Wurman on Wisdom.
6:00 am Sunday, and I’m on the phone with the relentless and gumptious Richard Saul Wurman, all 84 robust years of him. We’re talking about the guy who started the TED conference, created the Access guidebooks, and the world’s leading information architect. He’s also written 90 books.
He’s got a new entrepreneurial idea he wants to run by me. I offer him whatever advice I can, then take the opportunity to ask him a favor. “Tell me all you know about wisdom,” I ask.
As an untenured professor of curiosity, Richard tells me the emerging occupation of this century is sculpting information to inform. Life is a blank piece of paper. You start new, but you filter the old. The wiser you are, the better the filter. The better the filter, the more you’re a mapmaker. The more you’re a mapmaker, the easier you make the complex. You help people find their destinations. In other words, wisdom is about wayfinding.
To learn more about Richard, watch this “The Architect of Ideas” video.
