Information Anxiety

Wurman coined the term "information architect" in 1976 and this book is his fullest articulation of why the term matters: the gap between data and understanding is a design problem, not a volume problem. Written before the web existed, it anticipated the condition of information overload that would become everyone's daily reality within a decade. Wurman argues that most information fails not because there is too much of it but because it is poorly organized — the anxiety comes from the difference between what we understand and what we think we should understand. The book is eclectic, visually inventive, and deliberately non-linear, reflecting its own argument about the inadequacy of conventional formats. It laid the intellectual groundwork for an entire discipline that would become critical once the web made everyone both a producer and a consumer of information.