Maggie Appleton and Ida discuss the history and challenges of digital gardening, the cozy web, limitations of blogs and web infrastructure, and the relationship between digital gardening and Twitter.
Digital gardening challenges traditional stream-based publishing and emphasizes organizing information through interlinked networks.
Twitter and digital gardening are complementary platforms, with Twitter providing a relaxed space for discussions and digital gardening offering a structured environment for in-depth exploration of ideas.
Deep dives
Sane and the Mission of Deeper Knowledge Creation
Sane, a platform for raising the wisdom of humanity, aims to create and share knowledge through independent research, podcasting, and technology tools. The minimalist digital environment they are building, called Sane's thought spaces, allows users to collect, create, and share thought processes and interlink them to form a network of connected nodes. These spaces can be shared as unique URLs to showcase various types of knowledge, from research and professional profiles to creative work and online courses.
Introducing Maggie Appleton and Digital Gardening
Maggie Appleton, a designer and developer, is known for her work on open-source interoperable systems for structuring knowledge on the web. She advocates for digital gardening, a concept introduced by Mike Corfield in 2015. Digital gardening challenges the traditional stream-based approach to publishing personal knowledge and emphasizes organizing information through interlinked networks instead of linear time-based streams. It allows for continuous revision, collaboration, and the exploration of ideas in public spaces.
The Cozy Web and Complementary Platforms
The cozy web, a response to the overwhelming and commercialized nature of the internet, provides a retreat into smaller, private groups where individuals can have more contextual conversations and express ideas freely. While digital gardening aims to curate and cultivate knowledge over time, Twitter serves as a space for quick banter and casual engagement. Maggie Appleton sees these platforms as complementary, with Twitter offering a relaxed space for discussions, while digital gardening provides a structured environment for more in-depth exploration of ideas.
Tools and Challenges for Digital Gardening
While digital gardening has gained attention as a concept, the available tools often require some technical knowledge to use effectively. However, platforms like Obsidian, Rome Research, and LogSeq are emerging to simplify the process. Notion, with its easy-to-use interface, allows users to create public spaces with nested pages. Despite current limitations, Maggie Appleton envisions future tools that focus on intuitive digital gardening for non-technical individuals, making it accessible and inclusive for people from various backgrounds and professions.
In this episode, Maggie and Ida get into the weeds of digital gardening. They talk about the history of the concept, what it means, the challenges of building digital gardens, the Cozy Web, the limitations we face with blogs and the web infrastructure that propels them, and whether digital gardening is complementary or one-against-the-other with Twitter.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gooandprickle.substack.com
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