As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson made clear in their touchstone book Metaphors We Live By, metaphors are the basis of all human thought and reasoning. The metaphors we use to speak about the web are not simply linguistic trivia – they determine how we understand it on a fundamental level. It determines what we think the web is capable of, what risks, opportunities, and challenges it poses. Which means the metaphors we use to think about the web profoundly influence what we think the web is, what we think we can do with it, and how we might change or evolve it.
…Out of all of these metaphors [for the web], the two most enduring are paper and physical space.
Digital gardening is the Domestic Cozy version of the personal blog. It's less performative than a blog, but more intentional and thoughtful than our Twitter feed. It wants to build personal knowledge over time, rather than engage in banter and quippy conversations.
An open collection of notes, resources, sketches, and explorations I'm currently cultivating. Some notes are Seedlings, some are budding, and some are fully grown Evergreen.
Good design can copy. Attitudes to copying often make a round trip. A novice imitates without knowing it; next he tries consciously to be original; finally, he decides it's more important to be right than original.
I think the greatest masters go on to achieve a kind of selflessness. They just want to get the right answer, and if part of the right answer has already been discovered by someone else, that's no reason not to use it. They're confident enough to take from anyone without feeling that their own vision will be lost in the process.