thought spaces | Chris Aldrich

Read On Digital Gardens, Blogs, Personal Spaces, and the Future by Justin Tadlock (WordPress Tavern)

I have been thinking a lot about digital gardens this week. A blog post by Tom McFarlin re-introduced me to the term, which led me down a rabbit hole of interesting ideas on creating a digital space…

My blog posts were merely random thoughts — bits and pieces of my life. ❧

Annotated on August 12, 2020 at 09:52AM

Despite having something that worked sort of like a blog, I maintained various resources and links of other neat ideas I found around the web. It was a digital garden that I tended, occasionally plucking weeds and planting new ideas that may someday blossom into something more. ❧

The idea of a thought space hiding in here….
Annotated on August 12, 2020 at 09:53AM

“The idea of a ‘blog’ needs to get over itself,” wrote Joel Hooks in a post titled Stop Giving af and Start Writing More. “Everybody is treating writing as a ‘content marketing strategy’ and using it to ‘build a personal brand’ which leads to the fundamental flawed idea that everything you post has to be polished to perfection and ready to be consumed.”
It is almost as if he had reached down into my soul and figured out why I no longer had the vigor I once had for sharing on my personal blog. For far too long, I was trying to brand myself. Posts became few and far between. I still shared a short note, aside, once in a while, but much of what I shared was for others rather than myself. ❧

For many, social media took over their “streams” of thoughts and ideas to the point that they forgot to sit, reflect, and write something longer (polished or not).

Personal websites used for yourself first is a powerful idea for collecting, thinking, and creating.

Getting away from “branding” is a great idea. Too many personal sites are used for this dreadful thing. I’d much rather see the edge ideas and what they flower into.
Annotated on August 12, 2020 at 09:56AM

Personal websites can be so much more than a progression of posts over time, newer posts showing up while everything from the past is neatly tucked on “page 2” and beyond. ❧

This is an interesting idea and too many CMSes are missing this sort of UI baked into them as a core idea. CMSes could do a better job of doing both: the garden AND the stream
Annotated on August 12, 2020 at 09:57AM

While I lament the loss of some of the artistry of the early web and lay much of the blame at the feet of blogging platforms like WordPress, such platforms also opened the web to far more people who would not have otherwise been able to create a website. Democratizing publishing is a far loftier goal than dropping animated GIFs across personal spaces. ❧

WordPress has done a lot to democratize publishing and make portions of it easier, but has it gone too far in crystalizing the form of things by not having more wiki-like or curation-based features?
Annotated on August 12, 2020 at 10:01AM

Throughout the platform’s history, end-users have remained at the mercy of their WordPress theme. Most themes are built around what WordPress allows out of the box. They follow a similar formula. Some may have a fancy homepage or other custom page templates. But, on the whole, themes have been primarily built around the idea of a blog. Such themes do not give the user true control over where to place things on their website. While some developers have attempted solutions to this, most have never met the towering goal of putting the power of HTML and CSS into the hands of users through a visual interface. This lack of tools has given rise to page builders and the block editor. ❧

an apropos criticsm
Annotated on August 12, 2020 at 10:02AM

I also want them to be able to easily build something like Tom Critchlow’s wikifolder, a digital collection of links, random thoughts, and other resources.
More than anything, I want personal websites to be more personal. ❧

Those in the IndieWeb want this too!! I definitely do.
Annotated on August 12, 2020 at 10:03AM

Replied to Why I Started Microblogging by

Bryan (Bryan Sebesta)

So, I’ve started to microblog. I was inspired by Alan Jacobs’ recent article, getting back to the open web via micro.blog. One of the big reasons he supports starting a microblog this way is is because he owns the content; it’s part of his own domain, his turf. And that’s appealing to me. Ad...

Welcome to the game Bryan! Curious why you’re hosting your microblog separate from your main site instead of running them both from WordPress (not that you need to/have to)?

