30/04/2007 by Roger Evernden.

I’m doing some research into the short and long term future of the Internet. There are many interesting themes to explore, but the one that probably interests me most is the degree to which individuals or organisations can direct this future. To what extent do we control this evolution?

I think there is a fascinating balance between Design: our attempts to control the look, feel and content of the Internet, and Improvise: how well we respond with creativity, intelligence and empathy to everything that is happening on the Internet.

There is probably a continuum between the two - we try to anticipate needs, create original applications, and design informative and entertaining web sites; but there is so much happening that we are forced to rely on our wits, ad lib and make it up as we go along.

We have a great vision and create an all-embracing architectural blueprint, but we can never fulfill it as it was planned because needs and fashion are constantly changing.
There’s a good discussion of What is Web 2.0? by Tim O’Reilly at http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228. It’s a serious and well thought out article that seeks to clarify what we mean by Web 2.0.

And Technorati is always good for viewpoints and opinions on such topics http://technorati.com/wtf/web-2-0.

What do you think? I’d be very interested in feedback, comments or views on this matter.

Roger

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24/04/2007 by Roger Evernden.

When I started this blog there were two things that I found difficult. The first was figuring out what to call the blog, and the second was actually starting to write.

Elaine and I went through quite a lot of names - she is really good at word craft, and came up with a majority of the suggestions.

My first idea was informology - a new word that I thought I had just coined meaning the study of information. Silly me - I should have realised that almost every word under the sun has already been invented, and is up there somewhere on the Internet. Sure enough, informology is even in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informology - I must admit I was really pleased to find that Professor Abbas Horri (who actually did coin the term) uses it in the sense that I intended.

Here are some of the other words we thought up - all of them already in use: infotecture, infology, infocology, infolution, informics, infosense, infoexpert, infodea, infopoly, inforules… By now you’ve probably got the general gist of what I was trying to do.

Eventually I realised that there was an obvious name to use - one that I have previously used - at one stage I ran a company with the same name - 4thresource.

So that’s how we decided the name - 4thresource, meaning the information resource.

Roger

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23/04/2007 by Roger Evernden.

Welcome. I started the 4thresource blog because of a lifelong fascination with information - what is information? how is it used? how is it misused? could we make better use of it? and why do we spend so much time on information technology rather than just making better use of information itself?

Information is the 4th resource.
If you’re interested in informology, information management, enterprise architecture, organisational change, knowledge management or information architecture - then I think you’ll find this journey exciting.
Roger Evernden

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