I am an Information Architect. IA was my first interactive job way back at Quaxar.com, then a joint-venture partner with Agency.com – a global interactive consultancy.

Now, I dig IA. I like being an IA – I enjoy being at the nexus of design and tech – sort of the cornerstone of the project if I may say so myself. I happen to be at this very moment the ONLY IA IN MISSISSIPPI – that is according to the Institute of Information Architecture (IAI). So obviously I have some interested in having a good name for the field and my profession.

That being said – the field is becomming so full of ultra-high-level jargon and self-importance that reading through my IAI-Members mail list recently has become painful. In particular, a recent post on a marketing centric blog relegated IA to library classification which illicited a first snarky and then outright venemous series of attacks from an uber-geeky community of computer content classifiers and library science types.

I was tempted to post in the comments section of the site, but felt it best to practice restraint of tongue and pen (and keyboard) and post my thoughts to my own little space here.

IA, like other disciplines of thought and practice, has found it necessary to defend its own turf in the intellectual ether. My first run-in with this came while an undergraduate studying Anthropology. There was this Anthro – Sociology low-grade fight going on. Further on in my life, I witnessed a similar tiff between International Relations and Political Science. I mean – Come On!

Now with the IA Praetorians!

I guess these sorts of skirmishes between disciplines and the overt attempts to protect intellectual turf seems to reek to me at least as self-importance.

Again, I’m an IA. I dig the practice. I happen to think we’re the most important part of web development. I have a vested interest in having the practice understood and valued; however, at no time would I feel the need to degrade another opinion, or another person, however parochial or uniformed they may be.

Mis dos centados.