I’ve enjoyed linkblogging. When I read something, I can share the link along with a quote or reflection on how it affected me. It’s a great space to think out loud. ❧

Annotated on August 05, 2020 at 01:51PM

As Austin Kleon notes, blogging is a great way to discover what you have to say. My microblog has given me a chance to have thoughts, and this longer blog has given me a space to figure out what it means–to discover what it is I have to say. In other words, my microblog is where I collect the raw materials; my blog is where I assemble them into questions and, perhaps, answers. It’s a place where I figure out what I really think. ❧

Annotated on August 05, 2020 at 01:54PM

Read 7 Things Roam Did Right by tre (Proses.ID)

Sections Seven things Roam did rightPotentialsIs Roam just a fad, a shiny new tool?All the small thingsAnecdotesThe trifecta: getting things into, out of, and across heads Roam Research is a phenomenon that took the tools for thought space by storm. Let’s appreciate the seven things it did right a...

Read A garden with a water feature by

Jeremy Cherfas (jeremycherfas.net)

People have written some interesting things following on from the pop-up IndieWebCamp that Chris Aldrich organised a couple of weeks ago. The Garden and the Stream set out to compare and contrast wikis and weblogs and how the two might be used. It was a terrific success, and I’m sorry I wasn’t a...

Nevertheless, the very fact that I am going through my notes reflects a new habit I am trying to build, of setting time aside every week, and sometimes more often, deliberately to tend the oldest notes I have and the notes I created or edited in the past week. Old notes take longer, because I have to check old links and decide what to do if they have rotted away. Those notes also need to be reshaped in line with zettelkasten principles. That means deciding on primary tags, considering internal links, splitting the atoms of long notes and so on. At times it frustrates me, but when it goes well I do see structure emerging and with it new thoughts and new directions to follow. ❧

This is reminiscent of the idea that indigenous peoples regularly met at annual feasts to not only celebrate, but to review over their memory palaces and perform their rituals as a means of reviewing and strengthening their memories and ideas.
Annotated on May 09, 2020 at 07:17AM

Read Proposal for Near-Future Blogging Megastructures by Brendan Schlagel (Brendan Schlagel)

Blogging is great, but it sometimes feels like every blog is an island. To have a robust blog society requires connection, community, conversation. Part of the problem is we don’t have many great ways to connect blogs together into larger conversation structures.

I suspect this response (part read post, part annotation post, part reply, and with Webmentions enabled) will be somewhat different in form and function than those in the preceding conversations within the blogchain, but I offer it, rather than the standard blogpost or even reply, as the sort of differently formed response that blogging futures suggests we might experimentally give.

Sure we have hyperlinks, and even some esoteric magic with the likes of webmentions. But I want big, simple, legible ways to link blog discussions together. I want: blogging megastructures!

In practice, building massive infrastructure is not only very difficult, but incredibly hard to maintain (and also thus generally expensive). Who exactly is going to maintain such structures?

I would argue that Webmentions aren’t esoteric, particularly since they’re a W3C recommendation with several dozens of server implementations including support for WordPress, Drupal, and half a dozen other CMSes.

Even if your particular website doesn’t support them yet, you can create an account on webmention.io to receive/save notifications as well as to send them manually.
–November 17, 2019 at 02:14PM

Cabinet: one author or several; posts curated into particular collections or series’, often with thematic groupings, perhaps a “start here” page for new readers, or other pointers to specific reading sequences

Colin Walker has suggested something like this in the past and implemented a “required reading” page on his website.
–November 17, 2019 at 02:18PM

Chain: perhaps the simplest collaborative blogging form; a straightforward back and forth exchange of posts exploring a particular topicMesh: like a chain, but with multiple participants; still a legible structure e.g. alternating / round-robin style, but with more possibilities for multiplicity of perspectives and connections across postsFractal: multiple participants and multi-threaded conversation; more infinite game branching; a possibly ever-evolving and mutating conversation, so could probably use some kind of defined endpoint, maybe time-bound

In the time I’ve been using Webmentions, I’ve seen all of these sorts of structures using them. Of particular interest, I’ve seen some interesting experiments with Fragmentions that allow one to highlight and respond to even the smallest fragments of someone’s website.
–November 17, 2019 at 02:20PM

I tend to think of blogging as “thinking out loud”, a combination of personal essay, journaling, brainstorming and public memo.

