Digital Cultivation

“A garden is the highest level of cooperation of organisms.”

– [[ 4 False Beliefs that Society is Built On ]] by Dr. Bruce Lipton, PHD

This digital garden maps my struggle to heal and find meaning in an uncertain world. Amongst the major disruptions starting in 2020, old misconceptions about my mental health crumbled alongside my faith in society’s institutions, making room for new emergence.

A digital garden plants posts as incomplete, messy seeds at first. Unorganized by date, they grow as I learn more, linking related seeds across subjects: [[ Complex PTSD ]], superheroes, philosophy, and more! My goal is to tend this garden, allowing it to sprawl into a network of personal and encountered knowledge.

For a thorough introduction into Digital Gardens and how they have evolved, check out A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden by Maggie Appleton.

I like them because I can start small without a lot of structure, publisher deadlines, or video editing. I can just write – or plant more seeds. They remind me of the personal home pages of the 90s, when I first came online: pages about the person’s thoughts, hobbies, and links to their friends’ pages.

Raging Streams

The internet is full of streams: blogs, news, social media, etc. The world moves fast and keeping up is important… to a point. Streams keep us focused on the here and now, scrolling through timelines designed to entertain / distract / anger. There’s no time to include (and therefore consider) context. There’s no space to just sit and breathe.

Shock, humor, anger, fear (of missing out–FOMO is stronger than gravity) keep us subscribed, swiping to refresh. Our algorithmic streams are infinite. There are always new pet memes, pop culture distractions, and political controversies. Movie trailers are posted 5 times a day so we don’t forget them. Every online purchase comes with an email newsletter.

Just one more cute cat video, and then I’m going to bed!

Streams are driven by engagement: how much attention can they capture? Every second spent is tracked, collected, and analyzed by their big data systems. Did you look at some content too long, or maybe click the Like button? The algorithm will happily offer up anything remotely like it.

We aren’t and never were the users. We are the products being sold to advertisers. Content creation is all about filling the space between their ads. Concern for our individual and collective health is at the bare minimum according to the law. Companies hoard our data and every bit of our interactions they can capture to dream up new ways to exploit our attention.

The internet can be so much more than this!

Calming Antidotes

Digital Gardens are the antidote to the stream: choose to prioritize calm (over FOMO). Posts live in the same spot they were planted – written to inform and ponder, rather than incite and react. You don’t have to worry about information falling off the stream, never to be seen again.

“Cultivating calm in an environment that demands your fear and outrage is also a form of resistance.”

– Daniel Abraham (co-author of the Expanse) on Bluesky.

Much like gardens, this site will need regular upkeep. There are weeds to pull, posts to update, and new ones to plant. Digital cultivation is mindful gardening: intentional planting in creative structures. The garden is non-linear, more Wikipedia than textbook. Posts can link to any other post, surfacing references between ideas in disparate topics. With each post added, revised, and linked together, we reinforce the same structures in the brain–a zen-like experience.