Janet, The first time I encountered this term was in the article in Scientific American by Al Gore "Infrastructure for the Global Village", Sept 1991. Martin - Martin Campbell-Kelly, Dept of Computer Science University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, U.K. voice: +44 24 7652 3193 fax: +44 24 7657 3024 email: M.Campbell-Kelly@warwick.ac.uk -----Original Message----- From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Janet Abbate Sent: 02 August 2013 20:11 To: sigcis Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of term "information silo"? Does anyone know the origin of the term "information silos"? It's commonly used as a criticism of groups that don't share information for either organizational or technical reasons. This has always struck me as an odd metaphor. After all, in real life it's a good thing that grain is isolated in a silo; there is no physical-world benefit to connecting or "busting" silos, so how did this become a metaphor for good information management? And why would slowly fermenting fodder be a good metaphor for information? I'm assuming here that the term refers to farming and not to missile silos... which would be equally odd. Janet Dr. Janet Abbate Associate Professor Science & Technology in Society Virginia Tech www.sts.vt.edu/ncr www.linkedin.com/groups/STS-Virginia-Tech-4565055 www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members