Walled Gardens PAYAL ARORA Ph D Columbia University
Walled Gardens PAYAL ARORA (Ph. D. Columbia University, New York City) Dept. of Media and Communication Erasmus University Rotterdam Privacy within Public Leisure Space Online and Offline
argument Focus: privacy, commerce & ‘semi-public’ leisure architectures Relating material to the virtual Metaphor: Walled Gardens
Metaphors and Digital space Web 1. 0: Cyberspace wilderness; Digital frontier Web 2. 0: protective enclaves; safe enclosures; digital ghettos Definition: A ‘walled garden’ refers to a closed or exclusive set of information services provided for users. This is in contrast to giving consumers unrestricted access to applications and content. - (boyd & Marwick, 2011)
Virtual worlds are experienced fundamentally as places (Adams, 1998)
Ideological battlefield Values within web architectures Come a long way… Technical mode: (designers & State; efficiency & functionality) Philosophical mode: (creators ideals: rationalization of decisions) Empirical mode: (practice vs. intended design) “Keep your hands off the Internet “ - Hoven and Weckert (2008) ü vibrant architectures & high plasticity (Greenleaf, 2000) (Barlow, 1996).
Gated Communities a) Secluded social enclaves b) Scaling of enclosures c) Protective playgrounds for the youth
a) secluded social enclaves Natural social ordering? Better governance? Fulfilling a need for community Critique: Corrective mechanism for social failures? Retreating from public sphere & citizenship
Nature of social spatial segregation: globally Israel Shanghai South Africa Mumbai
b) Scaling of enclosures Flow of traffic and extended nodes Media conglomerations and synergies: Illusion of diversity Yahoo-Delicious-Flickr Google layer of the internet Gated Community trend: “recreationally selfsufficient”
c) Protective playgrounds for youth Digital playgrounds: Youth: Identity; trust; SNS (boyd 2007) Perception of SNS as recreational space hence more disarming (Sullivan, 2005) carving privacy within public leisure space through sociolinguistic strategies E-safety enclosures: Scaffolded learning; curating; Benign surveillance ; Bubble wrap generation (Malone, 2007)
Semi-private and commercial leisure space “social network sites have become the modern day equivalent of the mall” (boyd & Marwick , 2011) architectural designs to create “community rather than a public” (Fiske) Quality of expression affect Malls take the place of town squares, parks, streets, and other spaces that are publicly owned. That should imply a heavy responsibility -(Kohn 2004)
Conclusion Focus on - Public leisure spaces - material space (gated communities and malls) - ideologies and social values issues of seclusion, scaling, &protection of youth Trade-Offs: civic sense, social responsibility, nature of publicness, diversity and unplanned encounters, THANK YOU www. payalarora. com Upcoming book: Arora, Payal. (Forth). Virtual and Real Leisure Spaces: A Comparative and Cross-Cultural Analysis. Studies in Science, Technology & Society Series , Routledge.
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