## Digital Garden ![[digital_garden.png]] For a history of the Digital Gardening movement, I highly suggest reading [Maggie Appleton's post](https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history) that details the history of it and does a good job of explaining the spirit of the idea. This was my introduction to the concept. The above graphic does a good job of explaining where digital gardens sit on the spectrum of web content. They are more formal than tweets, more public than typical knowledge repositories, less structured and well-thought-out than blog posts, and much less formal than published research. ### The Principles #### Focus on Contextual Relationships Knowledge is non-linear. Our brains are not naturally attuned to rote memorization and regurgitation. They are a web of knowledge built up over a lifetime of experiences. When a new piece of information enters our web of knowledge, our brain does a better job of remembering it if we can add significance to the new concept by interlinking it with other existing nodes in our knowledge graph. The act of linking the nodes strengthens both the source and destination nodes simultaneously in a sort of symbiotic relationship. Traversing the knowledge graph is also non-linear. A single node can be linked to several different concepts and the reader has the freedom to choose which path to take based on personal interest. Through interconnection, nodes naturally cluster which may lead to abstract connections that would otherwise be hard to see. This focus on contextual relationships reminds me of the [[Zettelkasten Note Taking Method]]. #### Continuous Growth Knowledge is not static. Traditional web content has a timestamp, a metaphorical seal, and rarely gets updated once published. Gardens are living entities that change and update as new information enters our web of knowledge. There is no "final version" to any page -- they are always subject to change. Before learning about digital gardens, I subscribed to the idea that web content should be well-researched and highly edited in private, only being published once significant time has been spent to ensure quality. I drank the Kool-Aid, so to speak. This presented a large barrier to entry, requiring a significant time investment before publishing, which deterred me from posting causing my website lay dormant for long periods until I could muster the energy and effort required (which, admittedly, rarely happened). I'm old enough to remember a time in the early internet where the focus was more on sharing information rather than presenting a well-polished marketing-approved post. Gardens pay homage to the spirit of the early internet in that they focus on freedom, collaboration, and open discourse of raw ideas. #### Imperfection & Learning in Public The goal of digital gardens is not to be sole sources of truth which can be cited in academic papers. Rather, the goal is to present raw knowledge at various stages of refinement. As Maggie Appleton puts it, "Gardening sits in the middle... the perfect balance of chaos and cultivation." [[Learning in Public]] is sharing what you learn as you learn it in real time. #### Unique Playspace Your garden will naturally look different than your neighbor's -- it is unique to you, your interests, and your learning style. It acts as a space where you can freely try new things, draw in the margins, highlight different parts, discard what doesn't work, and build off of what does. There are no rules when it comes to how the information should be presented. You get to decide. Maybe your style will resonate with other like-minded people. #### Intercropping Knowledge comes in different mediums. If you're a visual learner, the online format of the garden enables you to embed videos, podcasts, images, and any other form of medium. The freedom enables a finer granularity, a higher fidelity, projection of you as an individual -- as a human being and all that comes with that. #### Independent Ownership How much of the web content that we generate is actually ours? We post to social media, upload files to Google, give Instagram (Facebook) our images essentially handing over all of our content. Medium in particular sells your content for their gain by putting your writing behind a paywall, blocking that information from getting to people who maybe cannot afford it. If any of those companies were to go under, they would take our data with them. One principle of a digital garden is longevity. Knowledge is accumulated over an extended amount of time. It is too risky to trust the fruits of your intellectual exploration to a third-party. Having control over your data means that your content is not held hostage by any particular entity. This garden is written entirely in text files that I have full control over. I can download all of the contents and transfer them to another service with little effort due to the portability, ubiquity, and interoperability of text files. This means that it is not tied to any particular entity, besides myself, and if any third-party were to go under, my data would be safe and could be posted somewhere else. ### Resources [The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral](https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/) [As We May Think by Vannevar Bush](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/)