Walls: Their In and Out Functions
May 8, 2010
In college, one of my courses featured lectures by a fellow named Smythe, Daniel Smythe, I believe. He was a Robert Frost scholar and had spent time with the poet doing odd jobs. I was never sure whether he cleaned the pasture spring or shoveled out the barn. I do recall having to read and discuss a poem about a stone wall that kept falling over or was shoved out of the way by my neighbors who wanted to shoot small animals with their weapons in the adjoining field.
After 40 years I recall
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
My thought as an addled goose was, “Apple, the New York Times, and Rupert Murdoch are obsessed with walls. Pay walls, registration walls, and walled gardens are among the types about which I hear much chatter.
After some dancing around in synonym and metaphor weeds, the Bobster[my name for Mr. Frost] concludes:
“Good fences make good neighbors.”
I think T shirts with this slogan will be distributed by Apple, the New York Times and Rupert Murdoch. I definitely will want one. (Do you think the T shirts will have a footnote pointing to the Bobster’s support of the wall thing?)
I read the UK Telegraph article “Adobe: Apple Wants to Turn the Web into a Walled Garden.” For me the hot passage was:
[Kevin Lynch, Adobe CTO] went [on] to say: “We’re facing a time where there are some who want to wall off parts of the web and need to have approval. I don’t think that’s the role of a company. Apple is playing this strategy where they want to create a walled garden.” Lynch compared Apple’s decision to put up technological barriers to railroads in the 1800’s. “It’s like railroads in the 1800?s. People were using different gauged rails. Your cars would literally not run on those rails. That’s counter to the web. The ‘rails’ now are companies forcing people to write for a particular OS, which has a high cost to switch. We need people to compete on the merits of the things they do, not on the gauge of the rails.”
The old addled goose is tired from inputs from 20 somethings, one of whom regaled me with enough baloney to keep a Chicago school lunch room in sandwiches for a decade. Let’s think about this wall angle.
First, walls mean control. Prisons mostly rely on walls. What happens in prison can be pretty exciting. I have watched a couple of the prison reality shows with titles along the line “Prison Tattoos for You” and “Street Gangs and MBAs: A New Male Bonding Opportunity.”
Walls are good if you own the prison, control the toll road, or have enough lawyers to frighten a Las Vegas street gang with a fondness for spray paint. For those who don’t own walls or have “wall power”, walls can be annoying.
There can be bad stuff behind walls. Examples range from control of the TV set, the color of the prisoners uniform (an Arizona sheriff allegedly likes pink overalls), and a chance to make friends with the delivery people. That is really good friends with the delivery people. Walls, therefore, don’t mean safe, clean, crime free, or fair. Walls mean an attempt at control. Other operative terms include lock in, lock down, lock up, and the hole. The “hole” is a bit like being at Google and not having any access to MOMA I have heard.
The interest in walls is one more step toward the Middle Ages of Information. I would not be surprised that in order to protect revenue, content, or jobs executives adopt some new clothing styles. I was thinking armour, tasers, and iPads would complete the outfit. Togas could be used to keep these goodies out of sight but close at hand.
Will the Middle Ages of Information override the Wild West along the Internet superhighway? Some folks are going to try.
Control and money are tasty chunks of kibble in my opinion. Search is easier too. Put a wall around your world and you have a shot at knowing who enters, what is there, and who does what. Oh, power. I forgot power. Did I mention money? Oh, money. And don’t forget the hendecasyllabic verse. The Bobster was into rhyme, not crime. Fences. Ambivalent maybe?
Stephen E Arnold, May 8, 2010
A freebie.
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