The Digital Garden is a conceptual place and a line of thought. It functions as both a verb and a noun; it is etymologically derived purely from the modern definitions of both words.
The digital garden is a philosophy. It is a formal phrasing that summarizes the modern drive to return to a prior stage of the World Wide Web, where aesthetics were not standardized and oneβs work was not manicured for the public to ogle, but for the personal eye. It is synonymous with the championing of Neocities, Tumblr, and GaiaOnline, and the reminiscence of MySpace and older Twitter. And it is a philosophy extant as early as the 90βs, once coined a βHypertext Gardenβ.
A digital garden is an online space in which work is never fully polished before it is published, if it is at all. That is not to say it is a chaotic sprawl because it often possesses organization; however, it is not cultivated in the name of organization. It is the accumulation and cultivation of knowledge in one region rather than the pruning of what information is deemed excessive. Nothing is ever lost; words are only gained. It is a personal hobby that is non-performative. This is a key ethos which dictates the establishment of this site among many others.
For more information, see:
- A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden, Maggie Appleton;
- Building a digital garden, Tom Critchlow;
- My blog is a digital garden, not a blog, Joel Hooks.