Hello, [I'm sending this for a second time, I have trouble when I respond directly to e-mails from the list, hopefully two of these don't show up on the list, apologies to Thomas and Andrew who already go this] I'm struck that transparency as making the inner workings of something apparent is a very old and I thought very common metaphor in various phrases. For example the phrase "I saw right through him" to indicate you saw through deception and divined someone's true motives and plans. So when you see right through him you actually see him better than when you see him in the normal mode, just as when you understand a political process better when it is transparent. This goes back to at least 1856 (and presumably far earlier but this was the earliest use I found on google books). Although arguably it suggests that we see right through someone's dissembling, lies etc. rather than through him, but it seems like a natural metaphor. http://books.google.ca/books?id=OjEZAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22I%20saw%20right%20through%20him%22&pg=PA287#v=onepage&q=%22I%20saw%20r ight%20through%20him%22&f=false Looking at some old usages I think the metaphor using the exact word "transparent" to mean "obvious" is pretty old also. So "my patriotic American ears burned with shame as I heard how an American had been gulled by such a simple and transparent operation." The transparency of the operation indicates that it is an obvious scam not a indiscernable one. http://books.google.ca/books?id=5GNEAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22transparent%20operation%22&pg=PA94#v=onepage&q=%22transparent%20operat ion%22&f=false Perhaps, the word "clear" provides a case of the metaphor going the other way, since (according to etymological dictionary I checked http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=clear ) it starts by meaning something obvious ("bright"), keeps that meaning, but also means not blocking/encumbering light/vision and so means transparent (a clear day, clear water etc.). Not sure I can justify it exactly, but I would have said transparency as a metaphor for divining inner workings is the inutive metaphor and that the CS metaphor making it synonymous with invisible or seamless is actually the less intuitive one (although it is still intelligible as a metaphor). To me transparency connotes something you can see through but that still makes its presence known, the opposite of transparency is opaqueness or obscurity, whereas the opposite of invisibility is simply visibility. -- Yours Truly, Allan Olley, PhD http://individual.utoronto.ca/fofound/