Another example in the wild of someone using a version of “thinking out loud” or “thought spaces” to describe blogging.
–November 17, 2019 at 02:25PM

Baroque, brutalist, Borgesian — let’s build some blogging megastructures.

Take a peek at https://indieweb.xyz/ which is a quirky and interesting example of something along the lines of the blogging megastructure you suggest.
–November 17, 2019 at 02:27PM

📺 Embedded in the Fabric: Georgetown Domains and the Master’s of Learning, Design, and Technology | Lee Skallerup Bessette, Randal Ellsworth | Domains 2019

Watched Embedded in the Fabric: Georgetown Domains and the Master's of Learning, Design, and Technology by Lee Skallerup Bessette, Randal Ellsworth from YouTube

The mission of the new Master’s of Learning, Design, and Technology program at Georgetown University is “to give our students a deep foundation in the tools and theory of learning design, technology innovation, learning analytics, and higher education leadership, a foundation on which they can create engaging and innovative learning experiences for all students.” Working in and with Georgetown Domains is a key part of this engagement; the students learn about and create their domains during the opening week-long foundations course, and build on it throughout the duration of the degree, ending with a final portfolio on their domain of their work. In between, the students have the option of taking a one-credit course in Domains, as well as showcasing their coursework and projects on the site. For some, their personal Domains specifically and Georgetown Domains more generally have become the subject of their research and study. What this allows is for students to engage directly with the technology, as well as questions of accessibility, privacy, surveillance, and tools. They learn about and apply these lessons as they move through the program, perform and reflect on their research, and build their sites. But most importantly, this allows for students to own their own intellectual property, as well as provide the tools to apply what they have learned in a practical and holistic way. The e-portfolio requirement at the end of the degree highlights this commitment to students’ intellectual property as well as professionalization, while also providing an experimental and reflective space for students to connect their work. This short presentation will discuss curricular examples (Intro week, Domains course, Studio and Studio Capstone) of how Domains has been integrated into the program, sharing some student sites, projects, and portfolios.

Slides

“Domains is a Trojan horse for thinking about ed-tech.”—Lee Skallerup Bessette

Randal Ellsworth uses the phrase “thinking space” to describe Domains here.

📺 Against Blogging | Zach Whalen | Domains 2019

Watched Against Blogging by

Zach Whalen from Domains 2019 | YouTube

For the past 15 years, I’ve included blog assignments in my classes as a default, routine, and generally low-stakes assignment. It began with a simple journal where students kept track of their progress through a video game, and through the years, the assignment has ranged from similarly simple logs or progress reports to the more ornate and decorous “features articles” where students seek to emulate magazine writing and engage with a public audience. At times, like when having a platform online was still a novelty and the adrenaline rush of Web 2.0-fueled activism took flight in the optimism of Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, blogging totally made sense. As a classroom experience, a blog assignment helped students find their digital identity through written expression. By finding their voice digitally, students found themselves.

But while this will still happen, and while I still see brilliant writing from my students, the era when the exigency of a blog assignment can be reliably vindicated by an authentic external audience has ended. It’s time for something else, which means it’s time to re-evaluate what blogs have been and what we have needed them for in order to find the best ways to meet those goals through other means. In this short presentation, I will offer several suggestions.

This is, however, an aspirational proposal. I’m writing this between semesters as I reflect on the Fall — where blog assignments didn’t always meet my goals or in some cases arguably undermined other goals for my class — and thinking ahead to the Spring — when I hope to implement some new assignments based on this recent conviction about the ineffectuality of blog assignments. Therefore, by June, my expectation is that I will have something new to report: either finding success with an entirely new set of assignments and corresponding tools, or returning to the familiar embrace of blog assignments with a renewed sense of their value.

