Tuesday, April 19th, 2016
In this series I propose to write short exegeses of sayings and fables drawn from the Zen tradition, with the aim of understanding how they might shed light on the work we do in information architecture. Is applying the principles of Zen to the field of information architecture a wildly inappropriate appropriation of Zen? Maybe, maybe not. If you find it useful, use it. If not, discard it.
I am writing these as I read through Daisetz T. Suzuki’s Zen and Japanese Culture, a rather old-school exposition on Zen, originally published in Japanese in 1938, and published in English in 1959. My background in Zen is rather scant, consisting of a scattering of readings in Zen, including: The New World of Philosophy by Abraham Kaplan, The Three Pillars of Zen by Roshi Phillip Kapleau, The History of Buddhism by Donald Lopez, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, and Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen.
Beyond reading, I have on occasion (and not any time recently) gone to Zen Buddhist temples on Sunday mornings, and had an on-again, off-again meditation practice. I like to excuse my inconsistency and the sporadic nature of my exploration of Zen by saying to myself enlightenment is right at hand, you don’t need to go looking for it. Sometimes I can even convince myself.
Now you know my credentials, or lack thereof. As to why I think writing these exegeses might be a good idea: a hallmark of Zen is its intellectual clarity and honesty, two qualities that are absolutely essential to an information architect. Zen is so dedicated to this sense of clarity and honesty that it has a deep distrust of intellectualism, and it warns against the dangers of language and ideas. As writers who have introduced Zen to Western civilization how often noted, there is an irony in trying to write about Zen, considering its antipathy to the written word and to the very idea of learning through theory rather than practice. Yet I’ve always been drawn to that nexus of analytical thought and Zen practice. Perhaps it is because of my love of reading; or perhaps because thought that is aware of its own limitations and its own embodied nature is so interesting. And here I am following in the footsteps of those writers, both Western and Japanese.
In any case, on to my first exegesis.
In general, words are dangerous. They breed confusion. They separate the thing from its representation (well, depending on what your theory of representation is). But they are helpful for communication to take place.
From Suzuki: “The dead ones [words] are those that no longer pass directly and concretely and intimately on to the experience. They are conceptualized, they are cut off from the living roots. They have ceased, then, to stir up my being from within, from itself” (7–8).
As an IA, examining the living words, and not the dead ones, means, at a certain level, attending to the language used within a system, in its labeling, its organizational structure, and its content; and subsequently rooting out all language that is no longer attached to a meaning that the user will understand. All sorts of “dead” words get added to systems, and they are usually words that only the system’s creators will have any intimacy with. We must be ruthless in removing them.
On another level, living words and dead words don’t just refer to language, they refer to concepts. What are the concepts that make up a system and do they have a living connection to user needs? Or are they a carryover from bygone systems, a detritus sustained by the inertia that is so stereotypical of software systems?
An information architect distinguishes between these two types through user research. And through courage and bravery in the face of systemic inertia and institutional intransigence, the information architect must hack away at the dead parts and recenter the system around the living parts.