A hypertext is a text with links to other texts. The hypertexts we are most familiar with are web pages.
Blog, micro-blog, digital garden, Zettelkasten, wiki, there’s not enough difference to draw lines. It’s all hypertext.
It’s all a question of intent, of culture, of belonging. The blog spirit is to write pages over time, and they disappear into the archive. The micro-blog spirit is to add a character limit to blog posts. The digital garden spirit is to write unfinished articles and papers, to be refined or not. The Zettelkasten spirit is to follow the trail of thoughts you thought and add new branches, small notes with new thoughts leading to more thoughts on new notes. And the wiki spirit is to write and edit online, to hit the Save button and then it’s live.
On a wiki, there is no editor, there is no draft. Wiki is like brutalism in content management. I can see the page sources and the end result is obvious and full of that old web power. It’s not an app. The software has no idea of process.
The wiki spirit is to open that window, write the text and hit Save. And then I read it again, and edit it. And tomorrow, I read it again, and edit it. And next week, perhaps, I read it again, and edit it.
#Wikis #Blogs #Social Media