A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden

nurturing my idea Library happened in tools that were single player and the feeling of laboring away in these tools that were you know that that nobody would ever see that my children wouldn't get to see that weren't able to kind of give a a Serendipity or a useful Trail to somebody else wouldn't collide with other people's brains or thoughts um th

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Gardens are organised around contextual relationships and associative links; the concepts and themes within each note determine how it's connected to others.

The early web-adopters were caught up in the idea of The Web as a labyrinth-esque community landscape tended by WikiGardeners and WikiGnomes. These creators wanted to enable pick-your-own-path experiences, while also providing enough signposts that people didn’t feel lost in their new, strange medium.

I understand digital gardens as online spaces where many people are coming together to tend to seeds, which can be understood as content. The container that digital gardens are held in is a commitment to sustainability, pluralism, and cyclical growth. It entails adaptation and a culture of learning.

The digital garden is a personal, wiki-like space collecting ever growing, in-process notes. It’s like a far less polished blog - more wild, densely tangled and interlinked.