Berkman Luncheon Series >

oct
27
2009

Walled Gardens: Opening the Discussion

Elizabeth Goodman, UC Berkeley School of Information

Tuesday, October 27, 12:30 pm
Berkman Center, 23 Everett Street, second floor
RSVP required for those attending in person (rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu)
This event will be webcast live at 12:30 pm ET and archived on our site shortly after.

"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.

About Elizabeth

Elizabeth Goodman is a PhD student at the UC Berkeley School of Information. Her writing, design and research focus on pervasive computing and the experience of everyday places. She is particularly concerned with how new technologies affect work and play in cities. As a design researcher with Intel, her research on mobile computing and healthcare informed the design of clinician-targeted products. Elizabeth has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and her design work has been exhibited in New York, Paris, and San Francisco. Elizabeth has a master's in interaction design from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University as well as a BA in Art from Yale University. She has received a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow and an Intel PhD Fellowship.

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Radio Berkman 136: The Garden and the Net thumbnail

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Location
Berkman Center for Internet and Society
License
Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution Unported
Copyright Holder
The President and Fellows of Harvard College

Radio Berkman 136: The Garden and the Net

The "Walled Garden" is an oft-used metaphor to describe an area of the web that is somehow closed off - think AOL in the 90s, or any site that lives behind a paywall. To some, these areas of the net are exclusive avenues to brilliantly curated content. To others "Walled Gardens" are threats to the open nature of the net. Elizabeth Goodman, a PhD student at the UC Berkeley School of Information and a design researcher with Intel, has taken the metaphor of the Garden back to its roots (so-to-speak), to see if we can't reimagine web communities through the lens of these physical spaces.

Produced 5 Nov 2009

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Location
Berkman Center for Internet and Society
License
Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution Unported
Copyright Holder
The President and Fellows of Harvard College

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Last updated October 27, 2009