Start Here
New to the garden? Here's the map, not the front door.
How this page differs from home
The home page introduces the newsletter and the living notebook. This page is a wayfinding guide: where to begin, what each section does, and how the pieces fit together.
How this garden works
This is a digital garden — a working notebook where ideas grow over time. Nothing here is finished. Everything is evolving. Notes move through stages of maturity:
| Stage | What it means |
|---|---|
| 🌱 Seed | A raw capture — a quote, a question, a fragment worth keeping |
| 🌿 Sprout | A developing idea with structure, connections, and open questions |
| 🌲 Evergreen | A durable insight — polished, reusable, ready to share |
| 🪴 Grove | A curated cluster of related notes — a pathway through a theme |
| 🌳 Forest | A big-picture synthesis — what multiple Groves mean together |
Not every idea reaches every stage. That's the point — growth is selective.
Recommended starting points
👤 Who I am
Use the About page for the short version of this site split, then go to wiobyrne.com for the professional front door.
🌳 The big picture
Start with the Digital Literacy Forest — the synthesis connecting privacy, sovereignty, resilience, and AI literacy into a coherent argument about collective digital self-determination.
🪴 Explore a theme
Browse the Groves — curated clusters on topics like Digital Resilience, Privacy by Design, AI Literacy, and Security Culture.
📚 Read my book notes
The Books collection has 0 notes with summaries, reflections, and connections to ideas in the garden.
📨 Follow along
The Digitally Literate newsletter has been running since 2015 — 420+ issues covering digital literacy, education, and the open web. Subscribe to get new thinking delivered weekly.
How to navigate
- Follow links. Notes are densely connected. Click any link to follow a thread.
- Use search. Press Ctrl+K (or ⌘+K) to search the entire garden.
- Check the nav. The top bar links to the main sections: About, Evergreens, Groves, Books, Newsletter.
- Look at backlinks. At the bottom of each note, you'll see which other notes link back to it.
There's no right way to read a garden. Wander. See what connects.