Digital Gardens and Networked Thoughts
Digital gardens
What is a digital garden? Maggie Appleton explains:
Rather than presenting a set of polished articles, displayed in reverse chronological order, these sites act more like free form, work-in-progress wikis. A garden is a collection of evolving ideas that aren’t strictly organised 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.
Some digital gardens:
- Anne Laurie Le Cunff
- Maggie Appleton
- Andy Matuschak
- Joel Hooks
- Kezie Todd
- Patrick Tanguay
- Salman Ansari
- Conor Dewey
- Christian Tietze
- Chuck Grimmett
- Tom Critchlow
Digital Garden concepts:
- Unfinished notes
- Evolving ideas
- Connected by context
Types of networks
There are three types of networks: centralised, decentralised and distributed. Which one is best for organising ideas?
The problem with ‘networked’ thoughts, is that networks don’t represent time, so as thoughts evolve, how can a network show how an idea started, where it currently is, and how it has changed? So is there a another way to organise notes and ideas that helps to show change over time?
Digital Gardens also don’t seem to deal with lots of thoughts very well. Anne Laure Le Cunff mentions the issue with the volume of ideas.