Deane’s Gardens

In December 2021, I was looking for a concept of a digital space where I could explore ideas without them having to be polished or presentable.

Someone on Twitter pointed me at an article entitled: “A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden” which was a lovely elucidation of the exact thing I was looking for. A “digital garden” is:

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. They’re less rigid, less performative, and less perfect than the personal websites we’re used to seeing.

And this is exactly what I wanted.

To be clear, the article didn’t explain how to create a digital garden, it just gave me…permission to do it.

My current gardens:

• User Extensible Software: A discussion about how to design software which can be extended by the user, without developer access