In 1993 Mark Bernstein proposed the metaphor “information farming” as a way to cultivate and share knowledge withing organizations. The farming metaphor stood in contrast to the ideas of information mining (extraction) and information manufacturing (stockpiling) because it emphasised cooperation and community.
The idea is that knowledge workers would collaborate on data, refine it, and share it.
The vision of information farming is integral to the romantic school of hypertext [Engelbart 63, Nelson 76], and the different goals of the information farm and information mine have been a fertile source of misunderstanding between the hypertext and information-retrieval communities.
Mark Bernstein, Enactment in Information Farming
