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Welcome!
Who?
What?
A digital garden is kind of like a blog, except it's meant to facilitate an evolving or "growing" set of ideas, however small or large, rather than static, full-fledged posts. The pages of a digital garden can be structured however you want. Some people like to tag their notes as "seedlings," "sprouts," and "trees" (in keeping with the garden theme) to represent how developed each idea is.
Why?
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Resistance: To me, they are a form of resistance, a revolution against big-tech social media and the way it forcibly curates our content[1]. I am in full control of how long this content exists and where/how it appears, which is nice.
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Focus: While here, we are both spending less time distracted by ads or content meant to simply grab our attention and keep us on a platform that makes money from that attention and our data. I don't need to log in anywhere to post something. Save a file on my computer, hit publish - done!
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Not much ado: I can publish something without making it a big deal if it isn't. I'm not forced to post it to the top of my page, but I can share it if I want to. I'm not forced to expect dopamine hits every time someone likes or comments that bring me back to someone else's platform.
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Context: Ideas do not have to live in isolation. This format allows you to use wiki-style links that are conducive to branching ideas. Part of the reason that social media is so divisive[2] is that posts are like sound-bites. They can be useful to convey a short message, but without context, words can have entirely different meanings. Even with some context, we can say the same thing and mean something different. Here, you can see a fuller scope - how these ideas interrelate and where they come from.
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Deconstruction: Continuing from the last point, linking allows one to break thoughts into its fundamental elements and deconstruct an idea in a methodical way. I believe deconstruction is important. The word has a negative connotation for some because it's being used by ex-Christians to describe their deconversion process. Well, as someone who has deconstructed in that way, too, and "reconstructed," if you will, I still think it's a good thing. It is good to tear down what is built on sand in order to build it upon a sure foundation of stone.
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Nostalgia: I miss the days when personal blogs and websites were the norm for an online presence. GeoCities, Angelfire, Xynga, Wordpress blogs -- even Myspace had a blog section and was customizable. You could express yourself in the layout and colors, have a background image, or an embedded music player. I never liked Facebook because it felt like a downgrade. Everyone's page has the same boring, sterile format, same features, but with more ads and dopamine farming.
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Repository: It's a place to put random things that I never considered worthy of posting elsewhere, including half-baked ideas, plans, and things I've invested time and effort into but haven't finished, or aren't "perfect". It's also a place to consolidate links to things across various platforms that I've used in the past. I think that's important. Integration instead of fracturing.
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Convenience: I already use Obsidian for note-taking, along with GitHub. Using the Obsidian Digital Garden plugin I can easily publish and update pages from the same place I take notes. It's also free (apart from the custom domain, which is optional).
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Hybrid storage: The files are stored on my computer and are synced to web as needed.
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Trust: I use AI sparingly and will let you know if something isn't written by me. Sources will be made available whenever possible.
Notes about this garden
- Please feel free stroll as you choose.
- Use the graph view to see how everything connects.
- Not every link has an associated entry, it might be a reminder for me to make one in the future.
- Many of these notes are about or link to external sites. I figure if a resource has helped me, it might help others as well.
- Backlinks (the "Mentioned in" section) are sometimes just as useful as links.
A question
Social media, blogs, digital gardens, and other manners of broadcasting our lives for all to see -- Is it natural?