Inspirations for my approach to this concept:
- Nicole van der Hoeven’s “working notes” site Fork My Brain and her approach to learning in public
- Mint’s Taniyn Quest – a very playful site that combines PKM with an old-school-blog vibe
- Cory Doctorow’s Memex Method – “when your commonplace book is a public database”
- Tomodashi design philosophy
- Maggie Appleton’s Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden
what am i trying to do here?
- embrace vulnerability—learning in public is scary but doing mildly embarrassing things is good for you
- write for the audience of my past and future selves; include enough context to get by, not much more. only include what interests me & i think i’ll want to return to. antiencyclopedic.
- no presumption of expertise over any topic
- a foundation upon which my other work is built. aiming for basic knowledge synthesis. See workflow pipeline.
- placeholders, incomplete entries, and redlinks are OK. low-friction enough that I can add a note even on a bad day.
- aim for interlinking over use of tags and folders—but use them when appropriate. rhizomatic vs. hierarchical or taxonomical approach to knowledge organization. atomicity for ease of granular recall/synthesis… but also i find a giant folder of notes with no folders visually intimidating/messy and i’m less likely to use it, in which case… what’s the point?
- incompleteness-as-wholeness. dynamic > definitive notes. it’s about saving myself work, not making more.
- recognition of how my brain works very quickly and also very slowly; quick capture with ability to go back and expand on, nurture etc my ideas.
- simplicity; minimal media integration. re-orient around text.
- space where the personal interacts with the global. (my newsletter is similar but with more of a diary-like orientation, and more fixed in time.
these goals are heavily informed by a disabled approach to computing and neurodivergence-supporting PKM (as opposed to the dark side of PKM.)
from obsidian.rocks’s post on digital gardening:
- Digital gardens are about exploring and not explaining
- Digital gardens are link-based, not time based
- Digital gardens are constantly growing, changing, and evolving
- Digital gardens are imperfect and experimental