Simon Willison's Weblog: christina-wodtke

Quoting Christina Wodtke

2025-07-31T22:08:24+00:00

The old timers who built the early web are coding with AI like it's 1995.

Think about it: They gave blockchain the sniff test and walked away. Ignored crypto (and yeah, we're not rich now). NFTs got a collective eye roll.

But AI? Different story. The same folks who hand-coded HTML while listening to dial-up modems sing are now vibe-coding with the kids. Building things. Breaking things. Giddy about it.

We Gen X'ers have seen enough gold rushes to know the real thing. This one's got all the usual crap—bad actors, inflated claims, VCs throwing money at anything with "AI" in the pitch deck. Gross behavior all around. Normal for a paradigm shift, but still gross.

The people who helped wire up the internet recognize what's happening. When the folks who've been through every tech cycle since gopher start acting like excited newbies again, that tells you something.

— Christina Wodtke

Tags: ai, generative-ai, llms, ai-assisted-programming, christina-wodtke

Content inventory tips

2002-11-20T22:43:20+00:00

Peter has been blogging the progress of a 3828 page content inventory he is working on. Day Two describes his method of working with Excel, Day Three provides three useful inventory tips. Christina Wodtke's Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web has a nice overview of the content inventory process which recommends a dual monitor setup and links (well, footnotes) to these tips by Noel Franus. Peter has also commented on my decision to go with the blue RSS button in favour of the standard orange XML button - I've posted my reasons in a comment attached to his post.

Tags: information-architecture, peter-van-dijck, christina-wodtke

IA has arrived

2002-11-06T17:30:20+00:00

Christina Wodtke: Information Architecture has arrived:

What's led me to the conclusion IA has arrived? Articles on IA are seen in every publication that addresses the web, from engineering to design. A recent search turned up 188,000 results on "Information Architecture". Information Architecture for the World Wide Web has gone to second edition, Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web hit the best seller list on Amazon in its second week on the stands, and three more books on IA are scheduled to come out next year. Jobs for Information Architects are found on most job sites, but more importantly, information architecture is listed as a skill for designers and programmers alike. And finally, the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture launched Monday-the first organization dedicated to promoting and advancing Information Architecture. These are heady times for information professionals.

I'm nearly half way through "Blueprints for the Web" now - I'll post a review of it once I've had time to read and digest it all but impressions so far are very favourable.

Tags: information-architecture, christina-wodtke

Asilomar Institute

2002-11-06T00:50:58+00:00

The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture - very promising organisation, great site but I have to admit I'm not too keen on the name (though I'm sure it will grow on me). The highlight of the site for me has to be the 25 Theses, which provide an excellent condensed description of what IA is and why it is necessary. The site lead me to make my first impulse buy in quite a while, so with a bit of luck from Amazon Christina Wodtke's Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web should be with me in the morning.

Tags: information-architecture, christina-wodtke

Controlled vocabularies

2002-08-14T12:37:45+00:00

Christina Wodtke: Mind your phraseology!, a tutorial on controlled vocabularies. The concept is very similar to that used by TopicMaps - relationships are defined between terms that take in to account hierarchies, associated terms and even alternative spellings. I'm planning an overhaul of the category / metadata system used on this blog in the near future and Christina's tutorial has given me a whole load of new ideas.

Tags: christina-wodtke