Concepts of Digital Garden

The Many Forms of Digital Gardens

Doing some research on the Web about the concept of Digital Gardens, I found some description about the idea behind that name. One of the descriptions is that they are a way to pusblish personal knowledge on the Web; they sit in the middle point between a weblogs or blogs, note takings apps, and a work-in-progress wikis. As such, a garden would be a collection of evolving ideas that are not organised by their publication date like a blog is, it is not just a collection of dispersed notes about any topic, and they are not polished articles Nobel Prize ready. On the other hand, previous iterations around the concept were about thinking the hyperspace made by hypertexts, and ways to organise information and its hyperlinks to foster free exploration instead of paths being predefined by the author of the webpage or website.

I found other description of digital gardenning as the act of sort, cleaning and declutter our digital space on the Web. Another approach is the Digital Garden as a different way of thinking about information on the Web. Instead of thinking about it as streams of events immersed in immediacy, another approach is a linked landscape that grows slowly over time. This is simular as the idea of Docuverse expressed by Ted Nelson where all the information is accessible by a link from anywhere else. A series of paths are initially propposed to the reader by the hyperwriter, but it is the reader, based on her own choices who decide which path may want to take. So, that idea of Digital Garden is connected with the original ideas about hypertext that Tim Berners Lee saw as the navigation architecture of the Web.

Photo by Jean Carlo Emer on Unsplash

Another idea arount the concept of Digital Garden is the idea of Personal Knowledge System (PKS). A PKS should serve to its purpose: build your own knowledge. It implies the idea of personal approach with its own information architecture, page layouts, styles and so on. If some hyperlinked structured is present, it should be done just understable for the person who is building its knowledge. It is like having expressed your way of articulate meaning published on the Web.

According to the MIT Technology Review, a Digital Garden let people cultivate their own little bit of internet. The Review stresses the personal approach and the process of approppriation of the Web as stablishing a home in the vast Web space of information. ‘Digital Gardens explore a wide variety of topics and are frequently adjusted and changed to show growth and learning, particularly among people with niche interests’ The emphasis in variety, change and grow shows how Digital Gardens are a space for work-in-progress styles and foster curiosity and reserach on specific topics online.

Another feature of the Digital Garden is the intended audience and the general tone of the work. The main target of your digital garden is yourself. You are talking with yourself about the topics you may more interested in. Tha personal tone and public thought implies a reader contract with other people that may find your garden. Others may know that the state of the garden they found is just a snapshot of a never ending process of thinking and understanding. They may know that the state of the garden may change and evolve over time.

As such, there is an ethos of cultivating creativity and individuality as well as a different sense of time and Web space. In Digital Gardens time is not marked by urgency or immediacy, but time is a place to stay and enjoy. At the same time, the Web space turns more personal, cozy and far from the Web noise pollution. At the end, Digital Gardens are a way to think in public, slowly growing that is rewarding in realizing connections, understanding and relations over time. A garden takes time and dedication to grow.

My Personal Digital Garden

This website is called ‘My Personal Digital Garden’. One of the reasons I choose that name was the idea of cultivate or nourish my own corner on the Web. Now, when I have done some research and explored different approaches to Digital Garden, I want to do may own contribution to the ongoing conversation. Here is my initial sketch of the topic:

Digital Gardens is about how we create, process and share information on the Web. It is about how we understand the Web. For example: how we understand hypertext, hyperwriting, hyperlinking. That process is very personal and the main intended audience for the content is its own creator. Althogh interaction is not excluded by design. Two keywords about Digital Gardens are: cultivate and nourish. The sense of grow a digital garden is cultivate, nourish and grow everything you may want to foster like: curiosity, passions, creativity and so on. It is a matter to ask yourself what you want to grow, and a Digital Garden may you help with it.

Growing a Digital Garden is a continuated action over time. Achieving Timeless Contemplative Flow may be an approach. It is not a rush hour, but a timeless contemplative action. It is a personal approach to building personal relevant information or simply a personal knowledge base. The idea of connection and relation is key. Cultivating your own garden may allow you to discover new patterns and relations between your knowledge points. Time again is key: it is about slow grow of ideas. Approppriation is key as well: tt is about how we may appropiate the digital space, the Web, to make our own Web. It is the thinking by writting way. It should be 100% human made content. It can be structured with different information architectures. It is about let things follow its own process. Some seeds may grow, others do not.

May this Digital Garden grow!