Why Walled Garden and The Prairie
This Chatauqua is a series on what is generally seen as two major incompatible views on how to design, implement and operate information systems. The aim is to explore how both general approaches make sense in different ways and in combination rather than in antagonism. In choosing Walled Garden and Prairie to categorise these two general approaches it might seem that I have a negative bias to one or the other, that really isn't where this is coming from. Walled Garden is often treated as a derogatory term, with hard perimeters, control and command hierarchies and long term planning but its also (in its original use) about providing the right conditions for different plants with different requirements and a structured navigation which allows maintenance, gardening without obstructing or affecting the rest of the Garden. In its way the Prairie might seem without controls, borders, vulnerable and inefficient but it's also resilient because there is no single point of failure and burning it down periodically keeps it healthy.
*In writing this I was convinced that I was around 15 when I read this but the Universe I appear to be in at the moment has it in 1974 when I was 18. I don't think this is materially a difference to anyone else but its one of those jarring hillocks that you come across between your personal history of the world and its 'objective' truth.
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