A Garden of
Digital Life.
Tecnocoltura is a metabolic space of interconnected thoughts, instruments and events, mapping the growth of digital culture across all forms of media. Come explore the roots, signals & soil of the digital world we are all a part of.
The Garden
Drift across the terrain. Regions glow as you pass; every plant is a topic taking root, and the landmarks descend into deeper chambers of the garden.
Click a region to enter
Fresh Topics.
Seed the Garden.
The garden grows through contribution. Plant a seed below — an idea, a question, a project — and a Curator will help it take root.
The Garden's
Philosophy.
"[Tecno]coltura is a place for human inquiry, exploration and understanding of today's digital ecosystem."
In a time of algorithmic saturation, a Digital Garden of Ideas [1] [2] serves as a sanctuary for slow growth. We reject the feed. Instead, we propose a metabolic architecture for thought. One that requires time to germinate, infrastructure to support its weight, and a community of Curators to provide light.
To plant a seed here is to commit to its maintenance. This is a space for exploring, understanding, curating digital technology as human culture. We do not archive to remember but to be in tune with the world.
Our Principles
Read the full explanationTecnocoltura is an antidote to the view that technology is either a tool to dominate nature (including us) or a mechanism that replaces all human things. Instead, here are our core beliefs:
(1) Technology is an extension of human intent → its flaws and faults are our responsibility.
(2) Digital tools are the interface between humanity and computational systems → AI is an interface that makes computational systems more human.
(3) When technology is for the senses, it fuses the virtual and the real into a third space where the distinction between the two effectively dissolves.
(4) Ideas are neither immutable nor property. They live apart from their authors.
(5) Technology is culture. Art is culture. They naturally happen together.
(6) Philosophy and technique are complementary, not opposed.
The garden's design
Our taxonomy is based on growth levels. We trace ideas from their Canopy, which reaches into the world of global events, political happenings, statements and movements that connect to each other across space and time.
These events are based on an infrastructure that supports them. The Body of each plant is made of techniques, technologies, and architectures that scaffold our actions.
All things reach down into the Roots, where vital nutrients are transferred, communicated sometimes through invisible channels.
How we curate
All content in the garden is curated by our team of human curators. This content is mostly produced by humans, although we use integrated support of generative AI. We do not use algorithms to determine what goes in the garden or how it is connected. We use git versioning so that modifications are always traceable. This has multiple benefits: It adds more protection to our content; it traces change, which helps us emphasize Point 3 of our Manifesto (we are all allowed to change our minds, make mistakes, evolve our ideas); it helps us track, to some extent, which contributions are made by humans and which are made by machines.
How we use AI: to support website development; to support editing; as part of a creative process to identify topics of interest, visual effects, and audio. Any rough material that is generated is then manipulated, re-edited, reshaped by humans. In a generative AI workflow, there is constant back and forth between machine-generated output and human intervention. We do not publish or republish AI-generated text content (as opposed to AI-edited content) if we can tell that AI was used.
What is this for?
- Learn: You can use this as a go-to resource to research and discover important events, technologies, and ideas and how they are all connected. You'll find news articles, people & org profiles, software primers, downloadable projects, and art experiences.
- Create: Develop your own ideas, your own projects, your own tools to address the themes raised here. Send them to us to add to the garden.
- Converse: Reach out to us on social media. We are artists, developers, professionals, business owners, activists, and cultural curators.