Dis-content

The Dis-content post on PeterMe has got me thinking again about content and context and whether the two can ever be separated (as well as why people use Venn diagrams when a simple list would do, but more on that another time).

Anyway, whether content and context are truly inseparable is a philosophical point (that is, suitable for discussion over supercans of O'Keefe's Extra Old Stock but not worth taking up here), but from the IA perspective they can't be considered independently.

I sort-of agree with Peter that content should be subsumed into the business context, although I think context of use is important as well. How and where a user interacts with an information product influence IA, and these things are not strictly properties of the user.

One problem I have with the Argus model is that it's not descriptive, since a descriptive model must include technology, but it's not really prescriptive either. It says content is there, content exists, but nothing about how it should fit with either user needs or business needs.

Also, I think the Argus model muddles three very different things:

• agents - it includes users, but not businesses and (tellingly) IAs themselves
• contexts - it has business context, but not context of use or political context
• materials - it has content but not technology (Flash? Visio? Bueller?)

And it says nothing about the media in which IA happens (although that could be considered part of technology).

It's fine to declare the Argus model an imperfect abstraction, but within the abstraction lies the conceptual underpinnings of the field. We need to get the abstraction right (preferably without a Venn diagram).

Yeah, well, maybe I'll end by quoting myself: "My point is that while content and technology are the construction materials, business and user needs drive architecture. Dealing with content independent of context would be something like an architect starting a project by saying 'what can we build with all this wood?'"