2020-05-09

Digital psychogeography

Thanks to a couple of recent [[thinking prompts]] from [[Panda]] and [[Graham]], [[psychogeography]] was on my mind. And lazily putting the word 'digital' in front of another always seems to be on my mind…

…So I have been thinking about the idea of [[digital psychogeography]], [[drifting]] through [[hypertext]]. Perhaps as a means of rediscovering lost history, and maybe as a way to break out of self- and algorithmically-prescribed [[filter bubbles]].

And well what do you know, there's already a rich vein of articles out there on the idea of being a [[cyberflâneur]].

(When I think cyberflâneur, I think '[[Kicks Condor]]').

Wiki links are my tags

For a brief period, I made a concerted effort to tag and categorise my posts. It seemed like a means of picking out themes in my writing, maybe discovery for me and perhaps also for people visiting my site.

But it always felt a bit weird and disconnected for me - I've written something, now I have to think about where it fits in to some abstract notion of my content. And it's not fun. It's just a thing that sits there staring at you in WordPress when you make a post. Hey you, eat your greens, and tag your posts. (If you don't give it a category, you get the 'Uncategorized' label of shame). So I kind of gave up on it again.

But as I've started heavily hyperlinking stream posts to my wiki, I've realised that pretty much my [[wiki links are my tags]]. I'm just tagging as I'm linking things together. And that's fun! (for me anyway…).

⥅ [[Wiki_links_are_my_tags/2020-05-09_11-18-18_screenshot.png]]

I've styled the wiki links diferent from other hyperlinks. I quite like it personally, but part of me wonders if it's just visual noise. I'd quite like if I could get WordPress to pick up those links and set them as tags, mainly just as a easy way to have them separate from the main body of the post.

[[Being, having, appearing]]

An earlier stage in the [[economy's domination of social life]] entailed an obvious downgrading of being into having that left its stamp on all human endeavour. The present stage, in which social life is completely taken over by the accumulated products of the economy, entails a generalized shift from having to appearing: all effective "having" must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate raison d'etre from appearances.

– [[The Society of the Spectacle]]

[[Enclosure of the gardens]]

I was thinking - [[digital gardens]] are an amazing, unique feature that the big [[silos]] don't really have.

The [[stream]] stuff, to some degree we're playing catchup. But other than a photo album here, a pin there, an 'on this day' here, there's very little mainstream investment in letting you turn your stream into a commonplace books, your knowledge base over time.

There's big platforms that do note-taking things, of course, like Evernote, etc, but the big companies in charge of the streams, I thought, don't seem to see the link between what goes in your stream being the seeds to grow a garden over time. You'd think they'd be all over that.

But… of course, the silos do have a digital garden for everyone. It's just it is [[enclosed]]. You don't have access to your own garden. They are reaping the benefits of the seeds you are sowing, collecting, connecting your dots, and then selling your fruit. [[People farming]], as Aral Balkan would have it.

All flow and no stock

And the real magic trick is to put them both together. To keep the ball bouncing with your [[flow]]—to maintain that open channel of communication—while you work on some kick-ass [[stock]] in the background. Sacrifice neither. The hybrid strategy.

– Stock and flow / Snarkmarket

Twitter and Facebook are all flow and no stock.

[[Water from the stream]]

I water my [[garden]] to help it grow. I get the water from the [[stream]].