Mike Caulfield talks about his collection of notes in his wiki and how they work together as a rich network of ideas. Part of his method is to very carefully describe the relationship between two ideas when he builds his links. These descriptions become ideas in their own right.
Caulfield’s links are by nature structure preserving, at once keeping the original idea intact but also expanding and elaborating it. Each note in the network becomes more important by being honestly joined with other notes.
This process of thoughtful linking creates a pathway through his notes that is stimulating to travel. He compares moving through his notes to walking through a garden – a comparison that Maggie Appleton suggests may be the origin of the concept “digital garden.”
In the end, traveling through the garden becomes an experience in its own right.
This is true of everything in the garden. Each flower, tree, and vine is seen in relation to the whole by the gardener so that the visitors can have unique yet coherent experiences as they find their own paths through the garden. We create the garden as a sort of experience generator, capable of infinite expression and meaning.
SOURCE Mike Caulfield The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral
Also on Wild Rye
By creating a bridge between two ideas, links between posts create a sense of “place” in your information network. Links create topology or sense of space in posts
Caulfield’s description of finding surprising insight in his “digital garden” is very similar to what Niklas Luhmann says about notes pointing to something you wouldn’t have thought of on your own. Links to notes should be unexpected.
His description of a garden, and how each element stands in relation to to the whole, could have been taken straight from Christopher Alexander, A garden is a semi-cultivated wildness.
The garden metaphor likely started with Mark Bernstein – Origins of digital gardening
