The Vietnam Wall on line
Posted on March 26th, 2008
TechCrunch has a good explanation of Footnote’s digitizing of the Vietnam Memorial, which is handy because the Footnote site is getting hammered with traffic right now, so the app is running slowly. The site lets you browse the Wall by multiple categories, and links together bunches of information. Sounds very cool.
The Vietnam Memorial wall is an argument for stone over information. But information is good, too.
Even to me, someone who was very opposed to the Vietnam War, the Wall is humbling and very sad. I have not seen the web sites yet.
thanks for the post. i hope to read some more.
Best regards from Sebbi
Edward Tufte, in his “Envisioning Information” book, has some interesting comments on the information design of the Vietnam War Memorial. While not everyone agrees with Tufte’s assessment that the memorial is an example of great information design, I think it’s fair to say that the memorial is intentionally and specifically an information interface and information-driven design.
I think there’s something deep and interesting in the memorial’s relationship between stone and text (and landscape topography and use of color, etc)–all of these things are information and are designed to be approached as information in the memorial experience.
interested post about traffic. i think is very useful