# Ambient Findability (Book) - Author(s): [[Peter Morville]] - Link: https://intertwingled.org/ambient-findability/ ![[Ambient Findability (Book).webp|200]] ## Description *Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become* (O'Reilly, 2005) is [[Peter Morville]]'s book about [[Findability|findability]]: how easily something can be located or navigated. It starts with wayfinding (how ants, birds, sea turtles and humans find their way without getting lost) and moves on to search, metadata and information architecture on the web. The title refers to a world "at the crossroads of ubiquitous computing and the Internet, in which we can find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime". Morville doesn't present that as a goal: perfect findability is unattainable, and he has serious reservations about life in a global panopticon. It's the direction we're heading, though, and the book explores what that does to authority, culture and the way we learn. ## Quotes <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #type/quote AND [[]] WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC --> ## Key ideas - Findability is "the quality of being locatable or navigable" (Chapter 1) - It works at two levels: - **The object**: how easily a particular item can be found - **The system**: how well the system or environment as a whole supports navigation and retrieval - Findability covers both wayfinding in physical environments and navigation and retrieval in digital spaces - Findability is one of the facets of the user experience, next to useful, usable, desirable, accessible and credible (his user experience honeycomb) - My takeaway for PKM: the two levels map directly onto a vault. Names, aliases and properties make each note findable. Folders, tags, links and the daily-note timeline make the vault navigable ## References - Morville's excerpt of the book on his blog: https://intertwingled.org/ambient-findability/ - Interview by Liz Danzico, "Findability is Ambient" (2005): https://bobulate.com/?p=1136 - Book review quoting the Chapter 1 definition of findability (Slashdot, 2006): https://books.slashdot.org/story/06/01/02/1748219/ambient-findability - Open Library record (ISBN 0596007655): https://openlibrary.org/books/OL17191193M - Cover: Open Library, https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/isbn/9780596007652-L.jpg ## Related - [[Peter Morville]] - [[Findability]] - [[Information Architecture (IA)]] - [[Personal Information Management (PIM)]] - [[The Complete Guide to Obsidian Search - Find Any Note When You Need It (Article)]] - [[Why You Can't Find Your Notes - The Science of Re-finding Information (Article)]]