Most likely, I’ll be somewhere in between, but my hunch is that different forms of discursive content creation will help students take control of their learning and find direction for their digital identities. Whatever I find in the coming semester, I’m confident that I’ll be ready to share some insight into the intents, purposes, and outcomes of inviting students to do intellectual work on the internet of 2019.

Notes as they occur to me while I’m watching this video:

To me blogging is a means of thinking out loud.

Of course having a site doesn’t mean one is blogging. In fact, in my case, I’m collecting bits and pieces on my site like a digital commonplace book, and out of those collections come some quick basic thoughts, and often some longer pieces, which could be called blog posts, but really are essays that help to shape my thinking. I really wish more people would eschew social media and use their own websites this way.

We need to remember that a website or domain is FAR, FAR more than just a simple blog.

It kills me how many in the edtech/Domains space seem to love memes. It’s always cute and fun, but they feel so vapid and ineffectual. It’s like copying someone else’s work and trying to pass it off as our own. English teachers used to say, “Don’t be cliché,” but now through the use of digital memes they’re almost encouraging it. Why not find interesting images and create something new and dramatically different. (I can’t help but think of the incredibly unique Terry Gilliam “cartoons” in Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the phrase “and now for something completely different…”.

Zach uses the phrase “personal learning journal” but doesn’t quite get to the idea of using domains as digital commonplace books. He also looks at other social sites like Tik-Tok, Instagram stories, YouTube channels, and Twitter hashtags, but doesn’t consider that what those things are could easily be contained within one’s own personal site/domain. The IndieWeb has been hacking away at just this for several years now. What he’s getting at here, but isn’t quite saying is “Why can’t we expand the Domain beyond the restrained idea of “just a blog.” And isn’t that just the whole point of the IndieWeb movement? Your website can literally be anything you want it to be! Just go do it. Invent. Iterate. Have fun!

Zack should definitely take a look at what one can do with Webmention. See: Webmentions: Enabling Better Communication on the Internet. I suppose some of the restraint is that most people don’t know that it’s relatively easy now to get one domain to be able to talk to another domain the way social sites like Facebook and Twitter do @mentions. And once you’ve got that, there’s a whole lot more you can do!

Perhaps what we should do is go back to the early web and the idea of “small pieces, loosely joined“. What can we do with all the smaller, atomized pieces of the web? How can we use these building blocks in new and unexpected ways? To build new and exciting things? What happens when you combine Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Blogger, Soundcloud, Foursquare, Flickr, Goodreads, Periscope, Lobsters, TikTok, Quora, Zotero, Flipboard, GitHub, Medium, Huffduffer, Plurk, etc., etc. altogether and mix them up in infinite ways? You get Domains! You may get something as cutting edge–but still relatively straight-laced–as Aaron Parecki’s website, which you might have to dig into to realize just how much he’s got going on there, or you might end up with something as quirky and cool as Kicks Condor’s site or his discovery/syndication channel Indieweb.xyz.

Want to be able to use your website to highlight and mark up what you read? Go ahead and do that! I have. You could keep a record of everything you watch or listen to. Make a food diary. Track where you’ve been. Want to keep collections of chicken related things so your site can have a chicken feed? Go crazy!!

Replied to a tweet by

Jessica Chretien (Twitter)

I increasingly find myself going to write replies to people on Twitter where I accidentally end up writing an essay, so I just decided to make a quick Wordpress so I can actually be vaguely effective in expressing myself? Anyway, here's a post:https://t.co/vKnEvXC89j
— Jessica Chretien (@infuturereverse) May 19, 2019

Which is kind of vaguely in response to @cathieleblanc's reply to a thread I wrote yesterday?
— Jessica Chretien (@infuturereverse) May 19, 2019

Should I post this in the CPLC moodle? I don't even know my dudes. Not gonna lie, I'm 10000% more comfortable writing this stuff on Twitter bc it feels less formal & therefore doesn't have to be "organized" or "actually good" & can just sometimes end up being surprisingly useful?
— Jessica Chretien (@infuturereverse) May 19, 2019

It’s threads/comments like these that make me think that using Micropub clients like Quill that allow quick and easy posting on one’s own website are so powerful. Sadly, even in a domains-centric world in which people do have their own “thought spaces“, the ease-of-use of tools like Twitter are still winning out. I suspect it’s the result of people not knowing about alternate means of quickly writing out these ideas and syndicating them to services like Twitter for additional distribution while still owning them on spaces they own and control.

