Wurman

Summary of The Business of Understanding, by Richard S. Wurman
3 February 2013
Kelsey Lynch

Wurman starts off using the example of an Informational Architect. He said that there are many who called themselves one, but not all legitimately meet the definition.  Good informational architects make the complex clear and make informational understandable to others.
He says the key to making things understandable is to "understand what it's like not to understand"
He makes the point that the most essential thing to admit on the path to understanding is that you don't understand. He calls this admitting to ignorance.

He includes an "Overview of Understanding" by Shedroff.  It starts with Data, which includes research, creation, gathering, and discovery.  Something to keep in mine is if it doesn't inform you, then it isn't information. Data is more raw, whereas information puts the data into understandable terms. Next is information, which includes presentation and organization. Information is the data presented in many different ways. Next is Knowledge (which is backed by experience). This includes conversation, storytelling, and integration.  Knowledge is gained by experiencing the same set of data in different ways so one can see it from different perspectives. Finally is Wisdom, which includes contemplation, evaluation, and interpretation.  This is the "ultimate level of understanding."

Wurman makes the point that one must know that all information and things will come to you through a filtered point of view and bias.  Once you admit and realize this, it will be less threatening to understand it and hold it.

He showed that  there are five ways of organizing data in order to be understood. Information can be organized by location, alphabetically, timely, categorically, or by hierarchy. When information is arranged one way, you can learn some things about the subject.  However, when you take the same information and arrange it a totally different way, you can learn even more because it's put into a whole new perspective. It makes the mind work differently and shows the importance of relaxing and thinking about the arrangement of information before it's made complex. This is called simplification and complication. It's the idea of looking at things from different vantage points to better understand the information.