May 30, 2003: Alex Wright's The Sociobiology of Information Architecture is well worth reading. Alex examines the evolutionary history of knowledge exchange and memory, and distills useful guidance for current IAs:

Today's information architects are the heirs of yesterday's scribes, clerks, and clerics: laboring to acquire, store, and disseminate knowledge for the sake of humanity, but ultimately in the service of institutions....

What evolution teaches us is this: in order to understand the deeper roots of our need to generate and manage information, we need to look beyond the individual organism [or institution -ns], towards the social groups that drive the mechanisms of evolution and adaptation for all species.

And he talks about ants, too!