ABSTRACT
Information architects and technical communicators share some common interests and responsibilities. Practitioners of both fields of expertise wrestle with their connection to technology, and both groups claim multiple professional identities. Experts in information architecture have a range of titles, from information designer, to user-experience engineers, to interface specialists. Other groups, such as usability specialists and graphic designers, can often be categorized as information architects when working with the technologies of the World Wide Web. This makes the borders of information architecture porous, allowing openings for technical communicators to take on the functions and responsibilities of information architects. Both fields are related in their desire to participate in technological change, including an interest in influencing the way technologies shape the future. Brown and Duguid, in The Social Life of Information (2000), articulated this as aspiration "to participate in that shaping and not merely to be shaped" by technological change (p. 33).
