The Case for Curation as a Service: A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden

The Case for Curation as a Service: A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden

In the vast sea of content available on the internet, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and lost. That's where curators come in. They act as life preservers, saving us from drowning in the ocean of information. Curators are domain experts or individuals with a deep obsession for a particular topic. They spend countless hours sifting through the garbage to find the hidden gems and then present them in a readable manner. The essence of good curation lies in quality, not quantity. It's all about finding the best resources for a given topic and delivering them to the audience.

The concept of the digital garden has been around for quite some time. Mark Bernstein's 1998 essay on Hypertext Gardens is believed to be the first mention of the term. The idea behind the digital garden is to create an organized and inviting space within the vast wilderness of information. It's a place where interesting things await, but one may be reluctant to venture due to the daunting task of navigating through the thorns and mosquitoes.

The term "digital gardening" gained more popularity in 2007 when Rory Sutherland, the vice president of Ogilvy Group, used it to describe the act of syncing and defragmenting digital content. However, it was Mike Caufield's keynote on The Garden and the Stream at the 2015 Digital Learning Research Network that laid the foundations for our current understanding of the term. Caufield emphasized the difference between streams and gardens. Streams, like social media feeds, only display the latest ideas of the last 24 hours. They lack the ability to accumulate knowledge, connect disparate information, or mature over time. On the other hand, the garden represents the web as a topology, an arrangement and rearrangement of interconnected knowledge.

Tom Critchlow's 2018 article, "Of Digital Streams, Campfires and Gardens," further expanded on the concept introduced by Caufield. Critchlow explored alternative metaphors for consuming and producing information, framing it in the context of a garden. Shortly after, Joel Hooks published "My blog is a digital garden, not a blog" in early 2019. This marked a shift in how people approached creating web content. Instead of traditional web pages, they started writing in form fields and text areas within a web page, mimicking the organic growth and interconnectedness of a garden.

In a digital garden, publication dates are not the primary focus. The structural basis for navigating the garden lies in the connections between posts. Themes, topics, and shared context link posts together, creating a web of interconnected ideas. Bi-Directional Links play a significant role in this process, making both the destination page and the source page visible to the reader. This allows for a more holistic understanding of the content and facilitates exploration within the garden.

One of the key aspects of a digital garden is its ever-evolving nature. Just like a real garden, it is constantly growing, changing, and evolving. Ideas are posted as "seedlings" and nurtured until they become fully grown, respectable opinions. This process of researching and refining happens in the open, allowing readers to witness the author's thinking and writing process. It adds a layer of transparency and intimacy to the content, creating a space that is both personal and public.

Digital gardens offer a unique opportunity for individuals to express themselves in ways that go beyond standardized templates. They allow for a higher-fidelity representation of one's identity, complete with quirks, contradictions, and complexity. The organization of the garden reflects the individual's way of thinking, making each garden a personal playspace.

However, at present, digital gardens are primarily solo endeavors. The concept of multiplayer gardens is still being explored by a community of enthusiastic developers and designers. The aim is to create a shared space where multiple individuals can contribute and collaborate, expanding the potential of the digital garden.

In conclusion, the concept of curation as a service and the ethos of the digital garden share a common thread of organizing and presenting information in a meaningful way. Curators act as guides, helping us navigate the vast sea of content, while digital gardens provide a unique space for the cultivation and display of knowledge. To fully embrace the potential of these concepts, here are three actionable pieces of advice:

1. Embrace quality over quantity: Focus on curating the best resources and presenting them in a readable manner. Don't get lost in the noise of the internet.

2. Nurture your digital garden: Constantly update and refine your ideas, allowing them to grow and evolve. Use bi-directional links to create a web of interconnected knowledge.

3. Explore collaboration: Look for opportunities to create multiplayer gardens, where individuals can contribute and collaborate. Foster a sense of community and collective growth.

By understanding the value of curation and the ethos of the digital garden, we can navigate the web more effectively, finding the hidden gems amidst the abundance of information.