Digital Garden: Introduction

During Corona, I stumbled upon the concept of “digital gardening”. Maggie Appleton describes it better – and more beautifully, I might add – than I ever could, but it’s basically a personal space to gather and publish (i.e. plant) “personal knowledge on the web”. In one interpretation – more akin to a blog – said knowledge is in flux, will be tended to (i.e. edited or rewritten) and might even grow into a full-grown blogpost or essay. In another interpretation – resembling a wiki – you have curated patches of knowledge and return to those every now and then to amend them.

I will use the latter and instead of a garden the image of a collection of butterflies spiked with tiny needles trapped behind glass inside a large wooden frame comes to mind. Or one of those library catalogs with indices and cards in tiny drawers. Also, instead of personal notes and thoughts my garden will mainly consist of links. Boy do I love links.

One might argue that this blog is already nothing more than a curated collection of links. Which is by design. I don’t feel I have much to add to the global think space, but I like pointing at things. The main difference is time. The usual blog entries are more or less important now. Entries in my digital garden are important forever.