The tale of the walled garden and the stack…

I had never thought about this concept of the walled garden before the week 6 lecture on the feudalisation of the internet. Facebook has always been something I had taken for granted and never really thought about until I found out it was a clear example of the walled garden. The Walled Garden is a place where social media occurs in an entirely mediated area. You cannot get in without signing up and providing your details. Everyone who signs up always owes a form of “information tax” to the walled garden. This results in a compilation of information called “The Stack”. These fortresses of information have given power to these Internet giants and has enabled them to put a dint in the way information flows.CIxzoj6.png

My question to you is, with the monopolisation of walled gardens and the information concentration station that is “The Stack”, will we ever return to a centralised network? Food for thought.vu4rb98

3 Replies to “The tale of the walled garden and the stack…”

  1. Yesss so many memes! 😀

    I like the term “fortresses of information” to describe The Stacks. It’s interesting that we keep using medieval era analogies to describe the corporate (mis)management of our information (e.g use of ‘fortress’, ‘feudalism’, and ‘enclosure’)… I think it says a lot about the ethics of these practises 😉

    In answer to your question: I doubt it! If the historical trajectory of rampant corporatisation offline is anything to go by…

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  2. Awesome memes to help further your point. To answer your question, i don’t think we would return to a centralised network. These sites share the information across each other in order to gain more information about us to target specific things our way. If one of these sites were to disappear another would take its place and the network wouldn’t be disrupted.

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  3. Awesome point but with your question I dont think so we will go back to centralized network like newspaper, it would be so hard to share a news in real time and it will affecting a global communication.

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