Digital Garden World Specification Document
Project Overview
A traversable digital world rendered as an interconnected vault, where each institution exists as a richly imagined fictional space co-created through human-LLM collaboration.
Institution Specifications
I. The School
A single institution existing across physical and digital planes—not “traditional vs. remote” but one school with multiple modes of presence.
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Architecture (Physical & Digital): The building exists. Stone, light, hallways. But students also attend from elsewhere, entering through interfaces. What do both modes share? Where do they diverge? Can you tell who’s “here” and who’s “there”?
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Pedagogical Philosophy & Daily Rhythms: What does this school believe learning is? Map a typical day—bells, transitions, boredom, revelation. Who teaches here and why? How does the philosophy accommodate presence at a distance?
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Student Culture & Secret Societies: The informal world students create within the formal structure. Rituals, slang, hierarchies, subversions. What gets passed down between generations that no administrator knows? How do remote students participate in this culture?
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Curriculum as Worldview: What subjects are taught and what does that reveal about values? What’s conspicuously absent? What textbooks are used—and what do their margins contain?
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Intimacy Across Distance: How do relationships form between students and teachers who may never share physical space? What new forms of friendship, mentorship, and rivalry emerge? What is lost?
II. The Network Society
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Constitutional Mythology: Draft the founding narrative—how did this society emerge, what crisis or vision precipitated its formation? What do members tell themselves about why they belong to something superimposed upon nations they already inhabit?
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Membership & Initiation: Define who can join and how. What commitments does membership require? Is there tiered participation? How does one leave, and what does leaving cost?
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Governance Mechanics: Describe the decision-making structures in granular detail. How are resources allocated, disputes resolved, leaders selected? What makes this governance “higher order”—what can it do that terrestrial states cannot?
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Mutual Aid Infrastructure: Map the concrete support systems—how do members help each other with housing, health, childcare, legal trouble, economic precarity? What obligations flow in what directions?
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Relationship to Terrestrial Authority: Articulate the legal and practical interface between this network and existing states. Where does it hide, where does it openly operate, where does it negotiate? What happens when its rules conflict with national laws?
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Rituals & Recognition: Describe how members identify each other, what ceremonies mark transitions, how the society maintains coherence across distance and difference.
III. The Think Tank
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The Post-Literacy Research Division: Detail the scholars and projects investigating what comes after reading and writing as dominant cognitive technologies. What are they observing in the world? What futures are they modeling? Do they mourn literacy’s passing or accelerate it?
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The Second Axial Age Observatory: Define how this division identifies and tracks the emergence of new fundamental frameworks for human meaning. What historical parallels guide their work? What signs suggest transformation rather than mere disruption?
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Golden Dark Age Documentation Project: Establish the methodologies for holding contradictory diagnoses simultaneously—the techno-feudal enclosure and the quiet enlightenment. How do researchers here maintain productive schizophrenia? What does their writing look like when it must be true in two incompatible ways?
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The Interstitial Seminar: Describe the ongoing conversation between all three divisions. How do post-literacy, axiality, and paradoxical temporality inform each other? What synthesis or productive non-synthesis emerges?
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Institutional Form & Funding: Address the material conditions of this think tank. Who pays for this work? What compromises does funding require? Where is it physically located—or is it, like the remote school, distributed across the network society itself?
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Output & Influence: Define what this think tank produces—papers, policy, prophecy, art? Who reads their work? How do their ideas enter the world and change it?
Meta-Specifications
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Navigation & Traversal Logic: Define how a reader moves through this digital garden. What links connect institutions? What paths emerge through exploration? How does the world cohere as a world rather than a collection of notes?
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Human-LLM Collaboration Protocol: Establish the methodology for co-creation. When does the human lead and when does the LLM? How are hallucinations handled? What does authorship mean here?
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Fictional Density Standard: Set expectations for level of detail—these institutions should feel inhabited, with the granularity of a novel’s world-building. Names, histories, textures, contradictions, the smell of the cafeteria and the tone of bureaucratic memos.
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Expansion Protocol: Define how new institutions, characters, or regions are added to this world. What proposals are required? How does new material integrate with existing lore?