Grain Elevators and Thought Elevators
I come from Buffalo. I wasn't born here, but I have now been here longer than anywhere else I've ever lived. Long enough to get ornery at anyone who talks down to my city. Mind you, I can tell you every single way in which this town is provincial and covered in ice and snow for the 10 months we call Winter. But anyone who's not from here who talks down to me about should prepare to be socked in the nose. I'd never do that of course, just saying they should gird themselves.
But I digress. Buffalo has some of the most incredible architecture of any US city, and among the most impressive structures are the most elemental. The magnificent grain elevators that line the Buffalo River to the Lake Erie coastline, massive clusters of exposed reinforced concrete tubes 200 feet high and 10-feet thick. People who aren't from here may find them ugly, and these people should refer to the penultimate sentence of the previous paragraph. Kayaking down the Buffalo River with these tall and eerily elegant structure overhead can only be compared to drifting through a manmade Grand Canyon.
Many of Buffalo's grain elevators have been abandoned, and yet they are almost impossible to tear down. So they just sit there, waiting. There are many reasons for this. Much of the Buffalo River is a giant brownfield, just now coming back to organic life after a century of industrial pollution. Some dioxins are better left undisturbed I suppose. Yet the primary reason the grain elevators remain is simply that they were so masterfully constructed in the first place. These were structures that were built for a vitally important reason: to store all the food grown in the plains and midwest and shipped across the Great Lakes on its way to the Atlantic seaboard. In other words, the grain elevators were built to protect the food supply for the preponderance of the US population. So yes, these were built extremely well, because without them, the nation risked dying of starvation. And also, that grain was worth a lot of money to a lot of merchants, let's never forget to put altruism in its place.
I'm fortunate to have lived with these structures for so long, because they have taught me how the university has been built. Many advocates of the "new economy" -- a dreadful term, let's face it, second only to "disrupting" everything -- speak of thought-silos or institutional silos as if this were a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, the downsides of silos are substantial. Teams and groups covet their own information and projects, fail to feed vital information to others who might be able to expand and enhance their thinking, and in this way silos can provide severe obstacles to innovation. This is a common complaint I hear of my own university and college. That the departments are built like silos, resist sharing resources and ideas with other units, horde enrollments when they can, problematize the formation of new interdisciplinary programs targeted to new student needs and new avenues of thought. All of this is most likely true.
On the other hand, a grain elevator is almost impossible to demolish. High-grade explosives are rarely to the task of pulverizing ten-foot thick reinforced concrete cylinders. Is this not what a university is primarily built for? To archive knowledge in thick cylinders so that it may be eternalized?
And so I reach the end of another parable. But I leave you with this thought: The problem isn't the silos -- they continue to do exactly what they were designed to do, even if that means holding a bunch of air. The problem is the ground between them, and the river between them. A contaminated environment that disallows organic growth to flourish between grain elevators. The academic occupants of departmental silos should be proud of them and what they accomplish. But now it's time to cultivate the brownfield, the seemingly empty spaces in-between that, if cared for correctly, will build a network of silos that is stronger and more durable than any single structure known to humankind.
But I digress. Buffalo has some of the most incredible architecture of any US city, and among the most impressive structures are the most elemental. The magnificent grain elevators that line the Buffalo River to the Lake Erie coastline, massive clusters of exposed reinforced concrete tubes 200 feet high and 10-feet thick. People who aren't from here may find them ugly, and these people should refer to the penultimate sentence of the previous paragraph. Kayaking down the Buffalo River with these tall and eerily elegant structure overhead can only be compared to drifting through a manmade Grand Canyon.
Many of Buffalo's grain elevators have been abandoned, and yet they are almost impossible to tear down. So they just sit there, waiting. There are many reasons for this. Much of the Buffalo River is a giant brownfield, just now coming back to organic life after a century of industrial pollution. Some dioxins are better left undisturbed I suppose. Yet the primary reason the grain elevators remain is simply that they were so masterfully constructed in the first place. These were structures that were built for a vitally important reason: to store all the food grown in the plains and midwest and shipped across the Great Lakes on its way to the Atlantic seaboard. In other words, the grain elevators were built to protect the food supply for the preponderance of the US population. So yes, these were built extremely well, because without them, the nation risked dying of starvation. And also, that grain was worth a lot of money to a lot of merchants, let's never forget to put altruism in its place.
I'm fortunate to have lived with these structures for so long, because they have taught me how the university has been built. Many advocates of the "new economy" -- a dreadful term, let's face it, second only to "disrupting" everything -- speak of thought-silos or institutional silos as if this were a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, the downsides of silos are substantial. Teams and groups covet their own information and projects, fail to feed vital information to others who might be able to expand and enhance their thinking, and in this way silos can provide severe obstacles to innovation. This is a common complaint I hear of my own university and college. That the departments are built like silos, resist sharing resources and ideas with other units, horde enrollments when they can, problematize the formation of new interdisciplinary programs targeted to new student needs and new avenues of thought. All of this is most likely true.
On the other hand, a grain elevator is almost impossible to demolish. High-grade explosives are rarely to the task of pulverizing ten-foot thick reinforced concrete cylinders. Is this not what a university is primarily built for? To archive knowledge in thick cylinders so that it may be eternalized?
And so I reach the end of another parable. But I leave you with this thought: The problem isn't the silos -- they continue to do exactly what they were designed to do, even if that means holding a bunch of air. The problem is the ground between them, and the river between them. A contaminated environment that disallows organic growth to flourish between grain elevators. The academic occupants of departmental silos should be proud of them and what they accomplish. But now it's time to cultivate the brownfield, the seemingly empty spaces in-between that, if cared for correctly, will build a network of silos that is stronger and more durable than any single structure known to humankind.
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