The Zachman Framework for Architecture Revisited

In all those stories John A. Zachman is telling us, we can recognize frequently an opposition, implicit or explicit, between two ways of perceiving the future: the long and the short term. This difference in the duration of looking forward is fundamental: “Life’s trade-off in its most simplistic form is between the short term (“immediate gratification”) and the long term (what’s ‘good’ for us)“ (1999). And as the world is not a perfect place, we are tempted to compromise the long term: “the pressure for immediate gratification [...] is enormous” (1999). Zachman is convinced that we should resist this pressure, in order to find the right balance in this trade-off. And the best way to resist is to choose rational and informed.