I know that Greg McVerry, Aaron Davis, and I (among others) often use our websites/commonplace books for quick posts (and sometimes syndicate them to Twitter for others’ sake). We then later come back to them (and the resultant comments) and turn them into more fully fleshed out thoughts and create longer essays, articles, or blogposts like Jessica Chretien eventually did on her own website.

I wonder if it wasn’t for the nearness of time and the interaction she got from Twitter if Jessica would have otherwise eventually searched her Twitter feed and then later compiled the post she ultimately did? It’s examples like this and the prompts I have from my own website and notifications via Webmention from Twitter through Brid.gy that make me thing even more strongly that scholars really need to own even their “less formal” ideas. It’s oftentimes the small little ideas that later become linked into larger ideas that end up making bigger impacts. Sometimes the problem becomes having easy access to these little ideas.

All this is even more interesting within the frame of Jessica’s discussion of students being actively involved in their own learning. If one can collect/aggregate all their references, reading, bookmarks, comments, replies, less formal ideas, etc. on their own site where they’re easily accessed and searched, then the synthesis of them into something larger makes the learning more directly apparent.

📑 Dumb Twitter | Adam Croom

Annotated Dumb Twitter by

Adam Croom (Adam Croom)

In fact, I’d argue this blog has been largely a collection of writings concentrated on me working through the thoughts of my own digital identity and the tools that help shape it. The whole bit is highly meta. ❧

Replied to Bookmark: Using Inoreader as an IndieWeb feed reader by

Frank Meeuwsen (Digging the Digital)

Ik onderzoek weer hoe ik deze pagina’s beter kan gebruiken als een commonplace book, een plaats waar ik allerlei gedachten, ideeën en losse flodders kan plaatsen met minimale barrieres. Het is een rode draad in mijn blog-ontwikkeling en ik denk dat het een belangrijk element wordt op de IndieWebC...
[Rough English translation for convenience]
I am researching how I can better use these pages as a commonplace book , a place where I can place all kinds of thoughts, ideas and loose pieces with minimal barriers. It is a common thread in my blog development and I think it will be an important element at the IndieWebCamp barcamp for me.

Frank, in case you haven’t come across it yet, there is a stub page on the IndieWeb wiki about using our websites as digital commonplace books. Hopefully it will have some useful information, articles, and examples for you to use as you continue hacking. Feel free to add your own thoughts to it as you experiment.

While I do like the way that WordPress makes it easy for one to create link previews by simply putting a URL into the editor (as in your example), I’ve generally shied away from it as it relies on oEmbed and doesn’t necessarily put the actual text into your site. (Not all websites will provide this oEmbed functionality either.) I mention this because a lot of the benefit of having a commonplace is the ability to easily search it. If your post only has a title and a URL, without careful tagging it may be much harder to come back and discover what you were searching for later.

I’ve started an article on how I’m using my website as one, but still have a way to go before I finish it. A big portion of my workflow relies on the Post Kinds Plugin and its available bookmarklet functionality. There are also a lot of nice Micropub clients like Omnibear that making bookmarking things quick and easy too.

In the erstwhile, I ‘ll note that on my own site, I tag things relating to my own commonplace (thinking about and building it) as “commonplace book” and for examples of other peoples’ commonplaces, I usually use the plural tag “commonplace books“. These may also give you some ideas.

With respect to the Medium article which you linked, I’ve seen a recurring theme among bloggers (and writers in general) who indicate that they use their websites as “thought spaces”. Others may use similar or related phraseology (like “thinking out loud”) but this seems to be the most common in my experience. Toward that end, I’ve been bookmarking those articles that I’ve read with the tag “thought spaces“. Some of those notes and websites may also give you some ideas related to having and maintaining an online commonplace book.