A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden
They're collections of evolving ideas that aren't strictly organized by their publication date. They're inherently exploratory – notes are linked through contextual associations. They aren't refined or complete - notes are published as half-finished thoughts that will grow and evolve over time.
It's a different way of thinking about our online behavior around information - one that accumulates personal knowledge over time in an explore-able space.
Features
- Topography over Timelines: Organized by contextual relationships, bi-directional links.
- Continuous Growth: Continuously evolving work in progress.
- Learning in Public & Imperfection: Blogging is performative. Digital gardening is less performative than a blog, but more intentional and thoughtful than our Twitter feed. It wants to build personal knowledge over time.
- Playful, Personal, and Experimental: Even the tools are evolving and experimental.
- Inter-cropping & Content Diversity: All varieties of mediums grow in the garden - videos, podcasts, short notes, long essays, academic papers, sketches.
- Independent Ownership: No one can take your garden away. If you give it a bit of forethought – storing notes in flat markdown files – you can built it in a way that easily transfers as platforms and technologies inevitably change.