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| **Why Walled Garden and The Prairie** {#TheWalledGardenandPrairie-WhyWalledGardenandThePrairie}
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| This
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| [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/285437-what-is-in-mind-is-a-sort-of-chautauqua-that-s-the Chautauqua]
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| is a series on what is generally seen as two major incompatible views on
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| how to design, implement and operate information systems. The aim is to
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| explore how both general approaches make sense in different ways and in
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| combination rather than in antagonism. In choosing Walled Garden and
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| Prairie to categorise these two general approaches it might seem that I
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| have a negative bias to one or the other, that really isn\'t where this
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| is coming from. Walled Garden is often treated as a derogatory term,
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| with hard perimeters, command and control hierarchies and long term
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| planning but its also (in its original use) about providing the right
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| conditions for different plants with different requirements and a
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| structured navigation which allows maintenance, gardening without
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| obstructing or affecting the rest of the Garden. In its way the Prairie
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| might seem without controls, borders, vulnerable and inefficient but
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| it\'s also resilient because there is no single point of failure and
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| burning it down periodically keeps it healthy.
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| If you want to think of these two views as being \'Enterprise
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| Architecture\' on the one hand and \'Startup Scrum like Good Enough for
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| Now\' on the other then that\'s fine so long as you also think about how
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| each view can inform and be integrated into the other. Its that I\'d
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| like to describe.
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|
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| The Chatauqua will meander through the current practices and arguments
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| using this metaphor. They\'re abstractions and like all abstractions
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| leaky. But we won\'t worry about that the metaphor will stay useful. But
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| why Chatauqua?
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| When I was around 18^\*^ my local library in
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| [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maghull Maghull] got a
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| copy of [https://www.univie.ac.at/Anglistik/easyrider/data/zen_and_the_art_of_motorcycle_ma.htm Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
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| Maintenance] which had just been published. It was in the small Philosophy section
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| which along with obscure foreign authors I used to backfill my education
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| like a magpie and the picture on the back of a low slung motorbike with
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| Pirsig and his son doing the thousand mile stare in monochrome was as
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| shiny a book as I\'d seen. Pirsig\'s peeling away of the layers of
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| Classical and Romantic aspects and exposing Quality as the mutually
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| supporting and unifying glue has stayed with me since. That and the
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| anecdotes around engineering and writing that I\'ll repeat with the dole
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| regularity of an old fart. Pirsig calls his book a
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| [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chautauqua Chatauqua] from the travelling circus of educational talks and demonstrations of
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| the 19th Century, a wagon train of TED Talks. That seems to describe
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| what I\'m intending to do and its all the more relevant (to me at
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| least), that it was last year (2017) that Pirsig died.
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| Whether he\'d enjoy or approve it though I don\'t know.
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|
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| - [Walls and Trust Nothing]
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| - [Interfaces All the Way Down]
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| :::
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| ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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| ^\*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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| **ORCID** [https://orcid.org/sites/default/files/images/orcid_16x16.png] [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3617-0891 orcid.org/0000-0002-3617-0891]
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