Walled Gardens: Opening the Discussion | Berkman Center

I'll be speaking on Oct 27 at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society on "Walled Gardens: Opening the Discussion."

Here's the abstract. Please come!

"Walled gardens" is a common term for systems that limit the entrance and exit of certain kinds of data. It is a deceptively simple metaphor that relies on the existence of a shared set of assumptions about what gardens are, what walls are, and what it means to build and maintain them. In this talk, I will try to productively extend the walled garden metaphor for digital spaces by comparing it to everyday experiences of more literal ones: urban community gardens. Often fenced off from surrounding city neighborhoods, community gardens are popular, beloved places. I propose that discussing how urban gardeners build, maintain, and understand their relationships to each other and to their walls will help us rethink this often-used but under-considered metaphor.